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Julian Bond 2011-2019 | Google+ Archive |  Home
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeI'm hiding behind the sofa. This is the scariest ever Dr Who Christmas Special. — Stanley Kubrick and his hotel corridor designs have found a rich, fertile ground. Does the White House have any elevators?
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Commented on post by Friends+Me in Google+ Help+Rupert Wood We may have had this discussion elsewhere, but I disagree with the ownership issue. As a community owner I have complete control over it. There is a sense in which I own the content posted in my community. There is a valid use case to do this. Where a community collectively decides they want to preserve and archive the communities content. Community owners and members are asking for this now. Google already does this. There are several places in the Takeout data where somebody else's post content ends up in your Takeout file. Examples include +1s on comments, +1s on posts. I'm not sure it helps to say "Google shouldn't, or couldn't do this" when it's a FAQ and a definite need. Currently, the Communities takeout is pretty useless precisely because it doesn't contain the content, only pointers to the post URLs. When those URLs may well 404 at some time in the future. But then the side effects of GDPR irritate the hell out of me. Just like Cookies before it. ;) — Good news everyone, We've released Google+ Exporter, an application that helps you to export your Google+ feeds (profile, pages, collections, communities, including all comments) to Wordpress eXtended RSS file. Another available option is to export all posts published to profile, pages, collections, and communities to JSON file, including all comments! Export up to 3000 posts with our free version. I would love to know your opinion, suggestions or requests. Thank you!
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearDo you have any kind of feel for how many communities people join if they join any at all? The UI seems to discourage joining more than 10 or so. — G+ Communities Rank-Size plot, based on 12,000 obs. sample The rank-size relation is a common feature of most population and group studies, see: http://www.statisticalconsultants.co.nz/blog/the-rank-size-rule-of-city-populations.html Plotting log-log of size (population or members) vs. rank (sorted order), a linear relation generally emerges. We see that here. The actual y-intercept should be about 4.3 million (Photography community), but the mainline sample, from about n=10 to n=1,000 gives a good fit. Values here are based on a 12,000 observation sample, multiply ranks by about 600 to get the full Communities estimate. More on analysis: https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/comments/9zx67d/google_communities_membership_analysis_preview/
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeAnyone for a repeat of Tottenham? As a motorcyclist and scooter rider I'm seriously uncomfortable with the Police using cars as offensive weapons. But there's no money for traditional policing. And the kids are a nasty bunch of thieving mudlarks who seem to like knifing each other. That stole my Burgman 400 in East London. So it's not like I have a lot of sympathy. But still. Is this what we want from our law and order systems in a civilised, rule based society? — Meanwhile, our grim Mad Max future is one step closer. The Met police has decided what to do with those violent moped gangs in London. They knock them off their mopeds. With those police cars. (Before you all get your knickers in a twist. Thats a specially trained group of drivers, and the police watchdog has the uneviable task to go through all this dashcam videos. Moped crime has gone down by 44% from last year.) I see a movie here. Mad Max V: Brexit Britain. With Tom Hardy and Simon Pegg.
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Commented on post by Don McCollough in Google+ HelpGoogle helpfully gives us these reference codes. But what do they mean? What are we supposed to do with them? — Good afternoon. Due to the consumer G+ sunsetting, I've been migrating my collections to Blogger. Everything has been fine until the last ~30 hours when every single post of mine that has the full links to the Blogger sites was removed with the emails citing the reason as "spam". I've reposted my contact info post to my profile again, but it was pulled twice and then once for two of my collections. It seems the filters are having false positives. I only have these posts on my profile and I do not spam/share them anywhere.
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Commented on post by Brian Williams in Google+ Help+Ifinder Ifindi Yes. And if you drill into Google+Stream, you get, ActivityLog, Collections, Events, Photos, Posts, And ActivityLog gives you +1s on comments +1s on posts Comments Poll Votes Google's really not helping here by hiding and combining these options but it is what it is. — I attempted to download my Google+ stream at http://takeout.google.com. However, there is no option to download Google+ info (see attached photos). Appreciate help from anyone who can tell me what I am overlooking. Thanks.
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Commented on post by Brian Williams in Google+ Help+1 s are in 2 places. - Top of the Takeout list. this is external websites you have applied a G+ +1 to via a button on that website. - G+Stream.Activitylog, which contains +1s on comments and +1s on posts inside G+ — I attempted to download my Google+ stream at http://takeout.google.com. However, there is no option to download Google+ info (see attached photos). Appreciate help from anyone who can tell me what I am overlooking. Thanks.
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Commented on post by Brian Williams in Google+ HelpThat's actually quite strange. My guess is that the account you're logged in as doesn't have a Google+ Profile. So Google have helpfully left out the G+ options. If I look at the same page with my account, I see G+ +1s at the top. And 3 entries for G+ Circles/Communities/Stream between Google Shopping and Groups. — I attempted to download my Google+ stream at http://takeout.google.com. However, there is no option to download Google+ info (see attached photos). Appreciate help from anyone who can tell me what I am overlooking. Thanks.
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Commented on post by Bill Brayman in Google+ Mass MigrationI really hate Twitter. And wish it would just die already. But meanwhile I visit it every day via a small highly curated list. — Two interesting items here, Twitter's discussion limitations, but also a big page of all of google's sometimes fantastic castaway products. check out gcemetery.co
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Commented on post by Don McCollough in Google+ HelpInteresting use case for copying and archiving G+content across to a pre-existing Blogger blog. It would be great if Google could provide tools to make this easier. But even if they don't, there's potential for some 3rd party to use Takeout, the G+API and the Blogger API to do this semi-automatically. And then in the meantime, what's the best way of telling your followers that the content has migrated? — Good afternoon. Due to the consumer G+ sunsetting, I've been migrating my collections to Blogger. Everything has been fine until the last ~30 hours when every single post of mine that has the full links to the Blogger sites was removed with the emails citing the reason as "spam". I've reposted my contact info post to my profile again, but it was pulled twice and then once for two of my collections. It seems the filters are having false positives. I only have these posts on my profile and I do not spam/share them anywhere.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitSomebody asked "What happened in Mid-2015". Oh Look. Theresa May, Home Secretary. 12 May 2010 – 13 July 2016 And remember these from 2013? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/30/illegal-immigrant-poster-go-home — The Home Office has wrongly tried to force at least 300 highly skilled migrants to leave Britain under an immigration rule used in part to tackle terrorists and those judged to be a threat to national security, government figures show. The figures, revealed in a governmental review of its use of the controversial 322(5) provision, also suggest that up to 87 highly skilled migrants – including teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers and IT professionals – have actually been wrongly forced to leave the UK under the terrorism-related legislation. A further 400 people may have been affected. They are largely people who have lived in the UK for a decade or more and have British-born children. Many were given just 14 days to leave and were no longer eligible for a visa to visit the UK or any other country. All the victims were denied the right to work, rent property or use the NHS during their appeals. Some chose to leave the UK but many of those who chose to stay and fight their cases were forced into destitution, debt and mental health issues, with some considering suicide, the review found. Children had suffered severe trauma and their parents feared it would have a life-long impact on them. The review revealed that 65% of Home Office 322(5) decisions were thrown out by the first-tier tribunal while 45% of applicants were successful at judicial review, against an ordinary applicant success rate of 28%. An extra 32% of “complex cases” could be wrongly decided, the review said. It also revealed that across all immigration categories refusal of settlement applications was 5% until mid-2015, when it increased to 52% for tier 1 (general) migrants. Paragraph 322(5) of the rules has been a central reason given for the Home Office’s refusal of those in this group. The review found that the most common mistake made by the Home Office was its failure to distinguish between a late submission of tax and an amended tax return. So I can get deported if I try to file my taxes in the right way? Splendid.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Warwick Varley Remember the kids at Glastonbury and festivals 2 years ago chanting "Ooh, Jeremy Corbyn". I think it's fair to say that the drug of choice for Brexiters is alcohol. And I'd guess that the drugs of choice of Remainers is all the rest, and alcohol. — I am surprised the figure is not higher, to be honest. Other cracking stats about Brexiters: Brexiteers (12%) are six times more likely to believe climate change is a hoax than remainers (2%), though this pales in comparison to the almost half of Trump voters (47%). A belief there are harmful effects from vaccines and that they are hidden from the public is more than twice as prevalent among leave voters (13%) than remainers (5%). Fifteen per cent of Brexiteers and 11 per cent of EU supporters agree with the statement: “Regardless of who is officially in charge of governments and other organisations, there is a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together.”
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Hartmut Noack Sorry about that. climate-alarmist was an unintentional dog-whistle. I should have said AGW believers or something. As you point out, being alarmed by climate change is an entirely rational response to the science not necessarily the deniers term of abuse, like "Warmist". — I am surprised the figure is not higher, to be honest. Other cracking stats about Brexiters: Brexiteers (12%) are six times more likely to believe climate change is a hoax than remainers (2%), though this pales in comparison to the almost half of Trump voters (47%). A belief there are harmful effects from vaccines and that they are hidden from the public is more than twice as prevalent among leave voters (13%) than remainers (5%). Fifteen per cent of Brexiteers and 11 per cent of EU supporters agree with the statement: “Regardless of who is officially in charge of governments and other organisations, there is a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together.”
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitTow the whole of the UK outside the UK 5-mile limit. Then we'll have unlimited fishing rights. I've long thought the UK would be a much better place if it had half the people and was 1000 miles further south. Never mind Gibraltar, perhaps we need to annex the Canaries. Now if we can just find a way of cutting the population. The traditional empire way of keeping a newly conquered territory under control is to put a hated minority in charge. This gets a bit tricky with post-Brexit UK because the obvious candidates are all a bit ideologically unsound and I'll get into trouble if I suggest them. I'd offer the Buddhists but there's not really enough of them and even they are getting a bit of a bad name just now. So I think Vegetarian Hindus are the thing. When the borders shut, we'll have trouble feeding ourselves. And nobody wants cheap tasteless chicken from the colonies. But there's never any decent veggy curries in the supermarkets. So, I for one, welcome our new Hindu Vegan overlords with their Masala Dosa, Roti, Daal and milk sweets. The Monster Raving Loony Party used to have a thing about uniting all the islands off the coast of Europe into one nation of "The Rainbow Isles". Since those long ago times, the rainbow has been co-opted by the LGBT community. So here's the deal. Forget about all those silly christian sects and the 500 years of bloodshed. Let's unite the UK and the Republic of Ireland into one safe haven for all those who are pronoun challenged or have non-CIS sexual preferences. And just think how much it will wind up the gammons. — Charlie is determined to make Brexit work, and has some ideas: 1) Swap Scotland with North Korea. Out with gay-hugging pinko commie socialists, in with Juche. (Which is similar to Tory philosophy anyway.) 2) De-decimisation. £1 is 23 shillings, 1s is 11 pence, 1p is 3 halfpennies. Pass a law that makes sure that all computers operating in the kingdom must support this in hardware. British computing corners the market! 3) Invade Gibraltar. Get some second-hand Iranian anti-ship missiles from Syria and control the entrance to the Mediterranian. Issue letters of marque, roll in the money. From the comments: 4) Sink the French fleet. 5) Repeal the 1824 Weights and Measures Act. Wet herring is obviously counted to short 100. 6) Declare the Isle of Wight to be Brexit Island, move all Brexiters there. 7) Charge a royalty for the use of the English language. 8) MI6 starts supporting far right populists on the continent to fill the European Parliament with Nazis. Suddenly everyone will think Brexit is a good idea! 9) Bring back aristocracy. 10) Just nuke the EU. 11) Some Royal marries a Disney princess and the UK merges with Disneyland. 12) Build a space elevator.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitMore seriously, I find it interesting that anti-science people are often actually anti-some-science. So pro-GMO, Pro-Nuclear, Climate Deniers are a thing. But so are Anti-GMO, Anti-Nuclear, Climate-Alarmists. And even radical vegans like their mobile phones. Dig it. All these tribes exist. Pro-GMO, AGW Believers = Ecomodern Pro-GMO, AGW Skeptics = GWPF Anti-GMO, AGW Believers = Greens Anti-GMO, AGW Deniers = Anti-science conspiracy nuts Pro-Nuclear, AGW Believers = Ecomodern, Lovelock Pro-Nuclear, AGW Skeptics = GWPF, Lukewarmists Anti-Nuclear, AGW Believers = Greens (especially EU) Anti-Nuclear, AGW Deniers = Anti-science conspiracy nuts — I am surprised the figure is not higher, to be honest. Other cracking stats about Brexiters: Brexiteers (12%) are six times more likely to believe climate change is a hoax than remainers (2%), though this pales in comparison to the almost half of Trump voters (47%). A belief there are harmful effects from vaccines and that they are hidden from the public is more than twice as prevalent among leave voters (13%) than remainers (5%). Fifteen per cent of Brexiteers and 11 per cent of EU supporters agree with the statement: “Regardless of who is officially in charge of governments and other organisations, there is a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together.”
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass Migrationm'kay. This looks like a classic power law. So expect a very long tail. The interesting bit is going to be “The Fat Middle”. That’s the ~250,000 (wild guess) of communities with >250 people. Automating it is going to be hard but hand sampling of things might be interesting. Like “date of most recent non-pinned post” and the profile ID of the owners and moderators. As sites go from nerdy to massive the UI function gets smaller. When you start it seems really obvious to provide a list of communities like a large spreadsheet with numerous columns and sort orders. All communities sorted by most recent activity, or by owner name, or by total number of posts or whatever. By the time Google has applied it's army of managers to it, you get a page of pretty pictures in response to a search and that's it. "Communities 'Suggested for you' ". https://plus.google.com/communities/recommended seems particularly fond of very large communities high up in the "Short Head". Wow! https://plus.google.com/communities/101740425670472889181 Photography - 4,320,172 members - Public — Estimating G+ Communities by size I've been kicking at the problem of trying to estimate total G+ activity for a few years, and with the Plexodus, the question of how many active Communities are there is particularly pressing. Setting an arbitrary cutoff, consider communities of > 1,000 members. Based on some preliminary results -- 6,000+ completed of a larger randomly-selected communities sample of 12,000, I'm going to suggest there are about 55k - 65k communities > 1,000 members on Google+, from a total Communities population of 7.974 million. I'm using my old familiar method of working from sitemaps for Google+, with a running commentary as results come in posted to Diaspora here: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/dbee1250d0680136d1dc0218b70db60d Briefly, you can grab the top-level sitemaps via Google+'s robots.txt file, at https://plus.google.com/robots.txt One line of that file reads: Sitemap: http://www.gstatic.com/communities/sitemap/communities-sitemap.xml That's not actually the Communities list itself, but a listing of another 100 files containing all 7,974,281 individual communities. Rather than look at each of those, I've randomly selected a set of 12,000 (after a first run of 300) to look at. Generally, random sampling allows you to work with very small sample sizes, but given the highly-skewed Poison / power-curve distribution of Community membership populations, we need more numbers. The pull is running now, at about a query a second, and I'd crossed the 6,000 community mark a few minutes back. There are two sets of statistics which are of interest, univariate moments which give a general sense of the dataset, and a ranked-item report, listing the largest of the communities. The first gives an overall sense of the data, the second reveals what the top end of the data show, much of which is far outside the reach of the first report, and where the vast majority of community memberships reside. The univariate data: count, sum, min, max, mean, etc: n: 5655, sum: 597008, min: 1, max: 217297, mean: 105.571706, median: 2, sd: 2979.245712 %-ile: 5: 1, 10: 1, 15: 1, 20: 1, 25: 1, 30: 1, 35: 1, 40: 1, 45: 1, 55: 2, 60: 3, 65: 4, 70: 5, 75: 8, 80: 13, 85: 22, 90: 45, 95: 129 What this tells us is that the typical Community size is very nearly 1. The mode is 2. And it's not until we get to the 95%ile that populations are over 100. The maximum (of the sample so far) is nearly a quarter million, at 217,297 members (a Spanish-speaking religious community, "La Palabra de Dios tiene Poder Comunidad", "The Word of God has Power Community" -- https://plus.google.com/communities/118362296060634412141), which is over 8x larger than the 2nd largest in the sample. The ranked listing shows (at this moment) 56 communities in the sample of > 1,000 members, each one representing about 1,086 other communities, or giving us roughly 60,000 communities of > 1,000 members. Similarly, there are likely about 9,800 communities with 10k+ members, and about 2,000 with 26,000+ members. (There's a report of the top 60 ranked communities below). *Keep in mind that community counts and populations have little to do with actual quality, and there may be some exceptionally vibrant, small communities of only a dozen or so members. That's not what I'm analysing here.* (I've ... heard variants of this argument for going on four years based on earlier analysis.) But for a sense of what potential bounds are, this should be useful information. (Needless to say, I'd really like to obtain confirmation of this from, oh, say, Google, just to pick a random authoritative source out of the air, but if it's got to be Space Alien Cats, let it be Space Alien Cats.) Other potentially interesting bits: Current sample (of 12,000): 6831 Total public: 6190 (90.61%) Member distribution: n: 5914, sum: 602661, min: 1, max: 217297, mean: 101.904126, median: 2, sd: 2913.446902 %-ile: 5: 1, 10: 1, 15: 1, 20: 1, 25: 1, 30: 1, 35: 1, 40: 1, 45: 1, 55: 2, 60: 3, 65: 4, 70: 5, 75: 8, 80: 13, 85: 22, 90: 44, 95: 125 Communities report Total communities: 6827 Total public: 6183 (90.57%) Total private: 644 ( 9.43%) Total open membership: 3773 (55.27%) Total closed membership: 3054 (44.73%) Total membership (public only): 602661 Mean membership (public only): 101.90 (And if you're noticing that the counts are creeping up, that's because, as I've said, the script's running now, though the numbers are sufficiently solid I'm confident in leaking a set.) (Further update: a 2nd large community with 126,123 members has turned up.) In other news, I've been looking at present G+ public participation and the fortunes of the 4,214 active profiles I found in 2015, versus the attrition rate of Google's last-updated profiles sitemap from 2017-3-1. Of the latter set, 1.6% were unreachable, giving 404 errors when I attempted to scrape them. Of the 2015 sample, the 404 rate is 13.24%. That is, having an active profile in 2015 gives an 8.275x higher likelihood of having a dead account in 2018 than having any account in March of 2017. That's ... an interesting result. The constructive active, public participants in G+ are too small to be seen in my current 3,000 profile sample. That corresponds roughly to < 1 million such users, and given some other data (3,248 members of G+MM as I type this, 7,061 users on the Pluspora Diaspora pod, 33,066 signatures on the "Don't Shut Down Google Plus" Change.org petition), it seems that somewhere in the 10k - 100k range, possibly bumping toward 1m with lurkers, etc., is the likely solid core. A value I've suggested often. (And yes, aggreeing on definitions, and finding accessible and trustworthy metrics is difficult.) 1 217297 members 2 26389 members 3 23412 members 4 22953 members 5 16902 members 6 12763 members 7 11490 members 8 10321 members 9 8782 members 10 7406 members 11 6819 members 12 6704 members 13 5344 members 14 5148 members 15 4972 members 16 4624 members 17 4590 members 18 4142 members 19 3518 members 20 3368 members 21 3243 members 22 3177 members 23 3164 members 24 3158 members 25 3035 members 26 2973 members 27 2764 members 28 2507 members 29 2477 members 30 2474 members 31 2334 members 32 2226 members 33 2070 members 34 2029 members 35 1964 members 36 1745 members 37 1744 members 38 1720 members 39 1620 members 40 1614 members 41 1593 members 42 1563 members 43 1501 members 44 1458 members 45 1343 members 46 1266 members 47 1230 members 48 1196 members 49 1160 members 50 1155 members 51 1133 members 52 1084 members 53 1035 members 54 1025 members 55 1009 members 56 1008 members 57 978 members 58 964 members 59 957 members 60 924 members Reminder: these are partial results, values will vary a bit, though should be reasonably reliable.
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Commented on postMan does not live by sugar beet alone.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationOf all the posts of this, where would you like commentary? ;) I take it you're scraping front pages to get the membership figure? Shame there's no easy way to get total posts, owner or moderators. Shame there's no API for communities. Shame Takeout for communities is so minimal. — Estimating G+ Communities by size I've been kicking at the problem of trying to estimate total G+ activity for a few years, and with the Plexodus, the question of how many active Communities are there is particularly pressing. Setting an arbitrary cutoff, consider communities of > 1,000 members. Based on some preliminary results -- 6,000+ completed of a larger randomly-selected communities sample of 12,000, I'm going to suggest there are about 55k - 65k communities > 1,000 members on Google+, from a total Communities population of 7.974 million. I'm using my old familiar method of working from sitemaps for Google+, with a running commentary as results come in posted to Diaspora here: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/dbee1250d0680136d1dc0218b70db60d Briefly, you can grab the top-level sitemaps via Google+'s robots.txt file, at https://plus.google.com/robots.txt One line of that file reads: Sitemap: http://www.gstatic.com/communities/sitemap/communities-sitemap.xml That's not actually the Communities list itself, but a listing of another 100 files containing all 7,974,281 individual communities. Rather than look at each of those, I've randomly selected a set of 12,000 (after a first run of 300) to look at. Generally, random sampling allows you to work with very small sample sizes, but given the highly-skewed Poison / power-curve distribution of Community membership populations, we need more numbers. The pull is running now, at about a query a second, and I'd crossed the 6,000 community mark a few minutes back. There are two sets of statistics which are of interest, univariate moments which give a general sense of the dataset, and a ranked-item report, listing the largest of the communities. The first gives an overall sense of the data, the second reveals what the top end of the data show, much of which is far outside the reach of the first report, and where the vast majority of community memberships reside. The univariate data: count, sum, min, max, mean, etc: n: 5655, sum: 597008, min: 1, max: 217297, mean: 105.571706, median: 2, sd: 2979.245712 %-ile: 5: 1, 10: 1, 15: 1, 20: 1, 25: 1, 30: 1, 35: 1, 40: 1, 45: 1, 55: 2, 60: 3, 65: 4, 70: 5, 75: 8, 80: 13, 85: 22, 90: 45, 95: 129 What this tells us is that the typical Community size is very nearly 1. The mode is 2. And it's not until we get to the 95%ile that populations are over 100. The maximum (of the sample so far) is nearly a quarter million, at 217,297 members (a Spanish-speaking religious community, "La Palabra de Dios tiene Poder Comunidad", "The Word of God has Power Community" -- https://plus.google.com/communities/118362296060634412141), which is over 8x larger than the 2nd largest in the sample. The ranked listing shows (at this moment) 56 communities in the sample of > 1,000 members, each one representing about 1,086 other communities, or giving us roughly 60,000 communities of > 1,000 members. Similarly, there are likely about 9,800 communities with 10k+ members, and about 2,000 with 26,000+ members. (There's a report of the top 60 ranked communities below). *Keep in mind that community counts and populations have little to do with actual quality, and there may be some exceptionally vibrant, small communities of only a dozen or so members. That's not what I'm analysing here.* (I've ... heard variants of this argument for going on four years based on earlier analysis.) But for a sense of what potential bounds are, this should be useful information. (Needless to say, I'd really like to obtain confirmation of this from, oh, say, Google, just to pick a random authoritative source out of the air, but if it's got to be Space Alien Cats, let it be Space Alien Cats.) Other potentially interesting bits: Current sample (of 12,000): 6831 Total public: 6190 (90.61%) Member distribution: n: 5914, sum: 602661, min: 1, max: 217297, mean: 101.904126, median: 2, sd: 2913.446902 %-ile: 5: 1, 10: 1, 15: 1, 20: 1, 25: 1, 30: 1, 35: 1, 40: 1, 45: 1, 55: 2, 60: 3, 65: 4, 70: 5, 75: 8, 80: 13, 85: 22, 90: 44, 95: 125 Communities report Total communities: 6827 Total public: 6183 (90.57%) Total private: 644 ( 9.43%) Total open membership: 3773 (55.27%) Total closed membership: 3054 (44.73%) Total membership (public only): 602661 Mean membership (public only): 101.90 (And if you're noticing that the counts are creeping up, that's because, as I've said, the script's running now, though the numbers are sufficiently solid I'm confident in leaking a set.) (Further update: a 2nd large community with 126,123 members has turned up.) In other news, I've been looking at present G+ public participation and the fortunes of the 4,214 active profiles I found in 2015, versus the attrition rate of Google's last-updated profiles sitemap from 2017-3-1. Of the latter set, 1.6% were unreachable, giving 404 errors when I attempted to scrape them. Of the 2015 sample, the 404 rate is 13.24%. That is, having an active profile in 2015 gives an 8.275x higher likelihood of having a dead account in 2018 than having any account in March of 2017. That's ... an interesting result. The constructive active, public participants in G+ are too small to be seen in my current 3,000 profile sample. That corresponds roughly to < 1 million such users, and given some other data (3,248 members of G+MM as I type this, 7,061 users on the Pluspora Diaspora pod, 33,066 signatures on the "Don't Shut Down Google Plus" Change.org petition), it seems that somewhere in the 10k - 100k range, possibly bumping toward 1m with lurkers, etc., is the likely solid core. A value I've suggested often. (And yes, aggreeing on definitions, and finding accessible and trustworthy metrics is difficult.) 1 217297 members 2 26389 members 3 23412 members 4 22953 members 5 16902 members 6 12763 members 7 11490 members 8 10321 members 9 8782 members 10 7406 members 11 6819 members 12 6704 members 13 5344 members 14 5148 members 15 4972 members 16 4624 members 17 4590 members 18 4142 members 19 3518 members 20 3368 members 21 3243 members 22 3177 members 23 3164 members 24 3158 members 25 3035 members 26 2973 members 27 2764 members 28 2507 members 29 2477 members 30 2474 members 31 2334 members 32 2226 members 33 2070 members 34 2029 members 35 1964 members 36 1745 members 37 1744 members 38 1720 members 39 1620 members 40 1614 members 41 1593 members 42 1563 members 43 1501 members 44 1458 members 45 1343 members 46 1266 members 47 1230 members 48 1196 members 49 1160 members 50 1155 members 51 1133 members 52 1084 members 53 1035 members 54 1025 members 55 1009 members 56 1008 members 57 978 members 58 964 members 59 957 members 60 924 members Reminder: these are partial results, values will vary a bit, though should be reasonably reliable.
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Commented on post by The Annoyed Atheist in Google+ Help+The Annoyed Atheist Did you see something like the screenshot above? You should end up with a zip file. Unzip that and you get a set of directories. At the top is an index.html file. Dig down and you get something like Takeout\Google+ Stream\Photos\Photos from posts\09-05-2017 And in there are some .jpg and .csv files. — I would like to know if there is anyway to mass download all of my photos to my personal computer? I looked in my Google photos and most of them are missing and I don't really want them on Google Photos. Is there anyway to download them totally without doing them one by one?
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Commented on post by The Annoyed Atheist in Google+ Help+The Annoyed Atheist https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — I would like to know if there is anyway to mass download all of my photos to my personal computer? I looked in my Google photos and most of them are missing and I don't really want them on Google Photos. Is there anyway to download them totally without doing them one by one?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationSomebody suggested Twitter/Reddit as the main parent source. These are long form posts so Twitter isn't a good source. And there's no RSS/Atom out from Twitter. The "Snowflake API" problem is that every major platform uses it's own API for both outgoing and incoming. If Incoming is even possible. Reddit is now quite unusual in that there's rss/atom for everything. — Once upon a time, I used to route G+ public posts to my blog, Twitter, Facebook. The idea was "Post once - Cross-post everywhere" . So I posted once on G+ and the system cross posted the article or a subset of it to all the other platforms. This originally used http://dlvr.it but then they stopped reading G+. I was never completely happy with the layout. And I needed to code for this in my own blog anyway, so I wrote a G+ post to Atom convertor. This gave me an Atom feed to push into http://dlvr.it as well as a source for my blog to auto-create posts. Then Facebook stopped allowing external apps to post on a personal timeline. This process always had to start with G+ because that didn't have a write API. It could only be a source for cross posting, not a sink. http://dlvr.it and IFTTT have become less and less useful as they monetise and keep reducing support for free users. Meanwhile, new systems started to turn up with their own APIs like Mastodon, Diaspora, Hubzilla, etc. But even though they use standardised protocols, they're still too small to get any traction with things like http://dlvr.it and IFTTT. And now G+ is closing down. So it can't even be a source any more. And there's no obvious way to get posts out of Facebook as they disabled Atom feeds out of Facebook long ago. So what with the snowflake API problem, free services getting monetised and closed and walled gardens adding barbed wire to the top of the walls, this approach is reaching the end of the road. Maybe the idea of "Post once - Cross-post everywhere" has become impossible. It's certainly hard to work out where to start.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Denis Wallez Well, let's look at this briefly. 1) I'm talking about multiple platforms, not multiple places within one platform. I'll get different engagement on G+, Twitter, Facebook, Mastodon for the same content. So do I cut and paste manually, or just automate the sh*t out of it? 2) If you have your notifications set up well, then you can engage with each new audience on each platform. Posting in multiple places doesn't mean you can't engage. 3) This is a really common SEO/Marketing approach for MSM. Do a post on your main publishing point, eg http://guardian.com. Copy/abstract, point to it from your account on each platform. But, maybe that's why so much of Twitter is write-only. 4) Given that G+ is closing down, cross posting every post to your own blog was a good choice to make sure your content was archived as you go along. 5) This is an old debate. Here's something from 2012 about G+'s missing write API. https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/JxY42qpjghh — Once upon a time, I used to route G+ public posts to my blog, Twitter, Facebook. The idea was "Post once - Cross-post everywhere" . So I posted once on G+ and the system cross posted the article or a subset of it to all the other platforms. This originally used http://dlvr.it but then they stopped reading G+. I was never completely happy with the layout. And I needed to code for this in my own blog anyway, so I wrote a G+ post to Atom convertor. This gave me an Atom feed to push into http://dlvr.it as well as a source for my blog to auto-create posts. Then Facebook stopped allowing external apps to post on a personal timeline. This process always had to start with G+ because that didn't have a write API. It could only be a source for cross posting, not a sink. http://dlvr.it and IFTTT have become less and less useful as they monetise and keep reducing support for free users. Meanwhile, new systems started to turn up with their own APIs like Mastodon, Diaspora, Hubzilla, etc. But even though they use standardised protocols, they're still too small to get any traction with things like http://dlvr.it and IFTTT. And now G+ is closing down. So it can't even be a source any more. And there's no obvious way to get posts out of Facebook as they disabled Atom feeds out of Facebook long ago. So what with the snowflake API problem, free services getting monetised and closed and walled gardens adding barbed wire to the top of the walls, this approach is reaching the end of the road. Maybe the idea of "Post once - Cross-post everywhere" has become impossible. It's certainly hard to work out where to start.
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Commented on post by Neil Sloan in Google+ HelpYou can always get the "Share Link" and then copy and paste into a G+ post. It still works as expected, they just removed the one click way of doing this. — How do I upload an album from Google Photos to Google +? Until last week I could do it automatically by clicking on the Google + symbol when I click on 'share.' But now the G+ symbol is gone. Any options?
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Commented on post by The Annoyed Atheist in Google+ Help+The Annoyed Atheist The instructions I gave are for G+ Photos. Not G Photos. As far as I am aware, the Takeout for G+ Photos works and is complete. At least it works for me. But note that https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout also has an entry for Google Photos. This should allow you to download Google Photos as well. So that gives you two routes to download G Photos AND G+Photos. Which should be everything. — I would like to know if there is anyway to mass download all of my photos to my personal computer? I looked in my Google photos and most of them are missing and I don't really want them on Google Photos. Is there anyway to download them totally without doing them one by one?
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Commented on post by The Annoyed Atheist in Google+ HelpGoogle Takeout, G+Streams, Select specific data, Google+ Stream data, Photos. This will let you download all your G+ Photos, now. — I would like to know if there is anyway to mass download all of my photos to my personal computer? I looked in my Google photos and most of them are missing and I don't really want them on Google Photos. Is there anyway to download them totally without doing them one by one?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationI've mentioned this before relating to group forming. - 5 noisy people provides enough combinations for conspiracies where 4 is not quite enough. There's a big jump between 4 factorial and 5. 4! = 24 5! = 120. - 90-9-1. 90% lurk, 9% comment, 1% post. Suggests that while a group of 5 will probably keep going, somewhere around 50 people are needed for those 5 to emerge with fairly regular contribution from another 10 and occasional from the rest. - Dunbar. Somewhere between 100 and 250. Its possible for everyone in the group to recognise everyone else in the group. Meaning that there's a sweet spot for active groups between 50 and 250 people who are actively engaged. Less than 50 and the groups tend to die out unless they're a talking shop for close friends. Greater than 250 and the noise level gets too high and people stop paying attention. And they no longer recognise the contributors. Now apply that not just to systems with formal community-group function but to things like circles and followers. Any group-forming network. It's a common pattern among active people to create a carefully curated subset of people they follow closely and to only sip from the firehose occasionally. It's actually very rare for people to have high follow-follower counts and to also meaningfully engage. — The Facebook Era is Over It's more than just the Plexodus ...Here are three predictions: There’s no Facebook Killer. There will be no single company or app that will take Facebook on and win.... The three most obvious alternatives people are turning to are: Private Messaging Platforms.... Vertical Social Networks and Subscription Content.... Highly Curated, Professional-Led Podcasts, Email Newsletters, Events, and Membership Communities...With awesome experiences and low switching costs, time spent will fan out among hundreds, if not thousands of different services.... Growth halts on the edges, not the core. Facebook’s prominence is eroding as the sources of creativity and goodwill that gave it magic, substance, and cultural relevance are quietly moving on. The reality is that Facebook stopped giving creators a return on their time a long time ago.... Big brands will be the last to leave.... </quote> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebook-era-over-gina-bianchini
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAnd that's NumberWangLand! — Brexit outcome: Wangland. (Via @tsjessyjones)
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Commented on post by John Lewis in Google+ Mass Migration+Mike Noyes Please do post feedback asking for this. — Google TAKEOUT now. You should probably be doing a Google Takeout once a month. Just FYI, the format of the data keeps changing. We have people tracking this, but since Google is modifying what data is included and moving it around, you may want earlier or later copies. If you have the hard drive space, keep them with dates so you can refer back to older copies when you get a chance. The reason this is important is because all this data will most likely be gone after the close Google+. You'll probably have no way to look it up and if you ever wanted to migrate, this is the only way. We are currently recommending JSON as the format to take out in, but that might change. You can't really go wrong with JSON, as it ports easily to other formats... and programmers like to use this format. Questions? Ask in the comments.
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Commented on post by John Lewis in Google+ Mass Migration+Lars Hanisch Go here https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout Click "select None" Scroll down to Google+ Circles and turn it on Click on the row Click on the drop down. Change vCard to JSON — Google TAKEOUT now. You should probably be doing a Google Takeout once a month. Just FYI, the format of the data keeps changing. We have people tracking this, but since Google is modifying what data is included and moving it around, you may want earlier or later copies. If you have the hard drive space, keep them with dates so you can refer back to older copies when you get a chance. The reason this is important is because all this data will most likely be gone after the close Google+. You'll probably have no way to look it up and if you ever wanted to migrate, this is the only way. We are currently recommending JSON as the format to take out in, but that might change. You can't really go wrong with JSON, as it ports easily to other formats... and programmers like to use this format. Questions? Ask in the comments.
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Commented on post by John Lewis in Google+ Mass MigrationThat article at http://seriot.ch is about parsing JSON at a base level. I'd expect G+ takeout's JSON to be sufficiently standard that any mainstream parser should construct the same data structure. But then given Google's difficulties with UTF filenames, maybe not! But that says nothing about Google's schema being totally different to the schemas required or produced by any other platform. This is the snowflake API problem where every platform uses JSON, but none of them use a common schema. — Google TAKEOUT now. You should probably be doing a Google Takeout once a month. Just FYI, the format of the data keeps changing. We have people tracking this, but since Google is modifying what data is included and moving it around, you may want earlier or later copies. If you have the hard drive space, keep them with dates so you can refer back to older copies when you get a chance. The reason this is important is because all this data will most likely be gone after the close Google+. You'll probably have no way to look it up and if you ever wanted to migrate, this is the only way. We are currently recommending JSON as the format to take out in, but that might change. You can't really go wrong with JSON, as it ports easily to other formats... and programmers like to use this format. Questions? Ask in the comments.
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Commented on post by John Lewis in Google+ Mass MigrationJSON =/= schema. — Google TAKEOUT now. You should probably be doing a Google Takeout once a month. Just FYI, the format of the data keeps changing. We have people tracking this, but since Google is modifying what data is included and moving it around, you may want earlier or later copies. If you have the hard drive space, keep them with dates so you can refer back to older copies when you get a chance. The reason this is important is because all this data will most likely be gone after the close Google+. You'll probably have no way to look it up and if you ever wanted to migrate, this is the only way. We are currently recommending JSON as the format to take out in, but that might change. You can't really go wrong with JSON, as it ports easily to other formats... and programmers like to use this format. Questions? Ask in the comments.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google+Is it worth trying the more generalised Google People API? It wasn't obvious to me that it was going to help. And using it is slightly more involved than the G+ API. — G+Takeout of Circles is now available in JSON. The problem is that there's very little info in there for each profile you've followed, { "firstName": "$First", "lastName": "$Last", "displayName": "$Display", "nickname": "$Nick", "profileUrl": "https://plus.google.com/$UserId" } So I figured you could work through them and use the $UserId to do a people.get lookup through the G+ API. That ought to fill in the gaps with all the publicly visible info that you can see on their profile. Except that quite a few of the documented fields in the API documentation don't appear because deprecated. And even data like email addresses are not returned even if the other user has them set to public. Is this a lost cause?
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Google+ Mass Migration+John Lewis I suppose change is quite likely. But so far we've only seen two minor changes in the last year or so. - activitylog fixed, when it was broken - Circles JSON added And that's it. — VCard Format and Google Takeout Just wanted to share a little tip, based on a mistake I made. When you are downloading Circles or Contacts using Google Takeout, you have the option to select CSV or VCF format. CSV is going to be more useful down the road, but the one thing that VCF is good for is importing into mail and address book clients. If you go the VCF route, you will see a bunch of files, each named after a G+ Circle (or if you are exporting from Contacts, it will be the various labels you might have used). It will look like a mistake and that Takeout didn't actually export the contacts. But all you have to do is double-click on that file and your address book should prompt you to import all the contacts for that specific Circle or Label. For example, I'm on a Mac and the below image was for my "Active Engagers" Circle here on G+. When I double click on it, the Apple Contacts app opens up and prompts to import the individual contacts for that circle. I at first thought that the export was flawed because the files were so small and the individual contacts are obvious. They are grouped and need to be opened up by the contact manager.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Google+ Mass MigrationWell that's annoying. There are fields in the G+.people.get API docs that simply don't exist any more or are not delivered, even if the profile has them set to Public. So even if you work through adding API data to your circles download JSON, you'll never get any email addresses, for instance. https://developers.google.com/+/web/api/rest/latest/people { "kind": "plus#person", "etag": etag, "nickname": string, "occupation": string, "skills": string, "birthday": string, "gender": string, "emails": [], "urls": [ { "value": string, "type": string, "label": string } ], "objectType": string, "id": string, "displayName": string, "name": { "formatted": string, "familyName": string, "givenName": string, "middleName": string, "honorificPrefix": string, "honorificSuffix": string }, "tagline": string, "braggingRights": string, "aboutMe": string, "relationshipStatus": string, "url": string, "image": { "url": string, }, "organizations": [ { "name": string, "department": string, "title": string, "type": string, "startDate": string, "endDate": string, "location": string, "description": string, "primary": boolean } ], "placesLived": [ { "value": string, "primary": boolean } ], "isPlusUser": boolean, "language": string, "ageRange": { "min": integer, "max": integer }, "plusOneCount": integer, "circledByCount": integer, "verified": boolean, "cover": { "layout": string, "coverPhoto": { "url": string, "height": integer, "width": integer }, "coverInfo": { "topImageOffset": integer, "leftImageOffset": integer } }, "domain": string } — VCard Format and Google Takeout Just wanted to share a little tip, based on a mistake I made. When you are downloading Circles or Contacts using Google Takeout, you have the option to select CSV or VCF format. CSV is going to be more useful down the road, but the one thing that VCF is good for is importing into mail and address book clients. If you go the VCF route, you will see a bunch of files, each named after a G+ Circle (or if you are exporting from Contacts, it will be the various labels you might have used). It will look like a mistake and that Takeout didn't actually export the contacts. But all you have to do is double-click on that file and your address book should prompt you to import all the contacts for that specific Circle or Label. For example, I'm on a Mac and the below image was for my "Active Engagers" Circle here on G+. When I double click on it, the Apple Contacts app opens up and prompts to import the individual contacts for that circle. I at first thought that the export was flawed because the files were so small and the individual contacts are obvious. They are grouped and need to be opened up by the contact manager.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationArticle on Linkedin says Facebook is doomed and the last people there will be businesses. Why am I not surprised? Facebook has an evil side evil. And they have UI quirks which infuriate me. But they do have awesomely, massively, huge numbers of active people, groups, events, chat, posts, comments and all the rest. And conversations do happen there at least as good as here. It's may be evil in parts, but it's also good in parts. — The Facebook Era is Over It's more than just the Plexodus ...Here are three predictions: There’s no Facebook Killer. There will be no single company or app that will take Facebook on and win.... The three most obvious alternatives people are turning to are: Private Messaging Platforms.... Vertical Social Networks and Subscription Content.... Highly Curated, Professional-Led Podcasts, Email Newsletters, Events, and Membership Communities...With awesome experiences and low switching costs, time spent will fan out among hundreds, if not thousands of different services.... Growth halts on the edges, not the core. Facebook’s prominence is eroding as the sources of creativity and goodwill that gave it magic, substance, and cultural relevance are quietly moving on. The reality is that Facebook stopped giving creators a return on their time a long time ago.... Big brands will be the last to leave.... </quote> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/facebook-era-over-gina-bianchini
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Commented on post by Akshaya Sampoorna Suresh in Google+ Help+Nina Trankova Do you have definitive information that it will not be possible to create a new Google Public Profile after Aug 2019? Note that you pointed at https://support.google.com/accounts#topic=3382296 which points to https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6304920?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=3382296 which says "Control what others see about you across Google services" which points to https://aboutme.google.com/ Which is all about controlling your Public profile. And one of the places that is used on is G+. It's clearly closely linked to G+ but not completely and it is used elsewhere. I'm trying really hard here to be completely accurate. At the moment, we simply don't know what will happen to Google Profiles after 2019. There's been no official announcement of that level of detail. I can guess that since profiles pre-dated G+ and are used on other Google Products, not just on G+, they might survive in some form. But until we have something official, we don't know. — Will our accounts be deleted automatically after August 2019? If so,is it possible to create a new account after that ?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+Adrian Colley If there's a hard border, we might need them. Actually, if Brexit happens we might need them on the mainland. — Johnson bought the crowd-control vehicles from the German police in 2014, in anticipation of social unrest, without checking whether they could be used on London’s streets. In one of his most humiliating episodes as mayor the then home secretary Theresa May banned them from use anywhere in England and Wales. It left the capital’s taxpayers with three expensive white elephants. [The Mayor's office] announced on Monday that it has agreed to sell the vehicles for just £11,025 to Reclamations Ollerton, a scrap metal yard in Newark, Nottinghamshire. The fee recoups 3.4% of the £322,834.71 spent on the vehicles since 2014.
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Commented on post by Akshaya Sampoorna Suresh in Google+ HelpYour Google Account is not quite the same as your Google+ Profile. And the Google Account is used right across all the Google products. It's only the consumer side of G+ that is closing down. So yes, accounts will almost certainly remain and it will almost certainly be possible to create a new one after Aug-2019. It's not clear if your publicly visible Google Profile will disappear with the G+Sunset. Google Profiles actually pre-date G+ and they might survive. As of now, we simply don't now. — Will our accounts be deleted automatically after August 2019? If so,is it possible to create a new account after that ?
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeAnybody want to buy the plans for a Garden Bridge over the Thames? One of the better bits of these stories is the new stereos fitted. I imagine a full Psy-Ops sound system capable of playing "Ride of the Valkyries" at 120dB. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/14/boris-johnsons-unused-water-cannon-were-fitted-with-1000-stereos — Johnson bought the crowd-control vehicles from the German police in 2014, in anticipation of social unrest, without checking whether they could be used on London’s streets. In one of his most humiliating episodes as mayor the then home secretary Theresa May banned them from use anywhere in England and Wales. It left the capital’s taxpayers with three expensive white elephants. [The Mayor's office] announced on Monday that it has agreed to sell the vehicles for just £11,025 to Reclamations Ollerton, a scrap metal yard in Newark, Nottinghamshire. The fee recoups 3.4% of the £322,834.71 spent on the vehicles since 2014.
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Commented on post by Yahuchanan Yakazqa'al Yashra'al in Google+ UpdatesNothing official, no. — ANYTHING NEW ON GOOGLE ➕ ABOUT THE SHUT DOWN?
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Commented on post by Fuxia Scholz in WordPressIs there an equivalent group on Facebook to this community? — Google will shut down Google+ soon. And with that, our community will come to an end. We will let it run as long as they let us. Right now I already want to thank you all for your contributions, and the open, friendly community we have enjoyed here. https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe/ Update: I have set up a group on MeWe that might work as a replacement: https://mewe.com/join/wordpress1
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Doug Senko Or, she's a crazy cat lady. cf Andrew Neil. — Tensions have been running a bit high, lately? Cabinet ministers were so concerned by Esther McVey 's behaviour during the crunch Brexit Cabinet meeting they thought security might have to be called, it has been claimed. Mcvey, who resigned from the Government on Wednesday in protest at Theresa May’s Brexit deal – is reported to have been embroiled in a furious confrontation with the Prime Minister during the mammoth five-hour meeting on Wednesday afternoon. One Minister present told The Mail on Sunday: ‘It was the most extraordinary meltdown I’ve seen in Cabinet. I thought security would have to be called, because she seemed so hysterical and aggressive. The Prime Minister tried to talk to her, but it was all just empty waffle which Esther talked over. So Julian [Smith, Chief Whip], just started shouting at her to shut up.’ Well, I for one am also a bit annoyed by all the empty waffle coming out of Theresa May's mouth. So I can relate. And Mr Smith seems to have learned how to run meetings from watching Trump TV. Anyway, too bad that they didn't call security. Pictures of a Brexit minister dragged out of Downing Street? Priceless.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google+Recently came across this code. It uses a couple of clever tricks to extract all the posts and comments from a community via the API. https://github.com/sdsalyer/gplus-archiver — The more I dig into this the more mind boggling I find the decision to sunset G+ - What happens to all those buttons, badges, embedded posts and signins for G+ on other websites? - How do you extract and archive content from within communities? - We now need APIs to extract and archive non-public data. And so on. Pretty much everything here is going to sunset as well. https://developers.google.com/+/web/
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Commented on post by Kevin Black in Google+ Mass Migration+Edward Morbius Well I didn't say it was easy! And we're seeing this problem with G+ posts on the Internet Archive. The recent deleted post has half a dozen snap shots, none of which show all the comments. — So, I moderate a Star Trek rewatch community on G+ (linked below for reference) that has about 500 episode reviews and discussion threads. I want to preserve the content of all the posts, inclusive of the comments, and translate it to a new site, which could be a standalone website (I'm looking at building one with Squarespace, with or without professional assistance). I used Takeout to download the content of my community in HTML format, but with regard to the posts, it seems to just give me a list of links to each of them on G+. Which is helpful, but I think those links will no longer be active once G+ is no more? I'm confused about how to make this functional as an archive I can use to rebuild the content on a different platform. Suggestions or assistance are welcome!
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Commented on post by Jenny-Gabriela Kolonaty in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearYoutube stopped pointing at their own G+ profile at the bottom of their LH sidebar.
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Commented on post by Kevin Black in Google+ Mass MigrationAnother inconsistency from Google. The API let's you download any post in full with all its comments if you have permission to view it. This is exactly the call used in the Salyer code above to download a community. So Google provides tools that can be used to download all of a community's posts and comments but doesn't provide a tool to explicitly download it. Indeed there is a case that if the data is visible to you in html, then there is nothing to stop you scraping the web page. It's just awkward. And Google does give you a list of the URLs to go to. It's really not hard to construct social circumstances where an archive of a community can be collected and posted elsewhere with full agreement from the participants (or lack of refusal). And there is a solid use case for wanting to do that in the current situation where it is at risk of disappearing completely. So again, I don't buy the copyright viewpoint that it's not your data to download. And I don't buy the Google policy argument that Google has a policy to not give you data that wasn't posted by you. So I'm left with Takeout.G+Community being useless and posting feedback asking them to improve it. — So, I moderate a Star Trek rewatch community on G+ (linked below for reference) that has about 500 episode reviews and discussion threads. I want to preserve the content of all the posts, inclusive of the comments, and translate it to a new site, which could be a standalone website (I'm looking at building one with Squarespace, with or without professional assistance). I used Takeout to download the content of my community in HTML format, but with regard to the posts, it seems to just give me a list of links to each of them on G+. Which is helpful, but I think those links will no longer be active once G+ is no more? I'm confused about how to make this functional as an archive I can use to rebuild the content on a different platform. Suggestions or assistance are welcome!
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Commented on post by Kevin Black in Google+ Mass Migration+John Skeats Logical. But like many things G+ there are some inconsistencies. For instance, activitylog gives you comments you posted with the full text of the Post you commented on. So does +1s in activitylog. Personally, I don't buy this argument. As a community owner, I consider that I own the content posted by others in my community. Somewhere in here is mention of code written by a third party to download a community. https://github.com/sdsalyer/gplus-archiver — So, I moderate a Star Trek rewatch community on G+ (linked below for reference) that has about 500 episode reviews and discussion threads. I want to preserve the content of all the posts, inclusive of the comments, and translate it to a new site, which could be a standalone website (I'm looking at building one with Squarespace, with or without professional assistance). I used Takeout to download the content of my community in HTML format, but with regard to the posts, it seems to just give me a list of links to each of them on G+. Which is helpful, but I think those links will no longer be active once G+ is no more? I'm confused about how to make this functional as an archive I can use to rebuild the content on a different platform. Suggestions or assistance are welcome!
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Commented on post by James Lamb in Google+ Mass MigrationCustom RSS/Atom feed aggregators? You can pretty much do this just with a curated OPML feed list. — The apps deliver curated partisan news feeds on what are effectively private social media platforms, free from the strictures and content guidelines imposed by Silicon Valley giants. The NRA app has 150,000 downloads. Apps monitored by AggregateIQ, a subsidiary of Cambridge Analytica.
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Commented on post by Bill Brayman in Google+ Mass MigrationYou can't leave these out. Photo Sharing: Flickr Blogging: Blogger — My take on g+ alternative and related platforms. Comments invited. A few startup open source platforms not included, such as Social Home, Pleroma, etc. Also Reddit isn't included because it isn't stream/feed oriented.
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Commented on post by Randy Culler in Google+ Mass Migrationhttps://twitter.com/cshirky still posting. As well as the ones that went quiet, were the ones that everyone followed but never did post in the first place. https://twitter.com/cshirky?lang=en — Early Google+ influencers remember the network's early glory days, and what led to its eventual demise. A discussion on Cake led by +Trey Ratcliff
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Commented on post by John Lewis in Google+ Mass MigrationJust what we need. Another Google messaging system. — Google replacing Google+ sharing in the wild YouTube just added YouTube messaging for sharing. You can ignore this video, it was just a way for me to access the link. Obviously it's in Google's best interest to replace any location where you could previously G+ share with something new. So have you tried the YouTube messaging? What do you think to far?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitDisgraced Former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson met Disgraced Former Leader of UKIP, Nigel Farage in Boisdale of Belgravia, a traditional Scottish restaurant with a variety of whiskies, a cigar terrace and live jazz. And the consequence was? — In the meantime, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage have dinner together.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+D Doc Which is why I keep calling it UK-Exit. To remind people that Brexit is not just about England but the whole of the UK. — Sky Data poll from today. Which Brexit outcome would you prefer? No Brexit - 54% No deal - 32% May's deal - 14% Should we have a second EU referendum? Yes - 55% No - 35% Who would you prefer to lead the country through Brexit? Theresa May - 31% Jeremy Corbyn - 25% Jacob Rees-Mogg - 18% Boris Johnson - 17% Dominic Raab - 10% This is all reasonably encouraging, except for the last question, where 45% of all polled are in favour of Moggie, Dom, or Boris. Whats the plan here? Barreling full force towards a Mad Max future?
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Google+ Mass MigrationOn my list of code that needs writing. Take the Takeout.G+Circles.json, extract the profile URLs, extract the user ID from each URL, use that to do a G+Api.people.get call to populate and then write out a much enhanced JSON/VCF file. — VCard Format and Google Takeout Just wanted to share a little tip, based on a mistake I made. When you are downloading Circles or Contacts using Google Takeout, you have the option to select CSV or VCF format. CSV is going to be more useful down the road, but the one thing that VCF is good for is importing into mail and address book clients. If you go the VCF route, you will see a bunch of files, each named after a G+ Circle (or if you are exporting from Contacts, it will be the various labels you might have used). It will look like a mistake and that Takeout didn't actually export the contacts. But all you have to do is double-click on that file and your address book should prompt you to import all the contacts for that specific Circle or Label. For example, I'm on a Mac and the below image was for my "Active Engagers" Circle here on G+. When I double click on it, the Apple Contacts app opens up and prompts to import the individual contacts for that circle. I at first thought that the export was flawed because the files were so small and the individual contacts are obvious. They are grouped and need to be opened up by the contact manager.
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Commented on post by Randy Culler in Google+ Mass MigrationNot sure if this is relevant or not. If you work through that list of 2011 Tech Influencers and try and find them now. You'll see a few of them on Facebook and Twitter, often with no posts for a year or two. But you probably won't find any of them on platforms like Mastodon or Diaspora. Rather too many in there that have fallen from grace since then as well. — Early Google+ influencers remember the network's early glory days, and what led to its eventual demise. A discussion on Cake led by +Trey Ratcliff
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Commented on post by Drew Olanoff/s — Sounds like this is the end, folks. https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe/ I enjoyed using and covering Google+ quite a bit. I met some of the folks who built it, worked on it and gave their all to make a great and safe tool for communities to flourish. It's a bummer that it just never hooked folks. I think we've all learned a lot about "social networking" and the connecting everyone at scale approach appears to have been the wrong one. Here's to new ideas. RIP G+
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Commented on post by Jon Kitchen in Google+ Help+Jon Kitchen Your posts from today, like https://plus.google.com/+JonKitchenMusic68908/posts/FNm4nxNLXDX look to me like they're working as expected. G+ is picking up a main photo from the first included link and displaying it in the G+ Post. On desktop web. Looks fine to me. — Where are the photos that used to be shared with most articles? It's beginning to be that all articles are bald and have no Media whatsoever!
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Commented on post by Jon Kitchen in Google+ HelpThere are tools out there to turn your own G+ posts into an Atom feed. There are then tools to take this Atom feed and cross post it to other platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Many platforms like Wordpress will also auto-post from an Atom feed. There are tools like http://dlvr.it and IFTTT that can automate all this as a service. However, G+ Is going to come to an end in Aug 2019. And the big platforms are making it increasingly difficult to auto-crosspost into them. — How do I share photos and articles from Google Plus to other sites?
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Commented on post by Lar Yungmann in Google+ Help+Walter Roberson Someone in Google just might think about merging Google+ into GoogleGroups. It's unlikely though. — I cannot find a google suggestion from google search about a replacement for Google plus being offered by Google after killing the only social site i use on the web which still is google+. Any suggestions from anyone who is NOT an employee of google Google or even GOOGLE?
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Commented on post by 1wolny1 in Google+ HelpUK. 1) Go to a photo in G Photos. Chose Share. There is no explicit icon for G+ although there is FB and Twitter. But you can get a link, go to G+, start a post and paste the link. The photo is imported. 2) Go to G+ and start a post. Click on add a photo. Your G Photos are already there to be chosen. — Looks like G Photos are not providing direct sharing to G+ anymore. But you can share to Facebook & Twitter :) Nice move Google.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWrong metaphor. It should have been the Berlin Airlift. Where the US flies in tins of Ambrosia Creamed Rice using sub-contracted Chinese shipping companies. — Tweet by Paul Sweeney, Labour MP: Just turned on #bbcqt [BBC Question Time] there to hear an audience member declare: "we survived being blockaded by German U-boats during the war, I'm sure we'll survive a Brexit no deal." 😯🙄...Oh well, that's just fine then. QT never fails to remind you why Parliamentary democracy is a good idea. Brexit: only slightly worse than WW2. And the gammons are the first to volunteer, of course.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThere's nobody to lead us. So we'll just continue bumbling along trying to make the best of it. And we'll end up with a middle, muddle, fiddle, faddle, where we leave the EU without leaving any of its institutions or agreements. In the belief that over the next 81 years we can somehow negotiate our way to something better. BINO, here we come. Can I just remind everyone again, that "No UK-Exit is better than any Bad UK-Exit". I keep saying UK-Exit instead of Brexit to try and remind everyone again that it's the whole of the UK that is leaving, not just Great Britain. — Sky Data poll from today. Which Brexit outcome would you prefer? No Brexit - 54% No deal - 32% May's deal - 14% Should we have a second EU referendum? Yes - 55% No - 35% Who would you prefer to lead the country through Brexit? Theresa May - 31% Jeremy Corbyn - 25% Jacob Rees-Mogg - 18% Boris Johnson - 17% Dominic Raab - 10% This is all reasonably encouraging, except for the last question, where 45% of all polled are in favour of Moggie, Dom, or Boris. Whats the plan here? Barreling full force towards a Mad Max future?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitHaving trouble keeping score. - Shailesh Vara - Dominic Raab - Esther McVey - Suella Braverman - Anne-Marie Trevelyan - Ranil Jayawardena - Rehman Chishti Next? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2018/nov/15/brexit-deal-theresa-may-takes-agreement-to-parliament-politics-live?page=with:block-5bed6a01e4b0bb700a72d604#block-5bed6a01e4b0bb700a72d604 — Another one bites the dust. Dominic "I didn't realise that Dover was so important" Raab just resigned.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaWe call him "Little Bobby Tables" — Well that is an interesting G+ profile https://plus.google.com/104245738338629634202
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Commented on post by Kevin Van Sant in Google+ HelpIf you're unlucky enough to get one of these messages, what are you supposed to do with the Content identifier? Is there any way of getting from this message to the specific content that is causing the problem? — I got the email below. The only thing I use google+ for is to post about watch faces I make for smart watches. I only post it to my own "collection" and then share that post with one appropriate community one time. So either this was an error or else someone with too much time on their hands decided it would be fun to falsely report a post as spam. How do I get google+ to undo this error, and how to I use that identifier to determine what post was flagged? Hello, Your Google+ content has violated the Google+ User Content and Conduct Policy, which is against the Google+ Terms of Service. As such, your content has been removed or blocked. Content type: Post or comment Reason for removal: Spam Content identifier: z12xffogalbsx3k5504ccrxg1ryjxj5ybxw0k Certain removal reasons may result in your content being visible either only to you, or only in certain countries. Sincerely, The Google+ Team
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Commented on post by Denise Lane in Google+ HelpWhat actually happened to Google Events? ISTR it was split off from G+ like Photos and Hangouts, but then became beta-only or something. I don't feel like I've seen it for ages. — Ingress requires us to post our First Saturday events in Google+ however right now when you try it is telling us that only a set subset of users may post. What can we do?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is Near+Julian Bond Wee! https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/JxY42qpjghh Me talking about a post from Drew Olanoff, that gets a comment from Gundrota (and me) about the perils of a Write API for G+ and cross posting. How times have changed. Except that the post really didn't get any actual engagement. — On Flukish Predictions
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearGoogle takeout. Then scan what you were writing in 2012. Somewhat scary, and only 6 years ago! — On Flukish Predictions
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Commented on post by Phil Anthony in G+ RPG Escape RocketStrongly recommend creating a list of links to all your profiles on Social Media platforms and putting it somewhere obvious. Then referring to it in the about text of each profile. Make yourself easy to find. https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JulianBond23/posts/VghLTMV6vAS — How to create social media buttons on a blog, with examples for MeWe, Pluspora and more.
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Commented on post by Government GangStalking and Electronic Harassment in Google+ HelpI'm finding the current Takeout to be variable. I've had some success with G+Stream.Posts.html The files are quite usable. However there are some quirks with filenames and the main index needed remaking. Circles and Community were pretty useless. G+Stream.activitylog.html is all bit strange and hard to process. There are lots of issues here, but a major one is that the Takeout files make numerous references back into G+ — Now that Google Plus will be shutting down, I would like to know of an easy way that I can migrate the data of my Google Plus into any other social media platform, whatever that maybe, ..be it Facebook of Twitter or other How can I migrate each of my Google Plus collections into a Facebook page and so on..!! If this is not possible, I wonder if Google Plus will make this possible soon as part of their closing down help duty perhaps..!! Thanks Eleni
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Commented on post by Government GangStalking and Electronic Harassment in Google+ Help+Eric Peña Can you recommend the best place:- - To discuss issues, approaches and successes with G+ Takeout - To discuss development associated with using Takeout files. Particularly with reference to moving the data to other platforms. - To discuss issues, approaches with combining G+ Takeout with the G+ API. Is this the best community to have these discussions, along with the "Developing with G+" community, or should we be going somewhere else? https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/113527920160449995981 I haven't been able to find any productforums or googlegroups that are appropriate. And this is by far the largest and most active G+ Help community. — Now that Google Plus will be shutting down, I would like to know of an easy way that I can migrate the data of my Google Plus into any other social media platform, whatever that maybe, ..be it Facebook of Twitter or other How can I migrate each of my Google Plus collections into a Facebook page and so on..!! If this is not possible, I wonder if Google Plus will make this possible soon as part of their closing down help duty perhaps..!! Thanks Eleni
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearNever mind the API limits. What Google should do is provide a useful and complete Takeout function for G+ Communities. If they're serious about providing "ways they can download and migrate their data." then they need to do this for communities and community owners as well. — Google Plus Archiver: gplus-archiver This is a PHP-based tool which queries the G+ API and can archive entire communities as JSON files, created by +Spencer Salyer. There is a 10,000 query/day limit imposed by Google on Google+ activity and you can cut through that quickly. I've not tested this, looking for folks who can/will. There's a set of archived communities as an example at: https://wispsoftime.com/gplus-archiver/ His notes follow: It is PHP code to query the G+ API with the community ID and loop through all the posts and comments, storing them as json files (one per post). It can eat through their 10k query/day limit quickly depending on the community, so I disabled the form on the live site. I'd be happy to take requests for archival, though. It should be every post and associated comments in each community, with info for photos and attachments, etc. I'm not actually downloading attachments, so much of that is still hosted at Google. It's still a bit of a work in progress, but I thought it better to download what I could as soon as I could. The code is here, if it's helpful: https://github.com/sdsalyer/gplus-archiver
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Commented on post by Derek Lynch in Google+ Help+Mike Noyes The PHP stuff came from https://plus.google.com/+SDSalyer You should talk to him directly. I honestly don't know. The Takeout JSON, def not. — What happens to Community content after G+ closes? When does that happen?
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeBig, if true. So, The Brexit Secretary is working in direct opposition to his responsiblities? https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/secretary-of-state-for-exiting-the-european-union Surely, that's a sacking offence. Oh. Wait. — Well, let the battle commence. Raab and May into the thunderdome.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google+Came across this today. PHP code to archive a whole community to JSON. https://github.com/sdsalyer/gplus-archiver — Code that needs writing related to the G+Sunset - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Blogger - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Atom - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Wordpress - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Reddit - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Other platforms that have an import or post API - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Static HTML as a better alternative to that provided by Google. - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts.html - > Extract <body> section to files. - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts.html - > <body> in markdown. - Takeout.G+Streams.Circles - > Enhanced VCard/CSV with additional data via G+API.people.get - Takeout - fix the filenames to deal with UTF-8 characters - Find My G+ Contacts on platform XXX. Like https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/ - G+Community -> Archive of all the posts and comments Maybe Google will provide some of this. Like Atom output and one click migration to Blogger. More likely is that the community will cobble something together from the takeout files and Apis. G+ Takeout data structure documentation reverse engineered https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Data_Migration_Process_and_Considerations#Takeout_Data_Structure Some experiences http://blog.kugelfish.com/2018/10/google-migration-part-i-takeout.html https://blog.kugelfish.com/2018/10/google-migration-part-ii-understanding.htmlhttps://blog.kugelfish.com/2018/11/g-migration-part-iii-content.html More discussion in this community stream. https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772/stream/365899e1-ee8d-4152-8353-c5dbb3a76ad7 And specifically this post https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/Svw8EAh21aE The Takeout feedback form is hard to find. It's here. https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/takeout_feedback
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe linkage between general (tribal) party politics and single issue voting is infuriating. Both among the public and in the two houses. And trying to summarise why an individual voted remain seems hard let alone en masse. — The article starts by looking at the UK Liberal Democrats and their recent electoral performance and strategies, but the hammer hits when it turns on who the 48% Remain voters really are. The 48% (and perhaps increasing!) is unlikely to be made up from dedicated Europhiles. Indeed one of the core messages from the Remain campaign had been that the EU was far from perfect and could be reformed. The vast majority of British relations with Europe since 1975 had also been presented as a battle against the more damaging instincts of Brussels and the wider European project. Simply put, the 48% contains a large residue of reluctant or contingent support for the EU as the lesser of two bad options. A further slice of the 48% might have democratic issues with trying to overturn the result. There are likely to be Remainers who feel that once a decision was reached in the Referendum it is necessary to abide with the result. A third portion of the 48% is likely to constitute those voters who, on balance, preferred to stay in the EU but whose party politics are defined by other issues. It is possible to be an ardent Remainer but also think that other issues – austerity, unemployment, health, immigration – are the ones that determine vote choice in an election rather than a binary on/off, in/out, yes/no referendum. A good bit of hypothesizing, and I would like to see some numbers here. But the first and the third paragraph feel right. There are, maybe, three groups of Remainers: (a) Reluctant Remainers who cling to the EU in a resigned manner and would like to save their marriage; (b) Party animals who accidentally vote pro-EU when their preferred party takes a pro-EU stance; (c) Europhiles: the true citizens of nowhere. Europe first, UK second. Type c seems to be hard to find, except of course among the metropolitan avocado-eating champaign slurping pinko commie hippie socialist cultural elite. Thats not a good start for a relationship.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearDid G+MKaTS disappear completely? Just wondering if that could be used as a test case. Except that I assume it only works on communities where the posts are public. — Google Plus Archiver: gplus-archiver This is a PHP-based tool which queries the G+ API and can archive entire communities as JSON files, created by +Spencer Salyer. There is a 10,000 query/day limit imposed by Google on Google+ activity and you can cut through that quickly. I've not tested this, looking for folks who can/will. There's a set of archived communities as an example at: https://wispsoftime.com/gplus-archiver/ His notes follow: It is PHP code to query the G+ API with the community ID and loop through all the posts and comments, storing them as json files (one per post). It can eat through their 10k query/day limit quickly depending on the community, so I disabled the form on the live site. I'd be happy to take requests for archival, though. It should be every post and associated comments in each community, with info for photos and attachments, etc. I'm not actually downloading attachments, so much of that is still hosted at Google. It's still a bit of a work in progress, but I thought it better to download what I could as soon as I could. The code is here, if it's helpful: https://github.com/sdsalyer/gplus-archiver
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Commented on post by Derek Lynch in Google+ HelpCurrently there's no real way to archive a community. There is a takeout.Google+ Communities here https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout However, it's only available to community owners. And the data is minimal at best being a set of vcards of members (each with very little data) and a set of URLs to the posts. And even with the API there's no way to get from the URL to an activity ID to query the actual content of the post and it's comments. It's highly likely that those URLs will disappear and 404 at some stage after the +Sunset. If archiving community as a community owner is important to you, I'd strongly recommend leaving feedback asking for a much more robust tool from Google Takeout. https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/takeout_feedback Today I came across 3rd party PHP code that uses the API to download a complete archive of a community to JSON. https://github.com/sdsalyer/gplus-archiver As for what happens at the G+Sunset, at the moment we simply don't know. It seems highly likely that the user UI will become at least read only after Aug 2019. At some stage after that the data will likely disappear. Again, at some stage after that takeout will become unavailable and the API will stop working. But the devil is in the details and at the moment, we haven't been given any details. An example of those details is the question of what happens to G+Profiles including their avatars. — What happens to Community content after G+ closes? When does that happen?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass Migration/s
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Commented on post by Filip H.F. Slagter in Google+ Mass MigrationSaw this earlier. https://www.androidcentral.com/ingress-has-huge-google-problem — Augmented/Alternate Reality Game Developer Niantic about Google+ Shutting Down I was reading an article about one of the leading developers in the field of Augmented/Alternate Reality Games, Niantic, known for games such as Ingress, Ingress Prime, Pokémon GO and the upcoming Harry Poter ARG Wizards Unite, about the development process of Ingress Prime, and they had the following to say about Google+ shutting down: A challenge for us was that Ingress was originally launched inside Google around the time that Google+ was launched. We launched the game to Google beta testers, which was a pretty tight group of a few tens of thousands of people who were vetted by Google. We launched on Android only. The Ingress community naturally sprung up, originally, on Google+. It’s persisted there. If you think about Google+ as this shopping mall where everybody’s left, there’s one anchor store in the corner that still has a huge amount of activity. It’s the Ingress store. And now the mall is closing. The realtors have decided to bring in the wrecking ball. [laughs] It’s a challenge for us to figure out how to help Ingress find that new version of–the Silph Road is obviously huge on Pokemon Go. That has to happen. We frankly acknowledge that’s something that we have to help with. It’s a challenge to help that get transplanted to a new home. (emphasis mine) https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/11/how-niantic-designers-tackled-ingress-prime-reboot/amp/ As an Ingress player, I'm interested in seeing how +Niantic will try to help us find a new home.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Edward Morbius I'm planning on using a pair of "Don't Panic" brand, peril-sensitive sunglasses . https://twitter.com/hackaday/status/1060604136872382465 — There is a plan?
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Commented on post by Chuck Bartok in Google+ Help+RavenX As always, the devil is in the details. And as yet, we don't have any. — Question regarding Recently, we made the decision to sunset the consumer version of Google+. What is the consumer version and what wil be left?
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Commented on post by Xavier CHAMOISEAU in Google+ Mass Migrationps. https://pluspora.com/people/cb0c4640c8370136849e005056264835 — Anyone already on Pluspora, let me find you! gojita972@pluspora.com https://pluspora.com/i/bc8a85c383ce
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Commented on post by Xavier CHAMOISEAU in Google+ Mass MigrationSomething I'm finding mildly annoying about the federation. You follow a link to somebody's profile page on one instance. But your home instance is on another one and you're logged in over there, not here. The process of following the person currently on the screen then becomes convoluted and non-obvious. I've had this with Mastodon and with Diaspora. Th quickest solution seems to be to copy their name, go into your logged in tab on your home instance and search for them. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. — Anyone already on Pluspora, let me find you! gojita972@pluspora.com https://pluspora.com/i/bc8a85c383ce
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Commented on post by felicia osaji in Google+ Helphttps://plus.google.com/u/0/apps/activities — Good morning everyone, please whr do I go to get activity log on G+??
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeIt's a Bhutan Buddhist thing. They're usually a bit better at it. https://zru9o3ijb9-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/fertility.jpg — Meanwhile, in Manchester...
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Commented on post by Bernhard Suter in Google+ Mass MigrationI'm struggling a bit with how to format G+ JSON output as a flat archive in some other system. The Takeout HTML is quite a good and complete example of how to lay this out. But it seems quite a lot of work to recreate it. And it's going to be littered with links that may 404 after the G+ Sunset. I'd strongly recommend comparing the HTML, JSON and your translated JSON for a specific post. — Simple proof of concept on how to reformat G+ posts in the JSON takeout archive into a post for Diaspora*
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Google+ Mass Migration+Gideon Rosenblatt I didn't notice it until you mentioned it today. My last test run on Circles was 22-Oct-2018. — VCard Format and Google Takeout Just wanted to share a little tip, based on a mistake I made. When you are downloading Circles or Contacts using Google Takeout, you have the option to select CSV or VCF format. CSV is going to be more useful down the road, but the one thing that VCF is good for is importing into mail and address book clients. If you go the VCF route, you will see a bunch of files, each named after a G+ Circle (or if you are exporting from Contacts, it will be the various labels you might have used). It will look like a mistake and that Takeout didn't actually export the contacts. But all you have to do is double-click on that file and your address book should prompt you to import all the contacts for that specific Circle or Label. For example, I'm on a Mac and the below image was for my "Active Engagers" Circle here on G+. When I double click on it, the Apple Contacts app opens up and prompts to import the individual contacts for that circle. I at first thought that the export was flawed because the files were so small and the individual contacts are obvious. They are grouped and need to be opened up by the contact manager.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Updates+Julie Wills I would hope so. And of course we need the improvements well before August if we're going to have time to actually use them. And of course, I'd encourage everyone to post feedback. The Takeout feedback form is quite hard to find. It's here. https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/takeout_feedback — Some Questions for Google about the G+ Sunset. Any idea on how we get answers? - What happens to G+ Profiles? And the URL they exist on. - Will there be a publicly visible version of a Google Account "About Me" information? - Will G+ content stay up on the web read only? As a permanent fixture or for a period of transition time? - Will there be any tools provided by Google to do something useful with Takeout of G+ content and import into other systems? eg http://Blogger.com - Is there any chance of getting enhancements done to Takeout prior to the G+ sunset? I have a specific need to get post.activityID added to post.url in the G+stream JSON so I can use it as the Unique ID in the G+ API. I'm sure you have others.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesBig old post about the issues. https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/JFqzxiq6Crx — It's coming up to the first month since the announcement of the G+ Sunset. We've had no further information from Google. The announcement posts all have comments disabled. We have a lot of questions about the process. It would be really helpful if a representative of Google took part in an AMA to try and clarify these issues. https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/N5cNimR6jHj
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Google+ Mass MigrationYes. JSON is new. The VCF files (and the other formats) are small because there's very little in them. BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:4.0 FN:$fullName N:$lastName;$firstName NICKNAME:$nickname URL:$googlePlusProfileUrl END:VCARD And that's it. I * think * but I'm not certain that if you import these into Google Contacts, it uses the Url and the G+API to lookup and get all the other public contact info. $googlePlusProfileUrl is sufficient to do this. At the moment, I'd recommend this route get as much as possible into Google.Contacts from available sources and then export it to some other contacts file. Which suggests more code to write! Take the Takeout.G+Circles.JSON code and add all the data you can get from the G+Api.people.get call to produce a much bigger JSON contacts file. ps. JSON option is broken. It actually produces the same old, same old, HTML. I guess it's a work in progress. — VCard Format and Google Takeout Just wanted to share a little tip, based on a mistake I made. When you are downloading Circles or Contacts using Google Takeout, you have the option to select CSV or VCF format. CSV is going to be more useful down the road, but the one thing that VCF is good for is importing into mail and address book clients. If you go the VCF route, you will see a bunch of files, each named after a G+ Circle (or if you are exporting from Contacts, it will be the various labels you might have used). It will look like a mistake and that Takeout didn't actually export the contacts. But all you have to do is double-click on that file and your address book should prompt you to import all the contacts for that specific Circle or Label. For example, I'm on a Mac and the below image was for my "Active Engagers" Circle here on G+. When I double click on it, the Apple Contacts app opens up and prompts to import the individual contacts for that circle. I at first thought that the export was flawed because the files were so small and the individual contacts are obvious. They are grouped and need to be opened up by the contact manager.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Mixology 🍸I still had some Xocolatl Mole bitters left over from a pack of The Bitter Truth Travelling Bitter Set. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bitter-Truth-Bar-Pack-Bitters/dp/B01I1XO4IG/ref=pd_sbs_370_8 — Saturday Night Cocktail - Right Hand To be drunk while listening to Nick Cave - Red Right Hand. It's a Rum Negroni more or less. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrxePKps87k http://barnotes.co/recipes/right-hand-cocktail There's the usual problem with translating US quantities but this seems to work. - 50ml dark-ish, old-ish rum - 20ml Campari - 20ml Red Vermouth - 2 dashes (12 drops) Xocolatl Mole or Chocolate Bitters - Rocks glass, Stirred, rocks, orange slice. Makes a change.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Alexander Goeres But which one is the evil twin? — Jo Johnson has resigned as a transport minister, saying the country is "barrelling towards an incoherent Brexit" and calling for another referendum. The Orpington MP said that "given that the reality of Brexit has turned out to be so far from what was once promised, the democratic thing to do is to give the public the final say". Mr Johnson added his brother Boris, the chief Brexit campaigner and former foreign secretary, is "as unhappy with the government's proposals as I am". Can't complain about this Brexit TV series. Each time you think it gets a bit boring the writers throw in something from the left field.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThis post is not about the USA. — Yes, the UK has a government minister who hasn't realised that Britain is an island. The UK also has Northern Ireland secretary who doesn't understand how elections in Northern Ireland work. (A point of ignorance that could get you kneecapped, back in the days.) Behold the government of the talentless. May’s government is the obnoxious hatchback driver in the Ferrari baseball cap, with negotiators such as Davis veering from ill-mannered to unrealistic. It has squandered much of the negotiating period since article 50 was triggered, acting like its bumper sports the legend “MY OTHER COUNTRY IS A SUPERPOWER”. Incidentally, from the clown car to the car being driven knowingly over a cliff, it’s striking how many of the most apposite Brexit metaphors are car-related. Or, as the more literal leading Brexiteer economist Patrick Minford put it the other week: “You’re going to have to run [the car industry] down, in the same way we ran down the coal and steel industry. These things happen.” The post-imperial hangover wasn't. Britain was still drunk. And still is. The real hangover is going to be murderous.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitMy wife and daughter are planning a weekend trip to Florence in April 2019. I suggested they plan on taking the train since there won't be any flights. And to allow enough time to get Visas. They should probably get their Euros now as well. — The great stockpiling has begun. Wild Water's Cardiff warehouse has capacity for 17,000 pallets. Across all its storage sites it is storing 40,000 pallets. [...] The company has now bought a 12-acre former wrapping paper factory in Aberbargoed and is converting it into another cold storage centre, which will cost £1.7m, with £500,000 over five years coming from the Welsh Government. It aims to employ 120 people within 18 months. Brexit creates jobs. In storage warehouses.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitFull text. https://medium.com/@JoJohnsonUK/why-i-cannot-support-the-governments-proposed-brexit-deal-3d289f95f2bc — Jo Johnson has resigned as a transport minister, saying the country is "barrelling towards an incoherent Brexit" and calling for another referendum. The Orpington MP said that "given that the reality of Brexit has turned out to be so far from what was once promised, the democratic thing to do is to give the public the final say". Mr Johnson added his brother Boris, the chief Brexit campaigner and former foreign secretary, is "as unhappy with the government's proposals as I am". Can't complain about this Brexit TV series. Each time you think it gets a bit boring the writers throw in something from the left field.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitSinking Ship-Rats. But they're not in the harbour. And safety isn't just a short swim away. — Jo Johnson has resigned as a transport minister, saying the country is "barrelling towards an incoherent Brexit" and calling for another referendum. The Orpington MP said that "given that the reality of Brexit has turned out to be so far from what was once promised, the democratic thing to do is to give the public the final say". Mr Johnson added his brother Boris, the chief Brexit campaigner and former foreign secretary, is "as unhappy with the government's proposals as I am". Can't complain about this Brexit TV series. Each time you think it gets a bit boring the writers throw in something from the left field.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Magnus Lewan What a great moment to be releasing "Outlaw King" on Netflix about Edward I, "Hammer of the Scots" and Robert the Bruce. — I wonder who told Theresa May to try block a court case that could have allowed the UK to call off Brexit? I mean, why would she do that, right?
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Commented on post by Jenny WinderAnd Neil Young. But mostly, what about Beyoncé. Because Empress Bey IS already in charge of the planet. And David Guetta (to pick a name out of the Dance Music hat). Because there's a whole generation who have no idea who Bowie or Lennon were but are having it large to their own heroes. — Imagine if we had David Bowie, Freddy Mercury, John Lennon, Leonard Cohen, Aretha Franklin, Prince and so many other music heroes in charge of our planet. Even if they fucked it up totally, they would have done a way better job than the shits in charge now, and it would have been a bloody fun ride!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitNote what he didn't say: "You’re going to have to run the Finance Industry down, in the same way we ran down the coal and steel industry. These things happen.” But these things happen. — Yes, the UK has a government minister who hasn't realised that Britain is an island. The UK also has Northern Ireland secretary who doesn't understand how elections in Northern Ireland work. (A point of ignorance that could get you kneecapped, back in the days.) Behold the government of the talentless. May’s government is the obnoxious hatchback driver in the Ferrari baseball cap, with negotiators such as Davis veering from ill-mannered to unrealistic. It has squandered much of the negotiating period since article 50 was triggered, acting like its bumper sports the legend “MY OTHER COUNTRY IS A SUPERPOWER”. Incidentally, from the clown car to the car being driven knowingly over a cliff, it’s striking how many of the most apposite Brexit metaphors are car-related. Or, as the more literal leading Brexiteer economist Patrick Minford put it the other week: “You’re going to have to run [the car industry] down, in the same way we ran down the coal and steel industry. These things happen.” The post-imperial hangover wasn't. Britain was still drunk. And still is. The real hangover is going to be murderous.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Magnus Lewan Yet another great unknown. Even at this late date, It's still not clear if the UK can unilaterally cancel Art50. http://uk.businessinsider.com/theresa-may-fails-block-case-allow-uk-to-stop-brexit-50-article-2018-11 If they can't then it requires an agreement from all the rest of the EU. And it's not clear what conditions that would entail. The Euro, Schengen, no more rebate and so on, might well be required. — I wonder who told Theresa May to try block a court case that could have allowed the UK to call off Brexit? I mean, why would she do that, right?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitMeanwhile. "We can't stop Brexit" says Corbyn. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-labour-leader-corbyn-we-can-t-stop-brexit-a-1237594.html No comment. For the moment. — I wonder who told Theresa May to try block a court case that could have allowed the UK to call off Brexit? I mean, why would she do that, right?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Mixology 🍸And by the power of social media, here's the answer, Hm, I'll have to check, seems like the domain redirect isn't working. http://savoystomp.flannestad.com until I get a chance to fix it. — Erik Ellestad's blog SavoyStomp.com seems to have crashed and burned. Which makes me sad. Does anyone know him personally? I think he's based in SF. https://www.diffordsguide.com/people/3569/bartender/erik-ellestad
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThis drifted across my timeline. https://www.facebook.com/events/407604919778034/ The Great Brexit Bogroll Buyup. The UK imports all its toilet paper, & has only one day's supply. On Nov. 19 we will buy it all, as a taster of what Brexit will be like. — The great stockpiling has begun. Wild Water's Cardiff warehouse has capacity for 17,000 pallets. Across all its storage sites it is storing 40,000 pallets. [...] The company has now bought a 12-acre former wrapping paper factory in Aberbargoed and is converting it into another cold storage centre, which will cost £1.7m, with £500,000 over five years coming from the Welsh Government. It aims to employ 120 people within 18 months. Brexit creates jobs. In storage warehouses.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitBest comment: It took you this long to realise this? What have you been doing? — Jo Johnson has resigned as a transport minister, saying the country is "barrelling towards an incoherent Brexit" and calling for another referendum. The Orpington MP said that "given that the reality of Brexit has turned out to be so far from what was once promised, the democratic thing to do is to give the public the final say". Mr Johnson added his brother Boris, the chief Brexit campaigner and former foreign secretary, is "as unhappy with the government's proposals as I am". Can't complain about this Brexit TV series. Each time you think it gets a bit boring the writers throw in something from the left field.
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Commented on post by Chuck Bartok in Google+ Help+Charlotte Imbeau Everything on G+ for consumers will be deleted It seems likely, but we don't actually know that and we don't yet know the details. We don't know how long G+ will be available read only. We don't know how long the data will be accessible via Takeout. We don't know if Profiles and Circles will survive. What we have been told is that it will no longer be possible for G+ to be used by consumers after Aug 2019. One month has gone by now. But there's been no further official information from Google beyond the initial announcement. — Question regarding Recently, we made the decision to sunset the consumer version of Google+. What is the consumer version and what wil be left?
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Commented on post by marie srboui pochodian in Google+ HelpAs said, there's no way of doing this at the moment without writing code. However there is Google Takeout for exporting G+ posts and their comments. And there is both manual and API ways of importing data into Blogger. The problem is that the data export formats from takeout don't match the data import formats for Blogger. It shouldn't be too hard to write conversion utilities and even a one click content transfer program. But to my knowledge nobody has done that yet. Takeout -> HTML or JSON (in Takeout layout) JSON (in Blogger layout) or Atom (XML) -> Blogger — one question Is it possible export g+ to blogger ? If yes how to do it Thanks
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is Near2009 would have been when they were developing Google Buzz. Announced on 9-Feb-2010. I have to say I liked it and was sorry to see it go. But Google make some huge trust mistakes in the first year, auto-linking Gmail and Buzz. And then repeated the mistakes with G+,YT. You'd think they would have learnt. Where's Bradley Horowitz? — 2017 review of G+, discussion, Part 2 The comments to original are the gold here.
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Commented on post by Edward c in Google+ HelpThe only big platforms with substantial general purpose community/group function I'm aware of are G+, Facebook and Yahoogroups. Sub-Reddits are somewhat like this. There are numerous sites out there based on forum software like phpBB, vBulletin, Drupal. These tend to be focused on specific interests, like Ford Focus or Cycling. — Ok so let’s clear this up google accounts you don’t pay for but g suit accounts you have to pay a monthly fee for, This means on google+ if you have a community and you only have a normal google account time’s up but if you have a G suit account your alright although even if you have a G suit account community’s might still close
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in WordPressG+ posts are not necessarily short! It's not Twitter. It's more about keeping a public, searchable, archive of old posts. And an existing Wordpress blog seems as good a place as any to do that. Takeout.G+Streams.Posts does include comments and plus ones from other people. They could either be turned into wordpress comments (probably hard) or just included in the main post (probably easier). AFAIK, the Wordpress API does allow for posts and comments to be created from Atom files or an Atom feed. So it seems like some tool for turning G+ Takeout files into Atom files might be useful here. It might even be possible to create a tool to import Takeout directly into a Wordpress blog. — Has anyone got a good solution for moving a Google Takeout archive of G+ posts to a Wordpress blog?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Help+Strawberry Shortcake I assume that's aimed at me. Yes, I know about Takeout. And that's part of the reason for asking if publicly accessible Google Profiles, with the data entered in the Aboutme page, will survive. Since the takeout files make frequent reference to Google Profile URLs. — Dear +Google+: We're inviting you to comment to the 3,000+ members of G+MM community, all joined since 8 October 2018, on what if any plans, commitments, capabilities, migration support, etc., Google are planning. My view has been that if Google don't provide some clarification within the first month of the announced shutdown, there's likely to be little if any support. There are three days left in that first month. The Google+ profile has not posted in three weeks, and its recent posts are locked against comments.... https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/N5cNimR6jHj
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Help+John Elstone I'll take the wishes of good luck as encouragement rather than sarcasm. ;) You have to try, right? — Dear +Google+: We're inviting you to comment to the 3,000+ members of G+MM community, all joined since 8 October 2018, on what if any plans, commitments, capabilities, migration support, etc., Google are planning. My view has been that if Google don't provide some clarification within the first month of the announced shutdown, there's likely to be little if any support. There are three days left in that first month. The Google+ profile has not posted in three weeks, and its recent posts are locked against comments.... https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/N5cNimR6jHj
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ HelpAmong many other things, I'm particularly interested in whether publicly visible Google profiles will survive, along with all the information on the AboutMe page. — Dear +Google+: We're inviting you to comment to the 3,000+ members of G+MM community, all joined since 8 October 2018, on what if any plans, commitments, capabilities, migration support, etc., Google are planning. My view has been that if Google don't provide some clarification within the first month of the announced shutdown, there's likely to be little if any support. There are three days left in that first month. The Google+ profile has not posted in three weeks, and its recent posts are locked against comments.... https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/N5cNimR6jHj
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass Migration+Natacha Leriche I think I've done all the takeouts in both JSON and HTML. activitylog was broken to start with but seems better now. They all basically worked for me but they've all got detailed problems. — Dear +Google+: We're inviting you to comment to the G+MM community on what if any plans, commitments, capabilities, migration support, etc., Google are planning. My view has been that if Google don't provide some clarification within the first month of the announced shutdown, there's likely to be little if any support. There are three days left in that first month. The Google+ profile has not posted in three weeks, and its recent posts are locked against comments. I've reached out previously to Google directly through its press contact, with follow-up requests, specifically for Ben Smith, VP Engineering, or someone within his group to speak to G+MM. That request stands and is renewed here. As one of the moderators of this 3,000+ member community (all joined since 8 October 2018), we're very much hoping to hear from you, and soon. Normally our format is an Ask me Anything, but at the very least, and even if you don't have solid plans or schedules, we'd like to know what's in the cards, especially the following: Information on any features or capabilities of G+ to be disabled in advance of the final shut-down date. Presumably new-account formation will be among these, possibly new Community formation. The former is fairly understandable, the latter might be useful even at a late date in the migration for on-platform planning. Post-sunset availability of the G+ website itself. Will profiles and content still be Web-accessible? There's a substantial and long-lived set of content here, and a complete shutdown would be highly disruptive. Post-sunset access to users' Google+ data via Data Takeout. It's quite likely that not all users will have attempted, or succeeded, in creating and offloading their Google+ content. If it will still be able to create archives past the sunset date, this would be exceptionally useful information to have. Tools for migrating Google+ data to new platform(s). Numerous present G+ users would like to be able to migrate their personal posts, comments, photos, and other content to new platforms, likely to include other major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, SmugMug/Flickr, etc.), blogs (Wordpress, Dreamwidth, Blogger, Medium, etc.), and the emerging universe of open and federated platforms. These archives will almost certainly contain non-public data which could be at best embarrassing, and potentially personally catastrophic or worse, if made public. Tools for safely and responsibly handling large data archives are lacking, and the present instructions and data structures within the Google+ elements of Google Data Takeout fail to adequately support this process. We are aware of third-party efforts to create migration tools, including from G+MM members, and Tim Berners-Lee of Solid who has begun work on a G+ Data Takeout migration tool. What specific steps, tools, instructions, and data format changes are Google planning to ensure that this process is effective, efficient, responsible, and respectful of privacy? Further, are Google now taking steps to work with both proprietary and Free Software projects to provide for import tools? Present G+ users will need to store their G+ data takeouts prior to migration elsewhere as well as for some time afterward to ensure full restoration. One of the available storage options is Google Drive, and at the very least, holding G+ data on Google Drive should not change the security risks appreciably over their initial Google-based storage. The size of some archives will push many users over the free service tier of Google Drive capacity. Will Google commit to providing indefinite free storage of Google+ Data Takeout archives on Google Drive without registering the data storage against other user limits? Use of Google Drive also presents an opportunity for Google to provide on-system access and management of G+ Data Takeout archives. Given this, will Google commit to providing native tools for viewing, searching, filtering, extracting, and exporting Google+ archives from within Google Drive, including at least post, comment, image, video, collection, and contact data, as well as for distinguishing public from non-public content, and providing for export to leading endpoints including Facebook, Diaspora, Friendica, Markdown, and a standard minimally complex HTML format, with batch-process (rather than individual item) capabilities? (There are likely other elements I'm omitting from this list and I invite G+MM members to suggest other needs, say, HOA, chat, events, or other G+ features which may be of interest in preserving.) G+ specialised in image presentation and was immensely popular amonst photographers. Classification of photographs, and in particular, sorting through photographic archives is a challenging task, particularly at volume. Google have considerable experience in image processing and recognition. Will Google commit to providing descriptive search capabilities to photo and image collections, as well as other descriptive characteristics such as date, size, format, and EXIF metadata, for searching, organising, selecting, and exporting image collections? Naturally, the sensitive information which may result from such analysis should be limited in access to the archive's owner only and not be provided or made available to any other parties. Google Communities were a major feature of Google+ and range in size to millions of members, with over 5 million communities created. There is presently no mechanism for exporting G+ communities as a whole in any format. This might be of value to either community owners in reconstituting the community elsewhere, or to members wishing to retain access to years worth of contributions. Will Google commit to providing tools for Community owners and members to export G+ Community posts and texts in a useful format? Thank you.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ HelpSeeAlso for a much longer version and request https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/N5cNimR6jHj — Dear +Google+: We're inviting you to comment to the 3,000+ members of G+MM community, all joined since 8 October 2018, on what if any plans, commitments, capabilities, migration support, etc., Google are planning. My view has been that if Google don't provide some clarification within the first month of the announced shutdown, there's likely to be little if any support. There are three days left in that first month. The Google+ profile has not posted in three weeks, and its recent posts are locked against comments.... https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/N5cNimR6jHj
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in PlusocalypseI expected to see more discussion about the G+Sunset at the Ingress community. https://plus.google.com/communities/103803967875500436831 — Because Ingress started out as an Android-only game and catered largely to early adopters in the Google ecosystem, Google+ was a fairly logical place to build a community. And while the rest of the world moved on from the network in fairly short order, the Ingress community thrived. When Google announced it was shuttering the service within the next ten months, Ingress was the fourth largest community on the platform with thousands active daily. Individual posts within the Ingress community continue to get hundreds of comments and interactions, all separate from the planning sub groups for players plotting their next attack on the opposing faction. This kind of active forum system is something Google+ has always done very well, especially when compared to the other large social networks. Losing it as a resource causes a lot of problems not only for the players who have been using it as a team message board for so long, but also for Niantic itself when trying to get the message out about new features and events outside of the app. The Ingress Twitter account, for example, has less than 100k followers and sees a little over 100 likes, retweets, and comments per post. The Ingress account on Google+ has over 4 million followers, and regularly sees six times the engagement per post. This includes calls to action for upcoming global events, which is a huge part of the Ingress gameplay experience. While it's unlikely shutting down Google+ is going to seriously impact attendance, it's certainly going to cause far fewer people to be aware of these events and the repercussions of one faction winning over the other in real-time.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationWhat are post-Sunset plans for Google Profiles? There are numerous places in the Takeout files that point to the current G+ Profile. Will those links all fail post the G+Sunset? Will there be a publicly visible version of a Google Account's "About Me" information? Takeout Enhancements There are lots of small enhancements needed to the Takeout files. Early adopters have been posting feedback about these. What plans are there for updates to the Takeout files? — Dear +Google+: We're inviting you to comment to the G+MM community on what if any plans, commitments, capabilities, migration support, etc., Google are planning. My view has been that if Google don't provide some clarification within the first month of the announced shutdown, there's likely to be little if any support. There are three days left in that first month. The Google+ profile has not posted in three weeks, and its recent posts are locked against comments. I've reached out previously to Google directly through its press contact, with follow-up requests, specifically for Ben Smith, VP Engineering, or someone within his group to speak to G+MM. That request stands and is renewed here. As one of the moderators of this 3,000+ member community (all joined since 8 October 2018), we're very much hoping to hear from you, and soon. Normally our format is an Ask me Anything, but at the very least, and even if you don't have solid plans or schedules, we'd like to know what's in the cards, especially the following: Information on any features or capabilities of G+ to be disabled in advance of the final shut-down date. Presumably new-account formation will be among these, possibly new Community formation. The former is fairly understandable, the latter might be useful even at a late date in the migration for on-platform planning. Post-sunset availability of the G+ website itself. Will profiles and content still be Web-accessible? There's a substantial and long-lived set of content here, and a complete shutdown would be highly disruptive. Post-sunset access to users' Google+ data via Data Takeout. It's quite likely that not all users will have attempted, or succeeded, in creating and offloading their Google+ content. If it will still be able to create archives past the sunset date, this would be exceptionally useful information to have. Tools for migrating Google+ data to new platform(s). Numerous present G+ users would like to be able to migrate their personal posts, comments, photos, and other content to new platforms, likely to include other major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, SmugMug/Flickr, etc.), blogs (Wordpress, Dreamwidth, Blogger, Medium, etc.), and the emerging universe of open and federated platforms. These archives will almost certainly contain non-public data which could be at best embarrassing, and potentially personally catastrophic or worse, if made public. Tools for safely and responsibly handling large data archives are lacking, and the present instructions and data structures within the Google+ elements of Google Data Takeout fail to adequately support this process. We are aware of third-party efforts to create migration tools, including from G+MM members, and Tim Berners-Lee of Solid who has begun work on a G+ Data Takeout migration tool. What specific steps, tools, instructions, and data format changes are Google planning to ensure that this process is effective, efficient, responsible, and respectful of privacy? Further, are Google now taking steps to work with both proprietary and Free Software projects to provide for import tools? Present G+ users will need to store their G+ data takeouts prior to migration elsewhere as well as for some time afterward to ensure full restoration. One of the available storage options is Google Drive, and at the very least, holding G+ data on Google Drive should not change the security risks appreciably over their initial Google-based storage. The size of some archives will push many users over the free service tier of Google Drive capacity. Will Google commit to providing indefinite free storage of Google+ Data Takeout archives on Google Drive without registering the data storage against other user limits? Use of Google Drive also presents an opportunity for Google to provide on-system access and management of G+ Data Takeout archives. Given this, will Google commit to providing native tools for viewing, searching, filtering, extracting, and exporting Google+ archives from within Google Drive, including at least post, comment, image, video, collection, and contact data, as well as for distinguishing public from non-public content, and providing for export to leading endpoints including Facebook, Diaspora, Friendica, Markdown, and a standard minimally complex HTML format, with batch-process (rather than individual item) capabilities? (There are likely other elements I'm omitting from this list and I invite G+MM members to suggest other needs, say, HOA, chat, events, or other G+ features which may be of interest in preserving.) G+ specialised in image presentation and was immensely popular amonst photographers. Classification of photographs, and in particular, sorting through photographic archives is a challenging task, particularly at volume. Google have considerable experience in image processing and recognition. Will Google commit to providing descriptive search capabilities to photo and image collections, as well as other descriptive characteristics such as date, size, format, and EXIF metadata, for searching, organising, selecting, and exporting image collections? Naturally, the sensitive information which may result from such analysis should be limited in access to the archive's owner only and not be provided or made available to any other parties. Google Communities were a major feature of Google+ and range in size to millions of members, with over 5 million communities created. There is presently no mechanism for exporting G+ communities as a whole in any format. This might be of value to either community owners in reconstituting the community elsewhere, or to members wishing to retain access to years worth of contributions. Will Google commit to providing tools for Community owners and members to export G+ Community posts and texts in a useful format? Thank you.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAs always. No paywall via google. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Brexit+is+teaching+Britain+its+true+place+in+the+world&oq=Brexit+is+teaching+Britain+its+true+place+in+the+world — 'Brexit is teaching Britain its true place in the world' (Usually paywalled, but presently freely visible?) Too much of Britain’s politics, culture and its self-image have been driven by its colonial past and the national myths built up around the last war. It is why the Brexiters cling so desperately to the theory that Theresa May has betrayed Brexit. The alternative is to accept that it is their own reckless chauvinism that has reduced the UK to the role of supplicant with its former partners. Adjusting to a reduced status will require a reality check in our media and our politics and a touch of humility. If Brexit helps the UK come to a more accurate realisation of its global significance, some good may yet come out of this wretched business. Still, it seems an expensive way to learn a lesson. Full article text available here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/9ugn2j/brexit_is_teaching_britain_its_true_place_in_the/
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Commented on post by Jesse Covner in G+ RPG Escape RocketOne Community/Group or many? IMHO, writing from scratch is way too hard. If the existing platforms don't work, then work with The Federation to build community/group function. Rather than just dismiss Facebook out of hand, what's good about Facebook Groups and what's bad? As far as I can see there is only G+ Communities, Facebook Groups and YahooGroups left in this space. If they don't work any more, they're still fully formed examples to work from. — The Present and a Road Map The End of an Online Community After discussing about the issue here and then trying various networks, I have come to this conclusion: members here can leave contact info and save the content they published here, but it is unlikely any community effort will create an effective replacement for G+ communities. I will outline a roadmap later in this post to explain a possible solution, but I doubt it will work. Ultimately, the best thing to do is to convince Google not to shut down G+, and ask them to convert to a model in which Community owners pay a yearly fee for keeping the group alive. Or somehow spin off G+ to the open source community. The one thing which holds G+’s diverse community together is the community itself, which will not exist if G+ is shut down. The people who discuss things here do not want to discuss things on Reddit (by and large) even though Reddit’s community is bigger and Reddit has better formatting and threading ability. People discussing things on G+ often are not into discussing on Discord, or at least, forum discussion and closed-but-large-group chat discussions fulfill very different roles. The people who just want to get info from a variety of sources can use aggregation tools. The bloggers still have their blogs and will continue to promote them to a variety of sources (maybe more often on Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook). People who like to follow others via social network (and who are actually into socialization through social connections) will lose out not because there are no better social networks, but because the G+ community is destroyed and a community cannot simply be replaced. Oh, and it seems that getting people to move to Facebook is less likely than getting the majority of Fate and PbtA gamers to play in an investigation-based campaign using D&D4.0 rules. Any single replacement option can appeal to some users but not all, nor even a majority. If if there was a replacement that did everything that everyone wants, it would take time for the community to build up to a sustainable level. But actually, all the alternatives are lacking: -MeWe is closed for outside-to-inside links so is of limited utility to “advertisers” (blog posters and product promoters). It has poor discovery mechanisms, and also has questionable business model which may offer an open door to undesirables. -The Federated options are mostly Twitter-replacements at this point. Although some are now offering long-form posting, there are no “Communities”; the only way to make one being to host a server… which is a quite daunting prospect that also puts the whole community (group / instance) at the whims of whoever if paying for it. -Reddit does not really offer good features for following specific types of content from specific users. It’s culture and content style is not well received with many G+ users. It’s corporate policies are looked on with suspicion. -Twitter is not a platform for long-form discussion. -BBS/Forum boards tend to lack community and don’t develop social connections (as they are not really social networks) -Facebook is considered evil. I’m more of a promoter on G+ than anything else, so I have less at stake. I’m building an RPG company and RPG products, so all I lose is the time invested in building this platform. I get my discussion on Reddit (where I mod r/RPGdesign), and I only need to come across new content on G+ once a week or so. But still, I think this situation is sad. Unless people can stop the ending of G+, the community will be destroyed. A Roadmap to Rebuild Here is a proposed plan. It’s not really likely to work but it is a plan. The goal of this plan is to build a network that is like G+ so that many current members would migrate to it. It is not a way to save the communities of G+, because, as mentioned above, those will die with G+. Step 1: Technical Feasibility and Cost Analysis: There are certain bare minimums that must be met to provide the functionality of G+. This includes ALL of the following: * Ability to create groups / communities without much effort; * Ability to block user and the ability of mods to ban users; * Ability to follow other users so that their content can appear intelligently a feed; * Display of total number of followers * User profile controls * Capability to write long posts with long-form replies * Ability to link to a post (and preferably also a reply) from the internet. * Display of respect for users rights, values, and privacy. Currently, there is no platform that does all of this. They all fail in critical areas (MeWe with external links, lack of good feed algorithms; Facebook with lack of respect; Reddit’s lack of user-follow detail, etc) The best way to achieve the above is to create a new network, owned by a non-profit group, and running a Federated platform. However, to achieve this, certain technical hurdles would need to be solved: * Communities / groups would need to be supported without needing to create a full new instance. (EDIT: although if the "instance owner" can set up lots of communities , ie OSR Community, Fate Community, etc" that could work too) * Long posts would need to be supported. If these features could be implemented, then at that point the user base needs to figure out how much all of this would cost and how long it would take. This step needs to start now. Step 2: Organize Non-Profit. We would need to organize a non-profit organization with a board of directors. Whithin the laws of this Non-Profit, we would need to have a Board of Directors vote / selection criteria. I know a lawyer who can create the non-profit and write up the laws. This step would need to be taken in January or so, after we have gotten more information about what Google will actually do. It may be useful for representatives of this organization to contact Google management; maybe there can be some collaboration. (Edit: I have no idea how to select the BoD, but the lawyer would be on it. I would nominate current owners of G+ RPG Escape Pod. At least 1-2 technical people. ) Step 3: Funding Once we have a clear leadership structure that is law-bound and transparent we present the plan to the community as a whole and ask for money. As this is a type of on-going project, a Patreon-type crowd sourcing project may be the best way to finance this. (Edit: honestly not worried about this if the cost is not too high. Lot's of people will pay $1 month for a G+ alternative. Supporters may get voting rights on BoD and a flair) Step 4: Management Once the funding is in place, the Board will select and assign managers and mods. Managers will oversea the technical development and monitor the mods. They will also take upon themselves the task of communicating the network to the RPG community. The Mods will moderate and enforce community standards on discussions. (Edit: Before the above happend, BoD will create a approve community behavior rules. There needs to be a general community buy-in mechanic. I'm not talking direct democracy here... but some mechanic to give the rules legitimacy) Step 5: Development The managers will assign people to develop the technical specification based on the original plan and the board of directors will monitor. (Edit: And the BoD will assign people to do promotion promotion promotion. I'll nominate myself for this because as an "advertiser" I benefit from the increasing size of the group)
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Commented on post by Jesse Covner in G+ RPG Escape RocketFollowing large numbers of blogs via a feed reader is OK, except that those blogs very rarely get any engagement or comments back. And if you do engage and comment back, its very hard for you to track all the conversations you're involved in. Blog comments don't have a good notification system, common log in, link to common profiles, or a good aggregation system. So Blogs effectively become Read-Only, One-To-Few, broadcast. There's merit in that, but it's not as good as G+Posts & Comments, Facebook Posts+comments for long form conversation. Disqus. — *What I need is...* The discussion threading / formatting options of Reddit (including ability to link from and to outside, long posts, nested replies, Markup) The social-networking functions of Google+ (following people preferably in one direction, seeing how many followers one has.) The filter -capabilities of Google+ (posts view-able only by followers or by group) No more advertisements nor user data sharing than what is currently done on Reddit. The subreddit / Community function of both. Is there anything that is EXACTLY like this? Cause I have not found it.
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Commented on post by Peter Maranci in Google+ Mass MigrationFacebook post. https://www.facebook.com/peter.maranci/posts/10156012826388526 It's the link on the datestamp. — I just did something a bit interesting: I wrote a long piece and posted it on G+, MeWe, Minds, DreamWidth, LiveJournal, Pluspora, Blogger, and Ello (it's about the Diablo 1 HD Mod). I wrote it in a Google Doc. Interestingly, G+ did NOT display the formatting; boldfacing and italics. Dreamwidth did, with no problems. So did LiveJournal, which received the post as an automatic crosspost from Dreamwidth. No formatting came through on MeWe, Minds, Pluspora, or Ello. Blogger displayed the formatting, but eliminated text wrapping; I had to switch to HTML and abandon the formatting (although I could have recreated it; it would just have taken a long time). I find it interesting that the two Google products, G+ and Blogger, couldn't handle the formatting applied by Google Docs! Now I'll wait and see which ones get the most responses, if any.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesI get the impression Takeout is being improved and maintained. G+streams.activityLog was broken and failing for everyone for 2 weeks or so. It seems to be working now. So hopefully somebody is actually reading the feedback. — Some Questions for Google about the G+ Sunset. Any idea on how we get answers? - What happens to G+ Profiles? And the URL they exist on. - Will there be a publicly visible version of a Google Account "About Me" information? - Will G+ content stay up on the web read only? As a permanent fixture or for a period of transition time? - Will there be any tools provided by Google to do something useful with Takeout of G+ content and import into other systems? eg http://Blogger.com - Is there any chance of getting enhancements done to Takeout prior to the G+ sunset? I have a specific need to get post.activityID added to post.url in the G+stream JSON so I can use it as the Unique ID in the G+ API. I'm sure you have others.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesI would hope that the Official G+, G+ account would also post something. https://plus.google.com/+googleplus — Some Questions for Google about the G+ Sunset. Any idea on how we get answers? - What happens to G+ Profiles? And the URL they exist on. - Will there be a publicly visible version of a Google Account "About Me" information? - Will G+ content stay up on the web read only? As a permanent fixture or for a period of transition time? - Will there be any tools provided by Google to do something useful with Takeout of G+ content and import into other systems? eg http://Blogger.com - Is there any chance of getting enhancements done to Takeout prior to the G+ sunset? I have a specific need to get post.activityID added to post.url in the G+stream JSON so I can use it as the Unique ID in the G+ API. I'm sure you have others.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationI wonder what growth was like across all the federation. At least some G+ refugees joined Diaspora but not at pluspora. Mastodon seems to be going through another growth phase. https://dashboards.mnm.social/d/000000001/mastodon-network-overview?refresh=1h&orgId=1 https://the-federation.info/ — Pluspora Growth Trend Rising from 0 to >6,700 users, with the bulk of that occurring from 8 - 12 October. (Screenshot attached as URL doesn't provide a suitable preview.) https://the-federation.info/node/pluspora.com
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Commented on post by Peter Maranci in Google+ Mass MigrationCould you post the URLs to all the versions? I take it you just did cut and paste from G-Doc to the data entry form of each platform in a web browser? — I just did something a bit interesting: I wrote a long piece and posted it on G+, MeWe, Minds, DreamWidth, LiveJournal, Pluspora, Blogger, and Ello (it's about the Diablo 1 HD Mod). I wrote it in a Google Doc. Interestingly, G+ did NOT display the formatting; boldfacing and italics. Dreamwidth did, with no problems. So did LiveJournal, which received the post as an automatic crosspost from Dreamwidth. No formatting came through on MeWe, Minds, Pluspora, or Ello. Blogger displayed the formatting, but eliminated text wrapping; I had to switch to HTML and abandon the formatting (although I could have recreated it; it would just have taken a long time). I find it interesting that the two Google products, G+ and Blogger, couldn't handle the formatting applied by Google Docs! Now I'll wait and see which ones get the most responses, if any.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationGroups/Communities work really well. I'm not entirely sure why. I think at least part of it is that trying to get people to add their own metadata doesn't really work. And search is imperfect for finding specific topic discussions. But having a group be about a specific thing does focus people's minds. And dealing with off topic posts becomes a minor admin chore. At the core of this is making it easy to find good posts about a specific subject. Which points up the problem with collections. I didn't want all the electric car posts from one person, I wanted all the electric car posts from everybody, but only one's specifically about electric cars. And going to the biggest electric car group is much more likely to work for this, than looking for #electriccar or searching for "electric car". But Groups do have problems. Especially the one about duplicate groups being created each of which fails to get traction. And the mega-group that becomes useless due to sheer volume of posts, too many of which start going off topic. The platform needs to address this, raising the bar slightly to force people to take creating a group seriously. And offering ways of combining groups, pruning inactive or unstarted groups, dealing with absent landlords and so on. — Some thoughts on ways of categorising Social Networks along different dimensions. Network effects There is power in size. The question is, how much power? Metcalfe looked at it via the number of 1-1 connections possible and decided it was proportional to the square of the total number of nodes. This is one reason why Facebook or Twitter have more potential network power than G+. So the utility rise not just with N but N^2 Reed took this a stage further and looked at group forming and the total number of potential groups. The total number of possible groups is 2N - N - 1 suggesting that Utility rises in group forming networks at 2^N. However in real world networks nowhere near all possible groups actually form. In Social Groups it seems to me you need a minimum of 5 noisy people for the group to be self-sustaining. On the usual basis that 90% lurk, 9% Comment and 1% post, that means the real lower end is more like 50 people. At the upper end, Dunbar's number steps in as groups become too big for everyone to know each other. Somewhere around 150-250 people, groups tend to fragment. So as well as Social Networks gaining utility with N^2, if they support groups, their utility rises at somewhere between N^2 and 2^N. So for a Social Network to have long term utility we need lots of people able to form 1-1 relationships. And the ability to form small (5-250), long lived groups around common interests. The open question right now is whether we can build another truly large scale system (tens of millions of users, tens of thousands of groups) on top of a federated architecture or if this requires Google/Twitter/Facebook scale centralisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%27s_law One-Few-Many A long time ago now, I had the idea of categorising communication systems and platforms according to the numbers of creators and the number of consumers. Or authors and readers. Break each side into "One", "Few", "Many" and you have a 3*3 matrix of One-Few-Many authors communicating with One-Few-Many readers. So Private Blogs are typically One-to-Few. Big Media broadcast outlets are One-To-Many. Discussion forums are Few-To-Few. a person's experience of Feed aggregators is Few-To-One. Private messaging is generally One-to-One. eBay is Many-to-Many. Filling out all the cells in the matrix is an interesting intellectual exercise. The point though is that there are fundamental differences here between the various styles of comms. https://www.voidstar.com/node.php?id=2977 https://www.voidstar.com/images/onefewmany.gif Sync-Async Or Sync-real time, nearly real time, Async. How is the style of our comms defined by time? Chat and group chat (like IRC) happen almost in real time. People sometimes try and use Twitter or Email like this but it really doesn't work that way. We then bolt notification systems on top of this to try and speed up the responses and encourage people to respond immediately. But of course this breaks people's natural workflow. It also encourages a lack of thought in the reply. Often what's actually needed is a conscious decision to make the comms Async. Don't expect a reply in 24 hours and the reply you get is likely to be more thoughtful. Media Text, voice & image, video. There's a real problem with communications that use a tool that is too high up the stack here. This also relates back to the Sync-Async problem. Don't interrupt me with a voice message when I could skim read the text in my own time. But also don't use a screen shot just because of platform limitations (Twitter!). And don't do a 5 minute video to camera when 300 words would do that I could skim read in 20 seconds. But each media type as it's place. Your text review is no substitute for listening to the music or watching the film. But don't force me to watch the 45 minute TED talk to grok your 5 page idea. TL;DR. is bad, but TL;DV. is worse. Post Size Micro, Small, Long. There are fundamental differences in style between 140 chars, one screen of text and a 5 page essay. Every time we impose a limit the users will try and find ways round it. Hence Unroll, and reply-to-self /N conventions. Ideally, any one platform should support all these and not differentiate. In practice, dropping a 1000 word block into a chat doesn't work. But that's actually obvious. What isn't obvious but should be is that long form text is important. And somewhere in social networks there should be support for this. A long form post with semi-threaded short form comments below it is a highly successful pattern so should be supported.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationIt may be obvious from the above, but beware. Takeout of your own Posts (including into communities) is pretty complete and includes comments. Takeout of posts from a community is VERY incomplete and only consists of a post url. — Code that needs writing - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Blogger - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Atom - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Wordpress - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Reddit - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Other platforms that have an import or post API - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Static HTML as a better alternative to that provided by Google. - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts.html - > Extract <body> section to files. - Takeout.G+Streams.Circles - > Enhanced VCard/CSV with additional data via G+API.people.get - Takeout - fix the filenames to deal with UTF-8 characters - Find My G+ Contacts on platform XXX. Like https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/ Maybe Google will provide some of this. Like Atom output and one click migration to Blogger. More likely is that the community will cobble something together from the takeout files and Apis.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWorth reading this thread. There's no time left. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1058338575530508288.html — There is no such thing as one poll that rules them all, but there are strong indications that voters in Labour seats are now in favour of a second referendum. Food for thought for Labour MPs. Corbyn is still in favour of calling an election first and going for a second referendum only if he can't get an election. His second-in-command, Keith Starmer, wants it the other way around.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearSadly, there are no good email clients. A huge problem with email is Outlook. Unfortunately, Gmail is not much better. In particular, I've yet to see a good threading model and display. Or a good filtering model. And part of the problem is that client design assumes one-to-one communication and then bolts on mailing lists and usenet. I'd actually like to see a client that works the other way. Solve the Usenet client problem, extend that to mailing lists. And then make it work for one-to-one. — A farewell to email ...Regardless of how these specific experiments work out, one conclusion is clear. Even the people who are most tied to email are finding it increasingly unworkable in the world we have grown into. Administering an email installation while blocking spam and ensuring that one's emails actually get delivered is getting harder; fewer people and organizations want to take it on. As a result, our formerly decentralized email system is becoming more centralized at a tiny number of email providers. If "email" means "Gmail", it starts to lose its advantage over other centralized sites.... +Jonathan Corbet at LWN noting a trend I've been observing, and practicing, myself. Email is becoming less usable, less used, more problematic, and yet without a clear alternative, open or otherwise. This is only part of the Plexodus problem, though many dynamics are similar and for related reasons. https://lwn.net/Articles/768483/
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitHow much damage has Momentum (Lansman) done by NOT calling for "No Brexit" in fear of political suicide in the Labour Heartlands? How bad does it have to get before they change their tune? Labour benefited from a huge influx of young remainers. And now they're losing them all. — There is no such thing as one poll that rules them all, but there are strong indications that voters in Labour seats are now in favour of a second referendum. Food for thought for Labour MPs. Corbyn is still in favour of calling an election first and going for a second referendum only if he can't get an election. His second-in-command, Keith Starmer, wants it the other way around.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationI need to go and update the examples of One-Few-Many for 2019. — Some thoughts on ways of categorising Social Networks along different dimensions. Network effects There is power in size. The question is, how much power? Metcalfe looked at it via the number of 1-1 connections possible and decided it was proportional to the square of the total number of nodes. This is one reason why Facebook or Twitter have more potential network power than G+. So the utility rise not just with N but N^2 Reed took this a stage further and looked at group forming and the total number of potential groups. The total number of possible groups is 2N - N - 1 suggesting that Utility rises in group forming networks at 2^N. However in real world networks nowhere near all possible groups actually form. In Social Groups it seems to me you need a minimum of 5 noisy people for the group to be self-sustaining. On the usual basis that 90% lurk, 9% Comment and 1% post, that means the real lower end is more like 50 people. At the upper end, Dunbar's number steps in as groups become too big for everyone to know each other. Somewhere around 150-250 people, groups tend to fragment. So as well as Social Networks gaining utility with N^2, if they support groups, their utility rises at somewhere between N^2 and 2^N. So for a Social Network to have long term utility we need lots of people able to form 1-1 relationships. And the ability to form small (5-250), long lived groups around common interests. The open question right now is whether we can build another truly large scale system (tens of millions of users, tens of thousands of groups) on top of a federated architecture or if this requires Google/Twitter/Facebook scale centralisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed%27s_law One-Few-Many A long time ago now, I had the idea of categorising communication systems and platforms according to the numbers of creators and the number of consumers. Or authors and readers. Break each side into "One", "Few", "Many" and you have a 3*3 matrix of One-Few-Many authors communicating with One-Few-Many readers. So Private Blogs are typically One-to-Few. Big Media broadcast outlets are One-To-Many. Discussion forums are Few-To-Few. a person's experience of Feed aggregators is Few-To-One. Private messaging is generally One-to-One. eBay is Many-to-Many. Filling out all the cells in the matrix is an interesting intellectual exercise. The point though is that there are fundamental differences here between the various styles of comms. https://www.voidstar.com/node.php?id=2977 https://www.voidstar.com/images/onefewmany.gif Sync-Async Or Sync-real time, nearly real time, Async. How is the style of our comms defined by time? Chat and group chat (like IRC) happen almost in real time. People sometimes try and use Twitter or Email like this but it really doesn't work that way. We then bolt notification systems on top of this to try and speed up the responses and encourage people to respond immediately. But of course this breaks people's natural workflow. It also encourages a lack of thought in the reply. Often what's actually needed is a conscious decision to make the comms Async. Don't expect a reply in 24 hours and the reply you get is likely to be more thoughtful. Media Text, voice & image, video. There's a real problem with communications that use a tool that is too high up the stack here. This also relates back to the Sync-Async problem. Don't interrupt me with a voice message when I could skim read the text in my own time. But also don't use a screen shot just because of platform limitations (Twitter!). And don't do a 5 minute video to camera when 300 words would do that I could skim read in 20 seconds. But each media type as it's place. Your text review is no substitute for listening to the music or watching the film. But don't force me to watch the 45 minute TED talk to grok your 5 page idea. TL;DR. is bad, but TL;DV. is worse. Post Size Micro, Small, Long. There are fundamental differences in style between 140 chars, one screen of text and a 5 page essay. Every time we impose a limit the users will try and find ways round it. Hence Unroll, and reply-to-self /N conventions. Ideally, any one platform should support all these and not differentiate. In practice, dropping a 1000 word block into a chat doesn't work. But that's actually obvious. What isn't obvious but should be is that long form text is important. And somewhere in social networks there should be support for this. A long form post with semi-threaded short form comments below it is a highly successful pattern so should be supported.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationCommunities are a real problem at the moment. Only Community owners get anything. They get a list of people and a list of post URLs. That's not enough to get the posts and comments via the API because the API calls for activity.get requires activityId which is different from the URL shortcode with no way from going from one to the other. Good luck! — Code that needs writing - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Blogger - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Atom - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Wordpress - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Reddit - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Other platforms that have an import or post API - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Static HTML as a better alternative to that provided by Google. - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts.html - > Extract <body> section to files. - Takeout.G+Streams.Circles - > Enhanced VCard/CSV with additional data via G+API.people.get - Takeout - fix the filenames to deal with UTF-8 characters - Find My G+ Contacts on platform XXX. Like https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/ Maybe Google will provide some of this. Like Atom output and one click migration to Blogger. More likely is that the community will cobble something together from the takeout files and Apis.
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Commented on post by Brenda Rebel Angel in Google+ Help+Brenda Rebel Angel Oh well. It worked for me. All I can suggest is leave feedback. Is there a way of just moving them to Google Photos? Are we sure they're not already there? — I want to know one question and probably thousands of people too. Is Google going to give us a way to download our photos in collections, groups etc? Some of us were here from the beginning and would like to keep our thousands of posts. Personally, all my posts were original. I spent thousands of hours researching for my posts. To have everythng just deleted is very upsetting. Please can you answer this question.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Mixology 🍸Does anyone know any other mixology groups on other platforms that we could all decamp to? Because this bar is closing soon. — Google+ is closing down in August 2019. https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/gxoJEZfRjPd https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe/ Download all your G+ data with Google Takeout. Save it in both JSON and HTML. https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout Google+ +1s, Circles, Communities, Streams. JSON for program access. The JSON version is more complete so save a copy even if you can't use it straight away. HTML as a quick and dirty way to put an archive on the web. Leave feedback about Takeout limitations. https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/takeout_feedback Takeout of Communities is very limited. ActivityLog appears to be broken. Talk to other people about all the issues. Google+ Mass Migration group. https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772 Especially about moving networks of people, contents and community to other platforms.
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Commented on post by Sisco Vanilla in Mixology 🍸BTW. http://Savoystomp.com is down. Which makes me sad. — Happy Halloween Everyone!!!! For today's SiscoVanilla's Special Daily Cocktail, I've decided to make a cocktail that is wickedly entitled Satan's Whiskers. I found the aptly named cocktail apropos for the day at hand. This cocktail hails back to the early 20th Century with its listing in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book. Read on to learn more. Satan's Whiskers - .75oz Bombay Sapphire Gin - .75oz Dry Vermouth - .75oz Sweet Vermouth - .5oz Fresh Orange Juice - .5oz Grand Marnier 2 dashes of Fee Brothers Cardamon Bitters. Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into chilled glass. #SatansWhiskers #SavoyCocktailBook #OldManDrinks #BombaySapphireGin #DryVermouth #SweetVermouth #VermouthRosso #Orangejuice #CardamonBitters #Cocktail #Cocktails #Coctel #Cocteles #Cocteleria #SiscoVanilla #SiscoVanillaisStepping #SiscoVanillaHitsTheBricks #SiscoVanillasSpecialDailyCocktail #FinnsCorner
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Commented on post by Sisco Vanilla in Mixology 🍸Hmmm. The Savoy book says equal quantities of everything including the OJ. The only exception being the orange liqueur. And with Orange bitters. Unusual, but I like it. I did 25ml*4+12ml+dash. — Happy Halloween Everyone!!!! For today's SiscoVanilla's Special Daily Cocktail, I've decided to make a cocktail that is wickedly entitled Satan's Whiskers. I found the aptly named cocktail apropos for the day at hand. This cocktail hails back to the early 20th Century with its listing in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book. Read on to learn more. Satan's Whiskers - .75oz Bombay Sapphire Gin - .75oz Dry Vermouth - .75oz Sweet Vermouth - .5oz Fresh Orange Juice - .5oz Grand Marnier 2 dashes of Fee Brothers Cardamon Bitters. Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into chilled glass. #SatansWhiskers #SavoyCocktailBook #OldManDrinks #BombaySapphireGin #DryVermouth #SweetVermouth #VermouthRosso #Orangejuice #CardamonBitters #Cocktail #Cocktails #Coctel #Cocteles #Cocteleria #SiscoVanilla #SiscoVanillaisStepping #SiscoVanillaHitsTheBricks #SiscoVanillasSpecialDailyCocktail #FinnsCorner
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Commented on post by Brenda Rebel Angel in Google+ HelpYou can find G+ Photos in Takeout hidden under G+ Streams, Select specific data. https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout — I want to know one question and probably thousands of people too. Is Google going to give us a way to download our photos in collections, groups etc? Some of us were here from the beginning and would like to keep our thousands of posts. Personally, all my posts were original. I spent thousands of hours researching for my posts. To have everythng just deleted is very upsetting. Please can you answer this question.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearFunny to see VRM, Doc Searls, Cluetrain, Gillmor gang, IIW turn up again. I wonder what happened to https://identitywoman.net/ She was one of the high profile refugees from the Real Names debacle. Not really relevant here, but the bit of VRM I got interested in was advertising management from the user end. I wanted, "love, ignore, block" buttons on every ad so I could talk back. And an RSS feed of ads very specifically aimed at me where I could say "not that, not that, more of this please". — From Platform to Protocol I'm having some conversations with the Vendor Relationship Management folks about the mass migration of Google+ users. If you're not familiar with VRM, I highly recommend you take a look. One of the interesting comments, I thought I'd share: If a parallel of what happened to AOL mail to SMTP/IMAP mail transition can occur again, it could be done. That has to happen at the protocol level. I am yet to see such.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWhen I told an Irish person how funny he was because Irish people are always doing stupid things he accused me of telling offensive jokes. My fav Irish joke. An Irish labourer goes to a building site looking for work. The foreman says, "We need experienced builders. I just have a simple test before we can take you on". "No problem", says the Irishman. "Ok. What's the difference between a girder and a joist?". "Ah to be sure, you've started with the easy ones", answers the Irishman, "Goethe wrote Faust and Joyce wrote Ulysses". — My Great Aunt Meredith was killed in WW2 when a heavy box of pencils fell on her head during a routine inspection of a stock room in Melbourne’s famous pencil district. This was at the height of the Blitz – and although that was going on many miles away in London my family always believed that the Germans were ultimately responsible because the pencils had been shipped via Hamburg. Growing up with the knowledge that Meredith had been a victim of the German war machine made me long for British freedom. Poppies are a personal thing and we shouldn’t judge people – but I wear my poppy with pride because of Great Aunt Meredith – unlike left wing fascists who literally hate Britain and everyone in it. This is very, very Brexit. And very well written.
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Commented on post by Michael Kennedy in G+ RPG Escape RocketIt's 2018 going on 2019. Not 2005. What are the chances of somebody building a Facebook/G+ scale social network to challenge the majors in the next couple of years? Could another Twitter emerge now? I keep waiting for the Chinese to expand into the rest of the world. And produce westernised, English language sections of their platforms. Western industry talk tends to be about Google, Apple, Facebook etc doing deals with China. We rarely hear about Wechat, Weibo, QQ, Alibaba opening an office in New York or London. — Ok I don't know if this is a thing that is even possible but I had the idea and wanted to throw it out here. Someone with the technical expertise sets out to make another G+, basically copying the platform completely, adding only those changes which are universally agreed upon to be good. This is gonna be difficult expensive and time-consuming, I'm sure, so we can crowdsource the funding for it via Patreon or something like it. This solves a lot of issues: for one, we get to keep all the cool stuff about G+ but it we be something we have built and therefore we populate. There will be little risk of malicious outsiders coming in because few will know about it but those in the OSR/DIY scene. What do you think? Could we do it?
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Commented on post by Michael Kennedy in G+ RPG Escape Rocket+Jesse Covner Yes. Google+ is closing down in August 2019. https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/gxoJEZfRjPd https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe/ Download all your G+ data with Google Takeout. Save it in both JSON and HTML. https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout Google+ +1s, Circles, Communities, Streams. JSON for program access. The JSON version is more complete so save a copy even if you can't use it straight away. HTML as a quick and dirty way to put an archive on the web. Leave feedback about Takeout limitations. https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/takeout_feedback Takeout of Communities is very limited. ActivityLog appears to be broken. Talk to other people about all the issues. Google+ Mass Migration group. https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772 Especially about moving networks of people, contents and community to other platforms. — Ok I don't know if this is a thing that is even possible but I had the idea and wanted to throw it out here. Someone with the technical expertise sets out to make another G+, basically copying the platform completely, adding only those changes which are universally agreed upon to be good. This is gonna be difficult expensive and time-consuming, I'm sure, so we can crowdsource the funding for it via Patreon or something like it. This solves a lot of issues: for one, we get to keep all the cool stuff about G+ but it we be something we have built and therefore we populate. There will be little risk of malicious outsiders coming in because few will know about it but those in the OSR/DIY scene. What do you think? Could we do it?
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Commented on post by al m in Google+ Mass MigrationMaybe we could all move to eBay comments. Or perhaps Amazon review pages for fictitious algorithmically generated products with artificially inflated prices used for money laundering. They're both "Social". — Not sure if this has been shared here yet, but I read each of the 250 descriptions and found it somewhat useful to see what's out there. Though I doubt it's a fully vetted list, it has the link to each platform and is a helpful reference. I also offer a Google Plus Meetup Group on Facebook for any interested. Google Plus Meetup Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1189060457917856/?ref=bookmarks https://socialmedialist.org/social-media-apps.html?fbclid=IwAR22uE99Q1b7NC1zG99pPFhKW7KUYQ9_pnIo4VsGM77IJw47Otdmb8qvK4I
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Commented on post by Al Tlön in Google+ Mass Migration+Halfey Halphstein Yup. The-Inq is just a low rent version of ElReg. You can safely ignore it. ps. Trying to remember ElReg's nickname for Google. "The Chocolate Factory"? Or is that Apple? — Sheeesh "A petition on popular echo chamber Change.org is beseeching Google to keep on the official floggers-of-the-dead-horse that is Google+, for the benefit of the few agoraphobic dwellers of the baronies and fiefdoms within."
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThey can just take the train. I hear they're fast, cheap, clean and run on time in the "abroad". — The Foreign Office is drawing up plans to rescue Britons if they are stranded in Europe because of disruption to flights after Brexit. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told MPs rescue flights were one of a number of emergency procedures being prepared in the event of a "no deal" divorce. Does anyone have an idea how this is supposed to work? In case of no deal, the few remaining British airplanes on European soil can make their way home, but then thats it. Is Hunt hoping to charter European airplanes whose pilots are willing to fly into unregulated airspace? Oh, I get it. Magical airplanes. With unicorns. This is just Brexit business as usual.
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Commented on post by Michael Kennedy in G+ RPG Escape RocketThe first problem is writing the code. Or using pre-written code. The next problem is kick-starting a network until it's self sustaining. The next problem is finding a way to pay for it all. But. If you want something self contained for a specific and relatively small community of interest, firing up an instance of forum software like phpBB or Drupal is not that hard or expensive. And if you want to be part of something bigger, then run an instance of one of the federated systems. But writing your own system is absolutely NOT trivial. And neither is getting engagement and activity. — Ok I don't know if this is a thing that is even possible but I had the idea and wanted to throw it out here. Someone with the technical expertise sets out to make another G+, basically copying the platform completely, adding only those changes which are universally agreed upon to be good. This is gonna be difficult expensive and time-consuming, I'm sure, so we can crowdsource the funding for it via Patreon or something like it. This solves a lot of issues: for one, we get to keep all the cool stuff about G+ but it we be something we have built and therefore we populate. There will be little risk of malicious outsiders coming in because few will know about it but those in the OSR/DIY scene. What do you think? Could we do it?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is Near"Social Inbox" just reminded me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed Another service that needs re-creating. — "It's a bit sad that I have to go to ten+ places in the future in order to find my favourite communities." Comment from a G+ community discussion on alternatives. It rather highlights the root of the problem: that we have to go to the conversations rather than have them come to us. A social / user-generated media inbox and user/authentication management piece would address that. Something that does not presently exist.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearI think it may be the conversation that is hard to aggregate. We hit this early with blogs. You could aggregate all the blogs you had found in your feed reader. But if you had a habit of posting comments on individual posts, it was almost impossible to follow up on and catch up with the conversations that spawned. This is one of the reasons why Disqus appeared. There was the option of going to Disqus to catch up on the threads you were in spread round the blogs. Except that I almost never do! — "It's a bit sad that I have to go to ten+ places in the future in order to find my favourite communities." Comment from a G+ community discussion on alternatives. It rather highlights the root of the problem: that we have to go to the conversations rather than have them come to us. A social / user-generated media inbox and user/authentication management piece would address that. Something that does not presently exist.
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Commented on post by Jesse Covner in G+ RPG Escape Rocket<cough> facebook </cough> — *What I need is...* The discussion threading / formatting options of Reddit (including ability to link from and to outside, long posts, nested replies, Markup) The social-networking functions of Google+ (following people preferably in one direction, seeing how many followers one has.) The filter -capabilities of Google+ (posts view-able only by followers or by group) No more advertisements nor user data sharing than what is currently done on Reddit. The subreddit / Community function of both. Is there anything that is EXACTLY like this? Cause I have not found it.
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Commented on post by Sasha Hart in G+ RPG Escape RocketYes, you can takeout HTML and later JSON. And I'd strongly advise doing both. If you only do one and don't plan on doing anything with it immediately, then JSON as it's likely other people will write code to do something useful with it. The HTML files for each post are actually ok and reasonably simple. It's only the index.html that is Google's usual huge pile of javascript. And it's comparatively trivial to build a much simpler index page. — If you have G+ takeout data in JSON format, what will you do with it? For example, if you want to be able to browse that data or publish it, it's fairly easy to write little scripts to convert from JSON to something else, and to make those files available on a website for pennies per month. Let's discuss the options.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationThe generic problem here is the large number of references in the takeout files to assets and URLs within the G+ system. If G+ goes away completely and those assets and URLs disappear, the takeout files will have major holes in them. Even something as comparatively minor as profile avatars. — Code that needs writing - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Blogger - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Atom - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Wordpress - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Reddit - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Other platforms that have an import or post API - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Static HTML as a better alternative to that provided by Google. - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts.html - > Extract <body> section to files. - Takeout.G+Streams.Circles - > Enhanced VCard/CSV with additional data via G+API.people.get - Takeout - fix the filenames to deal with UTF-8 characters - Find My G+ Contacts on platform XXX. Like https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/ Maybe Google will provide some of this. Like Atom output and one click migration to Blogger. More likely is that the community will cobble something together from the takeout files and Apis.
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Commented on post by Bernhard Suter in Google+ Mass MigrationTool originally created by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz RIP :( — Nice library which can be used for converting html formatted content strings in JSON takeout archive to markdown: #!/usr/bin/python import json import sys import html2text converter = html2text.HTML2Text() converter.ignore_links = True for filename in sys.argv[1:]: post = json.load(open(filename)) print ('%s :' % (filename, )) if 'content' in post: print(converter.handle(post['content']))
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWatching this on the news last night, Yvette Cooper is really good at that whole "rolls eyes" thing. — The shitshow continues. The government wants the estimated 3.5 million EU citizens in the UK to apply for settled status so they can continue living and working here. But that will not have happened by the time Britain leaves the EU on 29 March. In fact, Ms Nokes [government mininster] revealed to the Commons Home Affairs committee, just 650 people had registered so far in a pilot programme. Just wait, it gets better. She also revealed the system for EU citizens to register for settled status still didn't work on Apple phones. She said the US tech giant "won't release the upgrade we need in order for it to function". Clearly Apple's fault that Brexit doesn't work. But Ms Nokes suggested that in the event of a no-deal Brexit, where there would not be a transition period, new immigration controls - including employer checks of immigration status - will apply to EU citizens next year. "If somebody hasn't been here prior to the end of March next year, employers will have to make sure they go through adequately rigorous checks to evidence somebody's right to work." And now, suddenly, employers are supposed to check immigration status. In her evidence to the committee, Ms Nokes confirmed that EU nationals would not be issued with paperwork proving their immigration status. Wait, what? Pictured: committee chairwoman Yvette Cooper, looking as confused as everyone else.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit#WeLoveTheNHS . Don't let them destroy it. — The endgame. Ministers should allow American healthcare companies to compete with the NHS to run hospitals as part of a free-trade pact after Brexit, a think tank recommends. The Initiative for Free Trade (IFT) said that Britain should also end its ban on imports of products such as chlorinated chicken and accept American environmental and food Sounds safety regulations as equivalent to those in the UK. Sounds great. What was that about £350 million per week sent to the EU?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+John Lewis Yes. And there's actually a takeout service for the photos you stored in G+ Photos. — Code that needs writing - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Blogger - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Atom - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Wordpress - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Reddit - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Other platforms that have an import or post API - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Static HTML as a better alternative to that provided by Google. - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts.html - > Extract <body> section to files. - Takeout.G+Streams.Circles - > Enhanced VCard/CSV with additional data via G+API.people.get - Takeout - fix the filenames to deal with UTF-8 characters - Find My G+ Contacts on platform XXX. Like https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/ Maybe Google will provide some of this. Like Atom output and one click migration to Blogger. More likely is that the community will cobble something together from the takeout files and Apis.
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Commented on post by Yahuchanan Yakazqa'al Yashra'al in Google+ Updates+Julie Wills IMHO. It's my community. I set it up. I put the effort in to moderate it. So it seems completely reasonable to me to be able to archive the contents. Then there's the use case where the community as a whole wants to migrate somewhere else (like Reddit) and take their content with them. Then there's the situation right now where your posts in Takeout come with the full content of all the comments from other people. I get their content even though they didn't explicitly agree to me having it. If you grab your comments via Takeout.G+Stream.activitylog they come with the full text of the parent post. So by commenting on a post I can download the original post. All of this blurs the lines so I don't think it's cut and dried at all, at all. And I'm still left with the big use case. Which is wanting to migrate the whole community of people and content to another platform so they can continue the conversation without losing the history. — What happens to my Google communitys after y'all shut down smh
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Commented on post by Yahuchanan Yakazqa'al Yashra'al in Google+ Updates+Yahuchanan Yakazqa'al Yashra'al I'm pretty sure that the answer is you can't do that. Right now. It may become possible during the next few months and before G+ Sunset. But it's not possible now. — What happens to my Google communitys after y'all shut down smh
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Bernhard Suter There's a lot of references in the json and html to media assets on http://xxx.googleusercontent.com This is the same location that Google Photos uses. So I think it's highly likely that content from your profile that counts towards your storage allocation and is stored in that domain will stick around. — Code that needs writing - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Blogger - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Atom - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Wordpress - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Reddit - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Other platforms that have an import or post API - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Static HTML as a better alternative to that provided by Google. - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts.html - > Extract <body> section to files. - Takeout.G+Streams.Circles - > Enhanced VCard/CSV with additional data via G+API.people.get - Takeout - fix the filenames to deal with UTF-8 characters - Find My G+ Contacts on platform XXX. Like https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/ Maybe Google will provide some of this. Like Atom output and one click migration to Blogger. More likely is that the community will cobble something together from the takeout files and Apis.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Updates+Julie Wills Even if we don't expect an answer quickly, it's still worth asking them. And collecting them. And asking again. — What will happen to the official Google support communities on G+ ? eg https://plus.google.com/+Blogger There's a lot more of them here. https://www.google.com/press/blog-social-directory.html
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Commented on post by Peter Suber+Filip H.F. Slagter For a brief while (when G+ was new) there was a convention to put a redirect into one's personal website that went to your G+ Profile. In the form $mydomain/+ Apparently mine still works! — A short open letter to Google on minimizing the damage of shutting down Google Plus I'm one of many users not happy with your decision to shut down G+. https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe/ I don't expect you to reverse course on that decision. So I won't ask. Instead, I have two requests on how to minimize the damage to users like me, who have created a significant body of G+ posts over the years and shared the URLs widely. 1. Don't delete our posts. Stop us from adding new ones if you must, but don't delete the old ones. I know we can export and save them, and I plan to do that. https://9to5google.com/2018/10/08/how-to-download-google-plus-data/ But the exported copies will be offline, with no obvious way to put them back online in a form comparable to the original form. It's hard to believe that Google is the company that heroically hunted down, preserved, and reposted all the original Usenet posts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet Google wasn't even the creator or proponent-in-chief of Usenet. It's hard to believe that for posts to your own platform, you'd prefer deletion to preservation. It doesn't have to be that way. At least do for G+ posts what you did for Usenet posts. Save them all, keep them online, and keep them readable, discoverable, and useful. 2. There are many ways to implement the first suggestion. If you consider taking the step at all, please consider a solution that doesn't break the URLs to the original G+ posts. Either keep the posts at the existing URLs, or create seamless redirects to the new online space where you archive G+. As a variation on this theme, let us put all our G+ posts in our individual Google One accounts. Do it in a way that does not count against our memory quota. In that sense, treat these posts the way you treat Google Photos. Do it in a way that makes our public G+ posts automatically public, like public Google docs. Do it in a way that creates redirects from the original G+ platform. Make the migration a simple pushbutton operation. +Google+ +Google #googleplus #google+ #google
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Sebastian Lasse I'm quite in favour of the idea of a feed format and schema to rival RSS and Atom but in JSON. But people have been trying to do this for quite a while now and nothing's really got traction. RSS and especially Atom have a huge advantage that there's loads of it out there and loads of tools and libraries for using it. So I'd suggest that G+ migration is not the time for building new formats. — Code that needs writing - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Blogger - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Atom - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Wordpress - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Reddit - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Other platforms that have an import or post API - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts - > Static HTML as a better alternative to that provided by Google. - Takeout.G+Streams.Posts.html - > Extract <body> section to files. - Takeout.G+Streams.Circles - > Enhanced VCard/CSV with additional data via G+API.people.get - Takeout - fix the filenames to deal with UTF-8 characters - Find My G+ Contacts on platform XXX. Like https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/ Maybe Google will provide some of this. Like Atom output and one click migration to Blogger. More likely is that the community will cobble something together from the takeout files and Apis.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate Change+Jorg Lovoll 1) It's closed in the sense that posts on mewe are not visible externally or indexed/searchable externally. 2) It's getting a reputation for being far-right. And the owner has political views that some find distasteful. "open minded" is a bit of a dog whistle. — Google+ is closing down in August 2019. https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/gxoJEZfRjPd https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe/ Download all your G+ data with Google Takeout. Save it in both JSON and HTML. https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout Google+ +1s, Circles, Communities, Streams. JSON for program access. The JSON version is more complete so save a copy even if you can't use it straight away. HTML as a quick and dirty way to put an archive on the web. Leave feedback about Takeout limitations. https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/takeout_feedback Takeout of Communities is very limited. ActivityLog appears to be broken. Talk to other people about all the issues. Google+ Mass Migration group. https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772 Especially about moving networks of people, contents and community to other platforms.
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Commented on post by Peter SuberI would like to see Google put some effort into providing tools for moving G+ data elsewhere. - One click conversion to posts on a pre-existing http://Blogger.com blog. - Atom as a format for posts to go with JSON and HTML in a format that works with http://wordpress.com. I don't expect a one click "migrate to wordpress" solution but I would expect the atom files to work with the wordpress import functions. - Support for community owners to archive their whole community. At the moment all they get is a list of URLs to posts. - Confirmation that VCards of Circles are copied into Gmail Contacts. - Downloads of Followers to go with downloads of circles. It's available in the UI, why isn't it in Takeout? - Guarantees that Google Profiles won't be lost and that there will be a UI to display public information within them. So that data in aboutme is actually visible (optionally) to other people with a redirect from the G+ Profile URL. — A short open letter to Google on minimizing the damage of shutting down Google Plus I'm one of many users not happy with your decision to shut down G+. https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe/ I don't expect you to reverse course on that decision. So I won't ask. Instead, I have two requests on how to minimize the damage to users like me, who have created a significant body of G+ posts over the years and shared the URLs widely. 1. Don't delete our posts. Stop us from adding new ones if you must, but don't delete the old ones. I know we can export and save them, and I plan to do that. https://9to5google.com/2018/10/08/how-to-download-google-plus-data/ But the exported copies will be offline, with no obvious way to put them back online in a form comparable to the original form. It's hard to believe that Google is the company that heroically hunted down, preserved, and reposted all the original Usenet posts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet Google wasn't even the creator or proponent-in-chief of Usenet. It's hard to believe that for posts to your own platform, you'd prefer deletion to preservation. It doesn't have to be that way. At least do for G+ posts what you did for Usenet posts. Save them all, keep them online, and keep them readable, discoverable, and useful. 2. There are many ways to implement the first suggestion. If you consider taking the step at all, please consider a solution that doesn't break the URLs to the original G+ posts. Either keep the posts at the existing URLs, or create seamless redirects to the new online space where you archive G+. As a variation on this theme, let us put all our G+ posts in our individual Google One accounts. Do it in a way that does not count against our memory quota. In that sense, treat these posts the way you treat Google Photos. Do it in a way that makes our public G+ posts automatically public, like public Google docs. Do it in a way that creates redirects from the original G+ platform. Make the migration a simple pushbutton operation. +Google+ +Google #googleplus #google+ #google
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationSomebody I used to work for said "The winner is the one with all the names". He could easily be described as a "Networker" in that he has a huge rolodex of business people around the world and finds ways of making money from introducing them to each other. And getting non-exec positions with their businesses. For him, Linkedin is an obvious primary resource, but the rise of Social Networks meant he could meet and interact with new people on the basis of his posts and comments. — Question: Is "social networking" a worthwhile goal? Why, or why not? Some sub-questions: What is it? What does it offer? For good or bad? What doesn't it offer? Are the bad parts fixable? What practical alternatives are possible? Are there elements particularly resistant to repair, which generate frictions, or hard to replace?
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Commented on post by CA M in Google+ Mass MigrationWhen Google Buzz shut down, ISTR Takeout was still available for 6 months to a year after the UI closed. I'd expect the same thing to happen with G+ — Hmm wondering if google is going to delete out all of the google+ data files that has been hosted on their servers or just simply disable the interactive connectivity leaving the files Sun setting can mean no longer useful active disabled but doesn’t have to necessarily mean completely dismantled
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate Change+Jorg Lovoll Is it, though? — Google+ is closing down in August 2019. https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/gxoJEZfRjPd https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe/ Download all your G+ data with Google Takeout. Save it in both JSON and HTML. https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout Google+ +1s, Circles, Communities, Streams. JSON for program access. The JSON version is more complete so save a copy even if you can't use it straight away. HTML as a quick and dirty way to put an archive on the web. Leave feedback about Takeout limitations. https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/takeout_feedback Takeout of Communities is very limited. ActivityLog appears to be broken. Talk to other people about all the issues. Google+ Mass Migration group. https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772 Especially about moving networks of people, contents and community to other platforms.
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Commented on post by Yahuchanan Yakazqa'al Yashra'al in Google+ UpdatesThere are problems with Takeout G+ Communities. You only get output for communities you own. And you only get a list of post URLs, not the content of the posts. And of course the URLs will 404 after G+ Sunset. And there's no way of going from the URL to the activityID which the API needs to get a post. So if you wanted to archive your community's content or move it somewhere else, you'll have to scrape each post off the web interface. Which is not an option and sucks. Feedback sent. Please send more. https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/takeout_feedback — What happens to my Google communitys after y'all shut down smh
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Commented on post by Kristian Köhntopp in Fluffy fluff.In UKIP colours. — https://twitter.com/HumansOfLate/status/1056649940305354754 Happy Halloween!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege25 Euros! WTF is this doing in Europe? Shouldn't it have a UKIP rosette? ps. Although. It's in UKIP colours! So actually it can be re-used later for the UKIP party conference. — Humans of Late Stage Capitalism.
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Commented on post by Bernhard Suter in Google+ Mass MigrationThe takeout data structures seem different, but related to the API structures. https://developers.google.com/+/web/api/rest/latest/activities#resource-representations Have you matched them off? Is there data available in the API that doesn't appear in the Takeout? — Continuing the takeout data migration process with a first look at the data that is in the archive.
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Commented on post by Bernhard Suter in Google+ Mass MigrationAn example of Collections JSON info for a post in a single collection. "postAcl": { "collectionAcl": { "collection": { "resourceName": "collections/AB2YX", "displayName": "Politics" } } } Here's the HTML https://voidstar.com/Takeout/Google+/Posts/20160216%20-%20I%20wonder%20how%20much%20easier%20travelling%20by_.html <div class="visibility">Shared to the collection <a href="https://plus.google.com/collection/AB2YX">Politics</a> - Private</div> — Continuing the takeout data migration process with a first look at the data that is in the archive.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chromecast+Andrew Hatchett Doh! Apparently I can't even read ... But then there is https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/chromecast which seems to be still running while also pointing you somewhere else. — Google+ is closing down in August 2019. https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/gxoJEZfRjPd https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe/ Download all your G+ data with Google Takeout. Save it in both JSON and HTML. https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout Google+ +1s, Circles, Communities, Streams. JSON for program access. The JSON version is more complete so save a copy even if you can't use it straight away. HTML as a quick and dirty way to put an archive on the web. Leave feedback about Takeout limitations. https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/takeout_feedback Takeout of Communities is very limited. ActivityLog appears to be broken. Talk to other people about all the issues. Google+ Mass Migration group. https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772 Especially about moving networks of people, contents and community to other platforms. So where are Google Product Support communities going to go?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceYes, yes, yes and yes. Except for this bit. We need to create a blockchain-enabled social media. I firmly believe that's the wrong solution. I also think it's a category error. And then, a public social network with full cryptographic anti-deniability and anti-falsifiability could still be hijacked by bad actors. And especially if there's not enough moderation. — Manal al-Sharif: We need a new decentralised online media, "Twitter is now becoming a trap": Why I deleted my Twitter account Online harassment, propaganda, misinformation silencing tool of governments, dictatorships, and tyrants. Decentralised, non-advertising-based media are required. Also: Social media ‘aids oppressors’, says Saudi rights campaigner Manal al-Sharif, a leader in the fight for Saudi women’s right to drive, claims Twitter is used to harass activists https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/28/twitter-facebook-saudi-oppression Transcript: Good morning everyone. I am in Stockholm, Sweden, and yesterday in Singularity U, I decided to delete my Twitter account live on stage in a protest of how this tool that once saved my life is now being used to put my life and the life of a lot of human rights and activists in danger. If you look at world wide trends today it is ... I am Arab, and Mohammed bin Salman represents me. This tells you who is in control now of Twitter: Twitter is being controlled by trolls, by pro-government mobs, and by bots. Those are being paid by pro-government [agent]s who want to silence, intimidate, harass, dissidents and anyone who speaks the truth. Twitter today is being used by the same governments that we spoke against to disclose all the violations against human rights. It's being used by them to silence us, and not only to silence us but to propagate their propaganda, to also push for disinformation, and to harass and silence every single true voice. People I know, people I trusted -- people I'd thought were friends, and who have critical thinking -- they've been brainwashed by the messages being pushed by the pro-Saudi government (voices), in a way that is horrendous. I ... I wonder is this really happening? Is this really true? Ali Alzabarah), the Saudi Twitter employee, who had close ties with Saudi Intelligence, had had access to private accounts of Saudi activists providing this information to the Saudi government. Day by day, more and more, we know about "influentials" -- Twitter influentials -- who were harrassed, sent to prison, and even disappeared. Reports by companies like McKinsey -- _The New York Times talked about that [hhttps://http://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/20/us/politics/saudi-image-campaign-twitter.html] -- really make me worried. Twitter is now becoming a trap, and it's being used in a very efficient way by these governments, and dictatorships and tyrants to silence us, and not only that, but to spread their own propaganda, their own hate speech, their own misinformation and disinformation. This is why I protested yesterday by deleting my Twitter account, and will not go to that platform. Now I'm also deleting my Facebook account, because I don't feel safe being on these accounts. This is a call -- if you are a Tech Maker -- this is a call for people who believe that freedom of speech safeguards all other freedoms. We need to create a blockchain-enabled social media. We need to create social media that is decentralised, that can be used to push for the truth, and cannot be bought. That doesn't have the business model of Twitter which is based on who pays, and they don't care about anything but how many people are signing up for accounts. [Twitter] deleted 70 million fake, malicious accounts this year. Where were they since the company started, and since Saudis began using Twitter to push for human rights? In 2011 when I joined [Twitter], I remember a friend of mine who told me that he'd joined because his mother joined to follow our campaign to enable Saudi women the right to drive. He felt so embarrassed that he didn't have an account on Twitter, and so he joined. That year, the number of Twitter users was 60 million, today it is 380 million. People joined Twitter and these platforms because they believed in these causes, and they believed in the things that we called for. But if the same tools that we used for liberation once are being used to oppress us, are being used to undermine us, are being used to spread hate and fake news -- I'm out of these platforms. I'll continue speaking up because tyrants and dictators are the ones who should be afraid, not us. Lightly edited for continuity and clarity, otherwise as close as possible to the original. https://youtube.com/watch?v=8regaO3hl_g
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chromecast+Steve Nixon https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/chromebook-central https://support.google.com/chromecast/community?hl=en&vid=0-14873925532-1537804601043 Isn't that just typical Google that there are two places to go? — Google+ is closing down in August 2019. https://plus.google.com/+googleplus/posts/gxoJEZfRjPd https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/project-strobe/ Download all your G+ data with Google Takeout. Save it in both JSON and HTML. https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout Google+ +1s, Circles, Communities, Streams. JSON for program access. The JSON version is more complete so save a copy even if you can't use it straight away. HTML as a quick and dirty way to put an archive on the web. Leave feedback about Takeout limitations. https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/takeout_feedback Takeout of Communities is very limited. ActivityLog appears to be broken. Talk to other people about all the issues. Google+ Mass Migration group. https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772 Especially about moving networks of people, contents and community to other platforms. So where are Google Product Support communities going to go?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Jamez Frondeskias See above comments. I'm not sure at all, at all. In the old gmail contacts, there are sections for your circles. But does that mean that people in your circles are in your main contacts list? Or simply that the interface provides a look into the circles and they are actually separate. The new gmail interface doesn't have sections for G+ Circles. — Circles Takeout Export to Google Contacts Import. Choose Takeout G+Circles, CSV format. If you have any circles of > 3000 break it into multiple sheets each of < 3000 rows. Go to https://contacts.google.com/ Choose more, import CSV file. Choose one of your circle files, Import. Merge Duplicates. Repeat for each file. At the end run a find duplicates. It looks to me like Google is querying the G+ Profiles for public information as part of the import. There are no emails or contact info in the Takeout Export. But the Contacts Import was finding them. At the the end, Google Contacts can export the merged files to CSV or VCF for onward export into other systems.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitURL may have changed. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/27/uk-towns-polarised-by-far-right-sara-khan-counter-extremism-commissioner — This does not bode well. Khan [the counter-extremism commissioner], appointed by Theresa May in the wake of the Manchester Arena attack, told the Observer: “I was really shocked that in every place I visited I heard deep concerns about the activity and impact of the far right. “Councils across the country raised the impact the far-right demonstrations have on whole towns, exploiting tensions and stoking division. I repeatedly heard about a climate of intolerance and polarisation.” One youth worker from the south of England told Khan of his fears that a “whole generation of vulnerable children” could be lost to the far right. Elsewhere, a local education group said it had seen increasing numbers of children making racist and extremist statements in schools. [...] “This backs up what experts have been telling me – that we are seeing a new wave of the far right: modernised, professionalised and growing; supported by a frightening amount of legal online extremist material.” Rowley [counter-terrorism officer of the Met, ret.] warned the public and politicians not to underestimate the situation, describing how National Action, a proscribed neo-Nazi organisation, has “a strategy for a terrorist group” with online information on how to create discord in communities and evade police surveillance.
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Commented on post by Carsten Reckord in Google+ Mass MigrationSomething else to watch out for in Takeout filenames if they somehow end up in HTML Links. I had to go through and remove # / \ characters. Here's some minimal php code (with no error handling or dupe filename checking!). foreach (glob('*.html') as $filename) { $fileNameClean = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//IGNORE', $filename); $fileNameClean = str_replace(array('#','\','/'), '', $fileNameClean); if ($filename != $fileNameClean) { echo "<br />$filename $fileNameClean \n"; rename ($filename, $fileNameClean); $filename = $fileNameClean; } — Has anybody actually had any luck with Takeout exporting their Google+ Stream ActivityLog, JSON or otherwise? It fails consistently for me for at least two and usually all three of these: +1s on comments +1s on posts Comments Everything else I can get just fine, but not these three. In nine attempts across roughly a week, I managed to get one that claimed to contain "Comments.json", but actually didn't, and one that contained a "+1s on comments.json" with some sane-looking data even though the report overview claimed that it didn't.
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Commented on post by SansTheGuardian {Bumblebee} in Google+ HelpHangouts is tightly integrated with GMail and is Google's main current chat system. So unlikely to fade away with the G+ Sunset. However it's the latest incarnation of GChat and Google does seem to like creating new chat systems or migrating and rebranding old ones. So I;d say it's highly likely to change in the next few years. — Guys what will happen to Hangouts once Google Plus shuts down?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationI feel the need for a list of code that needs writing. — A reminder: REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Google HTML is absolutely worthless. The instructions don't make this clear, but you're going to see this advice repeated repeatedly and repetitiously. With great frequency. Repeatedly. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because the JSON format can be used by tools for extraction and import. Tim Berners-Lee is building one for Solid, there will be others. https://github.com/solid/solid-takeout-import (not yet usable, but in process). REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because the JSON format contains additional, useful, and critical fields for extraction and import to other sites and tools. REQUEST JSON SSSSSSSSCCCCCCccccrrrrraaaaaattttcccch...... <screeeech> Tap. Tap. Is this thing on? Hey folks, we interrupt this beat because I hear that you there, no, no, next to you, there, looking at your phone. Yeah, you, well, uh, I hear that you're thinking: "I don't know what JSON is." "I don't know what to do with JSON". "Heck, I don't plan to take any data out of Google. I'm gonna just #DoTheDataWalkaway ." Hey, cat, like, that's totally cool. I get it. I had a girlfriend who was all into that minimalism stuff. Wicked cool design ethic. But every time I wanted to fry an egg, I had to buy a new frying pan, 'coz she'd, like, donated the old one to charity or something? But she's moved on, and I like totally respect here and stuff.... Where was I? Oh yeah. But, y'see, we're not all like that. And some of us do know what to do with a JSON data extract. And we know that what it does is to make the information we want to use more accessible wherever else we want to use it. And there's a lot of folks who don't know this yet or are confused because, frankly, Google have messed this stuff up in how they do and talk about it. And those people need to know. And so when you're like "all, whatever man" out here on the dance floor, well, it kinda actually fucks shit up and stuff. So like, if you don't mind, please don't. Not here, anyhow? And even if we don't know what JSON is, or how to use it, what we know is that there will be tools created. Maybe by Google (we hope). Maybe by third party sites (and they're doin' just that). Maybe by a close personal friend. Maybe by a particularly talented housecat. But it's gonna happen, and JSON is the way. So. Go back to the phone. Do you important phone stuff. We'll leave you alone. We're cool with that. And let this be the message to the people doing the #GoogleDataTakeaway . Ya still wanna tawk about it? Start a new thread. Hip? Let's get this BEAT BACK ON!!! Let's get this BEAT BACK ON!!! Let's get this BEAT BACK ON!!! REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because Google's generated HTML is an ugly bastard stepchild of HTML that's not actually useful even as HTML. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because you'll give yourself far more options and far fewer headaches down the road. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because even if you can't make heads or tails of the output, the tools likely to be developed for intake to where you want the data to go will. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because your friendly neighborhood hackers (and Space Alien Cats) can hack something together using 'jq' and 'awk' (or Python, Ruby, Perl, Go, ...) if all else fails. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because it's what you actually want. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout (We need a have memes for this.) Where? Here: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass Migration+Edward Morbius I know, I know. But view source on this. It's really not that bad. https://voidstar.com/Takeout/Google+/Posts/20181016%20-%20The%20more%20I%20dig%20into%20this%20the%20more%20mind_.html — A reminder: REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Google HTML is absolutely worthless. The instructions don't make this clear, but you're going to see this advice repeated repeatedly and repetitiously. With great frequency. Repeatedly. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because the JSON format can be used by tools for extraction and import. Tim Berners-Lee is building one for Solid, there will be others. https://github.com/solid/solid-takeout-import (not yet usable, but in process). REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because the JSON format contains additional, useful, and critical fields for extraction and import to other sites and tools. REQUEST JSON SSSSSSSSCCCCCCccccrrrrraaaaaattttcccch...... <screeeech> Tap. Tap. Is this thing on? Hey folks, we interrupt this beat because I hear that you there, no, no, next to you, there, looking at your phone. Yeah, you, well, uh, I hear that you're thinking: "I don't know what JSON is." "I don't know what to do with JSON". "Heck, I don't plan to take any data out of Google. I'm gonna just #DoTheDataWalkaway ." Hey, cat, like, that's totally cool. I get it. I had a girlfriend who was all into that minimalism stuff. Wicked cool design ethic. But every time I wanted to fry an egg, I had to buy a new frying pan, 'coz she'd, like, donated the old one to charity or something? But she's moved on, and I like totally respect here and stuff.... Where was I? Oh yeah. But, y'see, we're not all like that. And some of us do know what to do with a JSON data extract. And we know that what it does is to make the information we want to use more accessible wherever else we want to use it. And there's a lot of folks who don't know this yet or are confused because, frankly, Google have messed this stuff up in how they do and talk about it. And those people need to know. And so when you're like "all, whatever man" out here on the dance floor, well, it kinda actually fucks shit up and stuff. So like, if you don't mind, please don't. Not here, anyhow? And even if we don't know what JSON is, or how to use it, what we know is that there will be tools created. Maybe by Google (we hope). Maybe by third party sites (and they're doin' just that). Maybe by a close personal friend. Maybe by a particularly talented housecat. But it's gonna happen, and JSON is the way. So. Go back to the phone. Do you important phone stuff. We'll leave you alone. We're cool with that. And let this be the message to the people doing the #GoogleDataTakeaway . Ya still wanna tawk about it? Start a new thread. Hip? Let's get this BEAT BACK ON!!! Let's get this BEAT BACK ON!!! Let's get this BEAT BACK ON!!! REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because Google's generated HTML is an ugly bastard stepchild of HTML that's not actually useful even as HTML. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because you'll give yourself far more options and far fewer headaches down the road. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because even if you can't make heads or tails of the output, the tools likely to be developed for intake to where you want the data to go will. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because your friendly neighborhood hackers (and Space Alien Cats) can hack something together using 'jq' and 'awk' (or Python, Ruby, Perl, Go, ...) if all else fails. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because it's what you actually want. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout (We need a have memes for this.) Where? Here: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Brian Holt Hawthorne Hmmm. I was using the new contacts preview. And that doesn't have circle options in the left hand sidepane. But maybe the circle entries are already in there. Except that after doing the import above, I gained 1000 or so contacts. — Circles Takeout Export to Google Contacts Import. Choose Takeout G+Circles, CSV format. If you have any circles of > 3000 break it into multiple sheets each of < 3000 rows. Go to https://contacts.google.com/ Choose more, import CSV file. Choose one of your circle files, Import. Merge Duplicates. Repeat for each file. At the end run a find duplicates. It looks to me like Google is querying the G+ Profiles for public information as part of the import. There are no emails or contact info in the Takeout Export. But the Contacts Import was finding them. At the the end, Google Contacts can export the merged files to CSV or VCF for onward export into other systems.
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Commented on post by Jenny WinderWill we get to 11b? UN Expects 11.2b in 2100 and with the population still rising. — How will we survive when the population hits 10 billion?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass Migration+Filip H.F. Slagter Those of us who can code might well do the same. And clearly, having the JSON copy gives you options later. So even if you can't do anything with it now, you've got the copy for later when you or other people can do something with it. But for the vast majority of people JSON is useless to them without somebody else's code. And that's what I was really trying to get at. Have a look at the HTML output. The index.html is a horrible mess of javascript. But the individual HTML files aren't too bad. It wouldn't be completely horrible to drop the <body> section into the <content> section of an Atom file. Or as a guide to recreate some html. — A reminder: REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Google HTML is absolutely worthless. The instructions don't make this clear, but you're going to see this advice repeated repeatedly and repetitiously. With great frequency. Repeatedly. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because the JSON format can be used by tools for extraction and import. Tim Berners-Lee is building one for Solid, there will be others. https://github.com/solid/solid-takeout-import (not yet usable, but in process). REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because the JSON format contains additional, useful, and critical fields for extraction and import to other sites and tools. REQUEST JSON SSSSSSSSCCCCCCccccrrrrraaaaaattttcccch...... <screeeech> Tap. Tap. Is this thing on? Hey folks, we interrupt this beat because I hear that you there, no, no, next to you, there, looking at your phone. Yeah, you, well, uh, I hear that you're thinking: "I don't know what JSON is." "I don't know what to do with JSON". "Heck, I don't plan to take any data out of Google. I'm gonna just #DoTheDataWalkaway ." Hey, cat, like, that's totally cool. I get it. I had a girlfriend who was all into that minimalism stuff. Wicked cool design ethic. But every time I wanted to fry an egg, I had to buy a new frying pan, 'coz she'd, like, donated the old one to charity or something? But she's moved on, and I like totally respect here and stuff.... Where was I? Oh yeah. But, y'see, we're not all like that. And some of us do know what to do with a JSON data extract. And we know that what it does is to make the information we want to use more accessible wherever else we want to use it. And there's a lot of folks who don't know this yet or are confused because, frankly, Google have messed this stuff up in how they do and talk about it. And those people need to know. And so when you're like "all, whatever man" out here on the dance floor, well, it kinda actually fucks shit up and stuff. So like, if you don't mind, please don't. Not here, anyhow? And even if we don't know what JSON is, or how to use it, what we know is that there will be tools created. Maybe by Google (we hope). Maybe by third party sites (and they're doin' just that). Maybe by a close personal friend. Maybe by a particularly talented housecat. But it's gonna happen, and JSON is the way. So. Go back to the phone. Do you important phone stuff. We'll leave you alone. We're cool with that. And let this be the message to the people doing the #GoogleDataTakeaway . Ya still wanna tawk about it? Start a new thread. Hip? Let's get this BEAT BACK ON!!! Let's get this BEAT BACK ON!!! Let's get this BEAT BACK ON!!! REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because Google's generated HTML is an ugly bastard stepchild of HTML that's not actually useful even as HTML. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because you'll give yourself far more options and far fewer headaches down the road. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because even if you can't make heads or tails of the output, the tools likely to be developed for intake to where you want the data to go will. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because your friendly neighborhood hackers (and Space Alien Cats) can hack something together using 'jq' and 'awk' (or Python, Ruby, Perl, Go, ...) if all else fails. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because it's what you actually want. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout (We need a have memes for this.) Where? Here: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Terrence Lee Reed Aaaaagh! Yes, the politicians can say "Sorry guys it's impossible, not sensible and bad for the country so we're not going to do it". That causes it's own problems. But seriously. Voting for something as serious as leaving the EU, just to protest against the UK government. It's unbelievably stupid. What did they think was going to happen? — YouGov poll from 23 October: 'In hindsight, do you think Britain was right or wrong to vote to leave EU?' Right 41% Wrong 47% Leavers 85% "right" Remainers 88% "wrong" 18-24 yr olds 65% "wrong" 25-49 53% "wrong" 50-64 52% "right" 65+ 62% "right" Lab 71% "wrong" Con 69% "right" Christ on a skateboard, can this country get more divided?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationSo you export to JSON. Then what? — A reminder: REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Google HTML is absolutely worthless. The instructions don't make this clear, but you're going to see this advice repeated repeatedly and repetitiously. With great frequency. Repeatedly. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because the JSON format can be used by tools for extraction and import. Tim Berners-Lee is building one for Solid, there will be others. https://github.com/solid/solid-takeout-import (not yet usable, but in process). REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because the JSON format contains additional, useful, and critical fields for extraction and import to other sites and tools. REQUEST JSON SSSSSSSSCCCCCCccccrrrrraaaaaattttcccch...... <screeeech> Tap. Tap. Is this thing on? Hey folks, we interrupt this beat because I hear that you there, no, no, next to you, there, looking at your phone. Yeah, you, well, uh, I hear that you're thinking: "I don't know what JSON is." "I don't know what to do with JSON". "Heck, I don't plan to take any data out of Google. I'm gonna just #DoTheDataWalkaway ." Hey, cat, like, that's totally cool. I get it. I had a girlfriend who was all into that minimalism stuff. Wicked cool design ethic. But every time I wanted to fry an egg, I had to buy a new frying pan, 'coz she'd, like, donated the old one to charity or something? But she's moved on, and I like totally respect here and stuff.... Where was I? Oh yeah. But, y'see, we're not all like that. And some of us do know what to do with a JSON data extract. And we know that what it does is to make the information we want to use more accessible wherever else we want to use it. And there's a lot of folks who don't know this yet or are confused because, frankly, Google have messed this stuff up in how they do and talk about it. And those people need to know. And so when you're like "all, whatever man" out here on the dance floor, well, it kinda actually fucks shit up and stuff. So like, if you don't mind, please don't. Not here, anyhow? And even if we don't know what JSON is, or how to use it, what we know is that there will be tools created. Maybe by Google (we hope). Maybe by third party sites (and they're doin' just that). Maybe by a close personal friend. Maybe by a particularly talented housecat. But it's gonna happen, and JSON is the way. So. Go back to the phone. Do you important phone stuff. We'll leave you alone. We're cool with that. And let this be the message to the people doing the #GoogleDataTakeaway . Ya still wanna tawk about it? Start a new thread. Hip? Let's get this BEAT BACK ON!!! Let's get this BEAT BACK ON!!! Let's get this BEAT BACK ON!!! REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because Google's generated HTML is an ugly bastard stepchild of HTML that's not actually useful even as HTML. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because you'll give yourself far more options and far fewer headaches down the road. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because even if you can't make heads or tails of the output, the tools likely to be developed for intake to where you want the data to go will. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because your friendly neighborhood hackers (and Space Alien Cats) can hack something together using 'jq' and 'awk' (or Python, Ruby, Perl, Go, ...) if all else fails. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because it's what you actually want. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout (We need a have memes for this.) Where? Here: https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout
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Commented on post by Musical One in Google+ Mass Migration+Nishit Dave You can set an FB group to Moderator approved for the membership. — Facebook Pages & Groups I am researching the difference between "Pages" and "Groups" on Facebook. From what I have read so far, Facebook Groups are the closest thing on the Internet to what we know as "Communities" on Google+. If anyone knows of options other than Facebook Groups that are similar to G+ communities, please supply me with links to the websites that offer those options. I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you, "Musical One"
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Commented on post by Martijn Vos in G+ RPG Escape Rocket+Shelenn Ayres Pretty much impossible since there's no way to grab a Community's posts via the G+ API. There's a long outstanding request for that and no hope of the API being enhanced to provide it now. — Turns out it's possible to create an RSS feed of your public posts. Since Hubzilla can follow RSS feeds, this should make it possible to follow public G+ content from Hubzilla. I need to experiment with this. https://gplusrss.com/
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Commented on post by Martijn Vos in G+ RPG Escape RocketI'm glad that appeared again. I wrote PHP code to do the same thing. https://gist.github.com/julian-bond/3938374 Of course, it's got a limited life span. ;) — Turns out it's possible to create an RSS feed of your public posts. Since Hubzilla can follow RSS feeds, this should make it possible to follow public G+ content from Hubzilla. I need to experiment with this. https://gplusrss.com/
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Commented on post by Rosh Jose in Google+ Help+Rosh Jose Click on select none. Scroll down till you find. Google+ Circles Google+ Communities Google+ Stream Click on Google+ Stream to activate it Click on the down arrow Click on Select specific data There's a little popup dialog. Select Posts only. Choose HTML to start with if the data looks useful do it again for JSON. — How to download info, comments and links shared with various circles? Per https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1045788?hl=en, it looks like only +1s, Google+ Circles, Google+ Communities and Google+ Stream can be downloaded. But if I want to download any links or info shared with a circle and any comments made under a post, how do I go about that?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationNext stop. Top 10 Social Networks in China, India and Brazil. Because it' not just English Language any more. And the China ones are huge. Especially Wechat, Weibo and QQ/Tencent For a long time I was really hoping those three would expand and become global, with English sections but it didn't really happen. https://www.dragonsocial.net/blog/social-media-in-china/ — From Russia, With Love
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Commented on post by Rosh Jose in Google+ HelpTry Takeout, G+Streams, Posts, JSON and HTML. You'll get all posts you've made with details of which circles/groups they were posted to. And each post includes the comments from other people. — How to download info, comments and links shared with various circles? Per https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1045788?hl=en, it looks like only +1s, Google+ Circles, Google+ Communities and Google+ Stream can be downloaded. But if I want to download any links or info shared with a circle and any comments made under a post, how do I go about that?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationI expect this to be a common thing. But also I think migrating people and content is going to be hard since G+ Takeout Communities is useless and the FB API is impenetrable. So migration is all about marketing the move and kickstarting the new community on FB. — foodies+ community is headed to Facebook (Not clear if temporary or permanent)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitSings: Where's Je-re-my Cor-byn. While wearing the T-Shirt: Love Corbyn - Hate Brexit And posting to Momentum: Joined Labour for Corbyn, Left over Brexit But then I don't live in the "Labour Heartlands (tm)" that voted Labour in the Election but Leave in the referendum. I truly believe that the graph in the OP is a direct result of Labour's ambiguity on Brexit and their failure to fully come out for Remain. They benefited from a huge influx of young Remainers. And now they've lost them again. — Meanwhile, the stunning performance of Jeremy Corbyn shows as his support among young voters is in... ... free fall.
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Commented on post by Carsten Reckord in Google+ Mass MigrationRepeating myself here. This sequence failed on any filename with a non US-Ascii character. Takeout Zip MS Windows unzip with Zip7 dir /b /O-D *.html > dir.txt notepad++ convert to <a href="$FILENAME">$FILENAME</a> for each row That's like the minimum viable tech solution to turning the takeout into a static archive site on some webhosting. Which means writing code, (bash, php, etc) to iconv rename the files prior to listing them. If it comes to that then you might as well use the code to create the alternate index.html completely. For something that one is only really going to do once. And the reason for doing it is because the index.html provided by Google is *SO F*CKING FULL OF CR*P". Why do Google's programmers like obfuscated javascript libraries and dense, random CSS classes so much? Do they get paid according to how impenetrable their web pages are? Index.html is a web page you're giving to your user, FFS! Feedback sent. — Has anybody actually had any luck with Takeout exporting their Google+ Stream ActivityLog, JSON or otherwise? It fails consistently for me for at least two and usually all three of these: +1s on comments +1s on posts Comments Everything else I can get just fine, but not these three. In nine attempts across roughly a week, I managed to get one that claimed to contain "Comments.json", but actually didn't, and one that contained a "+1s on comments.json" with some sane-looking data even though the report overview claimed that it didn't.
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Commented on post by Jack Samuel in Google+ Help+Kamal Tailor But if you download your posts via Takeout, the comments on those posts from other people are included. So in some circumstances, you can download other people's content. — I've been using Google blogger for a few weeks now and I find it to be an acceptable alternative to Google+ collections. Actually in terms of page view/traffic information I find it to be more useful than collections. And people can subscribe to my blog posts with feed readers or by email. But I'm wondering how safe the Google Blogger platform is from Google deciding to pull the plug on that too? Any thoughts about this? I considered using Word Press for my blog but I like the simplicity of Google Blogger.
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Commented on post by Carsten Reckord in Google+ Mass MigrationThe Activitylog always fails for me. Already posted feedback. — Has anybody actually had any luck with Takeout exporting their Google+ Stream ActivityLog, JSON or otherwise? It fails consistently for me for at least two and usually all three of these: +1s on comments +1s on posts Comments Everything else I can get just fine, but not these three. In nine attempts across roughly a week, I managed to get one that claimed to contain "Comments.json", but actually didn't, and one that contained a "+1s on comments.json" with some sane-looking data even though the report overview claimed that it didn't.
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Commented on post by Jeff Mooallem in Google+ HelpHere's what you need. https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!home — With Google+ being sunsetted, what will be the best forum in the future for questions and answers and community support for Google products?
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Commented on post by Jenny WinderAs always * scale * ! 10GtC/Yr turned into 30GtCO2/yr until the 1TtC of easily accessible fossil carbon is all gone. In one last #terafart . Leading to a temperature rise of at least 5C. And 200k years before CO2 and temperatures drop back again to pre-industrial levels. — Climate change: Five cheap ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaOne thing I find endlessly fascinating in the Corvids is the social differences between Jackdaws, Rooks and Crows. There's an old English saying that "If you see a rook on it's own, that's a crow. If you see a lot of crows together, they be rooks.". And yet you do occasionally see a murder of crows in a field. It's just that they're all keeping their distance from each other and eyeing each other up for potential rivalry. Whereas the rooks and jackdaws are clearly a tribal group that's constantly talking to each other. And the Rook nation and the Jackdaw nation have a friendly treaty and understanding. — I always thought crows were the most likely animals to develop tools just to shank you.
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Commented on post by Jack Samuel in Google+ Help+Kamal Tailor 1) Got a Citation? Big if True. I'm especially curious about what happens to a G+ Profile. Since the underlying data is part of one's Google Account. The G+ Profile is just one more or less publicly accessible web display of that data. Back in the day prior to G+ there was a thing called Google Profiles. These still exist in the sense that the URLs redirect to the G+ Profile and the data has migrated as the platforms changed. Can we expect this to happen again? http://profiles.google.com https://aboutme.google.com 2) I know individuals are working on Takeout to Atom and Takeout to Blogger. Are you saying Google is also doing this? 3) And the Wordpress developer community. As for Blogger It doesn't have to be done by the platform owner, providing the APIs are rich enough. And they are. — I've been using Google blogger for a few weeks now and I find it to be an acceptable alternative to Google+ collections. Actually in terms of page view/traffic information I find it to be more useful than collections. And people can subscribe to my blog posts with feed readers or by email. But I'm wondering how safe the Google Blogger platform is from Google deciding to pull the plug on that too? Any thoughts about this? I considered using Word Press for my blog but I like the simplicity of Google Blogger.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearI'd just like to note the comparison and commonality between Usenet Newsgroups and mailing lists. Especially as lots of people used the same client to deal with both. And all the problems of archiving, search, trolls, formatting conventions, threading conventions and so on apply to both. And also noting that Googlegroups grew out of a combination of reworking dejanews and competing with yahoogroups. So that now the difference between usenet archives on googlegroups, googlegroups mailing lists and googlegroups web forums are very blurred. And frankly a f*cking mess! I came from Usenet to IRC using a dial up connected PC. And one thing I hated about IRC was that conversations that happened while my PC was off were lost. And being in the UK, that meant that US afternoon and evening posts were never seen. With Usenet it was possible to catch up with conversations that happened while I was away. It also meant that conversations were async rather than IRC's sync. For ages I looked for group messaging that was both real time and async. Finally found it in Skype Groups, except that was limited in group size and then completely screwed by Microsoft. — Google+ and Usenet: An almost wholly inaccurate, incomplete, and useless comparison (Not that that will slow down the critics.) (But please do criticise ... substantively.) Just off the top of my head: Usenet had Newsgroups. Google ... doesn't, though Communities somewhat serve. Usenet newsgroups were not easily extensibile. You had to achieve consensus amongst newsfeeds/hosts to carry new groups. Google Communties can be started by any idiot and often are. Though individuals could host their own newsservers and run whatever groups they wanted within those. This capability is not available within Google. Those free-standing newsservers could, at their option, interoperate with others, and might distribute or restrict distribution of their own local feeds according to local policy. Both Usenet and Google ended up with vast wastelands of unpatrolled feeds, filled with spam, trolls, porn, warez, malware, and worse. Both Usenet and Google ended up with severe moderation issues. Usenet tried Cancelmoose and the Usenet Cabal, Google tried AI. Both failed, if not, wholly, against spam, then in holding the active positively-contributing readers and contributors. Usenet had binaries. Google did not. Usenet supported monospace font and shell-integrated readers (at least for a significant set of users). Google+ did not. Usenet offered client independence. Google+ did not (varying access via APIs, over time, excepted). Usenet offered no central identity Directory. Google+ was billed as a central Identity Directory. In Usenet, any user could claim any identity (including of any other user) at any time. On Google ... creating similarly-named identities is possible (and happens), but directly appropriating another identity isn't. (Usenet effectively federated identity within campuses and delegated discipline to campus sysops an sysadmins who could admonish, or restrict, troublesome users. This scaled to about 140k - 250k users, according to Spafford and Ried's data, cited in John S. Quarterman's The Matrix (1990), which I'm extrapolating out to ~1992 and the opening of the Internet to commercial traffic. Usenet effectively died as a primary channel shortly after, though it persists in a technical sense to this day.) (Usenet also effectively managed identity at the message level, either by implication or, as a minority practice, through PGP-, and later, GPG-signed messages, mostly on official security announcements. Closed feeds / newsservers might also have authentication protocols, details of which I am wholly ignorant.) Usenet carried state in the client, with only an ephemeral feed (1-3 months typically) on servers. If individuals wanted to retain access to content, they were responsible for doing so themselves. Though independent comprehensive archives emerge (and proved highly controversial initially). Google+ is a comprehensive archive: material persists unless specifically deleted by an account's owner, or the account itself is purged. Usenet had no comprehensive search. Google+ didn't for much of its life, but eventually did. Search via archives or centrally-located feeds (Kibo!) was possible, but effectively expensive (resources, location, storage). (Usenet addressed institutional memory and knowledge by other means, mostly as FAQs: distillations of knowledge. Whether or not this proves more useful than search in the long term might make an interesting discussion.) Usenet evolved conventions of posting style, formats, and indications of emphasis, etc., within messages. Those worked ... until they did not. This is actually a central problem with a great deal of communication, and greatly predates electronic media. I believe that human conventions in correspondence formatting in email and usenet are an underappreciated source of frictions. Having participated in discussions ranging from early uni-dominated Usenet to multi-industry email lists (one famously included techies, legal types, media, entertainment, students, business, and more), the cacophany of 1) massive egos and 2) utterly divorced standard (many imposed through client software) in communications lead me to abandon that particular channel, despite its then-storied reputation, in a matter of weeks. Communications are predicated on common standards, and coherence with these. Google+ addressed this largely by forcing single-client (or a very restricted and controlled client-set) usage on the platform, minimising the formatting options (overly much, IMO, but ...), and enforcing a standard structure of discussions in post + flat comments structure. Maddeningly limited, but also sanity-preservingly-consistent. Google scaled this to 3.3+ billion profiles, of which a reasonably impressive few percent were heavy users, and probably 100-300 millions at least occasionally participated in the platform. (That's a high-end estimate, but vaguely within reason.) Simply getting a million or more people to act in ways that don't drive one another into blind rages is an accomplishment. I'm spare with my praise to Google, but they pulled this off, whether by design or accident. I'd really like to see something like Usenet emerge again. I have extreme doubts that it can, outside very limited domains, and with very strong cultural enforcement (the September effect), to create a viable interoperating community. That's disappointing, as the underlying concepts are powerful and useful. Any system relying on multi-client implementations sets itself up for numerous types of failure. Again, said by something who'd very much like to see a multi-client, open-choice environment. It's as if there's a limit to overall liberty, and that increases in one domain must be matched by curtailments in others. I have my doubts about just how true that is, but as a rough heuristic, it may have value.
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Commented on post by Elizabeth Richardson in Google+ HelpWhat do you need it for? — How can I get my a Google + number
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Commented on post by Alma Kraemer in Google+ HelpGoogle Takeout has options for G+Collection and G+Communities but at the moment they're spectacularly useless because they're just lists of URLs back into G+. And Communities are only accessible to the community owner. Please complain here! https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/takeout_feedback — What is going to hapen with all the community and collection when G+ close?
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Commented on post by Franz Krauth in Google+ HelpHave you tried Google Takeout G+streams.events? — Any ideas what to do with Google+ events? I have loads of those, and am really sad that it is going away... So I need to find a way to keep the event data and pictures and share it with the same people...
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Commented on post by Jack Samuel in Google+ HelpTo bring this back on topic. 1. Blogger comments are more or less tightly integrated into G+. Some blogs use embedded G+ for comments. Others use the ability to use your G+ profile as the owner. Which then has a link that redirects to your G+ profile. What's going to happen to this? Which then means, what's going to happen to the G+ Profile after the G+ Sunset? 2. An automated route from Takeout G+ stream.Posts to a blogger blog would be a useful tool for preserving your content after the G+ sunset. It would be great if Google could provide this. But even if they din't, it looks like it is possible to create something like this using all the APIs. 3. You mentioned Wordpress. The same function in 2) could be done for Wordpress blogs. Perhaps via a Takeout G+ stream.Posts to Atom utility. Again, Google could help this by providing a Takeout G+ stream.Posts output in Atom format to go with HTML and JSON. These are all questions and functions to throw at Google, especially at the Takeout Feedback form. https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/takeout_feedback — I've been using Google blogger for a few weeks now and I find it to be an acceptable alternative to Google+ collections. Actually in terms of page view/traffic information I find it to be more useful than collections. And people can subscribe to my blog posts with feed readers or by email. But I'm wondering how safe the Google Blogger platform is from Google deciding to pull the plug on that too? Any thoughts about this? I considered using Word Press for my blog but I like the simplicity of Google Blogger.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaThe crows near us have worked out how to create nests out of discarded Lego and Ikea parts. The magpies help them find the allen keys and bolts. — I always thought crows were the most likely animals to develop tools just to shank you.
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Commented on post by Filip H.F. Slagter in Google+ Mass Migration+Filip H.F. Slagter Jokez. I used to be worried that http://bit.ly might disappear and all those permalinks with it. And it was a good thing that http://goo.gl was doing the same function because it was more likely to stay around. — It's a bad sign if the Google employees no longer are using Google's own infrastructure to publish these articles, and instead use competitors such as Medium. Makes you can wonder if Google's Blogger is also slated for termination, like Google+.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google++Cherise Mcbride Takeout G+Communities is just a list of URLs to posts in the community. and there's no way to get from the URL shortcode to the ActivityID longcode that is needed to use the API to get the post. So I'm afraid, current workflow is to bring up each post in turn and cut and paste. Which sucks. — The more I dig into this the more mind boggling I find the decision to sunset G+ - What happens to all those buttons, badges, embedded posts and signins for G+ on other websites? - How do you extract and archive content from within communities? - We now need APIs to extract and archive non-public data. And so on. Pretty much everything here is going to sunset as well. https://developers.google.com/+/web/
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Commented on post by Gideon RosenblattThis post is more than 280 chars. Twitter doesn't have groups. So by all means micro-blog and announce on Twitter, but where are your long form posts, groups and profile going to be? — Forwarding Card Until we get a viable, open social media network that's controlled by end-users (Solid, I'm looking at you for that path...), I will be moving the locus of my online engagement, slowly but surely, over to Twitter. To be clear, I'll still engage here and I'm not giving up on Google+ (until the very last day). Just making the transition and pinning this post as a pointer. On Twitter: https://twitter.com/gideonro On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheVitalEdge/ On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gideonrosenblatt/ On Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/gideonro/ See you there.
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Commented on post by Peter Maranci in Google+ Mass MigrationI wouldn't mind edit access, but don't necessarily need it. We need a row for forum software (Drupal, phpBB, vBulletin) — Due to repeated instances of advertising and screwing with the G+ Alternatives spreadsheet, it is no longer open to public editing. I regret the necessity, but I can't keep working to fix the apparently malicious edits that are being performed by anonymous users. Everyone can still view the document. If you'd like to be able to edit it, please contact me. I appreciate the good work done on the document by members of this community; I'm just sorry that some anonymous bad actors ruined it for everyone.
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Commented on post by Ifinder Ifindi in Google+ HelpTakeout G+Stream.Collections is spectacularly useless. It really just points back into G+. G+Stream.Posts provides all the post content but it although it's got the collections metadata in it, you;d have to work through each one. Going from html to PDF is probably going to mean bringing the post up in a browser and then print to PDF. So. Why do you want PDF? — How to copy all Google+ collections to PDF/PMD, Please ? Link to a relevant post may also enough Regards
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Commented on post by Shelenn Ayres in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearSuggest we talk about Atom instead of RSS. RSS is a useful marketing name, but it makes little sense to still use it as an actual protocol. I hit charset problems with my flintstones approach. G+ mangles your text input as it's being stored. So things like £, é, € and double spaces get stored as UTF-8 (I think). The title and filename approach is then to take the first N chars so these high order characters can end up in the filenames. Different OS then have different ways of dealing with this. A simple dir > dir.txt on a windows command line that is then edited with notepad++ ends up with a quite different character to what's in the filename. Gah! Even if you do simple approaches like this, it forces you to rename all the filenames converting to plain old ascii. Feedback sent. I've hit this post to title+post problem before. - strip tags - take first 256 chars - Split at the first ". " to try and break at the end of the first sentence - if not, split at the last " " to avoid breaking words - Check that your title is > 30 chars. and so on. Title is optional in RSS/Atom. But most consumers of Atom prefer to see one. — Something to explore if able to generate RSS from G+ stream
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationShould forum software be included? Such as Drupal, phpBB, VBulletin. There are others. — Looking for G+ Alternatives? See / add to / verify the G+ Alternatives Spreadsheet If you're looking for a single source for comparison of the options in front of you, especially with a group or Community to migrate, this is a prime tool. You'll find it in the Google+ Mass Migration sidebar (top-bar on mobile-web) under "About Community". https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772/ This has been filled in tremendously since I last looked at it, with 31 options completed (I just added Tildes, a discussion forum type site). +Trey Harris put a lot of work into setting this up, and it's becoming a very useful tool. Take advantage of it. Thanks, Trey, and other compilers! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1itbLtjWx2Cx88k2pqqwjY2j9vknLhoXpPXU52sTYbrI/edit#gid=0
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Filip H.F. Slagter Blogger does have a POST method for inserting new posts with their comments. These can be either Atom format in Blogger V2 API or JSON in the V3. I think a G+Takeout.streams.posts -> Atom convertor is a good first step to that. It may not be the end goal, but it's a useful step that will teach us a lot about where the problems are. https://developers.google.com/blogger/docs/2.0/developers_guide_protocol — G+ -> Blogger There's a case for providing a utility to make it easy to move your posts and their associated comments from G+ to a Blogger blog. There's a fairly good match (but not exact) between the G+ JSON Takeout format and the Blogger V3 API JSON import/export format. 4 routes to this I can think of. 1) It's self evident that since it all belongs to Google, they are best placed to provide a one click migration from Google Profile to Blogger blog. 2) A Google half way house would be for Google to produce Takeout in Atom format in addition to JSON and HTML. This can be used by the Blogger V2 API import/export. It's also understood and accepted by other blog platforms. (I think) 3) Social media delivery tools. eg IFTTT, DLVR.IT[1] These groups have the capability to do this, but for money. These systems are also biased towards cross-posting new content, not the old archives. 4) User-led development in 2 areas to produce custom code to extend takeout. - Convert Takeout JSON files to Atom - Import Takeout JSON direct into Blogger, WordPress and similar. [1]dlvr.it were one of the groups that used the G+ API to grab new posts and turn them into an Atom feed. For a while there I was using them to auto-crosspost from G+ to Twitter and Facebook. I was also using their Atom feed to import direct into my own blog. Then facebook posting support disappeared. G+ input disappeared. I wrote my own G+ -> Atom utility. So all I've got left now using the dlvr.it free service is an auto-post to twitter whenever I post on G+ via my own atom feed. [cross-posted from a comment on a post in RPG Escape Rocket https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RobertFreemanDay/posts/5827F5R3Aie ]
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Bobbi Jo Woods Don't be quite so defeatist. You * can * get your posts out of G+ with their comments and there's a strong possibility it will be possible to get them into another blogging platform such as Blogger or Wordpress. And the work of people like +Filip H.F. Slagter (and myself) is exactly how that will happen. — G+ -> Blogger There's a case for providing a utility to make it easy to move your posts and their associated comments from G+ to a Blogger blog. There's a fairly good match (but not exact) between the G+ JSON Takeout format and the Blogger V3 API JSON import/export format. 4 routes to this I can think of. 1) It's self evident that since it all belongs to Google, they are best placed to provide a one click migration from Google Profile to Blogger blog. 2) A Google half way house would be for Google to produce Takeout in Atom format in addition to JSON and HTML. This can be used by the Blogger V2 API import/export. It's also understood and accepted by other blog platforms. (I think) 3) Social media delivery tools. eg IFTTT, DLVR.IT[1] These groups have the capability to do this, but for money. These systems are also biased towards cross-posting new content, not the old archives. 4) User-led development in 2 areas to produce custom code to extend takeout. - Convert Takeout JSON files to Atom - Import Takeout JSON direct into Blogger, WordPress and similar. [1]dlvr.it were one of the groups that used the G+ API to grab new posts and turn them into an Atom feed. For a while there I was using them to auto-crosspost from G+ to Twitter and Facebook. I was also using their Atom feed to import direct into my own blog. Then facebook posting support disappeared. G+ input disappeared. I wrote my own G+ -> Atom utility. So all I've got left now using the dlvr.it free service is an auto-post to twitter whenever I post on G+ via my own atom feed. [cross-posted from a comment on a post in RPG Escape Rocket https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RobertFreemanDay/posts/5827F5R3Aie ]
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is Near+emaralive Not just me then.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationI think internal +1s may be in the activity log takeout. But since that breaks all the time I can't tell. All I've got so far is polls I've voted on. — Takeout +1s is fairly useless. - HTML only - Produces a single file of bookmarks - +1s external to Google plus only. Not anything you've +1ed inside G+
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Commented on post by Filip H.F. Slagter in Google+ Mass MigrationBlogger dates to 23-Aug-1999 so it's going to hit 20 years next year. In Feb 2018 it had been a Google property for 15 of those 20. There are numerous blogs still around from the early years[1] that their owners consider their home. So I think it would be a disaster if Google closed it. [1] eg Simon Reynolds. http://blissout.blogspot.com/ — It's a bad sign if the Google employees no longer are using Google's own infrastructure to publish these articles, and instead use competitors such as Medium. Makes you can wonder if Google's Blogger is also slated for termination, like Google+.
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Commented on post by Julian BondThe moral dilemma for Labour MPs that campaigned and voted for Remain but are in Leave constituencies. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/23/brexit-constituents-poorer-leave-labour-second-referendum-phil-wilson-mp#comment-121809958 — Following Saturday's March Against UK-Exit We don't need another referendum or vote for MPs to come to their senses, act in the national interest and say: "You asked us to try and find a way of leaving the EU. Well, we've done our best and we can't find any sensible way of doing that. So we've decided to cancel Article 50 and call the whole thing off. Here's my resignation".
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is Nearstreams.posts 1700 posts 2011-2018, 1.6Gb zip file. It just worked. I've tried most of the other G+ sources and only streams.activityLog just failed.
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Commented on post by Filip H.F. Slagter in Google+ Mass MigrationGoogle Maps still uses http://goo.gl to offer links to share and embed. Go figure. — It's a bad sign if the Google employees no longer are using Google's own infrastructure to publish these articles, and instead use competitors such as Medium. Makes you can wonder if Google's Blogger is also slated for termination, like Google+.
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Commented on post by Robert Freeman-Day in G+ RPG Escape RocketThere's a case for providing a utility to make it easy to move your posts and their associated comments from G+ to a Blogger blog. There's a fairly good match (but not exact) between the G+ JSON Takeout format and the Blogger V3 API JSON import/export format. 4 routes to this I can think of. 1) It's self evident that since it all belongs to Google, they are best placed to provide a one click migration from Google Profile to Blogger blog. 2) A Google half way house would be for Google to produce Takeout in Atom format in addition to JSON and HTML. This can be used by the Blogger V2 API import/export. It's also understood and accepted by other blog platforms. (I think) 3) Social media delivery tools. eg IFTTT, http://DLVR.IT[1] These groups have the capability to do this, but for money. These systems are also biased towards cross-posting new content, not the old archives. 4) User-led development in 2 areas to produce custom code to extend takeout. - Convert Takeout JSON files to Atom - Import Takeout JSON direct into Blogger, WordPress and similar. [1]http://dlvr.it were one of the groups that used the G+ API to grab new posts and turn them into an Atom feed. For a while there I was using them to auto-crosspost from G+ to Twitter and Facebook. I was also using their Atom feed to import direct into my own blog. Then facebook posting support disappeared. G+ input disappeared. I wrote my own G+ -> Atom utility. So all I've got left now using the http://dlvr.it free service is an auto-post to twitter whenever I post on G+ via my own atom feed. — So I am noticing some bloggers (I believe all are from blogger) have their comments "hosted" through G+ Has anyone heard about how that will work when G+ dies? Has any blogger ...err... blogger that uses it been reached out to by Google?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitZut Alors! L'Escargot est le champion! Alez Les Bleus! — The Guardian cartoon on the race to agree a Brexit deal is an absolute joy.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Filip H.F. Slagter Thanks for spotting that. I bet there's more. Isn't it always the way? I think I'll blame Google for using UTF-8 in file names. sigh. — Takeout - G+ Circles Beware. The current data from this takeout option is more or less the same in all 3 formats (CSV, HTML, VCard). First Name Last Name Nickname Display Name Profile URL So a tiny subset of their publicly visible profile information. It's broken out into one file per circle. Missing from that list of files is "Followers". This is really not sufficient on its own to do much of anything with.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass Migrationhttps://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/rwby/images/4/45/82733-why-not-both-meme-5LvD.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20160618185223 but first, REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout. — A reminder: REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Google HTML is absolutely worthless. The instructions don't make this clear, but you're going to see this advice repeated repeatedly and repetitiously. With great frequency. Repeatedly. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because the JSON format can be used by tools for extraction and import. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because the JSON format contains additional, useful, and critical fields for extraction and import to other sites and tools. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because Google's generated HTML is an ugly bastard stepchild of HTML that's not actually useful even as HTML. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because you'll give yourself far more options and far fewer headaches down the road. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because even if you can't make heads or tails of the output, the tools likely to be developed for intake to where you want the data to go will. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because your friendly neighborhood hackers (and Space Alien Cats) can hack something together using 'jq' and 'awk' (or Python, Ruby, Perl, Go, ...) if all else fails. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout Why? Because it's what you actually want. REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout REQUEST JSON FORMAT for Google Data Takeout (We need a meme of this.)
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationRe HTML vs JSON. I did a google+.stream.posts takeout in HTML. I then did a directory list in reverse date order of just the html files. Spent 10 minutes or so with a text editor to turn this listing into an index.html file. Uploaded the entire archive to some public hosting. And came up with this flintstones solution. https://voidstar.com/Takeout/Google+/ It's pretty horrible but it does kind of work for minimal effort. There's not much structure or metadata and the filenames as first line of post can be obtuse. But at least it's a publicly accessible archive under my control. — Takeout - G+ Circles Beware. The current data from this takeout option is more or less the same in all 3 formats (CSV, HTML, VCard). First Name Last Name Nickname Display Name Profile URL So a tiny subset of their publicly visible profile information. It's broken out into one file per circle. Missing from that list of files is "Followers". This is really not sufficient on its own to do much of anything with.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI completely agree with the viewpoint on reputation. And I really don't think the UK would be allowed to do this repeatedly. If by some chance the UK does manage to halt the process and back out of it, I'd expect that to be dealt with to make it harder for anyone the next time. But at the same time, the EU has given some hints that if there was a complete change of heart, a change of government, another referendum that voted remain or such like, they would look favourably on a request to cancel Art50 and allow the UK to remain. Even then it's not clear what the terms would be. I don't know if it would go as far as requiring the Euro and Schengen but it might. However I'm sure it would men rolling back any existing concessions. — Twitterthread by Ian Dunt. Brexiter argument today seems to be: Yeah, we know we fucked up, but it's too late now. Not very inspiring. Also wrong.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Alexander Goeres It's not clear to me. But one of the authors has said it can be revoked. And then there's this. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/21/triggering-article-50-reversed-european-court-justice-brexit-bad-dream — Twitterthread by Ian Dunt. Brexiter argument today seems to be: Yeah, we know we fucked up, but it's too late now. Not very inspiring. Also wrong.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Bernhard Suter But Followers is data that I can view from inside G+ https://plus.google.com/people/haveyou "Followers" tab. If I can view it now, and I will lose the ability to do that later, why shouldn't I be able to download it as a list? It would be horrible to do, but in theory I could parse the page and extract the same data available in the takeout downloads. Name, Profile URL, Profile Image. — Takeout - G+ Circles Beware. The current data from this takeout option is more or less the same in all 3 formats (CSV, HTML, VCard). First Name Last Name Nickname Display Name Profile URL So a tiny subset of their publicly visible profile information. It's broken out into one file per circle. Missing from that list of files is "Followers". This is really not sufficient on its own to do much of anything with.
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Commented on post by Jesse Covner in G+ RPG Escape RocketA note about Facebook and the other majors which overlaps with the previous post on "Types" and "Relevant Features". Facebook. Facebook's function is huge. Blogging/Posting, Comments, +1s, Groups, Private messaging, Group messaging, Events, Pages, Marketplace, Friend lists, Photo hosting. And on and on. Since there's no lower limit on post size, it covers micro-blogging as well. There really isn't anywhere else with that breadth of function. So when people criticise a bit of it, be careful which bit they're criticising. This breadth of function, the ability to comment on anything with some threading, the groups and pages and the ability to private message almost anyone turn out to be incredibly useful. The downside is the evil and ads. But at least the ads can be pretty much completely hidden. To repeat. Nothing has as many people or as much function as Facebook. Twitter. I hate Twitter with a vengeance. I wish it would die already. For numerous reasons, it's hopeless for anything except announcing content that is hosted elsewhere. I've repeatedly called it Write-Only-Media. Which can't be right, because people (even me) do read Twitter. But in general they don't reply. The one thing it introduced to the game was being able to follow somebody or thing unilaterally without forcing a bi-directional "friend" link. Mastodon. I wanted to like this. But the lack of groups, lists and noise means it's become worse than Twitter for me. It's Twitter with less function, less people but a slightly larger max post size. I'm not managing to have meaningful conversations on it. Personal Blogs, Blogger, Wordpress, Medium (maybe). There's a place for this. And I think it's long term, long form, archived content. RSS/Atom, announcement on other locations deals with visibility and comments. But the big thing about it is the content should stick around and not 404 with no constraints on size, censorship or whatever. Forums, Drupal, phpBB, vBulletin, etc. These still exist. They still work. They still work great for specific communities of interest like rock-climbing or Kawasaki sports bikes. These days they are easy to throw up on a bit of shared hosting. But admin and moderation doesn't get any easier or less arduous. — *High (but basic) Level Analysis of Social Networks and the G+ Predicament. Part 2: We are Screwed* I wrote Part 1 here ( https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JesseCovner/posts/CPHrkZEaC6M ) You know what is infuriating? At one time I had to figure out that I need to maximize the post then copy the URL from the top bar… What? Google couldn’t have been bothered to built in a simple “permalink” link? Fuck. Anyway… *5. Really Quick and Absolutely Incomplete Analysis of Some Networks* **Facebook**… if 1 was pure evil, and 9 was the dude who tackled a mass-shooter in a wafflehouse, Facebook would be a 0. I’m using it now, but I feel sick. They had no responsibility for their content, other than preventing copyrights being stolen and not showing nipples. It offers a ton of controls for protecting privacy in so much detail that they can say they protect privacy, while making said controls so unwieldy that people don’t understand them… on purpose. That being said, besides the evil issue, the lack of ease of use, Facebook would be the perfect platform for everyone. It provides powerful inner-network social networking, notifying friends of all activity, external visibility of replies, and content discovery. Besides the evil stuff, what Facebook fails at is in it’s exclusivity. It’s very exclusive in that it requires people to sign up to see content by default. But that means nothing because everyone already is signed up. It does not provide clear controls for determining who sees what. Which makes Facebook a critical failure for a lot of popular bloggers who want to have cozy inner groups. And it’s evil. *Reddit*: Reddit is OK as a Social Discussion forum. It has critical mass, external network visibility, and content discovery. It has the ability to follow (in one direction), but does not report below post level about activity. I don’t believe it even shows how many people are following. So virtually no inner-network social networking. It does not give controls over who sees what. So almost no exclusivity. It’s a discussion forum with social networking features, not a social network. It’s moderately evil in that it tolerates some groups which promote extreme views, though as a network it takes responsibility for moderation and does not give everything to Hydra. So it’s good for people who want discussions and are not choosy about with whom. Or at least, for people don’t mind that lots of people can be reading the content, and some of those people are stupid assholes. *Twitter*: I’m not familiar with it so can’t judge exclusivity. It has external visibility in the form of embeding posts. It has lots of social networking potential and content discovery. In terms of Ease of Use, it’s really poor as a blogging platform. Well... it’s not a blogging platform; it’s a content announcement platform, that has a lot of critical mass. So this works really well for publishers and “celebrities” who already have a following. It does not work well for those looking to get fame nor that great for people who want detailed discussions. Not great for social advertising until you form a following. *MeWe*: I know a lot of people are saying MeWe is it. And let’s assume that sooner, rather than later, posts can be shared without losing the by-line. This is still a closed content site: there is no extra-network visibility of anything. You cannot share a link to a MeWe post. It has poor content discovery options, simply displaying the feed from all contacts, which is useless unless your contacts are limited. This is not scale-able. It does not have critical mass in general. I’M VERY SORRY TO SAY THIS. I have met some cool people on MeWe. But right now, this absolutely does not cut it for most people’s needs. You cannot “follow” people, only gain contacts. So it’s a mass of “friends” posting without practical content discovery options, nor detailed exclusivity options. What’s the point of having “friends” then? Sure, it does not productize your data. But it doesn’t do actual social networking functions either. *Blogger / Wordpress*: These are social communities of bloggers, but they are not in themselves social networks that can help people find them from outside the network. *G+*: G+ does everything wrong, but it does enough better than the other sites in certain ways so as to be a great middle ground. It does social networking, but it’s relatively easy to control the exclusivity options. It tried to control evil, and failed, but it gave the impression there was an attempt. It’s forum / blogging interface is piss-poor, but seems better than Facebook and twitter. It link to outside of G+, on the post level, but couldn’t be bothered to make that process clear. It offers OK content discovery… but this got overwhelmed by the final flaw; lack of critical mass meant poor noise control. G+ had critical mass of RPG players, but not enough to sustain it’s business… supposedly. ---- *6. What does G+ mean for shutting down?* G+ provided a middle ground that was acceptable to “RPG Celebrities” , indie publishers, and RPG hobbyists. I think that a lot of “hackers” prefer specialized communities, forum boards, or reddit, where you often get huge forum posts. But now it’s going to be shut down. What does this mean? * First of all, the connections and content from G+ will be lost. This can be partially mitigated, but not by much. Those with reputations outside of G+ can emerge without difficulty. Those connected mainly through G+ will suffer greater loss. *Important*: picking different substitutes without critical mass does not work!!! We are undergoing the destruction of our community. That means fracturing. * A problem which is just as big as the first problem is that there seemingly is no acceptable middle – grounds that can appeal to a critical mass of RPG users like G+ could (in spite of it’s flaws). Facebook is too evil, poor discovery, lack of exclusivity hidden with fake exclusivity, and lack of ease of use. Reddit is barely a social network. Twitter is not really good as a forum. MeWe is very immature and currently a closed network with zero external visibility. *7. What to do?* I may expand on this in a future post, but I would like to recommend the following suggestions. 1. We should experiment with multi-platform solutions with ad-hoc patches. The solution to this could and should use multiple platforms that reference and cooperate with each other on the user and moderator level. This will be difficult to establish as, assuming we can come up with the plan and get people to stick with it, there are no IT policy ( mechanics) that will force compliance. In other words, we need to homebrew solutions that connect one long campaign that would somehow use the Fate, OSR, Call of Cthulhu, and D&D3.5 rules from session to session, with the same story, settings, and characters, with veteran and new players, as well as a lot of drop-in players, and some of the "output" of this campaign would sync with the Pathfinder Adventurers Society. And the campaign must not be rail-roaded but there needs to be Red-Card systems and clear expectations at the table. It can be done, but it will not be easy. Ad-hoc patches represent rules that we push people to abide by that mirror rules on other platforms. *2. Let’s fight.* I mean really… let’s FUCKING FIGHT GOOGLE! Yeah, it’s their platform and they can do what they want with it. But we put spirit, emotion, and trust in this platform. What they are doing is a violation of trust. If that’s what they are going to do, their brand needs to suffer. We should not excuse them. We should not be understanding of their business needs. We need to be shouting this out loud, in strategically selected places, using well crafted and biting language. We need to make Google hurt, as much as we can. Everyone is talking about running. And that’s probably what we need to do in the end. But this community should be fighting as well.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Edward Morbius Well it should redirect to the logged in person's "About me" page where their own personal data is stored along with the permissions of who can see what. Personal contact info Work contact info Work history Education Places Sites Gender, date of birth and more Story Skills and so on. — Takeout - G+ Circles Beware. The current data from this takeout option is more or less the same in all 3 formats (CSV, HTML, VCard). First Name Last Name Nickname Display Name Profile URL So a tiny subset of their publicly visible profile information. It's broken out into one file per circle. Missing from that list of files is "Followers". This is really not sufficient on its own to do much of anything with.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationHaving to think about what else would be useful. In theory, anything on this page that they share with you. https://aboutme.google.com/u/0/?referer=gplus So the blocks marked public or circles where you are in their circles. — Takeout - G+ Circles Beware. The current data from this takeout option is more or less the same in all 3 formats (CSV, HTML, VCard). First Name Last Name Nickname Display Name Profile URL So a tiny subset of their publicly visible profile information. It's broken out into one file per circle. Missing from that list of files is "Followers". This is really not sufficient on its own to do much of anything with.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Help+Peggy K Thanks for that. I knew it must have gone somewhere! — I'm sure it used to be possible to view my own profile as if it was being viewed by somebody else. Did that option disappear, because I'm damned if I can find it? This is all on Desktop web.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearTwo things. 1) It turns out that the G+ API can work with +shortName to retrieve profile info. So it's comparatively easy to extract +shortName from a profile URL and then use people.get to get all the other accessible info. 2) I'm repeating myself, but I think Google's long term plans to provide public access to people's Google Account info is key. If it's likely to stay around, which is preferable, then we can try and pressure Google to provide redirects so that the two URLs (userID and shortName) don't 404. If it's not likely to stay, then we need to build our own stores of vCard data and migrate it to other platforms, even if that's another Google property like GMail contacts. — I've reached out to Ben Smith, VP of Engineering at Google through press@google.com Ben was the author of the Google+ sunset blog post. The Press website and autoresponse promise to ignore me if they won't accept my Krell-issued Altair IV press credentials, so I'm posting this here. If any of my Google followers/contacts care to let Ben know that I'm trying to reach him or, more likely, someone within his team to do an AMA at the Google+ Mass Migration Community, that would be peachy. (Ben ... does not appear to have a visible Google+ profile.) We're hoping to schedule a 1-2 hour AMA by 3 November 2018, and if possible follow-ups at 4-8 week intervals afterward, if possible. Topics for consideration: Some though not all of the questions are referenced in the "PlexodusWiki" FAQ: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/FAQ * Instructions for making Google Data Takeout exports, particularly regarding content, options (JSON vs. HTML), and selections. * Storage and securing of those exports. We're recommending Google Drive presently, or offline Flash/Disk storage. * Tools for importing Google+ data to new services or platforms, including working with third parties for effective and privacy-aware import mechanisms. * Respecting of privacy scope of original data creation. * Online/integrated tools for management. It seems a Google Drive integration, data explorer, and search capability, would be useful. We're not sure that that's feasible. * Post-sunset availability of the present Google+ site, and/or Google+ data. * Impacts and interactions on other Google products and services. Given the ... in retrospect, extraordinarily unfortunate forced integration presented in multiple cases ... there is considerable uncertainty and concern. * Options for ongoing use of Google+ by corporate or noncommercial entities. There's been some interest in this though it's difficult to gauge. * Rough numbers on actively-engaged Google+ users, for which a sense of those posting and commenting actively on the site, excluding bots and spam actors, would be a useful proxy. This is useful for those looking at planning and capacity questions, particularly in self-hosted or community-hosted capacities, as well as commercial services such as MeWe, Minds, Cake, Reddit.needing that.) The forum is G+, the G+MM Community. A Wiki page with format specifications and requirements (the session will require the subject to have a Google+ account) is given below. https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Ask_Me_Anything I am reachable by email: dredmorbius <at> protonmail <dot> com
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearHow times change. Only a little while ago, Robert Scoble would have been high up the list. There's something slightly backwards about this. A notable person ought to be easy to find. And their profile pages ought to have a link to somewhere with the list of all of their online accounts. So finding them on another platform should be easy. And all of this should be indexed by the search engines so it should be easy to search for "Robert Scoble Mastodon", go straight to that profile page and click follow. For us not so notable people we can start this by putting our own list of account profiles somewhere searchable (with rel='me' in the links) and then making sure every account profile has a link back to this list. There's then two related tasks. 1) Try and persuade the notables to do the same 2) Try and persuade the platforms to make "Follow" an easy, easy task when looking at their profile. 2) Should be obvious to platform developers. It's sad how often it isn't or requires numerous clicks and keystrokes. ps. "Notable" not "Deplorable" ;) — The Google+ Notable Names Database If there's someone (not yourself) you think deserves a discoverable future home from Google+ and they are notable, then consider adding them to this page. Please note: PUBLISH WELL-KNOWN SOCIAL MEDIA OR BLOG ADDRESSES ONLY, NOT EMAIL OR OTHER PERSONAL CONTACT INFORMATION, OR CLOSELY-HELD ONLINE IDENTITIES OR PSEUDONYMS. So: if their forwarding information is easily found (and most especially, in a pinned post or their Profile "About" section), fair game. If you had to track this down and there's no clear connection, do not post it. Also do not post direct personal contact information such as email addresses or phone numbers. https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/G%2B_Notable_Names_Database
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Commented on post by Cristian Motoiu in Google+ Helpwe will provide consumers with additional information, including ways they can download and migrate their data. We already have ways to download in Google Takeout. https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout G+ +1s, Circles, Communities, Stream. Although there are some limitations. The data is generally available in VCard and a choice of JSON or HTML. What we don't have yet is advice or tools from Google for migration. The G+ Mass Migration community is exploring these issues. https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772 — What will happen to g+ posts after August 2019? Posts will disappear from the internet?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Help+Shenan Stanley Have you got anything constructive to say? Because the distraction is being dragged away from my original post. — Google Takeout - Google+ Communities I'm active in a lot of communities on G+ but I don't own or moderate any. I went to Takeout Google+ Communities and it gave me nothing. When I tried to select single communities it didn't offer any. So either this is completely broken or it's only for community owners. Has anyone who owns a community tried to do this? What did you get? The aim here is to archive as much as possible of the content of a community you own/moderate. With a view to moving the content to another platform. Somebody else who has tried to do this says: I’m owner of a community and I only get the community description and image, vCard for all members and a list of all the posts but only as links to G+ posts. One could scrape these for post & comments. It’s not everything but at least it’s a structured starting point. But then what? Because there's no way of getting from a post URL (within the community) to the activityId that the API requires to interrogate a specific post.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitMy fav. Sum Yung Gai with a placard that says "PLACARD". https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — We have the best signs. Believe me, we have the greatest signs.
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Commented on post by Rob Meijer in Google+ Mass Migration+Filip H.F. Slagter Ah, interesting. That wasn't immediately obvious from the docs. — Is there a way to map the G+ URL found in Google Takeout files for group owners to the actual Google identity? It would be interesting to set up an ,(O-AUTH) aggregation service for takeout files that different alternative sites could use to allow group members to rejoin groups they were members of on G+. Is there any technical means to do this mapping?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Help+Shenan Stanley Um, what? — Google Takeout - Google+ Communities I'm active in a lot of communities on G+ but I don't own or moderate any. I went to Takeout Google+ Communities and it gave me nothing. When I tried to select single communities it didn't offer any. So either this is completely broken or it's only for community owners. Has anyone who owns a community tried to do this? What did you get? The aim here is to archive as much as possible of the content of a community you own/moderate. With a view to moving the content to another platform. Somebody else who has tried to do this says: I’m owner of a community and I only get the community description and image, vCard for all members and a list of all the posts but only as links to G+ posts. One could scrape these for post & comments. It’s not everything but at least it’s a structured starting point. But then what? Because there's no way of getting from a post URL (within the community) to the activityId that the API requires to interrogate a specific post.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Help+Shenan Stanley Orkut? Important to me because I posted a lot of content there and ran 3 communities. Then Google took it over ... If not Orkut, how about Buzz. Like G+ , takeout was possible for a while. But the site disappeared. All that content is gone now. — Google Takeout - Google+ Communities I'm active in a lot of communities on G+ but I don't own or moderate any. I went to Takeout Google+ Communities and it gave me nothing. When I tried to select single communities it didn't offer any. So either this is completely broken or it's only for community owners. Has anyone who owns a community tried to do this? What did you get? The aim here is to archive as much as possible of the content of a community you own/moderate. With a view to moving the content to another platform. Somebody else who has tried to do this says: I’m owner of a community and I only get the community description and image, vCard for all members and a list of all the posts but only as links to G+ posts. One could scrape these for post & comments. It’s not everything but at least it’s a structured starting point. But then what? Because there's no way of getting from a post URL (within the community) to the activityId that the API requires to interrogate a specific post.
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Commented on post by Cristian Motoiu in Google+ Help+Davi Silva Santos https://web.archive.org/web/20151007014127/http://orkut.google.com/en.html Which seems to be an Internet Archive capture of the site. Damn hard to find anything in it. — What will happen to g+ posts after August 2019? Posts will disappear from the internet?
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Commented on post by Jürgen Christoffel in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearCan someone who runs/owns/moderates a community do a takeout in JSON and HMTL of a small community and see what comes out? I'm assuming that the list of posts is just a list of URLs which means it can't be used by the G+ API. Is that correct? — Techncial question: I can "takeout" my stuff. But what happens with communities, e.g. this one? Are moderators able to do a "takeout" of their communities postings? If so, this might be a way to share community content: provide a takeout to Google Drive and make this takeout available to members.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Help+Shenan Stanley There's a social ethics issue here. It would be at least polite to let the membership know what was happening. And in the real world that's what happens. I've seen a group that upped sticks and moved to reddit en masse with nobody objecting. Then there's a computing side to this if the posts are public, anyone can view the post and scrape the content. It's just stupidly hard. It seems as though Google is going part of the way there. Owners/Moderators can get a set of VCards containing the publicly viewable data from the member profiles. It also provides a list of posts in the form of the URL for that post. Then there's the comparison with what happens with takeout for your own posts. They turn up complete with lists of +1s and the full content of all the comments on the post. Google doesn't require you to get permission from the people who +1ed or commented on that post. — Google Takeout - Google+ Communities I'm active in a lot of communities on G+ but I don't own or moderate any. I went to Takeout Google+ Communities and it gave me nothing. When I tried to select single communities it didn't offer any. So either this is completely broken or it's only for community owners. Has anyone who owns a community tried to do this? What did you get? The aim here is to archive as much as possible of the content of a community you own/moderate. With a view to moving the content to another platform. Somebody else who has tried to do this says: I’m owner of a community and I only get the community description and image, vCard for all members and a list of all the posts but only as links to G+ posts. One could scrape these for post & comments. It’s not everything but at least it’s a structured starting point. But then what? Because there's no way of getting from a post URL (within the community) to the activityId that the API requires to interrogate a specific post.
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Commented on post by Kenneth Andrews in Google+ HelpAll these questions, and more, are being discussed here. https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/112164273001338979772 — WHAT HAPPENS TO COMMUNITIES? HOW WILL i CONTECT/STAY IN TOUCH WITH COMMUNITIES THAT ARE SO INFORMATIVE WITH INFO ON MUTUAL INTERESTS?ANY ANSWERS,ARE GROUPS MOVING SOMEWHERE OR IS ALL THAT HAS BEEN CREATED JUST FADING AWAY?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ HelpYes, but, as an owner/moderator it's a perfectly reasonable request to be able to archive the contents of the community you started and run. Especially if it's a publicly open community. It may well be that Google considers this an ownership issue but IMHO, they're wrong. As for importing into other platforms, there is a standard and that's Atom. There are numerous platforms (such as Wordpress) that provide tools to take an Atom feed and turn it into posts on that platform. And I've thought seriously about writing a Takeout -> Atom converter even just for my own use. It's not a huge amount of work. Some social media content is indeed ephemeral (eg most of Twitter). Some is much, much longer lived. I've got blog posts on my own site that date back to 2001 and I hope to keep them on the web and avoid them going 404 for some years to come yet with their permanent URLs intact. I feel sure there are posts on Blogger that are as old. There certainly is content on G+ that should be archived and kept accessible, just as there was on Buzz before it. It may feel like there's plenty of time, but the remaining 10 months will go all too soon. So I really hope that Google puts some genuine effort into improving Takeout and even into methods of import into other platforms before it's too late. An example might be an official Google mechanism for moving a whole community to a Blogger blog. But always in the back of my mind is Orkut, that simply disappeared. — Google Takeout - Google+ Communities I'm active in a lot of communities on G+ but I don't own or moderate any. I went to Takeout Google+ Communities and it gave me nothing. When I tried to select single communities it didn't offer any. So either this is completely broken or it's only for community owners. Has anyone who owns a community tried to do this? What did you get? The aim here is to archive as much as possible of the content of a community you own/moderate. With a view to moving the content to another platform. Somebody else who has tried to do this says: I’m owner of a community and I only get the community description and image, vCard for all members and a list of all the posts but only as links to G+ posts. One could scrape these for post & comments. It’s not everything but at least it’s a structured starting point. But then what? Because there's no way of getting from a post URL (within the community) to the activityId that the API requires to interrogate a specific post.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is Near+Edward Morbius I hit a very similar problem with Post URL -> Post ID as well as People URL -> People ID. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52889020/google-rest-api-is-there-any-way-of-getting-from-a-posts-url-to-the-activityi https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52912674/google-rest-api-is-there-any-way-of-getting-from-a-profile-url-to-the-account But if the Profiles disappear it makes a user visible HTML with links useless regardless of whether you can get at the data via the API now and while the API still exists. The JSON is full of blocks like this. Both for the Post Author block and the commenter author blocks. "author": { "displayName": "Julian Bond", "profilePageUrl": "https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23", "avatarImageUrl": "https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-y6QAo3xqmcg/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAADT8/W0CEfzDL8dE/s64-c/photo.jpg", "resourceName": "users/106416716945076707395" }, This gets reduced to <a href="https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23" target="_blank" class="author">Julian Bond</a> in the html version. — I've reached out to Ben Smith, VP of Engineering at Google through press@google.com Ben was the author of the Google+ sunset blog post. The Press website and autoresponse promise to ignore me if they won't accept my Krell-issued Altair IV press credentials, so I'm posting this here. If any of my Google followers/contacts care to let Ben know that I'm trying to reach him or, more likely, someone within his team to do an AMA at the Google+ Mass Migration Community, that would be peachy. (Ben ... does not appear to have a visible Google+ profile.) We're hoping to schedule a 1-2 hour AMA by 3 November 2018, and if possible follow-ups at 4-8 week intervals afterward, if possible. Topics for consideration: Some though not all of the questions are referenced in the "PlexodusWiki" FAQ: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/FAQ * Instructions for making Google Data Takeout exports, particularly regarding content, options (JSON vs. HTML), and selections. * Storage and securing of those exports. We're recommending Google Drive presently, or offline Flash/Disk storage. * Tools for importing Google+ data to new services or platforms, including working with third parties for effective and privacy-aware import mechanisms. * Respecting of privacy scope of original data creation. * Online/integrated tools for management. It seems a Google Drive integration, data explorer, and search capability, would be useful. We're not sure that that's feasible. * Post-sunset availability of the present Google+ site, and/or Google+ data. * Impacts and interactions on other Google products and services. Given the ... in retrospect, extraordinarily unfortunate forced integration presented in multiple cases ... there is considerable uncertainty and concern. * Options for ongoing use of Google+ by corporate or noncommercial entities. There's been some interest in this though it's difficult to gauge. * Rough numbers on actively-engaged Google+ users, for which a sense of those posting and commenting actively on the site, excluding bots and spam actors, would be a useful proxy. This is useful for those looking at planning and capacity questions, particularly in self-hosted or community-hosted capacities, as well as commercial services such as MeWe, Minds, Cake, Reddit.needing that.) The forum is G+, the G+MM Community. A Wiki page with format specifications and requirements (the session will require the subject to have a Google+ account) is given below. https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Ask_Me_Anything I am reachable by email: dredmorbius <at> protonmail <dot> com
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in PLExodus: The Beginning is NearA key question that is emerging is what happens to the public account profile page. Both what still remains and also if it will redirect somewhere else. Presumably the profile data one enters in aboutme will remain, but it's useless if it's not visible to others. Part of the issue here is that the Takeout data references and points to lots of profile URLs so even if the Takeout is archived it could end up with numerous links that will 404. — I've reached out to Ben Smith, VP of Engineering at Google through press@google.com Ben was the author of the Google+ sunset blog post. The Press website and autoresponse promise to ignore me if they won't accept my Krell-issued Altair IV press credentials, so I'm posting this here. If any of my Google followers/contacts care to let Ben know that I'm trying to reach him or, more likely, someone within his team to do an AMA at the Google+ Mass Migration Community, that would be peachy. (Ben ... does not appear to have a visible Google+ profile.) We're hoping to schedule a 1-2 hour AMA by 3 November 2018, and if possible follow-ups at 4-8 week intervals afterward, if possible. Topics for consideration: Some though not all of the questions are referenced in the "PlexodusWiki" FAQ: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/FAQ * Instructions for making Google Data Takeout exports, particularly regarding content, options (JSON vs. HTML), and selections. * Storage and securing of those exports. We're recommending Google Drive presently, or offline Flash/Disk storage. * Tools for importing Google+ data to new services or platforms, including working with third parties for effective and privacy-aware import mechanisms. * Respecting of privacy scope of original data creation. * Online/integrated tools for management. It seems a Google Drive integration, data explorer, and search capability, would be useful. We're not sure that that's feasible. * Post-sunset availability of the present Google+ site, and/or Google+ data. * Impacts and interactions on other Google products and services. Given the ... in retrospect, extraordinarily unfortunate forced integration presented in multiple cases ... there is considerable uncertainty and concern. * Options for ongoing use of Google+ by corporate or noncommercial entities. There's been some interest in this though it's difficult to gauge. * Rough numbers on actively-engaged Google+ users, for which a sense of those posting and commenting actively on the site, excluding bots and spam actors, would be a useful proxy. This is useful for those looking at planning and capacity questions, particularly in self-hosted or community-hosted capacities, as well as commercial services such as MeWe, Minds, Cake, Reddit.needing that.) The forum is G+, the G+MM Community. A Wiki page with format specifications and requirements (the session will require the subject to have a Google+ account) is given below. https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Ask_Me_Anything I am reachable by email: dredmorbius <at> protonmail <dot> com
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Commented on post by Rob Meijer in Google+ Mass MigrationThis starts with the question of whether Google Profiles or Account Pages or whatever still exists after G+ Sunset. And where profilePageUrl will redirect to or if it will just 404. The JSON files from takeout have entries like this. "creationTime": "2011-08-21 17:28:29+0000", "author": { "displayName": "Stef Kunzer", "profilePageUrl": "https://plus.google.com/+SteveKunzer", "avatarImageUrl": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Na1TcEWJkfg/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAABsNA/72uWmmVbCWg/s64-c/photo.jpg", "resourceName": "users/107704291973085041225" So there is a map in there for URL <-> Profile identifier. However, you can't use the G+ API to do people.get using the URL name. eg SteveKunzer. Only the identifier 107704291973085041225. The HTML version of takeout builds links to commenters/posters profile pages but uses the profilePageUrl. — Is there a way to map the G+ URL found in Google Takeout files for group owners to the actual Google identity? It would be interesting to set up an ,(O-AUTH) aggregation service for takeout files that different alternative sites could use to allow group members to rejoin groups they were members of on G+. Is there any technical means to do this mapping?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt was massive. We got to Trafalgar sq with a big march behind us to meet people coming back up Whitehall saying that Parliament Sq was rammed and they couldn't get beyond Downing St. We couldn't get more than 50m down Whitehall before we gave up and headed out. Quite a crowd control problem. It was bigger than anything else I've been on and comparable to the big Stop The War march. Heard a few impromptu "Where's Jeremy Corbyn". — Live coverage of the People's Vote march from the Guardian. Not a gammon in sight. The organisers estimate 570,000 people on the march, the Guardian uses presently a more conservative older estimate of 100,000.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+D Doc That's why I keep referring to it as UK-Exit. Reminds people that it's the United Kingdom that's leaving not Great Britain. — U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is said to be ready to ditch one of her key Brexit demands in order to resolve the vexed issue of the Irish border and clear the path to a deal, according to people familiar with the matter. Big if true. She seems to want to ditch the time limit on the backstop. Which could keep the UK inside the customs union and the common market indefinitely. So how is she going to explain that to the DUP?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWould BRINO be acceptable to the EU and N.Ireland? Obviously not acceptable to lots of other people. As for single market, the problem is partial versus full. Goods only is cherry picking so no good for the EU. Full single market means we haven't left and has lots of other implications so no good for the ERG. No UK-Exit is better than a bad UK-Exit. And there are no good UK-Exits. Quite angry about the Labour sloganeering of "If the Tories can't negotiate Brexit, they should give it to somebody who can" when it's pretty obvious that Labour would find it just as impossible. — U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is said to be ready to ditch one of her key Brexit demands in order to resolve the vexed issue of the Irish border and clear the path to a deal, according to people familiar with the matter. Big if true. She seems to want to ditch the time limit on the backstop. Which could keep the UK inside the customs union and the common market indefinitely. So how is she going to explain that to the DUP?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Mixology 🍸And round we go again. This time with - 40ml Havana Club 7 - 20ml Punt E Mes - 2.5ml Grenadine - 6 drops Angostura Lush! This one brought to you via G+ closing down, Google Takeout and a fast scan of all the bollocks I've written in 7 years on this platform. — I need a name for this. - 40ml Dark Rum - 20ml Red Vermouth - 2.5ml Grenadine - 6 drops Angostura It's good, btw! Loosely based on something called a "Master at Arms" which is dark rum, port evaporation and home made Grenadine at Zetters Townhouse bar in London.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google+Um. Stackoverflow tells me that the answer is "you can't". There's no route from post url to post activityId. So I have two options. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52889020/google-rest-api-is-there-any-way-of-getting-from-a-posts-url-to-the-activityi 1) Try and get Takeout to add ActivityID to streams.post.json. Unlikely. Apart from providing feedback, who would you ask? 2) Try and replicate Takeout to access the same posts via activities.search, activities.list and activities.get. Except that AFAIK, those can't access non-public posts or posts in communities which Takeout does. — activities.get requires an activityId. Is there any way of getting from a Post's URL to the activityId? Because as far as I can see Google's Takeout JSON doesn't include activityId which means there's no easy way for me to use the API to gather other info about the post.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google++Yash Trivedi https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/google-plus is a lot closer than just the front page. +Allen Firstenberg G+ is continuing for GSuite customers. So presumably the API will continue as well? Take your point about there being no Google people here. But there is still a community of developers here. For a while anyway. I'm seriously thinking about writing some code to help me migrate my copy of Google Takeout into a blog platform. Maybe that will help others as well, even if it is likely to be in PHP! The problem is that takeout isn't quite good enough on it's own. But neither is the API. I've written code to turn a person's public posts into an Atom feed and have been using it myself for quite a while now. So there's potential there to turn the Takeout output into an Atom feed or possible to use activities.list, .get and .search into a set of Atom feeds. Given that a lot of other platforms can import Atom this might be a route into a migration utility. — activities.get requires an activityId. Is there any way of getting from a Post's URL to the activityId? Because as far as I can see Google's Takeout JSON doesn't include activityId which means there's no easy way for me to use the API to gather other info about the post.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google++Yash Trivedi I know. And I wish you'd given a URL? :( But then this community is still an entry on this page. https://developers.google.com/+/web/support — activities.get requires an activityId. Is there any way of getting from a Post's URL to the activityId? Because as far as I can see Google's Takeout JSON doesn't include activityId which means there's no easy way for me to use the API to gather other info about the post.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationYes, I've posted feedback. Yes, you got the description right. I guess we need a list of questions for Google. Of course I'm not sure how we get answers! - What happens to G+ Profiles? And the URL they exist on. - Will there be a public visible version of a Google Account "About Me" information? - Will G+ content stay up on the web read only? As a permanent fixture or for a period of transition time? — Getting your Google Data Takeout is only the start of the problem. Working with the data is most of it. This post is adapted from a comment I'd just made to a Plusser and G+MM Community member, and should be useful to many of you. Downloading and safekeeping your Google Takeout archive is only a first step, and there's far more work involved in safely turning into something useful. I've contacted Google, and will continue to contact them, requesting BOTH that they develop, AND communicate clearly timetables and capabilities, tools for processing, managing, filtering, and uploading extracts. First: You need to store the archive somewhere safe. Google Drive is one of the options Google offers and it's probably a very good one to use. Google already knows everything, so you're not publishing the data to other third parties. If Google develop tools for accessing, filtering, and importing data to other services, _there's some chance they'll do so using Web-based methods, and will support Google Drive based archives directly. (I don't know this, but I suspect this, and it would be a goddamned wise thing to do. My record on nudging Google on all these points is mixed, though miracles sometimes occur.) The alternative is that we here, or target platforms independently, develop parsing and uptake systems for your G+ archive. That runs numerous risks, with the one I'm most concerned about is the publishing of what had originally been private data. If that happens at scale (and Google's operations are nothing but scale), it can cause a lot of pain, grief, headache, and very much worse for a lot of people. As it happens ... in another and earlier life, I may or may not have been involved in data analysis and warehousing and what's known as ETL: extract, transform, and load. The G+ data migration process is basically an ETL task. It's an incredibly tedious job to do manually. I've seen situations where it takes weeks or months to match up source and destination data systems, and it's all kinds of awful. Much of the data never really gets through, and it's considered skilled and specialised work. Imposing that on many thousands to millions, or billions, of lay-public Google customers is kind of ridiculous. This problem is big enough and affecting enough people that I recommend getting the support of legislators and consumer advocates inside and outside of government. In the U.S., this means your state and national legislators (congressional and senate representatives), as well as your state Attorney General's office, in most cases. Support elsewhere -- the EU, Canada, Australia, UK, Japan, India, etc., will differ. Google+ has significant usage in most of these regions. So again: Request a Data Take Out. And request JSON rather than HTML formats, for further processing. Store that in a safe and secure location. Google Drive, or offline DVD/BluRay, Flash drive, or backup-drive storage is going to be the safest option. Press Google both to produce tools for curating and importing this data elsewhere AND to keep people informed as to what capabilities will be available and when. (Answering that question should be somebody's headache within Google presently...) Actually, tell you what: I'm just going to copy and past this comment directly into Google's Feedback dialog, and post it to the Community, noting we're about 2,300 strong already and growing.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationI'm tempted to just throw the takeout HTML archive up on a public server. And then trim the index.html by hand so it's just a list of links to the posts. So basically don't attempt to do anything programmatically with the data. Just make sure it doesn't disappear off the web forever. — Getting your Google Data Takeout is only the start of the problem. Working with the data is most of it. This post is adapted from a comment I'd just made to a Plusser and G+MM Community member, and should be useful to many of you. Downloading and safekeeping your Google Takeout archive is only a first step, and there's far more work involved in safely turning into something useful. I've contacted Google, and will continue to contact them, requesting BOTH that they develop, AND communicate clearly timetables and capabilities, tools for processing, managing, filtering, and uploading extracts. First: You need to store the archive somewhere safe. Google Drive is one of the options Google offers and it's probably a very good one to use. Google already knows everything, so you're not publishing the data to other third parties. If Google develop tools for accessing, filtering, and importing data to other services, _there's some chance they'll do so using Web-based methods, and will support Google Drive based archives directly. (I don't know this, but I suspect this, and it would be a goddamned wise thing to do. My record on nudging Google on all these points is mixed, though miracles sometimes occur.) The alternative is that we here, or target platforms independently, develop parsing and uptake systems for your G+ archive. That runs numerous risks, with the one I'm most concerned about is the publishing of what had originally been private data. If that happens at scale (and Google's operations are nothing but scale), it can cause a lot of pain, grief, headache, and very much worse for a lot of people. As it happens ... in another and earlier life, I may or may not have been involved in data analysis and warehousing and what's known as ETL: extract, transform, and load. The G+ data migration process is basically an ETL task. It's an incredibly tedious job to do manually. I've seen situations where it takes weeks or months to match up source and destination data systems, and it's all kinds of awful. Much of the data never really gets through, and it's considered skilled and specialised work. Imposing that on many thousands to millions, or billions, of lay-public Google customers is kind of ridiculous. This problem is big enough and affecting enough people that I recommend getting the support of legislators and consumer advocates inside and outside of government. In the U.S., this means your state and national legislators (congressional and senate representatives), as well as your state Attorney General's office, in most cases. Support elsewhere -- the EU, Canada, Australia, UK, Japan, India, etc., will differ. Google+ has significant usage in most of these regions. So again: Request a Data Take Out. And request JSON rather than HTML formats, for further processing. Store that in a safe and secure location. Google Drive, or offline DVD/BluRay, Flash drive, or backup-drive storage is going to be the safest option. Press Google both to produce tools for curating and importing this data elsewhere AND to keep people informed as to what capabilities will be available and when. (Answering that question should be somebody's headache within Google presently...) Actually, tell you what: I'm just going to copy and past this comment directly into Google's Feedback dialog, and post it to the Community, noting we're about 2,300 strong already and growing.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationGah! The only unique post identifier in the takeout data (both JSON and HTML) is the URL. And there's no way to go from the URL to the G+ internal identifier activities.activityId And you need the activityId to use the API to get any information with activities.get. This is made worse because the Takeout system can get at data such as non-public posts and community posts which aren't accessible via the API. The Takeout data has extensive links to G+ Profiles and G+ Post URLs which of course will disappear after the sunset. So the data will be heavily affected by bitrot the moment G+ disappears. So what we get in the takeout is - a G+ unique layout, not standards based (such as Atom) - contains links to temporary URLs that will 404 in 10 months - is missing unique IDs that might allow expanding the data via the API in the mean time current mood: disheartened — Getting your Google Data Takeout is only the start of the problem. Working with the data is most of it. This post is adapted from a comment I'd just made to a Plusser and G+MM Community member, and should be useful to many of you. Downloading and safekeeping your Google Takeout archive is only a first step, and there's far more work involved in safely turning into something useful. I've contacted Google, and will continue to contact them, requesting BOTH that they develop, AND communicate clearly timetables and capabilities, tools for processing, managing, filtering, and uploading extracts. First: You need to store the archive somewhere safe. Google Drive is one of the options Google offers and it's probably a very good one to use. Google already knows everything, so you're not publishing the data to other third parties. If Google develop tools for accessing, filtering, and importing data to other services, _there's some chance they'll do so using Web-based methods, and will support Google Drive based archives directly. (I don't know this, but I suspect this, and it would be a goddamned wise thing to do. My record on nudging Google on all these points is mixed, though miracles sometimes occur.) The alternative is that we here, or target platforms independently, develop parsing and uptake systems for your G+ archive. That runs numerous risks, with the one I'm most concerned about is the publishing of what had originally been private data. If that happens at scale (and Google's operations are nothing but scale), it can cause a lot of pain, grief, headache, and very much worse for a lot of people. As it happens ... in another and earlier life, I may or may not have been involved in data analysis and warehousing and what's known as ETL: extract, transform, and load. The G+ data migration process is basically an ETL task. It's an incredibly tedious job to do manually. I've seen situations where it takes weeks or months to match up source and destination data systems, and it's all kinds of awful. Much of the data never really gets through, and it's considered skilled and specialised work. Imposing that on many thousands to millions, or billions, of lay-public Google customers is kind of ridiculous. This problem is big enough and affecting enough people that I recommend getting the support of legislators and consumer advocates inside and outside of government. In the U.S., this means your state and national legislators (congressional and senate representatives), as well as your state Attorney General's office, in most cases. Support elsewhere -- the EU, Canada, Australia, UK, Japan, India, etc., will differ. Google+ has significant usage in most of these regions. So again: Request a Data Take Out. And request JSON rather than HTML formats, for further processing. Store that in a safe and secure location. Google Drive, or offline DVD/BluRay, Flash drive, or backup-drive storage is going to be the safest option. Press Google both to produce tools for curating and importing this data elsewhere AND to keep people informed as to what capabilities will be available and when. (Answering that question should be somebody's headache within Google presently...) Actually, tell you what: I'm just going to copy and past this comment directly into Google's Feedback dialog, and post it to the Community, noting we're about 2,300 strong already and growing.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationI've been digging around in the HTML and JSON exports. They seem to contain content that I don't think you can get at via the G+ API. So it's a more complete set. But just like the API it's a snowflake view of the data. It's quite a long way from any standards based view of the content that other systems might be able to import. So I'm thinking that a service/code that converts the takeout stream.posts output to an atom file would be useful. Because there are a number of blogging service that can create posts from an Atom feed. A big problem here is the sheer quantity of data. — Getting your Google Data Takeout is only the start of the problem. Working with the data is most of it. This post is adapted from a comment I'd just made to a Plusser and G+MM Community member, and should be useful to many of you. Downloading and safekeeping your Google Takeout archive is only a first step, and there's far more work involved in safely turning into something useful. I've contacted Google, and will continue to contact them, requesting BOTH that they develop, AND communicate clearly timetables and capabilities, tools for processing, managing, filtering, and uploading extracts. First: You need to store the archive somewhere safe. Google Drive is one of the options Google offers and it's probably a very good one to use. Google already knows everything, so you're not publishing the data to other third parties. If Google develop tools for accessing, filtering, and importing data to other services, _there's some chance they'll do so using Web-based methods, and will support Google Drive based archives directly. (I don't know this, but I suspect this, and it would be a goddamned wise thing to do. My record on nudging Google on all these points is mixed, though miracles sometimes occur.) The alternative is that we here, or target platforms independently, develop parsing and uptake systems for your G+ archive. That runs numerous risks, with the one I'm most concerned about is the publishing of what had originally been private data. If that happens at scale (and Google's operations are nothing but scale), it can cause a lot of pain, grief, headache, and very much worse for a lot of people. As it happens ... in another and earlier life, I may or may not have been involved in data analysis and warehousing and what's known as ETL: extract, transform, and load. The G+ data migration process is basically an ETL task. It's an incredibly tedious job to do manually. I've seen situations where it takes weeks or months to match up source and destination data systems, and it's all kinds of awful. Much of the data never really gets through, and it's considered skilled and specialised work. Imposing that on many thousands to millions, or billions, of lay-public Google customers is kind of ridiculous. This problem is big enough and affecting enough people that I recommend getting the support of legislators and consumer advocates inside and outside of government. In the U.S., this means your state and national legislators (congressional and senate representatives), as well as your state Attorney General's office, in most cases. Support elsewhere -- the EU, Canada, Australia, UK, Japan, India, etc., will differ. Google+ has significant usage in most of these regions. So again: Request a Data Take Out. And request JSON rather than HTML formats, for further processing. Store that in a safe and secure location. Google Drive, or offline DVD/BluRay, Flash drive, or backup-drive storage is going to be the safest option. Press Google both to produce tools for curating and importing this data elsewhere AND to keep people informed as to what capabilities will be available and when. (Answering that question should be somebody's headache within Google presently...) Actually, tell you what: I'm just going to copy and past this comment directly into Google's Feedback dialog, and post it to the Community, noting we're about 2,300 strong already and growing.
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Commented on post by Robyn Richards in Google+ Mass MigrationThis is another take on what I was trying to get at with https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/3wo7UBq8Si6 — I saw this article and it made me think of you guys.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Shelenn Ayres https://takeout.google.com/settings/takeout Google+ Communities Click on Select communities radio button Click on Google+ Communities button I get "Select communities", a toggle all checkbox and no communities below it. I can only assume I'm not offered any communities because I don't own any because I certainly belong to some. (like this one!) — Google Takeout - Google+ Communities I'm active in a lot of communities on G+ but I don't own or moderate any. I went to Takeout Google+ Communities and it gave me nothing. When I tried to select single communities it didn't offer any. So either this is completely broken or it's only for community owners. Has anyone who owns a community tried to do this? What did you get?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationI was only expecting my posts in communities and possibly my comments but I'm not getting anything. I think this MIGHT turn up in G+Streams.ActivityLog and I'm currently collecting this to see. I also think it's likely to be buried in all the other stuff in Activity. If I owned a community, I'd expect to get the whole community content, not just my contributions. That might allow you to move the community as a whole to another platform and preserve the archive. Which is a reasonable use case. But I don't own a community so can't check that. — Google Takeout - Google+ Communities I'm active in a lot of communities on G+ but I don't own or moderate any. I went to Takeout Google+ Communities and it gave me nothing. When I tried to select single communities it didn't offer any. So either this is completely broken or it's only for community owners. Has anyone who owns a community tried to do this? What did you get?
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Commented on post by Dave Hill in Geekery and NerditudePretty sure all that will happen is I'll stop using G+. I'll continue to use Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, Reddit and a personal blog. — Yet more pondering out loud over where to move to from Google+ I'm not finding either MeWe or Pluspora satisfying -- not to the point of wanting to quit either one, quite, but ... MeWe feels like I'm wading though glue every time I'm on the site, between the interface speed, the number of clicks to read and find stuff, and the constrained layout. I'm also annoyed at the cap on image uploads (ch-ching), which will add to the effort cost of using the service. Some of the visibility issues I've been concerned about might be going away with promised upcoming releases, but it has yet to feel like a place I am comfortable working in. Pluspora is snappy in performance, and I like the general way it groups and sorts info. But the interface is relatively crude, stuff doesn't always seem to work as expected, and I remain dubious about the whole distributed / federated Diaspora-etc-verse as a long-term platform that will survive and be stable, let alone see significant UI improvement over time. That last element about viability to me is important for both of these platforms. MeWe and the D* Federation are both small beans, even if they see a bump from the G+ shutdown. Their operation and sustainability models are both quite different, from what I can glean, but neither feels stable or perhaps even viable in the long haul. (Of course, on the Internet, nothing is necessarily stable or viable for the long haul. E.g., Google+.) Maybe I need to get back to looking at my use cases for a Social Media platform, just like a Project Manager would: 1. I want a place where I can share the stuff I find cool, thought-provoking, cathartic, cute, or whatever. 2. I want to see stuff that others find cool, thought-provoking, cathartic, cute, or whatever, with the ability to narrow down with whom I'm chatting. 3. I want a community that can and will discuss the above two items with me. Shouting into the darkness is not what I'm wanting. I'm looking for people I like, trust, respect, and/or enjoy being around. (I've had such a community at G+; where they are going matters.) I want to be able to kick people out of the conversation who are being deplorable. 4. I want the ability to use my WordPress blog as a canonical repository for as much of the stuff I write (and even comment on) as possible. That's my backup, and why G+'s closure hasn't hit me as hard as some. Promises that I can extract the data I put up there don't mean a lot to me; I want something ongoing and easy. 5. I want things to be as stable and long-lived as possible (with the understanding there are no guarantees, but taking what steps I can to make it that way). So beyond the above two choices (and with Pluspora include the other D* sites and Friendica and Hubzilla and that whole creaking federation), what else is there? A. Something New - People have recommended a number of other alternatives (e.g., Mind, Dreamwidth, etc.). But they seem to all have very thin slices of the pie, making both the Community and Stability aspects dodgy. B. Facebook - So everyone gasps at that, since the first words out of everyone's mouth outside of Facebook is "Never Facebook!" And, yes, it's a horribly run site, as far as exploiting user data. Is that the highest priority for me? I know folks who have actually taken serious discussions over to FB. It's certainly a (relatively) stable setup, it has the horsepower (even if the interface has some interesting gaps). A lot of the community I've had isn't there, but a lot of it is, in some measure. FB doesn't make it easy to get data out, but there are ways to work around that. C. Twitter - Everyone, after saying NO to Facebook, follows with Twitter being unusable for reasons of tweet length, difficulty of dialog, and trolls. The first is probably the biggest issue ... but, then, nothing says I can't do long-form stuff in WordPress and publish to Twitter, and use Twitter for the short shares and suck it back into WordPress. I would leave some community behind, but some of it actually is there. D. Tumblr - At least one correspondent (+John E. Bredehoft) is using this tool, and its visibility and interoperability are pretty darned good. I find dialog on Tumblr tough, though, and I worry a bit about its long-term viability under Oath. Also, it just ... man, Tumbler seems mainly for image shares, more than serious blogging (less so than Pinterist, to be sure, but in that same ballpark). E. Reddit - I've seen serious suggestions about this. While Reddit sometimes seems like a cess pool in some of its zanier corners, I have no sense as to whether it would serve my blogging purposes. Anyone with more info is welcome to chime in. F. Just Use My Blog - If I write it, will they come? I can post stubs, at least, out to other sites (FB, Twitter, even D* with some add-ons), but I know that ends up with fragmented discussions and overall lowered engagement. But, hell, maybe I should just go back to the old way of doing things, when bloggers were bloggers, and RSS roamed the Earth. No conclusions here, just continuing to work some of these issues out by nattering out loud.
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Commented on post by Phạm Chung Hiếu in Google+ Mass MigrationI've just discovered my takeout zip of 375 posts on Google Buzz between 10-02-2010 and 04/11/2011 Which is nice. Included in there is a post on Buzz saying "I seem to have made it into G+ and apparently I can invite people." — To the folks who have already downloaded and opened your takeout files, is there text posts, comments or other stuff like commenter account...
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Commented on post by Brian Holt Hawthorne in Google+ Mass MigrationI was wondering where this had got to. https://code.google.com/archive/p/google-plus-platform/issues/139 For a long time Google had an issue tracker for the G+ API. At some stage they basically moved to stack overflow and archived the old tracker. When this was done all the names were obfuscated to protect the innocent. This post was by me and apparently I became "Swift Kangeroo". Which I rather like. I think I might use that next time I need a quasi-anonymous alias! Any road up, the request is from Dec 16, 2011 and is for an Atom feed of a profile's stream of posts. We never got it. — Back before twitter introduced the concept of micro-blogging, we had actual blogs (web-logs). One of the most powerful parts of blogs was near-universal syndication using a few standards such as RSS. Then, along came walled gardens like Twitter and Google+, and suddenly you needed a separate app or web site for each. Google+ was compelling enough for me that I basically stopped reading blogs, except those linked to from Google+. Now that Google+ is going away, I am rethinking that decision. I’ve installed Feedly and I’m slowly adding all the blogs of people whom I used to just follow on Google+. Some of these are standalone Wordpress blogs. Some are journals on Dreamwidth. I’m sure I will find others. But however many people are moving to MeWe or pluspora or whatever, if it doesn’t support RSS syndication, I probably won’t be interacting with them much. I’ve downloaded apps for all those that have it, but I can’t see myself making the mistake of investing in any one self-enclosed site again. I am tired of walled gardens. I am tired of “social media” meaning a proprietary website. I am tired of seeing distributed problems solved and then those solutions destroyed by Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Before walled-gardens nearly killed blog syndication, we saw global standards like XMPP/Jabber that allowed universal chat through many services (AIM, iChat, Google Chat) with a single app destroyed by new proprietary systems and refusal to continue to use standards. So, MeWe is great, but without RSS support (which it will never have because of its privacy model), I won’t use it often. Pluspora (and diaspora) will consume RSS feeds, but unless I am missing something, it won’t generate RSS feeds. [ Update: +Edward Morbius points out you can follow a diaspora feed in Feedly https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/47cw3hzPmTv ] So, I am going back to reading blogs. I’ll probably resurrect one of my old blogs, or start a new one, and wash my hands of the whole walled-garden social media concept.
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Commented on post by Phạm Chung Hiếu in Google+ Mass MigrationHas * anyone * got data out with takeout and then done something useful with it? — To the folks who have already downloaded and opened your takeout files, is there text posts, comments or other stuff like commenter account...
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Commented on post by Michael Bruck in Google+ Mass MigrationOne advantage of G+ closing down is that you won't find your Google account and it's access to gmail et al suspended because of something you wrote on G+. Even if that post just happened to mention alcohol for instance without previously marking your account as for +18 only. Or for posting a picture of a model on the cat walk in Paris that was showing a bit of underboob. — Any alternative to G+ should take into account that censorship efforts have accelerated in the last two years under the pretext of weeding out 'Russian propaganda' or 'useful idiots' etc. A decentralized approach is much more urgent today than it was just a few years ago. From the article: "The clear implication is that censorship will not end with Google’s manipulation of its search platform or the removal of accounts by Facebook and Twitter. The ultimate aim is the total banning of oppositional news web sites. The publication of the PropOrNot blacklist and its promotion by the Washington Post helped trigger a wave of censorship measures against oppositional news sites by the major technology companies, working at the instigation of the US intelligence agencies and leading politicians."
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Commented on post by Peter Maranci in Google+ Mass Migration+Pat Kight If it's on a desktop, do you use Adblock (with Chrome)? — Please use the comment area of this post to talk about your experiences with Facebook (if you have any), and how it feels to use it in comparison with G+. I'm not looking for features or politics here. Thanks! #GooglePlusAlternativeReviews . #Facebook
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Danie van der Merwe When Google Buzz shut, the content just disappeared. We got a tool equivalent to Takeout but that was it. — Spare a thought for the developers. As well as the G+ UI, the API is going to sunset as well. All those buttons, badges, signin with G+, Share to G+, etc, etc are going to fail. They will have to be removed and/or replaced. If data doesn't come out of G+ via Google Takeout, then the only other option is to start writing code with the API. Except that the API has some major limitations that never really got addressed. Two big ones. - No API access to Communities - No API access to non-public data https://developers.google.com/+/web/
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Commented on post by Peter Maranci in Google+ Mass MigrationI use FB friends lists, page feeds, groups, events, chat every day. I almost never use the big stream. My main entry point is a bookmark of a carefully curated "close friends" list. I use adblock, some DNS control and Stylus to hide the bits I don't like. So I never see any ads. This is all through the desktop web interface. It works for me. — Please use the comment area of this post to talk about your experiences with Facebook (if you have any), and how it feels to use it in comparison with G+. I'm not looking for features or politics here. Thanks! #GooglePlusAlternativeReviews . #Facebook
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationI'd suggest just taking over that community by posting to it. Except that having no friendly moderators is a worry. Is there a Facebook "G+ Migration / Exodus / Refugee" community? ;) — Is there a Reddit "G+ Migration / Exodus / Refugee" community? There is https://reddit.com/r/googleplus for general discussion, but it's not specifically about external migration and the mods aren't responding to queries. I thought I'd seen another but cannot find a reference. It didn't strike me as terribly useful. Should we create one as a secondary / offsite / out-of-band channel?
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Commented on post by Macdaddy Josh in Google+ Mass MigrationLooks like Facebook won and got all the names. There will be other niche players and sites providing niche function but FB is the big gorilla in the room. Interestingly, the one thing FB don't really do is micro-blogging. So they're not in direct competition with Twitter/Mastodon. Yet. With a bit of work on hiding adverts and some curation I find FB extremely useful. When G+ dies I probably won't actually migrate anywhere. I'll just use FB a bit more. And somewhat ironically, I've been unable to find an active G+ group or page on facebook. — I use facebook all the time
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google++Remi F. Exactly. So what happens to all the G+ buttons, badges, embedded posts, API usage after they do? And in the short term, Takeout is incomplete for archiving and extraction all that G+ content. So it may require code and the API to get at some of it. Except that the API is incomplete as well. Any automated migration facility to another platform is going to have to use the API. And there's not much time. — The more I dig into this the more mind boggling I find the decision to sunset G+ - What happens to all those buttons, badges, embedded posts and signins for G+ on other websites? - How do you extract and archive content from within communities? - We now need APIs to extract and archive non-public data. And so on. Pretty much everything here is going to sunset as well. https://developers.google.com/+/web/
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Commented on post by Brian Holt Hawthorne in Google+ Mass MigrationThe one big thing we never worked out was sharing of lists of feeds, subscribing to other people's lists and even just viewing the composite feed for other people's lists. We've got a functioning standard in OPML but the only thing it's been used for really is migrating a subscription list from one feed reader to the next. OPML adoption and function needs work. - A convention for publishing a link to a person's OPML and getting people to actually do this. - Auto-discovery to match RSS auto-discovery - Viewing the "River of news" feed for a specific OPML file - Aggregating and Searching OPML lists - Easy permanent adding of an OPML to your feed list - Temporary subscription to an OPML list This is another layer on the stack. https://voidstar.com/opml.xml — Back before twitter introduced the concept of micro-blogging, we had actual blogs (web-logs). One of the most powerful parts of blogs was near-universal syndication using a few standards such as RSS. Then, along came walled gardens like Twitter and Google+, and suddenly you needed a separate app or web site for each. Google+ was compelling enough for me that I basically stopped reading blogs, except those linked to from Google+. Now that Google+ is going away, I am rethinking that decision. I’ve installed Feedly and I’m slowly adding all the blogs of people whom I used to just follow on Google+. Some of these are standalone Wordpress blogs. Some are journals on Dreamwidth. I’m sure I will find others. But however many people are moving to MeWe or pluspora or whatever, if it doesn’t support RSS syndication, I probably won’t be interacting with them much. I’ve downloaded apps for all those that have it, but I can’t see myself making the mistake of investing in any one self-enclosed site again. I am tired of walled gardens. I am tired of “social media” meaning a proprietary website. I am tired of seeing distributed problems solved and then those solutions destroyed by Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Before walled-gardens nearly killed blog syndication, we saw global standards like XMPP/Jabber that allowed universal chat through many services (AIM, iChat, Google Chat) with a single app destroyed by new proprietary systems and refusal to continue to use standards. So, MeWe is great, but without RSS support (which it will never have because of its privacy model), I won’t use it often. Pluspora (and diaspora) will consume RSS feeds, but unless I am missing something, it won’t generate RSS feeds. [ Update: +Edward Morbius points out you can follow a diaspora feed in Feedly https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/47cw3hzPmTv ] So, I am going back to reading blogs. I’ll probably resurrect one of my old blogs, or start a new one, and wash my hands of the whole walled-garden social media concept.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond+Per Siden The UN modelling in the 2017 revision only goes to 2100 and must be treated as pretty uncertain for >2050. But their medium fertility model still has +10m/yr in 2100. So no peak this century. Data collected is currently following the medium fertility model closely. And with 2050 only ~30 years away, the model should be fairly predictable out to there barring black swan events or some full on collapse. They kept pulling back the date for 10b but it's been stable for the last couple of revisions. So 10b in 2050-2060 seems very likely. — Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb By a spooky coincidence, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968 in the same year that population growth rate peaked at 2.09%/yr. The global population that year was 3.55b. If that growth rate had been maintained ever since then we would have passed through 10b this year. So we're really lucky that 1968 was also pretty much when we transitioned from exponential growth to linear growth and hitting 10b is still 38 years away. It's easy to see now in retrospect that the demographic transition happened and come up with all kinds of reasons why it happened. It's harder to come up with reasons as to why Ehrlich should have seen it then. He was writing in a time when we'd had a 100 years or so of exponential growth over 1.5%/yr and in the previous 20 years it had been accelerating. So I think he deserves a break for being overly pessimistic back then. 10b, right now, and having got there so fast, would not be pretty. I don't think its going to be pretty in 2056 either, but we have a little more time to adjust. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#growthrate
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationFollowing a single person in Atom is handy. But what about feeds for a single community or for a person's home stream. Reddit does some of that. There was a brief spell of 5 years or so when every new system added feeds for everything. Now we're in the time of snowflake APIs (all different) or no feeds at all because "Who uses them?" and we've only just got the minimum Viable Product out the door. — Yes, Diaspora has Atom feeds (like RSS) Tag ".atom" to the end of the username, as in: https://joindiaspora.com/public/dredmorbius.atom
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass Migration+Brian Holt Hawthorne Mastodon atom feed titles. I requested more expressive titles, but the developer community said no and closed the issue. https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/1438 So it was re-opened in a follow up. https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/8125 — Yes, Diaspora has Atom feeds (like RSS) Tag ".atom" to the end of the username, as in: https://joindiaspora.com/public/dredmorbius.atom
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Commented on post by Brian Holt Hawthorne in Google+ Mass MigrationEvery blog has some sort of commenting system Except where the owner can't be bothered any more to deal with the spam and moderation. Or where integration with Disqus proved too hard. And part of the problem is keeping track of, and getting notifications from, all the places you've left a comment. — Back before twitter introduced the concept of micro-blogging, we had actual blogs (web-logs). One of the most powerful parts of blogs was near-universal syndication using a few standards such as RSS. Then, along came walled gardens like Twitter and Google+, and suddenly you needed a separate app or web site for each. Google+ was compelling enough for me that I basically stopped reading blogs, except those linked to from Google+. Now that Google+ is going away, I am rethinking that decision. I’ve installed Feedly and I’m slowly adding all the blogs of people whom I used to just follow on Google+. Some of these are standalone Wordpress blogs. Some are journals on Dreamwidth. I’m sure I will find others. But however many people are moving to MeWe or pluspora or whatever, if it doesn’t support RSS syndication, I probably won’t be interacting with them much. I’ve downloaded apps for all those that have it, but I can’t see myself making the mistake of investing in any one self-enclosed site again. I am tired of walled gardens. I am tired of “social media” meaning a proprietary website. I am tired of seeing distributed problems solved and then those solutions destroyed by Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Before walled-gardens nearly killed blog syndication, we saw global standards like XMPP/Jabber that allowed universal chat through many services (AIM, iChat, Google Chat) with a single app destroyed by new proprietary systems and refusal to continue to use standards. So, MeWe is great, but without RSS support (which it will never have because of its privacy model), I won’t use it often. Pluspora (and diaspora) will consume RSS feeds, but unless I am missing something, it won’t generate RSS feeds. [ Update: +Edward Morbius points out you can follow a diaspora feed in Feedly https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/47cw3hzPmTv ] So, I am going back to reading blogs. I’ll probably resurrect one of my old blogs, or start a new one, and wash my hands of the whole walled-garden social media concept.
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Commented on post by Julian BondAn incomplete list of discontinued Google products. http://uk.businessinsider.com/discontinued-google-products-2016-8 — Google is proving itself to be an unreliable and untrustworthy partner. We're being chucked off G+ as it closes down. So which other Google properties should we leave now and stop investing time and effort into? Because we don't know when Google will decide to just close them down. Here's a short list of Google Products that feel to me like they might be at risk. - Music - Photos - Drive - Blogger - Calendar - News - GoogleGroups - Hangouts - Chromecast Audio - Wear OS - Android Auto - Google Pay - Feedreader https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/about/products/ And that's just the consumer stuff. Want to invest time in Google APIs to build into products? Don't. Originally posted at https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/3wo7UBq8Si6 Apologies to +John Lewis
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationI have no idea how to go about archiving a community, let alone migrating it. +Edward Morbius Didn't we go through this with Miranda's Knitting and Tea House? ISTR attempts to extract the existing post and comment streams and copy them across to reddit that basically failed. — Action Item: Members, Moderators, and Owners of Google+ Communities Through several recent conversations, I’m realising that G+ Communities need to both migrate their users and the community itself, ranging from small groups to 400,000+ member, 2,000-3,3000 monthly post groups. I think some tools for that are missing – there’s no "export Community” button, for example – and there’s a lot of confusion over what to do, when, or how. The Google+ Mass Migration Community (2,300 members since 8 October) is the largest I know of on Google+ itself dealing with this problem, and we’re collecting and organising information on contacts, practices, possible destinations, Google tools, and more. With the voice and members of larger communities, the whole G+ Mass Migration effort has more sway. We’re 2,300 voices now, it would be Really Nice to say “hi, we’re representing about 50,000 (or 500,000, or 5 million) Google+ users, we’re looking for a new home, and we’d like to talk Features and Stuff We Care About with you”. There is power in numbers and unity, that’s an attractive pull to possible destinations, and can make things happen, especially representing multiple engaged and cohesive groups. Would you be interested in getting the word out about Google+ Mass Migration: https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772 If you’re a mod or owner, engage with your members, if you’re a member, recruit your moderator(s) and community owners. And the #PlexodusWiki , which has been getting populated with information detailing goals, plans, schedules, data migration, and potential target platforms. It is agnostic to destination, and doesn’t pretend to speak for all Google+ users and groups, but to help each in their own process of moving communities forward. See: Goals: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Goals *How to Plan an Exodus: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/How_to_plan_an_exodus Exodus Planning and Scheduling: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Exodus_Planning_and_Scheduling Data Migration Process and Considerations: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Data_Migration_Process_and_Considerations Thank you. The text of this post should be a good template or copy or adapt for posting to your communities.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Google+ Mass MigrationThe Guardian is on Diaspora via friendica. https://diasp.org/people/174591b4195831ac97e7116945967380 Those news feeds though are really like Pages in facebook, or bot driven users that auto-cross post, not communities/groups. — Action Item: Members, Moderators, and Owners of Google+ Communities Through several recent conversations, I’m realising that G+ Communities need to both migrate their users and the community itself, ranging from small groups to 400,000+ member, 2,000-3,3000 monthly post groups. I think some tools for that are missing – there’s no "export Community” button, for example – and there’s a lot of confusion over what to do, when, or how. The Google+ Mass Migration Community (2,300 members since 8 October) is the largest I know of on Google+ itself dealing with this problem, and we’re collecting and organising information on contacts, practices, possible destinations, Google tools, and more. With the voice and members of larger communities, the whole G+ Mass Migration effort has more sway. We’re 2,300 voices now, it would be Really Nice to say “hi, we’re representing about 50,000 (or 500,000, or 5 million) Google+ users, we’re looking for a new home, and we’d like to talk Features and Stuff We Care About with you”. There is power in numbers and unity, that’s an attractive pull to possible destinations, and can make things happen, especially representing multiple engaged and cohesive groups. Would you be interested in getting the word out about Google+ Mass Migration: https://plus.google.com/communities/112164273001338979772 If you’re a mod or owner, engage with your members, if you’re a member, recruit your moderator(s) and community owners. And the #PlexodusWiki , which has been getting populated with information detailing goals, plans, schedules, data migration, and potential target platforms. It is agnostic to destination, and doesn’t pretend to speak for all Google+ users and groups, but to help each in their own process of moving communities forward. See: Goals: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Goals *How to Plan an Exodus: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/How_to_plan_an_exodus Exodus Planning and Scheduling: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Exodus_Planning_and_Scheduling Data Migration Process and Considerations: https://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Data_Migration_Process_and_Considerations Thank you. The text of this post should be a good template or copy or adapt for posting to your communities.
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Commented on post by Brian Holt Hawthorne in Google+ Mass MigrationMastodon has Atom-Out. Needs some work though as the title of every item in a feed is the same. AFAIK, though this is just for a single user's posts, not for a user's home feed. — Back before twitter introduced the concept of micro-blogging, we had actual blogs (web-logs). One of the most powerful parts of blogs was near-universal syndication using a few standards such as RSS. Then, along came walled gardens like Twitter and Google+, and suddenly you needed a separate app or web site for each. Google+ was compelling enough for me that I basically stopped reading blogs, except those linked to from Google+. Now that Google+ is going away, I am rethinking that decision. I’ve installed Feedly and I’m slowly adding all the blogs of people whom I used to just follow on Google+. Some of these are standalone Wordpress blogs. Some are journals on Dreamwidth. I’m sure I will find others. But however many people are moving to MeWe or pluspora or whatever, if it doesn’t support RSS syndication, I probably won’t be interacting with them much. I’ve downloaded apps for all those that have it, but I can’t see myself making the mistake of investing in any one self-enclosed site again. I am tired of walled gardens. I am tired of “social media” meaning a proprietary website. I am tired of seeing distributed problems solved and then those solutions destroyed by Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Before walled-gardens nearly killed blog syndication, we saw global standards like XMPP/Jabber that allowed universal chat through many services (AIM, iChat, Google Chat) with a single app destroyed by new proprietary systems and refusal to continue to use standards. So, MeWe is great, but without RSS support (which it will never have because of its privacy model), I won’t use it often. Pluspora (and diaspora) will consume RSS feeds, but unless I am missing something, it won’t generate RSS feeds. [ Update: +Edward Morbius points out you can follow a diaspora feed in Feedly https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/47cw3hzPmTv ] So, I am going back to reading blogs. I’ll probably resurrect one of my old blogs, or start a new one, and wash my hands of the whole walled-garden social media concept.
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Commented on post by Brad Borland in Google+ Mass MigrationThis reminded me that Google once had a Blog-Specific search engine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Blog_Search Long since discontinued. — Okay, this is a weird idea, but here it goes. What about jumping in blogger and using rss feeds? Blogger is pretty well networked and is searchable within itself. Just join in, post and comment.... Sort of a network of blogs where each one is like a profile. (Just a thought) : )
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Commented on post by Brad Borland in Google+ Mass Migration+John Lewis For specific communities of interest, we've been doing that for quite some time with products like phpBB, vBulletin, Drupal. As you say, the catch is scale. And doing the second and subsequent communities of interest. In a previous life, I built quite a substantial social network on top of Drupal V3 with a load of custom code. No longer with us, sadly. And I wouldn't want to do that again. — Okay, this is a weird idea, but here it goes. What about jumping in blogger and using rss feeds? Blogger is pretty well networked and is searchable within itself. Just join in, post and comment.... Sort of a network of blogs where each one is like a profile. (Just a thought) : )
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationFeel free to continue the discussion here. https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/EhcAN1vQdCQ — Google is proving itself to be an unreliable and untrustworthy partner. We're being chucked off G+ as it closes down. So which other Google properties should we leave now and stop investing time and effort into? Because we don't know when Google will decide to just close them down. Here's a short list of Google Products that feel to me like they might be at risk. - Music - Photos - Drive - Blogger - Calendar - News - GoogleGroups - Hangouts - Chromecast Audio - Wear OS - Android Auto - Google Pay https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/about/products/ And that's just the consumer stuff. Want to invest time in Google APIs to build into products? Don't.
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Commented on post by Brad Borland in Google+ Mass Migrationhttp://Wordpress.com as an alternative to http://Blogger.com ? I put some effort into creating an RSS feed of my G+ posts and then using that to auto-post into my blog platform. So at least I have an archive without needing to use takeout. After all these years, I still don't think we've got a good solution to blog comments. — Okay, this is a weird idea, but here it goes. What about jumping in blogger and using rss feeds? Blogger is pretty well networked and is searchable within itself. Just join in, post and comment.... Sort of a network of blogs where each one is like a profile. (Just a thought) : )
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+John Phillips Not a problem I've run into yet. I guess I'm just lucky. Seriously though, that language is a little excessive, no? — Google is proving itself to be an unreliable and untrustworthy partner. We're being chucked off G+ as it closes down. So which other Google properties should we leave now and stop investing time and effort into? Because we don't know when Google will decide to just close them down. Here's a short list of Google Products that feel to me like they might be at risk. - Music - Photos - Drive - Blogger - Calendar - News - GoogleGroups - Hangouts - Chromecast Audio - Wear OS - Android Auto - Google Pay https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/about/products/ And that's just the consumer stuff. Want to invest time in Google APIs to build into products? Don't.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+John Phillips Security and Privacy? If that's really important to you, then don't join and post on a big social network. — Google is proving itself to be an unreliable and untrustworthy partner. We're being chucked off G+ as it closes down. So which other Google properties should we leave now and stop investing time and effort into? Because we don't know when Google will decide to just close them down. Here's a short list of Google Products that feel to me like they might be at risk. - Music - Photos - Drive - Blogger - Calendar - News - GoogleGroups - Hangouts - Chromecast Audio - Wear OS - Android Auto - Google Pay https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/about/products/ And that's just the consumer stuff. Want to invest time in Google APIs to build into products? Don't.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Dima Pasechnik AdBlock, plus some DNS blocks and a little Stylus and I never, never see any ads on Facebook. I curate a small list of friends and then bookmark that feed. So I never see the big feed. If the "close friends" annoy me in any way (eg by clicking on bullshit). They first get removed from the "Close friends" list. If they keep doing it, they get unfriended and blocked. Problem? What problem? — Google is proving itself to be an unreliable and untrustworthy partner. We're being chucked off G+ as it closes down. So which other Google properties should we leave now and stop investing time and effort into? Because we don't know when Google will decide to just close them down. Here's a short list of Google Products that feel to me like they might be at risk. - Music - Photos - Drive - Blogger - Calendar - News - GoogleGroups - Hangouts - Chromecast Audio - Wear OS - Android Auto - Google Pay https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/about/products/ And that's just the consumer stuff. Want to invest time in Google APIs to build into products? Don't.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+John Phillips Facebook Posts, Groups, Messenger Chat, the Pages feed, Events, Friends lists. I use all these every day. They work. I'm not sure what it is people hate about it so much. Part of the problem here is that there aren't many social network systems of the scale and functionality of G+. FB is undoubtedly the leader. There are others that replicate * some * of the functionality. — Google is proving itself to be an unreliable and untrustworthy partner. We're being chucked off G+ as it closes down. So which other Google properties should we leave now and stop investing time and effort into? Because we don't know when Google will decide to just close them down. Here's a short list of Google Products that feel to me like they might be at risk. - Music - Photos - Drive - Blogger - Calendar - News - GoogleGroups - Hangouts - Chromecast Audio - Wear OS - Android Auto - Google Pay https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/about/products/ And that's just the consumer stuff. Want to invest time in Google APIs to build into products? Don't.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass Migration+Dima Pasechnik The danger, and likelihood, is that the free version disappears. So you won't be able to upload your 50k tracks or your 1k track playlists unless you take out the subscription. Then they'll notice that nobody is paying the £10pm. — Google is proving itself to be an unreliable and untrustworthy partner. We're being chucked off G+ as it closes down. So which other Google properties should we leave now and stop investing time and effort into? Because we don't know when Google will decide to just close them down. Here's a short list of Google Products that feel to me like they might be at risk. - Music - Photos - Drive - Blogger - Calendar - News - GoogleGroups - Hangouts - Chromecast Audio - Wear OS - Android Auto - Google Pay https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/about/products/ And that's just the consumer stuff. Want to invest time in Google APIs to build into products? Don't.
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Commented on post by Matthew FongIf you want a vision of the future, imagine a pair of Vans Classics stamping on a human face - forever. — So when does Google++ come out?
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Commented on post by Matthew FongG++ is the one where we throw objects at them. Not by reference but by value. And before they invoke the inherited destructor. Google seem to be following the alchemist's instruction, "Invoke often". But also Lovecraft's dictum. “Do not call up that which you cannot put down.” — So when does Google++ come out?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationClose to real time Chat is just one major feature. I've been following GChat since the old days of XMPP support and when their major competition was Skype, MSN, ICQ, AIM and so on. For a brief moment, Google looked like it might unite an open source federation around XMPP. But no. And now I can no longer keep up with all the different and incompatible Google Chat systems. So my go to these days is Facebook chat. Because FB chat just works and people respond to it. — Google is proving itself to be an unreliable and untrustworthy partner. We're being chucked off G+ as it closes down. So which other Google properties should we leave now and stop investing time and effort into? Because we don't know when Google will decide to just close them down. Here's a short list of Google Products that feel to me like they might be at risk. - Music - Photos - Drive - Blogger - Calendar - News - GoogleGroups - Hangouts - Chromecast Audio - Wear OS - Android Auto - Google Pay https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/about/products/ And that's just the consumer stuff. Want to invest time in Google APIs to build into products? Don't.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Gerhard Torges lol! — This just in: EU ambassadors being debriefed by Michel Barnier, the bloc’s chief negotiator, have been told that there is no deal, and that there are serious remaining issues over the Irish border question. The meeting in Brussels is ongoing. The Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, was with Barnier for just over an hour before the briefing. One senior EU diplomat said that the British did not believe they had enough on the temporary nature of the customs union aspect of the backstop to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. The UK wants it to be time-limited, but Brussels is resisting. “Raab had come here for a concession”, the diplomat said. “They don’t have enough.” The source did not dissuade me from the view that much of this is political theatre designed to help the prime minister sell the backstop at a later date back home. However a meeting of the leaders’ ‘sherpas’, the officials who are the most senior heads of state and government, that was due to take place on Monday afternoon to sign off on any deal, has now been cancelled. That is ominous.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Mass MigrationAs you know, Google's Help, Support and Press communities are all over the place. There's GoogleGroups, Productforums, G+ Profiles, G+ Communities, blogs on Blogger, Help&Support FAQs and on and on. At some stage, probably in the Gundrota era, a lot of Google product teams were encouraged to create G+ communities to do customer relationship and support work. Some of these are still running and active. In theory, all that content and community outreach should be migrated somewhere else as part of the G+ sunset. In practice, we know Google will simply shutter them. And the people tasked with running them will just get re-assigned. Took me a while to find that Press page, listing all the customer and press relationship sites. Expect it to just disappear as well. https://www.google.com/press/blog-social-directory.html — I wonder what tools Google is providing internally to help their teams migrate the official Google Communities on G+ https://www.google.com/press/blog-social-directory.html eg https://plus.google.com/+Blogger or https://plus.google.com/+google
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Commented on post by Todd William in Google+ UpdatesThere's Google Takeout Use JSON Extracting your comments, especially from communities, may be difficult. see https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/112164273001338979772 — Is Google intending to offer any solutions to export our content? I've put a lot of effort into cultivating my content for multiple collections and I'm hoping I don't have to back up each post individually to preserve them.
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Commented on post by Jeffry Johnston in Google+ Mass MigrationJust ignore it. The culture is what the users make it. And you're a user. IMHO. CW is appropriate in a very few cases. eg NSFW and spoilers or joke reveals. In all other cases, the correct response to something somebody feels should be behind CW is for them to unfollow you or block you. — I've been looking into Mastodon, but the culture there is quite puzzling. A majority of posts and images are hidden behind content warnings. I opened a bunch of them and wasn't sure why they were even hidden. My first impression is that Mastodon seems to be a Twitter-style version of Tumblr for snowflakes that need trigger warnings on everything. It makes me afraid to post because someone might take offense. Am I missing the point?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIndefinite BRINO. A key issue is if it can be made vague and innocuous enough for Labour to whip their MPs to vote for it. — Looks like May has a plan: the UK would stay in a customs union, likely to be described as a customs arrangement by the prime minister, on an indefinite basis. However, the British government would be able to point to criteria under which the arrangement would be terminated, fulfilling the British desire for it to appear to be a temporary arrangement. Now she just has to convince the hardliners in the Tory party.
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Commented on post by Lauren WeinsteinI went back and looked at GoogleGroups. And was astonished at just how bad search was. I'm also concerned that the early archives of usenet via dejanews have pretty much disappeared now. — Of course there is another approach entirely to keeping in touch in the absence of G+ -- yep, Google Groups.
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Commented on post by Martha Magenta in Google+ Mass Migration+Martha Magenta And for the real old school. Usenet. — When you announce alternatives to G+ it would be helpful if you said whether we can create communities there Many of us are looking for sites where we can migrate our communities, not just individuals doing our own thing and posting stuff on a stream. Thank you.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeWe could do with one of these https://bridge.joinmastodon.org/ but for G+ to diaspora — 'We are shutting down Google+ for consumers.' We will implement this wind-down over a 10-month period, slated for completion by the end of next August. Well, its not actually a surprise, isn't it? So, any suggestions where to go? I have reddit and mastodon on my list. Anything else? (If you mention Twitter you risk to get blocked. I won't grace this cesspit with my presence.)
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Commented on post by Andreas SchouAssume good intent. At least to start with. Own your own words. If other people fail to understand them, that may be your fault. — On Moderation: An Ass-Backward Guide to Managing a Community Which Extends From Revolutionary Socialists to Anarcho-Capitalists (1) When responding as editor, always assume that you are talking to a reasonable person making the most reasonable possible version of their argument. This is not always true in the real world, but this sort of bad-faith good-faith heads off any risk of escalating, tit-for-tat misinterpretation of the other person's argument. (2) A new member of the community, especially a dissenting member, will often appear to be a troll. Dissenting members who have been socialized to dissent helpfully eventually become valuable members of the community. (3) Use soft power until you have reached its limits. If the community has a disruptive member who disagrees with you, see if you can get someone who agrees with the disruptive person to intervene on your behalf. It will seem less like you're punishing dissent. (4) There is no reason to be rude or cruel to someone whom you will not have a continuing relationship with. If you need to exercise hard power -- banning, reporting, excluding -- decide that that's what you need to do, do it, and don't comment on the subject. (5) Try to be epistemically multilingual. If you can explain a position using only assumptions that you and the other person share, don't try to force a new set of assumptions down their throat. More than likely, they'll just reject your position outright, and you will no longer have anything interesting to talk about. (6) The most difficult problem an ideological diverse community faces is not antisocial disagreement, but antisocial agreement. It is difficult to convince people that any such thing exists, but community punishment of people who operate outside the editorial consensus can stifle dissent and cause the community to go wildly awry. (7) Hard apriorists are not a useful part of most conversations. If someone believes he can determine the appropriate federal funds rate from I Think, Therefore I Am, you will probably not have a productive conversation with him, and it is best to politely tell him that he is being ignored. (8) Biographical details are important. They are anecdotal, but not peripheral. If someone believes they have insights into their own region, ethnicity, profession, gender, government, family, or life experiences, this is likely to be true. What's more, people demand more respect for their own lived experiences than for beliefs which they hold for other reasons. It is fair to demand that people tread carefully around biographical details and lived experience. (9) People overgeneralize from their own biographies. Anecdotal experience derived from lived experience is important. It is, however, still anecdotal. If you are inclined to make a strident point based on a biographical argument, it would help if you also went and found some data to support it rather than simply demanding concession from the person you're arguing with. If you see someone genuinely trying to make a fair argument against your biographical details and lived experience, try to assume that it was made in good faith.  (10) If you find yourself looking at a Wikipedia page to construct an argument against someone whom you believe to be better-informed on a subject than you, stop. At best, you are denying yourself the opportunity to learn something from a subject matter expert -- even one who turns out to be wrong. At worst, you are about to embarrass yourself.  (11) Argument about rules of evidence, especially in the middle of another argument,  is seldom productive. If you are aware of the rules of evidence generally adhered to by the people you're arguing with, try to produce evidence which at least meets that standard, and table the argument about evidentiary rules until it can be addressed separately. (Note: If you have seen this before, and you are seeing it again now, it's because I've pinned the rules for my space to the top of my profile.)
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Commented on post by Andreas SchouThere certainly are a lot of decorative motherfucking gourds around just now. And the leaves have only just begun to turn and fall. And I miss you most of all, my darling When decorative gourds begin to appear. — It's "it's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers" season, motherfuckers. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/its-decorative-gourd-season-motherfuckers
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Commented on post by John Hattan in Google+ Mass MigrationWhen G+ disappears, will your Google Profile disappear as well? Because the profile is common to other Google properties. And it used to be possible to add links to other social networks. However. I'd strongly recommend having a personal domain with a personal website, that contains a roll of all your social media profile pages each with some semantic web markup in the form of rel='me' on each link. I call it a YASN-Roll. (Yet Another Social Network). — Public Service Announcement : If you are leaving G+ for good, please make your very last post a list of places where we can find you (Pluspora, Twitter, etc). That way, those of us who are trying to maintain communication with our old G+ friends will will know where to find/follow/aspect you.
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Commented on post by Gideon RosenblattWe need a name for whatever it is that Google is about to do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKu7TYWNxqA — And the main lesson for those end-users, like us, who have invested thousands of hours helping to build services like Google+ and Google Reader? Never invest deeply in a platform that isn't the primary focus of the company behind it. #GooglePlus #Google
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Commented on post by Gideon RosenblattOn the plus side, you're less likely to get your main google profile banned, blocked or removed from Google because of something you posted on G+ — And the main lesson for those end-users, like us, who have invested thousands of hours helping to build services like Google+ and Google Reader? Never invest deeply in a platform that isn't the primary focus of the company behind it. #GooglePlus #Google
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Commented on post by Martha Magenta in Google+ Mass MigrationYes, Communities are a key and very important function. Yes. Facebook Groups work pretty well. Two other possible alternatives. With their own problems. - GoogleGroups - Yahoogroups re Googlegroups. Try and find a group on there talking about Google+. It's hard !!! — When you announce alternatives to G+ it would be helpful if you said whether we can create communities there Many of us are looking for sites where we can migrate our communities, not just individuals doing our own thing and posting stuff on a stream. Thank you.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt+Gideon Rosenblatt Ah yes. Google Groups - The archive of the early years of usenet. — And the main lesson for those end-users, like us, who have invested thousands of hours helping to build services like Google+ and Google Reader? Never invest deeply in a platform that isn't the primary focus of the company behind it. #GooglePlus #Google
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Commented on post by Gideon RosenblattThere should be a sweep on which product is next for the hammer. Photos? Music? — And the main lesson for those end-users, like us, who have invested thousands of hours helping to build services like Google+ and Google Reader? Never invest deeply in a platform that isn't the primary focus of the company behind it. #GooglePlus #Google
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Commented on post by Gideon RosenblattWhere are you now +Vic Gundotra, +Dave Besbris +Bradley Horowitz and also +Joseph Smarr ? I don't even know who's currently in charge and wikipedia doesn't seem to either. — And the main lesson for those end-users, like us, who have invested thousands of hours helping to build services like Google+ and Google Reader? Never invest deeply in a platform that isn't the primary focus of the company behind it. #GooglePlus #Google
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeTo those arguing against Facebook, I'd suggest you're using it wrong. It doesn't have to be unpleasant. Used right, it has a lot going for it. Twitter is horrible. I wish it would just die. Mastodon is ok and improving, as far as it goes. But the discussions are still ephemeral. What I actually want is somewhere for medium to long form posts with medium to long form comments. Private blogs with rss feeds are all very well, but we still don't have a good way of aggregating them and their comments. And even with things like Disqus and akamai, moderating comments on your own blog is a nightmare. — 'We are shutting down Google+ for consumers.' We will implement this wind-down over a 10-month period, slated for completion by the end of next August. Well, its not actually a surprise, isn't it? So, any suggestions where to go? I have reddit and mastodon on my list. Anything else? (If you mention Twitter you risk to get blocked. I won't grace this cesspit with my presence.)
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Gundotra where are you now? — And the main lesson for those end-users, like us, who have invested thousands of hours helping to build services like Google+ and Google Reader? Never invest deeply in a platform that isn't the primary focus of the company behind it. #GooglePlus #Google
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Commented on post by Gideon RosenblattI liked Buzz and put quite a bit of effort into it. I was very disappointed when Buzz was shut and migrated to G+ And in the process a bunch of useful function was lost. I then put quite a bit of effort into recreating Atom/RSS feeds for G+ using the G+ API. And building links to auto-crosspost from G+ to other platforms. Like tears in the rain, etc. Google screwed me over 3 times with Orkut. I was an early adopter and created some groups. Then Google came in and absorbed the login process. Then I discovered my old ID had gone and somebody else had taken over the groups. Then Google canned the whole project. I was never a user of Reader, except to try it out. But I am an early and heavy user of Atom/RSS. Destroying Reader effectively destroyed the Atom/RSS market as a mass user system. It still runs and people still use it, but increasingly signal sources don't see RSS feeds as a necessary part of a startup. So what's left? When do Drive, Photos, Gmail, Calendar, Music just get canned because G doesn't want to do them any more? And perhaps more importantly what happens when G destroys a dominant incumbent by coming into a market, and then later leaves that market? That's not just G but a whole market sector that gets damaged in the process. — And the main lesson for those end-users, like us, who have invested thousands of hours helping to build services like Google+ and Google Reader? Never invest deeply in a platform that isn't the primary focus of the company behind it. #GooglePlus #Google
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Commented on post by Gideon RosenblattI'm going to make a case for Facebook. 1) Create a list or two of close friends. 2) Bookmark the feed for this list and make it your entry point to Facebook. 3) Use a browser with lots of ad blocking. And use Stylus (or similar) to remove bits of facebook and fb sidebars you don't like. 4) Like and follow pages. Then view the pages/feed 5) join and contribute to groups 6) Set permissions so in general you post to your friends list and only accept comments and messenger from friends. 7) Like all social media, block early and block often. You've now got 3 functions in Friends, pages, groups which allow meaningful communication signal but reject all the noise. Do all that and facebook is a very useful tool. Facebook too, will pass. — And the main lesson for those end-users, like us, who have invested thousands of hours helping to build services like Google+ and Google Reader? Never invest deeply in a platform that isn't the primary focus of the company behind it. #GooglePlus #Google
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Commented on post by Gideon RosenblattPerhaps they could restart Buzz and Orkut. — And the main lesson for those end-users, like us, who have invested thousands of hours helping to build services like Google+ and Google Reader? Never invest deeply in a platform that isn't the primary focus of the company behind it. #GooglePlus #Google
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Commented on post by Julie Wills in Google+ UpdatesI heard they were going to restart Buzz and Orkut. Not. — So long, and thanks for all the fish 😢
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Dima Pasechnik Not sure I get that. The city in Czech Republic? And "JC's handlers": What, you mean Momentum? — So Theresa May has run the numbers during the Tory conference, and with the troglodytes around Mogg torpedoing any deal, she has noticed that she can win the final vote on whatever the EU offers only with the help of Labour. That would be the Labour party whose explicit strategy it is to make sure that May loses that vote, in order to trigger an election. And so she is reaching out to selected Labour MPs. I suppose mainly those from Leave voting constituencies. I bet Team Corbyn is super happy. I think the success of this strategy depends on four things: 1) How much she caves in and erases her silly red lines, so that the EU can throw her something. Do I smell a customs union in the morning? 2) How nice the EU wants to be. 3) How hard the Labour whips whip. 4) What those Labour MPs make out of all this, under all this pressure.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Joerg Fliege Are Labour edging towards officially aiming for BRINO? (Brexit In Name Only). — So Theresa May has run the numbers during the Tory conference, and with the troglodytes around Mogg torpedoing any deal, she has noticed that she can win the final vote on whatever the EU offers only with the help of Labour. That would be the Labour party whose explicit strategy it is to make sure that May loses that vote, in order to trigger an election. And so she is reaching out to selected Labour MPs. I suppose mainly those from Leave voting constituencies. I bet Team Corbyn is super happy. I think the success of this strategy depends on four things: 1) How much she caves in and erases her silly red lines, so that the EU can throw her something. Do I smell a customs union in the morning? 2) How nice the EU wants to be. 3) How hard the Labour whips whip. 4) What those Labour MPs make out of all this, under all this pressure.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThis sounds remarkably like the Galileo defence from AGW-Deniers as to why the 97% are wrong. — "Mr Tusk says it won't work, but that's what people said about the light bulb in 1878." There you go, folks. Brexit against physics. I know where my money is.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitOk. So who picked all the cherries off the Tories Secret Plan cakes? — And now on to actual Tory politics, which consists of promising everything to everyone, including mutually exclusive things. This didn't start with Brexit: right now, as before, they are promising to widen home ownership. (To get more votes from young renters.) Right now, as before, they promise to keep house prices up. (To keep votes from house owners.) In practice, these two policies are mutually exclusive.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitUKExit means U Keks It — Notes from the 'Brexit means Brexit' event, not part of the official Tory party meeting, but just next door. If you know what I mean. Priti Patel is running through a list of European treaties, and invites the audience to boo at each of them. Andrea Jenkyns says Remainers are "talking the country down." An audience member shouts: "Traitors!" Nuremberg in the Midlands.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Engrumpled Curmudgeon ME262. Baby, don't fear the reaper. Cities in flames (with rock and roll). On your feet or on your knees. Here they are. The amazing. Blue Öyster Cult! — Brexit is a comedy singularity. Blockchain May Resolve Irish Border Brexit Problem: Hammond A solution to providing frictionless trade across the Irish border after Britain leaves the European Union might be found using technology such as Blockchain, finance minister Phillip Hammond said on Monday. "There is technology becoming available (...) I don't claim to be an expert on it but the most obvious technology is blockchain," Hammond said when asked about how the government could achieve smooth trade after Brexit. And thats a wrap. The EU will be a cloud based solution, with a firewall from China. The Euro will be replaced by Bitcoin, and we chain May to a block and drop her into the Irish sea.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI, for one, am vigorously indifferent. — Brexit and the Anglican vote. It appears that 66% of all Anglicans who voted in the referendum voted for Leave. That is significantly more than the average in England (53%). Anglicans are more enthusiastically pro-Brexit than affiliates of other major religions. In England, 55% of Catholics voted Leave, 45% Remain. Amongst other non-Christian faiths – though sample sizes are small – the tendency was to favour Remain over Leave. The increasingly large group who report ‘no religion’ also favoured Remain: 53% Remain, 47% Leave. The effect stays after correcting for other demographic factors like age etc. Anglicans are generally centre-right in politics but liberal on matters of personal morality. Newspapers like the Telegraph or Daily Mail reflect their views. They take a generally negative view of the EU, with a quarter saying they can see no benefit at all in being a member. What they object to most are ‘EU rules and regulations’, followed by weak borders and unchecked immigration, and taking power from Parliament. Over half object to every one of these things. After that come economic objections. In other words, most Anglicans take a positive view of English culture and ethnicity, and regard the EU as a threat to their heritage, values, identity and parliamentary sovereignty. These concerns, which are sometimes lumped together as ‘nativist’ are greater even than their economic ones.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitPlease note, especially Americans:- Most of Europe is now >50% A-Religious. We're not Atheists. We just have zero interest in religion at all, at all. — Brexit and the Anglican vote. It appears that 66% of all Anglicans who voted in the referendum voted for Leave. That is significantly more than the average in England (53%). Anglicans are more enthusiastically pro-Brexit than affiliates of other major religions. In England, 55% of Catholics voted Leave, 45% Remain. Amongst other non-Christian faiths – though sample sizes are small – the tendency was to favour Remain over Leave. The increasingly large group who report ‘no religion’ also favoured Remain: 53% Remain, 47% Leave. The effect stays after correcting for other demographic factors like age etc. Anglicans are generally centre-right in politics but liberal on matters of personal morality. Newspapers like the Telegraph or Daily Mail reflect their views. They take a generally negative view of the EU, with a quarter saying they can see no benefit at all in being a member. What they object to most are ‘EU rules and regulations’, followed by weak borders and unchecked immigration, and taking power from Parliament. Over half object to every one of these things. After that come economic objections. In other words, most Anglicans take a positive view of English culture and ethnicity, and regard the EU as a threat to their heritage, values, identity and parliamentary sovereignty. These concerns, which are sometimes lumped together as ‘nativist’ are greater even than their economic ones.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademiahttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reimagining-of-schroedingers-cat-breaks-quantum-mechanics-mdash-and-stumps-physicists1/ Which depends on two boxes, two of Wigner's friends in them (Bob & Alice) and a secure quantum cryptography channel between them. Timetabling is worse than that. It's an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game involving multiple boxes, multiple experimenters, a herd of cats, incomplete communications and a random number generator. — The highlight of the week has been the Timetabling department's decision to turn next week's lectures into an exciting form of scavenger hunt – due to a series of unfortunate events involving faculty laxness, personnel turnover and a magnificent new piece of software, I have no idea where my classes might be occurring. I like it. It adds a frisson of unknowability to an already stressful week which keeps the cardio-vascular system going. I can relate. Around here, certain computer labs that are supposed to start early next week are in a state of quantum superposition, with students and lab hours drifting in and out of existence. Ah, the joy of having not enough lab seats. Or too many students, if thats how you want to phrase it. Soon, the wave function will collapse.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThere's a very large number of people in the UK who state "Anglican" as a tribal membership but are essentially A-Religious. That's true also of most of the other major religions. There's also an increasingly large number of people who identify (if asked) as A-Religious. They're more likely to be young but not exclusively. So using that as a split and trying to relate it to political feelings is risky, since what you're really comparing is tribal memberships and backgrounds with a strong correlation with age. We already know that the young voted remain, and people who feel strongly "British" (and likely to call themselves Anglican) voted Leave. 2 years on, all this stuff is moot though. It's more important how people feel now than how they voted then. — Brexit and the Anglican vote. It appears that 66% of all Anglicans who voted in the referendum voted for Leave. That is significantly more than the average in England (53%). Anglicans are more enthusiastically pro-Brexit than affiliates of other major religions. In England, 55% of Catholics voted Leave, 45% Remain. Amongst other non-Christian faiths – though sample sizes are small – the tendency was to favour Remain over Leave. The increasingly large group who report ‘no religion’ also favoured Remain: 53% Remain, 47% Leave. The effect stays after correcting for other demographic factors like age etc. Anglicans are generally centre-right in politics but liberal on matters of personal morality. Newspapers like the Telegraph or Daily Mail reflect their views. They take a generally negative view of the EU, with a quarter saying they can see no benefit at all in being a member. What they object to most are ‘EU rules and regulations’, followed by weak borders and unchecked immigration, and taking power from Parliament. Over half object to every one of these things. After that come economic objections. In other words, most Anglicans take a positive view of English culture and ethnicity, and regard the EU as a threat to their heritage, values, identity and parliamentary sovereignty. These concerns, which are sometimes lumped together as ‘nativist’ are greater even than their economic ones.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitLink to the poll for Facebonkers. https://www.facebook.com/NFarageHero/posts/2202705069947730 — Someone is trolling Nigel on Facebook. Its the will of the people
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Commented on post by Allen DowneyWas this the offending cross post? — Here's a Bayesian puzzle to start your day.
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Commented on post by Julian BondIn another instalment of festival memories, I did a post on a Stonehenge group on facebook. It was asking about which fields the various 70s Stonehenge festivals actually occupied. It seems that we all disagree and the Uk Free Festivals site has at least 3 diagrams which are all different. That led to a conversation about Caesar's Camp '78. Another commentor said he'd been there as well. Then that he'd run the free food kitchen. Then that I'd helped peeling spuds on the Bank Holiday Monday. So we must have sat next to each other. — 42 years ago, I received this hand painted invitation to a free festival in the ruined gardens of Rivington Pike near Chorley in Lancashire. I knew I still had it but it had gone missing and I'd been searching for it for 15 years at least. Yesterday it fell out of a bunch of old papers and yellowed copies of International Times. http://internationaltimes.it/ There's a detailed write up here of the adventures we and others had. http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/rivington-pike-78.html There's a postscript as well. Here And Now liked my write up so much, they asked me to do the liner notes for one of their Live CDs of their set at the festival. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_%26_Now_%28band%29
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt's the Long, Dark, Tea-Cake of the Soul. — Another brilliant analysis. Leaving aside the few who live on the wilder shores of Brexit, the vast majority of the UK political, academic, media and think-tank class do not really want to leave the EU, even those who say loudly how much the result of the 2016 referendum must be honoured. What they really want is to be able to remain in the EU but, like Joey Zasa [from The Godfather III], to be treated with the “respect” to which they think the UK is entitled. I call this “cakeism in the soul”, CIS for short. Those suffering from CIS want to be in the EU but on terms that suit the UK, because the UK is special and different. There is another variant of CIS: Red Mist CIS (RM-CIS). This is largely found among those on the left. You recognise that they are suffering from it when you hear the words “jobs-first-Brexit”. Those suffering from RM-CIS believe that the lack of progress in the Brexit negotiations is all the fault of Tory ineptitude. If only Labour were in charge of the negotiations, they reason, the EU would be much more accommodating.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Joseph Moosman Ni! — Jacob Rees-Mogg writes for the Daily Mail. An interesting treatise. Boadicea would have been impressed by Theresa May as she spoke from a room festooned with Union flags in Downing Street on Friday. The strains of Rule Britannia could have been playing in the background because her words made it clear that Britons never shall be slaves. I have not made this up. He really wrote this.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt's becoming impossible to vote for the 2 major parties. Which leaves 80% of the people disenfranchised. If only the SNP fielded candidates throughout the UK. — Officials in Brussels had been briefed by Whitehall to find a solution to the Irish border in a way “that it is not applicable for Scotland.” Hahahaha. They can't do their job, so they are asking the EU to do it for them. They have completely forgotten about the Irish issue, and now they have to come up with something that does not allow any Scottish gambit. Because of the Union, the sacrosanct, holy Union. Because no country can ever be divided. (Except Ireland. And Cyprus. And Germany. And Korea. But I digress.) Bunch of amateurs.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexithttps://www.libdemvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Screen-Shot-2017-09-13-at-20.06.09-300x283.png — Jacob Rees-Mogg writes for the Daily Mail. An interesting treatise. Boadicea would have been impressed by Theresa May as she spoke from a room festooned with Union flags in Downing Street on Friday. The strains of Rule Britannia could have been playing in the background because her words made it clear that Britons never shall be slaves. I have not made this up. He really wrote this.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitNever mind will power, I think she needs a chariot with rotating knives. And a hoard of MPs behind her dressed only in woad. Where's Arthur and Merlin when we need them? And the Green Man. And men in tights. They will rise again in our hour of greatest need. ps. There's lots of wonderful Britannia images on DeviantArt but not entirely suitable. except perhaps this one. https://www.libdemvoice.org/cheer-up-britannia-brexit-is-coming-55259.html — Jacob Rees-Mogg writes for the Daily Mail. An interesting treatise. Boadicea would have been impressed by Theresa May as she spoke from a room festooned with Union flags in Downing Street on Friday. The strains of Rule Britannia could have been playing in the background because her words made it clear that Britons never shall be slaves. I have not made this up. He really wrote this.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademia+John Arrington Woodward Climate Denial and Techno-cornucopians — I mean, the confidence interval bit is actually not that bad. (Via +John Wehrle.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Chris Blackmore Just play that one out. But without the fantasies. What's the timeline from about late October, post the party conferences if No Deal becomes the most likely end result. Because there's nothing on the table for the EU to vote on. I somehow can't believe that May and the current Tory government would actually survive till March 2019. There is no "just letting the time run out". That's fantasy. — More post mortem from Salzburg. For weeks the working assumption in Brussels had been that, on the Irish issue at least, a major step forward would be made by the next leaders’ summit in October. But over the coffee the prime minister dropped a bombshell. She did not believe it would be possible for the British government and Brussels to come to a solution by then. Six months after promising to come up with a fix that would avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland in all possible circumstances, the British appeared to be stalling for time again. Macron heard about this, and apparently lost his shit.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Engrumpled Curmudgeon An Ice Age? Is that when the House Of Commons freezes over? — Brussels has changed its attitude. Something is in the water, something is in the wind.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAre we expecting a baby boom around 1-Jan-2020? — Looks like we are ready, boys! (Via +Gerhard Torges .)
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google Play MusicThere's another side issue here of the best way to move playlists from winamp to GPM and back again. Since GPM, GPM upload and Music Manager still don't understand standard .m3u and .pls playlist files. And there's no obvious way to download GPM playlists back to PC music players. — Is there any way of uploading a playlist from Android Play Music to Google Play Music? I don't mind going via a third party or via PC.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google Play MusicWell I've got a playlist of tracks local to the phone and in local storage. The tracks are also in my web GPM, but the playlist hasn't appeared. Do I have to do something to get it to sync with the web interface? As always it's kind of confusing where the music and playlists are. Is this one in local storage or in the cloud? The actual source of the playlist is a sync from winamp running on a laptop to the phone via USB. Winamp is reading files off a home NAS. It's been created on the phone as a .pla file, and the phones Play Music (and BlackPlayer) is reading it quite happily. Unfortunately, VLC-Android can't see it. All of this is trying to see if I can retire my ageing iPod and replace it with a phone upgraded with a big (256Gb) SD card. I'm still hitting limitations (eg 1000 track limit on playlists) that mean the phone is not yet as good as the iPod. — Is there any way of uploading a playlist from Android Play Music to Google Play Music? I don't mind going via a third party or via PC.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Joerg Fliege If you want a vision of the future, imagine a red stiletto from Jimmy Choo stamping on a human face - forever. In soft focus, with highlight lighting, wearing all white and a skirt that's just a little too narrow and a little too short. Now you have to work out if it's me being a bitch or her. — Lets hope that these statements are for domestic consumption and aimed at the hardliners in her own party. Because otherwise we are having a bit of a situation.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege"Unsafe at any speed" takes on a whole new meaning. Even stationary at a pedestrian crossing. — Another car for our Mad Max dystopian future. What's better than to barrel down the M25 at 170 km/h in a plywood box, with a propeller at the front to vanquish your foes? (Via +Lev Osherovich .)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaOf course schools function to condition individuals to their assigned roles. We may sneer at them, but society needs Deltas and Gammas to function. We can't all be Alphas and Betas. /s c/o Brave New World — I see that the "if you are poor then you are stupid" narrative is alive and well in English schools. Some secondary schools are failing teenagers from deprived backgrounds by giving them reading material for primary-age children, the head of Ofsted has warned. Amanda Spielman said she had been angered to find schools setting lower expectations for children simply because of their background. It follows evidence that students as old as 14 are being given English texts designed for primary children. In a wide-ranging interview with the Observer, Spielman said she had been driven “absolutely nuts” by evidence that some schools were assuming that disadvantaged children were “automatically low-achieving and need a watered-down curriculum”. The chief inspector also warned that the schools system had “stopped acting in children’s interests” by allowing thousands of underperforming pupils to be ushered out of the door to protect their school’s exam pass rates.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitFWIW, please try not to call them Brexiteers. They are Brexiters. The extra e in -eers implies some kind of dashing, swashbuckling, Russel Crowe, Francis Drake type. Other terms of abuse are of course acceptable. Especially Quitling. Given the confusion over Britain, British, Great Britain and so on, why didn't it get called Ukexit? Too close to UKIP? — Excellent news. The Brexit hardliner's attempt to plaster the newspapers with their plans backfired, and all they got was a thorough trashing by the media. Even the Daily Mail abandoned them. Meanwhile, the fingerpointing continues. The hard Brexiters now point at the May team, which might or might not have leaked news of Boris' divorce to journalists.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeAcoustic couplers FTW! — Hipsters have nothing on this guy. (Apparently a textbook illustration from a 1980ies technologies textbook. That modem though. Kids, I was there.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaThe original post was about Britain and not the USA. But here we are again talking about the USA. I wonder how many people in the UK attended a private boarding school at some stage in their life. Somewhere between 1 and 10% of the population, I'd guess. Only a few of them end up as wealthy sociopathic bullies in public office. The vast majority end up as reasonably well adjusted, reasonably well off people living the typical UK middle class life of quiet desperation. However, central government does seem to be dominated by wealthy sociopathic bullies from private boarding schools. — When socially privileged children are separated from their families at a tender age, some develop what psychotherapists have called “Boarding School Syndrome”: “a defensive and protective encapsulation of the self,” in which they learn to hide emotion, fake maturity, and assert dominance over anyone weaker. They develop loyalty to their institutional tribe and suspicion of outsiders; they become bullies devoted to winning above all. If these traits sound familiar, it may be because the men who sent Britain careening into the catastrophe of Brexit—David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage—are all products of elite boarding schools, notorious symbols of social and economic inequality. For Britain’s privately educated leaders, politics is a ladder to be climbed, and policy-making a game. Never has this been clearer than in David Cameron’s colossal gamble on Brexit in the summer of 2016, when a referendum dominated by bad-faith messaging, data breaches, and campaign-finance violations triggered the UK’s limping exit from the European Union. It was not a cause for which the majority of citizens was seriously advocating. The only real victors so far have been those (often privately educated) financiers who made millions by betting on a massive drop in the value of the pound.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege"The Metropolitan Elite". "Tory-Voting, BMW-owners with an overwhelming sense of entitlement" "Mudlarks" — The struggle is real.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitSurrounded by buzzing furcups. — This is the most disgusting and vile cartoon on the Tory party that I have seen up to now. In other words, top notch work.
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in MotoGPShould be a lifetime ban. At the very least a ban for the rest of 2018. — Has Romano Fenati lost his mind???? Grabbing a rivals brake lever at 140mph!!! Misano moto2 GP today.
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in Motorcycle RoadracingI was sceptical. But it turns out a wide track and sweeping S bends produces close and hilarious racing. All 5 major races were superb. It's a shame they can't go a bit further round to Chapel before cutting back to the Wellington Straight. I veglia remember them using the same track back in the days of Lavilla. — BSB organisers have decided to use the Silverstone National Circuit for the upcoming race weekend. This follows the historic cancellation of the MotoGP meeting recently due to the amount of standing water experienced during prolonged rainfall.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Boris Borcic They said I was crazy, but when the crisis came I was ready. https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — That's quite an exclusive club we have down there at the bottom of the graph. Two of them have better beaches than the UK.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green Technology+Jaco Venter The business. not cheap, mind. https://www.altamotors.co/redshift-mx/ — Electric Bikes Another trip to the other Fully Charged. There are lots of nice electric bikes available these days and apparently there are lots on the roads as well.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyThey're brilliant. Highly recommended. Even more fun are the highly illegal, off road versions. Full downhill bike but with 2kw through the gears. look for Bafang BBS02 and BBS-HD. Now can we please have shopper utility bikes. Sit up, comfy seat, rack and baskets front and rear, mudguards. And finally, we really need to sort out built in security. It shouldn't be an afterthought. And it should work. And it should be really easy to use so you always use it. There's too many thieving bastards in the big cities. — Electric Bikes Another trip to the other Fully Charged. There are lots of nice electric bikes available these days and apparently there are lots on the roads as well.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI was thinking more "Vera" than Breaking Bad. Grizzled veteran cop with a heart of gold, Treeza solves crimes around Maidenhead, endlessly driving her trusty Range Rover Discovery back and forth along the A4. All she's got at home is a bottle of scotch and a Charlie Bigham's Lasagne from Waitrose. Her sidekick Philip has got her back but will the disciplinary board let her get the job done before she gets told to stand down? — What is the name of this series? Is it on Netflix?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe killer escapes through a wheat field. — What is the name of this series? Is it on Netflix?
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Commented on post by Jenny WinderWhat I find most impressive is that this is done with just 87 turbines of 7 and 8MW each. — The world's largest working offshore wind farm - covering an area equal to 20,000 football pitches - is due to open later off the coast of Cumbria.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeDid you buy one Apple Product? Only one? I'm sorry, Dave, I can't let you do that without buying into the entire ecosystem. — I upgraded to the latest version of iTunes.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeThe same treatment needs to be applied to all the other hope fiends in The Intellectual Dark Web (c). Perhaps in a TED talk. Climate change isn't that bad (yet, and may end up being less bad than the 97% think). And anyway, doing anything about it would cause far more hunger and food insecurity than climate change itself. (c Lomborg). It's true the oil will eventually run out. But with Fracking, Nuclear power, GMOs, Birth Control, Educating Women, Roundup, Neonics and moving everyone to cities, we can keep business as usual going until long after you've died. And without any of those pointless renewables that don't work and kill birds. So why worry? (c Ecomodern) Don't look at this constant rise in the numbers each year. Look at this falling percentage rise compared with the total each year. Extrapolate that out and the percentages will drop to zero, right? (c WorldInData) — Ouch, that hurts.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit8. Agnostics. What they want: A quiet life without Brexit. How many? The rest. I haven't done the numbers, but I'm pretty sure they're in a large majority. There's a lot in the Labour Party as well. "I campaigned and voted remain, but what can you do? The referendum happened and now we have to make the best of it." Some seek responsibility. Some have it thrust upon them. So now what are you going to do? Just follow the whip or stand for what you actually believe? — The eight Brexit tribes in the Tory party. Let me see. There are the Militant Brexiters, the ERG-lite, the Egomaniacs, the Careerists, the Pragmatists, the Soft-Brexit Rebel Coalition, the People's Vote Brigade, and the Agnostics. Not accounted for: the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front. And then there is Labour.
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Commented on post by Jenny WinderInteresting point about this and other possible environments for life. Water based lifeforms (eg fish) have a roof to their environment. Even more so for life that exists in a liquid area with a frozen skin. The question is how that would shape their knowledge of the universe. — Water worlds could support life: Analysis challenges idea that life requires 'Earth clone'
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Code DependencyBoth Android and ChromeOS seem to have a blind spot for Home NAS and samba shares. I came across this when asking how you were supposed to listen to your mp3 collection in google play music. And the answer is "upload to Google music and then stream it back again". There are obvious benefits to this with multiple devices. But after decades of collecting music, it feels absurd. And there are limitations. 320 not FLAC, syncing playlists is some time-ish, no support for m3u playlists, <1000 track playlists, <50k total tracks. And yet, VLC for android has no problem with any of this. And SMB/CIFS on linux is as old as the hills now. It begins to look like deliberate obtuseness not to support it. — +Android -- support for Windows network names when?? I'm tired of having to use IP addresses for my in-house servers, thanks. Don't make me set up my own DNS.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Code DependencyDid this happen? "Android Samba Client" seems to be 404. — +Android -- support for Windows network names when?? I'm tired of having to use IP addresses for my in-house servers, thanks. Don't make me set up my own DNS.
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Commented on post by Jenny Winder+Dave Wonnacott I think we just mis-heard. What they meant was "No Brexit is better than a Bad Brexit". At least I think that's what they should have said. — Brexit: Planes to be grounded if UK crashes out of EU without one-off air deal, Theresa May told 'If there are no alternative arrangements in place, it would be as bad as the worst fears suggest: planes would not be allowed to fly' #StopBrexitSaveBritain #PeoplesVote #FinalSay
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeAnother Chequers summit. Another set of useless compromises. Another bunch of resignations? — The government wants to "take stock" on Brexit preparations to see if the country "could survive" a no deal Brexit. Six months to go.
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Commented on post by Jenny WinderBread and pea soup, with a little dairy, eggs and the occasional meat. Fruit and veg mostly in season and with winter stores. That kind of diet is completely healthy and sustainable. The problem is that it doesn't really scale to 7.6b people. — If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answer Intensively farmed meat and dairy are a blight, but so are fields of soya and maize. There is another way
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Commented on post by Jenny WinderEven a final referendum will still require currently sitting MPs to cancel Art50. Which they could do without the referendum. Damn you, Representative Democracy! — Please sign and share #PeoplesVote #FinalSay #StopBrexitSaveBritain
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Commented on post by Jenny Winder+Pieter van Pelt FO. And I don't mean Foreign Office. Just because you don't fear the reaper, doesn't mean you shouldn't try to avoid him. — If you weren’t scared by the prospect of a no-deal Brexit before, you sure as hell should be now This isn’t ‘Project Fear’, it’s harsh reality – and even Dominic Raab has had to admit that #PeoplesVote #FinalSay #StopBrexitSaveBritain
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitMeanwhile, Hammond writes to Nicky Morgan to inform that the Treasury believes no-deal would crash the UK economy by nearly 8% and leave borrowing £80bn a year higher. https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1032638448757297152 Good timing. — First quick analysis of the first batch of 'no deal' papers that has been released by the government today. More bureaucracy. Lots of more bureaucracy. Tons of stuff will get more expensive, as VAT will apply on all small parcels coming in from the EU. Not a word about Northern Ireland. Or aviation, it seems. Oh, very important: up to now, the UK imported human sperm from Denmark. This will have to stop, of course. British boys will do their duty and step in, of course. Think of England!
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Commented on post by Armin Grewe in Europe, Brexit, Remoaning and all that nonsenseI looked at that photo and saw somebody rolling themselves a camberwell carrot. — When no deal is actually a deal. A very bad one to be precise, where you lose all the control you wanted to take back and introduce a huge bureaucracy instead of reducing it.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeISTR a plan to bury nuclear waste in the Cascadian sub-duction zone. Superficially sensible. Except that the sub-duction zones are the most earthquake active areas on the planet. Mainly it's yet another scale error (YASE). If you have a few 10s of million years the earth will suck it down. But in the mean time, it's just as liable to get thrown back up into the air or sea. As for chucking stuff in volcanoes, we have pretty much mastered fire now. To the point where we don't need to use natural fire just because it's there. Although, perhaps we could dump it on forest fires since they're going to burn anyway. — Interesting question. Even leaving the awkward logistics aside, the answer is 'no'.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeAlthough perhaps a complete withdrawal from the region and an end to drone bombing of the Afghani-Pakistan border areas might be no bad thing. Lest we forget, Afghanistan has a (porous) border with Iran. — What could possibly go wrong?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitHow ironic that so many of them write opinion pieces for that very organ. — We have become a nation run by people whose knowledge extends a mile wide but an inch deep; who know how to grasp the generalities of any topic in minutes, and how never to bother themselves with the specifics. Who place their confidence in their ability to talk themselves out of trouble, rather than learning how to run things carefully. And who were trained in this dubious art as teenagers: often together on the same university course. We have become a nation run by people whose knowledge extends a mile wide but an inch deep; who know how to grasp the generalities of any topic in minutes, and how never to bother themselves with the specifics. Who place their confidence in their ability to talk themselves out of trouble, rather than learning how to run things carefully. And who were trained in this dubious art as teenagers: often together on the same university course. [..] But other consequences are deeper still: the short-termism of our institutions is, in no small part, due to bluffing. As the Brexit preparations (or lack thereof) are beginning to demonstrate.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Doug Senko Cheap Afghani opium should take the edge off trying to cope with £7 a pint craft beer. — Anything in particular you want to bring into the UK post Brexit? A truck with dodgy meat? Some white powder? Or are you just into plain old human trafficking?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexithttps://twitter.com/PassportTotnes https://www.facebook.com/citystatetotnes/ https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — London next! Then Scotland, then Wales, then Cornwall!
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Technology Meets HumanityThe price for stealing fire and giving it to humans is to be chained to a rock and having your liver pecked out by an Eagle. For ever. So Technotopianism leads to cirrhosis of the liver? — "I'm highly pessimistic of human culture and optimistic of human nature." Jamie Wheal articulates a kind of updated Bodhisattva message in this interview. "Stay awake, build stuff."
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Analysis and News About GoogleHmmm? Android. Facebook app. Hamburger menu. see more. feeds. List feeds are still there. Seem to be identical to the browser versions. — Facebook Kills Friend List Feeds, The Best Feature Ever Stolen From Google+.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Analysis and News About GoogleStill working for me in the web[1] version. Note also that Twitter has also had lists and list feeds for a long time. In both Twitter and facebook it's easiest to use browser bookmarks to get back to them as the UI to actually find the list feeds is awkward. My use case for this is to be be fairly indiscriminate about friending people. I then manually curate a "close friends" list which is my main way of viewing Facebook/Twitter. I then have a couple of special purpose community of interest lists eg "Motorcycle Racing". My use of Facebook boils down to three areas. 1) Close friends list feed 2) Pages list feed on pages I've liked and followed (I could do with sub-list curation on this as well) 3) Groups for specific communities of interest Between these and aggressive adblocking and function hiding with adblock and Stylus I can get high value and low noise out of Facebook. Finally improved with a bit of cutting down the notification settings. [1]With all social media sites, the browser version usually works better than the app version. If they'll let you use it. — Facebook Kills Friend List Feeds, The Best Feature Ever Stolen From Google+.
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Commented on post by Armin Grewe in Europe, Brexit, Remoaning and all that nonsense+Armin Grewe I have no idea what really happened in Salisbury, Amesbury and Douma (or even if they should be linked). But pretty much everything we've been told via the official channels makes no sense whatsoever. So it's hardly surprising the events are ripe with conspiracy theories. It's almost as if the official narratives were designed to generate conspiracy theories to obfuscate whatever it was that actually happened. While providing reasons to blame the Russians and justification to bomb stuff and expel diplomats. With extensive D Notices and gov-media pressure to control the state media and prevent the public media from asking too many questions. It's the 45 minutes/WMDs of 2018. Except executed by increasingly incompetent amateurs with even less credibility. IMHO. — A very valid point. Baffling. Why is the UK so complacent about Russia's meddling?
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyThis is one of many things I find deeply depressing about the design and style of current new builds. We're covering the SE of England with "Garden City" style "new villages". These consist of detached and semi-detached 3-4 bed room houses in cul de sacs with a tiny patch of garden and space for 1.5 cars. The trend is for 10 architecture designs chosen randomly and then laid out randomly so they all point in different directions. They're all white, cream, red brick, some times with some fake wood beams. Where are the - passive haus designs - electric car charging points - solar panels - basement storage - Victorian terraces - stacked 2 bedroom maisonettes - shops, pubs, play areas - places to walk the dog - social housing - Allotments and so on. Will these houses last >200 years like the previous housing stock in our villages and towns? Will they ever generate any feel of community? — Why aren't all new build houses fitted with solar? I have been saying this for a long time and it is a no brainer. If you are in the UK sign the petition! https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/218223
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeIn 100 days, they'll be playing Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody, 24/7. Is there a difference? — I pity the employees.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitNuclear weapons are not an answer to a break down of law and order. It's just one of many things they can't help with. — \begin{tinfoilhat} Modernising the armed forces when you absolutely have no money to spent might indicate the desire for some foreign adventure. Remember that Thatcher won an election due to the Falklands War. \end{tinfoilhat} The above, of course, would never happen in a mature democracy.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitJust say no to Bre卐it. — An increase of 23% in religious and racial hate crimes after the Brexit vote, with several police forces reporting an increase by 40% ? Surely just a blip, right? Nothing to do with enabling racists, right?
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Commented on post by Jenny Winderhttps://twitter.com/mattwridley/status/966074652006199296 Funny how right wing, climate denying, Bre卐iters just love Steven Pinker. — Brexit and the rejection of reason
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAnother Brexit Cabinet away day. Another set of unworkable compromises that fall apart within hours. Will it bring another set of resignations? How about they have a cabinet summit on BINO and NOBREXIT. How about a cabinet summit on discarding "Red Lines". — A Cabinet summit on no-deal Brexit? I wonder what the agenda might be. 1) We are fucked. 2) How can we enrich ourselves? 3) Any other business.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe one objective the present government has is to stay in power. Unfortunately, the one objective the present opposition has is to gain power. And their policy wonks also have an ideological objection to the EU, while believing that challenging Brexit is "political suicide". So both sides are practicing Kali-esque creative destruction, hoping something better for them will emerge from the wreckage. — Three signals suggest that we have entered the No Deal phase of the Brexit negotiations. (A) Liam Fox suggesting in the Times that the chance of No Deal is 60% (B) The eerie silence post Theresa May’s meeting with Macron (any positives would have been announced with great jubilation) (C) The Telegraph story suggesting the EU is legally obliged to provide the UK with a good deal - ie preemptive blame assignment. All rather plausible. The one objective the present government has is to stay in power. Preparing for Brexit or going for the EEA option would probably result in a leadership challenge, and so they just wait and hope that something happens. So the only chance left is to increase the political cost of the present 'carry on regardless' stance of the government. Not sure how can achieve that except by crashing the economy before Brexit.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit 1) England Leaving the EU 2) The UK staying together and Scotland, Wales, N.Ireland remaining part of the UK. — FFS.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Joseph Moosman Still no score after extra time so it goes to penalties. EU wins after Barnier stops one and Raab slips and Sky's one into the stands. — No one imagined a member state starting the negotiations clock before deciding on a negotiating position or delaying for over 15 months before seeking cabinet consensus on what kind of future relationship it sought. Don’t blame the treaty: the time pressure we’re now under is entirely of our own making. Must be something to do with those tax avoidance laws that the EU will enact in 2019. But intentions can change and an article 50 notification isn’t an irrevocable act. We could take the letter back at any time before 29 March 2019 or before the end of any agreed extra time. There would be no price, political or financial, to pay, because we would never have left. Behaving like a bull in a china shop does not come with a price? I know that this Guardian piece is written by the guy who drafted Article 50, but that sounds rather optimistic to me.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond+John Barker Satirical comment a month too late? An attempt at humour? It's your phone. Do what you want with it. Perhaps a bucket of water might help. — Are you going to hit the streets today? https://www.stopbrexitmarch.com/ https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/what-is-the-people-s-march-brexit-protest-and-rally-in-london-on-saturday-23-june-2018-1-5573899 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44575929 https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-march-2018-thousands-to-march-on-westminster-to-demand-second-referendum-a3869606.html Just Say No To Brexit
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Commented on post by Jenny WinderOk. So let's take this seriously. How exactly could this happen? At a minimum, it would require HoC to vote for it. So what are the pre-requisites for that to happen? — UK could cancel #Brexit and stay in EU on same terms, says French government 'We have always said, always, that the door would remain open,' says European affairs minister Nathalie Loiseau Do it! FFS DO IT! #PeoplesVote #StopBrexit
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Commented on post by Johnny Stork in PhilosophyCountries should have to prove that they can run fair elections before they should be allowed to give their people a vote. — Should People Need to Prove They Are Informed Before Being Allowed to Vote? "In 2016, Georgetown University political philosopher Jason Brennan published a controversial book, Against Democracy. He argued that democracy is overrated — that it isn’t necessarily more just than other forms of government, and that it doesn’t empower citizens or create more equitable outcomes." "According to Brennan, we’d be better off if we replaced democracy with a form of government known as “epistocracy.” Epistocracy is a system in which the votes of people who can prove their political knowledge count more than the votes of people who can’t. In other words, it’s a system that privileges the most politically informed citizens." #philosophy #democracy #epistocracy
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitDon't get ill. Especially, don't get ill enough to need blood products or imported medicines. https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — Tweet from Lisa O'Carroll (Guardian correspondent): BREAKING: Raab promises government will "make sure there is adequate food" in Britain in the event of no Brexit deal. But says it is wrong to say government itself is stockpiling "Adequate". Very reassuring.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitFor 30 years we've lived on Tripe. Now Brexit is coming, I don't know what we'll do. Never mind dear, I'll put the kettle on. We can have a nice cup of hot water. https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — Tweet from Lisa O'Carroll (Guardian correspondent): BREAKING: Raab promises government will "make sure there is adequate food" in Britain in the event of no Brexit deal. But says it is wrong to say government itself is stockpiling "Adequate". Very reassuring.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Gerhard Torges Just Say No To Bre卐it https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — The great Brexit con So what is Jacob Rees-Mogg up to with telling us that it might take 50 years to reap the benefits of Brexit? What he’s doing here is something con-men have always had to do – stopping their victim going to the police when the goods they have charged him for fail to arrive. This job is called cooling the mark out, as described back in 1952 by Erving Goffman: "An attempt is made to define the situation for the mark in a way that makes it easy for him to accept the inevitable and quietly go home. The mark is given instruction in the philosophy of taking a loss." Classican Nigerian scam. The millions are in a Swiss bank account, but there are some additional processing fees. There are three processes at work here: 1) Desire for consistency. "Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment." 2) 'If its expensive it must be good'. Expensive placebos work better than cheap ones. Expensive cars. Trump salesmanship. University fees. Initiation rites in the military and the workplace. Stuff we have worked hard for we value more, even if there is no rational argument for it. 3) Sunk costs. We’ve come so far and paid so much we can’t turn back now. Good conmen can work all three processes to squeeze out their mark even more. Watch out for deregulation requests. We need to get rid of all these worker's rights to be more competitive. After all, we have come so far. It will be a small price to pay.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Gilles Bourdin Cry "Chapeau" for irony. — The great Brexit con So what is Jacob Rees-Mogg up to with telling us that it might take 50 years to reap the benefits of Brexit? What he’s doing here is something con-men have always had to do – stopping their victim going to the police when the goods they have charged him for fail to arrive. This job is called cooling the mark out, as described back in 1952 by Erving Goffman: "An attempt is made to define the situation for the mark in a way that makes it easy for him to accept the inevitable and quietly go home. The mark is given instruction in the philosophy of taking a loss." Classican Nigerian scam. The millions are in a Swiss bank account, but there are some additional processing fees. There are three processes at work here: 1) Desire for consistency. "Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment." 2) 'If its expensive it must be good'. Expensive placebos work better than cheap ones. Expensive cars. Trump salesmanship. University fees. Initiation rites in the military and the workplace. Stuff we have worked hard for we value more, even if there is no rational argument for it. 3) Sunk costs. We’ve come so far and paid so much we can’t turn back now. Good conmen can work all three processes to squeeze out their mark even more. Watch out for deregulation requests. We need to get rid of all these worker's rights to be more competitive. After all, we have come so far. It will be a small price to pay.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI'm sure Waitrose will sort something out. — Tweet from Lisa O'Carroll (Guardian correspondent): BREAKING: Raab promises government will "make sure there is adequate food" in Britain in the event of no Brexit deal. But says it is wrong to say government itself is stockpiling "Adequate". Very reassuring.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIf we had a multi-choice referendum with transferable 2nd (or more) choices, are 3 enough? As I said earlier, there seem to be at least 6 identifiable options: ND (No Deal), HB (Hard), CC (Chequers), BINO (Name Only), ED (Endless Delay), NOB (No-Brexit). Regardless of a popular vote, we actually need MPs to vote on these. And parliamentary voting does not allow 2nd choices. IF MPs could have a free vote on these 6 options what would they vote for? And would they vote on their conscience and beliefs or on their perception of what their electing constituents wanted? All of which is just idle speculation, because the end game is not going to play out like this. It's going to involve knives, backs and meat hooks. — YouGov polling result, from 19/20 July 2018.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeOriginal: http://voidstar.com/images/cctv.jpg Related: http://voidstar.com/images/chemical_lge_2.jpg Watchful Eyes: http://voidstar.com/images/secure.jpg — The Civil Service Quarterly, a publication of the Cabinet Office, accidentally used a Scarfolk poster as the latest cover. The poster encourages parents to shoot their children. OK you good folks, what do you think? How accidental was this?
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeThe civil service have produced some wonderful posters in their time. The "Beneath the watchful eyes" series were classics. My fav is this Anti-Terrorism poster encouraging the public to report anything suspicious. http://voidstar.com/images/sonic_attack.jpg — The Civil Service Quarterly, a publication of the Cabinet Office, accidentally used a Scarfolk poster as the latest cover. The poster encourages parents to shoot their children. OK you good folks, what do you think? How accidental was this?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI wonder what preparations and warnings they're giving out in N Ireland. Stockpile red diesel? Get dual nationality and move south? — 'Britain steps up doomsday planning for no-deal Brexit' A 10-mile-long motorway in south-east England can be shut and turned into a lorry park to cope with tailbacks from the port of Dover if Britain crashes out of the EU with no deal, under one plan being considered by the government. The M26 in Kent would become a “holding area” for up to 1,400 goods vehicles to try to ease the gridlock as up to 10,000 lorries a day suddenly require customs checks to enter the EU. Over the summer, the government will start issuing weekly advice to businesses and households on how to prepare for a “disorderly” Brexit and 70 technical notes are being prepared. As part of the preparations, some 250,000 small businesses will be asked to start making customs declarations, in a dry run for a hard Brexit. I wonder how many people will wake up then. In the face of heavy traffic at the ports, however, HMRC said on Thursday that it would prioritise keeping the “flow moving” over collecting duties. About 5,000 new customs officials will be needed if there is no Brexit deal, and 1,113 have so far been hired, HMRC said. Taking back control.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond6 Now. ND = No Deal HB = Hard Brexit CC = Chequers Compromise BINO = Brexit In Name Only ED = Endless Delay NOB = No Brexit — 5 Brexit Options - Full Brexit JRM, BJ, DD, ERG. Crash out in the biggest possible way. - Chequers Compromise The impossible middle way. Not acceptable to pretty much everyone. EU, Leavers, Remainers, N Ireland, etc, etc, - Brexit in Name Only Leave EU but not any EU structure. Stay in the Customs Union, Single Market, 4 freedoms, ECJ, Euratom, etc, etc. Sensible, but not actually acceptable to anyone. - Delay Negotiate 2-year stays of execution. Repeat indefinitely. Give up control but don't change anything. Wait until political climate changes. - Cancel Art50 and Remain This is probably possible but nobody really knows the implications. Full Euro and Schengen as a minimum payment for wasting the EU's time? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jul/16/back-second-brexit-vote-says-conservative-mp-justine-greening We are so screwed. But we're heading into an end game. And people are beginning to talk about the break up of the UK 2 party system. And some fundamental re-alignments. Which is going to be tricky because the sensible middle ground consists of MPs who have never rebelled and never gone against their party's whip. It's hard to see how they could grow a backbone and do anything. While simultaneously holding their nose and cooperating with the other tribe. More likely is that the extremes of each party break away. Leaving 2 rump parties, neither of which can get a majority.
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Commented on post by Jenny WinderThere is no answer to N Ireland that is acceptable to everyone. And the only two that actually work are BINO (Brexit In Name Only) and NOB (No-Brexit). ND (No Deal), HB (Hard Brexit) and CC (Chequers Compromise) simply don't work. Those three all require abandoning N Ireland which will bring down the government. The Tories and the factions within it (especially ERG) are still publicly in denial about this. But unfortunately, BINO and NOB will also bring down the government. Labour is very slowly inching towards BINO without really publicly opposing. Get the summer holidays out the way and we're into the end game. -- 6 options Now. ND = No Deal HB = Hard Brexit CC = Chequers Compromise BINO = Brexit In Name Only ED = Endless Delay NOB = No Brexit — May's Brexit proposals have been two years in the making. They were killed off in Brussels within eight minutes Does it feel like the risk that was taken with our children and our children’s children’s futures might not be paying off? #BrexitShambles #StopBrexit
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI suspect it's actually a subset of psychopathocracy: Sociopathocracy Achieved via a Pigopolist Tendency. — 'The Brexit campaign represents a triumph for a view of politics as mere marketing.' Many leftist remainers accuse Brexiters of being neoliberal. In one sense, this is questionable: "fuck business" is not a neoliberal sentiment, and nor is a desire for harsh immigration controls. (Many) Brexiters, however, have a different conception [of politics]. To them, politics is simply about getting what you want by whatever means you can, regardless of cost. We could have had a rational debate in the referendum about the trade-off between sovereignty and prosperity. But we didn’t. Those Brexiters who now privately claim that the loss of ‘hundreds of thousands of jobs’ would be worth it didn’t say so at the time. For them, getting what they wanted trumped duties of honesty. Of course, the Brexiters might have won an honest and legal campaign, but they never took that chance. In this sense, Brexit is like spivs mis-selling financial products. All that matters is that the sale gets booked, that the seller gets his bonus. The cost of achieving those sales – the future fines that’ll be paid by some other mugs - doesn’t matter. The author then claims that all this falls under the remit of neoliberalism. I don't know. It falls more under the remit of psychopathism, if you ask me. Its not a kleptocracy or an oligarchy, its a psychopathocracy.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitN Ireland either gets more complicated or is reaching some clarity depending on your point of view. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/19/theresa-may-i-will-never-accept-eus-ideas-on-irish-brexit-border Any kind of border between N Ireland and the rest of the UK was never going to fly but is now impossible. But Theresa wants to say that "Regulatory alignment", even temporarily, in the event of no deal is also impossible. Quite the dilemma. The Irish border is still the problem that will bring down all the rest. — I see that the new Brexit negotiator has arrived in Brussels.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeDonald Poutine — The new Time cover is a thing of beauty.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit5 Brexit Options - Full Brexit / NoDeal. JRM, BJ, DD, ERG. Crash out in the biggest possible way. - Today's Chequers Compromise. The impossible middle way. Not acceptable to pretty much everyone. EU, Leavers, Remainers, N Ireland, etc, etc, - Brexit in Name Only. Leave EU but not any EU structure. Stay in the Customs Union, Single Market, 4 freedoms, ECJ, Euratom, etc, etc. Sensible, but not actually acceptable to anyone. - Delay. Negotiate 2-year stays of execution via "Transition Periods". Repeat indefinitely. Give up control but don't change anything. Wait until political climate changes. - Cancel Art50 and Remain. This is probably possible but nobody really knows the implications. Full Euro and Schengen as a minimum payment for wasting the EU's time? We are so screwed. But we're heading into an end game. — That went exactly as expected. Led by Michel Barnier’s deputy, Sabine Weyand, the EU’s team of officials picked apart the most contentious parts of the paper as it was presented by Olly Robbins, Theresa May’s chief Brexit adviser, leading to increased concerns on both sides that a no-deal scenario is moving from possible to likely. “The white paper is not going to form the basis of the negotiations,” one senior EU diplomat told the Guardian.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeOi, Football, FFS man! Go home. You're drunk. And put some clothes on. — Approbating success, the Sun style.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI remember the gang of four and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). That was eminently sensible from eminently sensible people. But look where that led. Maybe there is room for a Pro-EU, Pro-Remain, Centrist, Mixed Economy, Social Democratic, Unionist Party. And if the other extremes fragment into Left, Right, UKIP, DUP, Sinn Fein it might well command a substantial majority. But to get from here to there would mean long-term moderate Tory and (Blairite) Labour MPs holding their noses to come together. And moderate MPs who have never voted against the whip and always hold the party line growing a backbone and actually rebelling. The only way I see this happening is the minority crazies of each major party leaving to each start their own new "One True X". So that the respective rumps end up as equal major parties neither of which can get anywhere near a majority. Followed by a temporary Tory-Labour pact. — Well, one can hope.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeThe 4 of them on the red carpet at Blenheim Palace with the mass guards band doing the full 10 minute fan fare perfectly timed to close the evening news. And our Treeza's showing a bit of ham and eggs. https://youtu.be/KCP0-XfbyRU?t=43 What a picture, what a photograph Stick it in your family, Stick it in your family, ... Al - bum — Borowitz is off the chains.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThis is a fake satirical site, right? — Holy guacamole, they have a Brexit plan. The Conservatives have a public Brexit plan. Well, at least they have a succinct URL: https://www.conservatives.com/brexitplan Anyone wants to count the inconsistencies which puts this into unicorn land?
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeSaxifrage or Sexy Farage? Only one of them is succulent. — Dear iOS, If you autocorrect "Frage" to "Farage" one more time, I am going back to Windows.
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Commented on post by Armin Grewe in Europe, Brexit, Remoaning and all that nonsense"Riots" could mean a lot of different things. Cable St or Tottenham, or The Troubles. A bit of unpleasantness with a handful of EDL/BNP is quite likely, but more than that? — Also be prepared for riots, as Farage will call for them. And at least some of his followers will oblige.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitExtend. Got to keep power till 2022. — Crash, capitulate, or extend? So what's going to happen? Leave your opinion in the comments. I might take bets.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitYou gotta be sure that it's something Everybody's gonna talk about Before you decide that the times arrived For making your mind up https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — The Raft of the Maydusa Adrift at sea. And look how happy Macron is to see the back of the Brits.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThis one was particularly good. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DSEQXRnWsAAGJ5R.jpg Of course the UK refugees won't be allowed to land anywhere in the EU. Except maybe Gibraltar. — The Raft of the Maydusa Adrift at sea. And look how happy Macron is to see the back of the Brits.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt was an ironic comment. It's Theresa May that is putting lives at risk in N. Ireland over Brexit by failing to offer a realistic solution to the N Ireland problem. Double the hypocrisy. — Theresa tries blackmailing. Its not very effective.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWas she referring to N. Ireland? — Theresa tries blackmailing. Its not very effective.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitYou can't build cars here. This is batshit country. — Where we are going, we don't need any cars!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexita sizeable minority of relatively well-off and relatively well-educated people who voted leave because they thought the EU imposed on the sovereignty of the UK I've lost friends and wont speak to them any more over this. Left wing at 19, right wing capitalist at 29, fascist bastard at 59. And these are people that travel frequently in Europe and by any standard are European. How does that happen? There's often a well developed and well argued cognitive dissonance here. They'll find a way to argue in favour of Scottish, N Irish and Welsh independence because "if I argue for independence from the EU, how can I argue against independence from Westminster". But they don't seem to be able to see just how destructive they're being. Or they'll turn that into a positive and start talking about creative destruction and new beginnings. If you meet Shiva on the road, just shoot him. Especially if he's wearing the mask of Kali. — Long report (well, 27 pages PDF, [1]) on why Britain voted leave. TL;DR: as in many an analysis before, it's the xenophobic and the racists that expressed their vote. And these traits correlate strongly with age (positively) and education (negatively). Add to this toxic mix the left behinders who just want to stick it to the man. The one newsworthy bit seems to be that there is a sizeable minority of relatively well-off and relatively well-educated people who voted leave because they thought the EU imposed on the sovereignty of the UK. The other news is how well-entrenched those feelings are and have been. [1] http://www.matthewjgoodwin.org/uploads/6/4/0/2/64026337/leave_vote_lecture.pdf
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit"Only 156 MPs had campaigned for an outcome (Leave) that was supported by a majority of people in 401 seats." Also turn that around. A large number of MPs campaigned for Remain and personally voted for Remain were elected in constituencies that had a majority for Leave. In 2015, they made this clear. And largely in 2017, they didn't stand for their views but for acceptance of the referendum. This is troublesome. And a big part of Labour's problems with positioning. It also reflects that voting in general elections is tribal and rarely for the individual MP or the individual MP's views. The MP can be seriously out of step with their constituents providing they stand for the correct party. And having been elected, especially when there is a narrow majority, they can't realistically rebel. So we get the distasteful sight of comparatively sensible MPs voting with the whip and against their actual views. — Long report (well, 27 pages PDF, [1]) on why Britain voted leave. TL;DR: as in many an analysis before, it's the xenophobic and the racists that expressed their vote. And these traits correlate strongly with age (positively) and education (negatively). Add to this toxic mix the left behinders who just want to stick it to the man. The one newsworthy bit seems to be that there is a sizeable minority of relatively well-off and relatively well-educated people who voted leave because they thought the EU imposed on the sovereignty of the UK. The other news is how well-entrenched those feelings are and have been. [1] http://www.matthewjgoodwin.org/uploads/6/4/0/2/64026337/leave_vote_lecture.pdf
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Doug Senko https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96I2CWHa_-A The Brexit Anthem Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - Roadrunner comes to mind as well. "Turn the Radio On". And all I hear is the Radio 4 Today programme. — Here comes the next.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt's just politics. But 'jeez, what is wrong with these people? Won't anyone actually stand up for what they believe in? My own Tory MP will tell you he was a Remainer, who voted Remain and believes we should stay in the EU. But has never, ever, ever, voted against the whip. And is quite happy to say "Well the referendum happened so what can you do? All we can do now is try and make the best of it". — Grieve and his rebels have climbed down: they voted against their own tabled amendment. Final outcome 303:319. Apparently, they settled for a concession that recognised "the authority of MPs to hold the government to account, and saying that it would be for the Speaker to decide at the time whether any government motion could be amended." Which means, basically, that the final part of the Grieve amendment has been killed off. Hard Brexiters are very happy.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeIf you're in the UK pointing at USA child internment camps, remember Yarls Wood. G4S and Serco are much more efficient at this stuff. The Private Prison (Military Entertainment) Industrial Complex is global now. — Ah, the "totally not like Nazi Germany" excuse. That's where we are.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Lee Rothstein The UK system is complicated. Trying to explain how an un-elected chamber that is stuffed with a mix of political appointments, hereditary representatives and other specialists is part of our ancient and developing democratic process may take a while. It's different, not undemocratic. If it helps, think of it as a large advisory body that votes internally on it's view of what ought to be done. That view is then taken as advice by the elected representatives. But then I was born and live here, and frankly, I don't really understand it either. — Aaaaand we are back to the House of Commons. The House of Lords wacked the Grieve amendment back to the Commons with a vote of 354:235. Grieve and his rebels (read: sensible Leavers) had been doublecrossed by May last week. May had promised to leave the Grieve amendment as it is, the rebels didn't rebel, and May turned around and deleted the amendment from the bill. Not so fast, said the House of Lords. Wednesday's parliamentary debate is going to be interesting.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitDo they think we're stupid? Yes. — All going according to plan.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliegehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deoNAOfkXxc — On someone who got his leg amputated after an accident, and decided to take his leg home. And cook it. (Recipe: marinate overnight and sautee with onions, peppers, salt, pepper, and lime juice. Served on corn tortillas with a tomatillo sauce.) Supposed to be very beefy, akin to venison. Maybe I should invite my PhD students for dinner.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademia+Edward Morbius +1 for Idries Shah - World Tales. Wonderful book. — On memory palaces, and song lines. (Via +Rhys Taylor.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit- Nessie (Scotland voted remain, nearly voted for independence) - Minis (owned by BMW) - Didcot power station. Fell down while being dismantled What else can you spot? — German sheep, Italian architects, Greek engineers, Seraphim fish dishes, potatoes from across the Atlantic, and other totally British concepts.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeThere's a thought that won't go away. Trump (and the USA) thinks he's playing poker or american football or some "OK Corral", Mexican standoff, duel thing or fixed odds slot machines. N Korea (and China) are playing Go. — Kim seems to have completely out-negotiated Trump, and it’s scary that Trump doesn’t seem to realize this.
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Commented on post by Sisco Vanilla in Mixology 🍸It's all about the Vermouth. Cocchi Torino is a rare treat. Beware though, there's a LOT of sugar in a Negroni. Not sure about all this stirring and then pouring. Just chuck all the ingredients in a rocks glass with plenty of rocks, give it a stir and you're done. — It's Negroni week and here is the classic Negroni. Equal parts @campariofficial @plymouthginus and Vermouth Rosso. Garnish with Orange peel. As usual the Campari stands out and gets me on the back of the tongue. But mind you it's a pleasurable hit on the tongue. A tu salud!!! #FinnsCorner #Negroni #CountNegroni #NegroniWeek #Campari #PlymouthGin #VermouthRosso #Cocktail #Cocktails #Coctel #Cocteles #Cocteleria #SiscoVanilla #SiscoVanillaIsStepping
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Commented on post by Miyon Ishikawa in MotoGPHas there been a formal announcement that he's retiring? — Good bye! , Good luck! & Thank you❣️ LITTLE SAMURAI "Dani" Pedrosa 26
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in EnvironmentSuccessfully trolled Stewart Brand into tweeting the word, "terafart". Mission accomplished. Achievement unlocked. https://twitter.com/stewartbrand/status/1005133139939766274 — The #terafart What mankind does when we dump 1 Tera-Tonne of Carbon (1 TtC) into the atmosphere by burning all the accessible fossil fuel, mixed in with some methane liberated from the melting tundra. It isn't completed yet but we're well on the way with business as usual. We're currently blowing 8 Giga-tonnes of Carbon (8GtC) into the atmosphere per year. And it's still accelerating no matter what gets pledged for the Paris Climate talks. Deep human history to 1970 =~ 185GtC, 1970 to 2010 =~ 185GtC. 2010 to 2100 is predicted to be 700-1400GtC. That's one hell of a "Whale Fall". Unlike a real whale fall, there won't be another one. We get just one shot at this and when the whale's gone, it's gone. After that, it's all renewable sustainability. Hat tip to https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/ for coming up with the idea, described in http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1 
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+Gilles Bourdin 1) She chose her path. So she gets no sympathy from me. 2) All heads of state age prematurely. If they don't, there's something fishy going on. 3) There is no plan. There is no hidden agenda. WYSIWYG. The headless chicken behaviour is real. 4) The bondage chain jewellery still scares me. Every PM is born free; and everywhere they are in chains. — Still no plan. Two years gone, and no plan.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege404 not found — Glitch in the matrix?
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Artificial Intelligence8) Be Most Excellent To Humans 9) Don't Be A Dick — Google sets out its principles around artificial intelligence. Encouraging. 1. Be socially beneficial. 2. Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias. 3. Be built and tested for safety. 4. Be accountable to people. 5. Incorporate privacy design principles. 6. Uphold high standards of scientific excellence. 7. Be made available for uses that accord with these principles: Many technologies have multiple uses. We will work to limit potentially harmful or abusive applications. As we develop and deploy AI technologies, we will evaluate likely uses in light of the following factors: Primary purpose and use: the primary purpose and likely use of a technology and application, including how closely the solution is related to or adaptable to a harmful use Nature and uniqueness: whether we are making available technology that is unique or more generally available Scale: whether the use of this technology will have significant impact Nature of Google’s involvement: whether we are providing general-purpose tools, integrating tools for customers, or developing custom solutions
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitJust as long as they don't help the Conservatives avoid defeat by abstaining or voting with them every step along the way until it's too late. It's such a dangerous game. — Step by step, Labour moves towards reality. Now they can already see the end of the tunnel.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThere doesn't seem to be a generic name for followers and supporters of Jacob Rees-Mogg. I suggest "The Moggies". — Sky News has also heard of major UK automotive suppliers now ceasing UK supply of major components to cars for export to countries currently covered by EU Free Trade Areas - countries such as South Korea, South Africa and Canada. Andrew Varga of Seetru, a manufacturer of safety valves in Bristol, said that last autumn, many existing customers showed caution in taking UK parts into new models. "There was an 'oh my god moment' last August. Our customers don't have the infrastructure to manage UK certificates of origin," he said. Looks like we need to sell more fish. And turnips.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+michael cole The real question. Does the UK leave or only England while the new countries of Scotland, Wales, and Norn stay in the EU? I have very little faith in another referendum being fought on the basis of rational thought and facts. So I thinks it's exceedingly dangerous. The only good ending would be 75-25 remain and upwards and I just don't think that's possible. Which leaves some possibilities. - An autumn 2018 general election in which Labour narrowly win. But perhaps somebody could explain how this would change anything. At all. - A minimum Brexit where we stay in all the EU institutions. Customs union, Single market, Euratom, ECJ. Formally and indefinitely. - A minimum Brexit where we stay in all the EU institutions for repeated temporary periods of 2 years. - Crash out (and burn) with no deal on 29 March 2019 — Here’s the thing, the last great taboo of Brexit, the unsayable. But I’ll say it anyway because it’s true: the British public were not smart enough to understand the consequences of Brexit. This isn’t elitist. Nobody was smart enough. We were all too ignorant, too lied to, too manipulated by media, too encouraged to believe the failings of domestic politics were someone else’s fault, and too hypnotised by abstracts such as “sovereignty” “taking back control”, “red, white and blue Brexit”. Deceits dressed up as patriotism. Based on this, the author then makes the case for a second referendum. Informed, clear-eyed, snapped free from hypnosis. While I think the premise is correct, the case made looks weak to me.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeI get a surprising amount of misdirected emails to the address without the dot. But not yet any phishing that doesn't also get caught by gmail's junk filters. — This blasted gmail feature has to go.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitFormer chancellor, fervent Brexiteer ... and Climate Change Denier. — Fantastic stuff from the Brexit comedians.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt's all just gammon and spinnage, gammon and spinnage. Maybe it's like the multiple buffalo sentence given that gammon now refers to a class of people as well as a cured meat and a form of common gossip. Gammon gammon gammons gammon gammon gammon. Hmm: Is it a verb[1] as well? [1]I never met a noun I couldn't verb. — "I felt a great disturbance in the Brexit, as if millions of gammons suddenly cried out in anger..."
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademialol! The "3" trick in YT is brilliant. Did not know that one. — Listing authors in alphabetical order discriminates against X, Y, and Z. And I am not being facetious: apparently, having a last name starting with A improves your chances of getting tenure by 26%, as opposed to someone whose last name starts with Z.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeThe X Market will be Y big in Z years. How X will kill Y. X is going to be the Y of Z. X vs Y - Who will win? These articles write themselves. I strongly suspect that in 2018 that's literally true and not just a metaphor. — Not bad for your first quest. Now take on Twitter.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaHow does that explain why so many of my favourite SciFi authors begin with S? — Listing authors in alphabetical order discriminates against X, Y, and Z. And I am not being facetious: apparently, having a last name starting with A improves your chances of getting tenure by 26%, as opposed to someone whose last name starts with Z.
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in Motorcycle RoadracingI hope he makes a full recovery. And I also hope he retires and doesn't return to racing. Last year and early this year, he was obviously still fast, but I definitely got the impression that he wasn't prepared to really push it any more. So much as I wanted him to push all the BSB records beyond reach, enough is enough. — Superbike star Shane Byrne ‘in good spirits’ after surgery following brutal crash Shakey suffered a fracture to his back plus several other injuries during a test session at Snetterton.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingThink I'm imagining it as I can't find pictures now of what I thought I saw on TV in parc ferme — Congrats to Van Der Mark. Just noticed something strange VdM uses two levers on the left bar of his Yamaha. Is this the Pasini option? Or an alternative for a rear brake?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitNot so much the US as a 3rd world developing country from the old commonwealth, circa 1930. Decaying infrastructure, huge inequality, stifling bureaucracy. — Austerity Britain, year 8. A view from the other side of the pond. They say the UK resembles the US more than any European state. I don't think that's a compliment anymore. Ah, well. The Tory government. This is all going according to plan.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademia+Joerg Fliege That's 750 years of mission creep and counting. There used to be an apocryphal story that you could walk from Trinity College to the City of London on Trinity land but you had to go via Cornwall. The current situation is like some Time Travel SciFi where the protagonist goes back centuries to invest pocket change at 1%/yr interest. And needs to liquidate the investment fund that now owns the world to fund building the time machine. And yes, it is way past time they divested from fossil fuels and invested ethically. — Things you could do if you had an appropriate endowment.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Boris Borcic I remember that slogan. "Let June be the End of May". Turned out well, didn't it. — First she is running through wheat fields, now she is playing hide and seek. Will she ever grow up? And then there is this: Last week the British negotiating team proposed that the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the largest data protection authority in the EU, sit on the body that will regulate the new GDPR data rules. It also wishes to be part of the “one-stop shop” mechanism, whereby only one supervisory authority, rather than multiple bodies across the EU, decides on cross-border data disputes, so at to give EU and UK firms greater certainty. Are these people completely mad?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Andrew Meir There's no need for bad language. We'll have none of your foreign muck here. — Liam Fox has been wrong?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitZulus. Thousands of 'em. Coming over here. Blowing the bloody doors off! — Splendid rant. So many movie references. Dominic Cummings as the villain with the brilliant plan, foiled by his own idiotic henchmen. The Tories as Ladykillers, slowly stalking each other. And Boris Johnson was supposed to blow only the doors off.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitYes, But, "The Dilemma" doesn't make it clear enough. The Dilemma is that there is no solution to achieving Brexit that doesn't do huge harm to the country and to the Union. I'm in favour of some legal government and popular route to deciding what happens. And before Art50 completes so there is a realistic chance of calling the whole thing off. But it has to be made completely clear what the choice is. And it looks like it may be 3 way, not 2 way. - Try and negotiate a cancellation of Art50. - Leave but stay in the Customs Union and Single Market - Leave and crash out of everything, with all that entails. The full monte of no nukes, hard N.I. border, Dover chaos, Closing City of London, Scottish independence, etc etc etc. Calling it "The Dilemma" is meaningless if you don't understand what the "The Dilemma" means or can twist into something else. And yes, Labour's equivocation is doing nobody any good. And it's not "Blairite" to say it. — Yes, I know. It's Blair. Bear with me. Bear with him for two minutes. He is saying that Labour lost it. Labour lost the Leave voters, for accepting a customs union. And Labour lost the Remain voters, as a route to avoid Brexit. I agree with his analysis. His solution? Tell people that Labour accepts the referendum outcome, but that there is no resolution to the dilemma, and that thus the people should have a final vote.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademiaunsliced in a paper bag in a bread bin. I have no idea where that sits. — Moved from lawful good to chaotic neutral. What might my next steps be?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIs this the moment when the Tories flip and campaign on "Stop Brexit", leaving the Labour party stuck on "Brexit: Will O'People[1], for jobs"? [1]Ah, yes. William O'People. One of the famous O'Peoples of Armagh. — Not another one!
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Social Problems and Social ChangeThe Intellectual Dark Web - A long form justification for a categorisation https://medium.com/the-abs-tract-organization/enlightening-the-intellectual-dark-web-41f3a1e81b3e Joe Rogan, Steven Pinker, Camille Paglia, Owen Benjamin, Eric Weinstein, Nicholas Christakis, Gad Saad, Heather Heying, James Damore, Douglas Murray, Jonathan Haidt, Tim Ferriss, Stephen Hicks, Dave Rubin, Quillette/ Claire Lehmann, Jordan Peterson, Christina Hoff Sommers, Ben Shapiro, Dan Carlin, Lindsay Shepherd, Maajid Nawaz, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sam Harris, and Bret Weinstein Also, https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/5/10/17338290/intellectual-dark-web-rogan-peterson-harris-times-weiss Now look at the kind of company that Pinker keeps. https://twitter.com/mattwridley/status/966074652006199296 Matt Ridley, Steven Pinker, Max Roser together at last! Outside the UK Houses of Parliament, and self described as "liberal optimists and protagonists of progress". — Progress is progressive. A powerful refutation to Stephen Pinker's "Enlightenment Now" by Jeremy Lent. It’s time to reclaim the mantle of “Progress” for progressives. By falsely tethering the concept of progress to free market economics and centrist values, Steven Pinker has tried to appropriate a great idea for which he has no rightful claim.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Some far future archaeologist. "We think they may have been wiped out by an asteroid. We've found traces of lead in a thin layer of sedimentary rock in a large number of locations. This points to an event approximately 300m years ago give or take 5m. The most likely source is a heavy metal rich asteroid but we're still looking for suitable candidates for crater sites." Are we sure that the Iridium layer isn't evidence of a technological dinosaur civilisation based on using Iridium jewellery as currency? — Roman coin production produced lead pollution - and that left traces in the Greenland ice pack clear enough for us to read out Roman economic history. This is not the sort of scientific result I ever expected to see from an ice core. Via +A.V. Flox
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Is this another candidate marker for the beginning of the anthropocene? — Roman coin production produced lead pollution - and that left traces in the Greenland ice pack clear enough for us to read out Roman economic history. This is not the sort of scientific result I ever expected to see from an ice core. Via +A.V. Flox
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Commented on post by John Wehrle in Scientific WhatnotUgh. TL;DR! Many of these things are worth doing in their own right. However, I have to keep coming back to scale. Roughly: 10GtC/Yr turned into 30GtCO2/yr until the 1TtC of easily accessible fossil carbon is all gone. In one last #terafart . Leading to a temperature rise of at least 5C. And 200k years before CO2 and temperatures drop back again to pre-industrial levels. In the end and on a 100K year timescale, it's mostly rock weathering that locks up atmospheric CO2. — One way to pull our carbon out of the atmosphere is to cultivate plants in such a way that they do the hard work for us. (Seagrass can do the same thing with our oceans.) Such methods are now gaining steam thanks in no small part to state incentives and state cap and trade programs. (Vote in your state and local elections people.) I found this from an +Azimuth (and +galen stone and +rasha kamel) of this article from Grist about a CA program to work with farms to test our these strategies: https://grist.org/article/california-is-turning-farms-into-carbon-sucking-factories/ Quoting in full because a lot of people can't afford a NYT subscription. From NYT Magazine: Can Dirt Save The Earth? By Moises Velasquez-Manoff (4/18/18) [Warning, it's long] When John Wick and his wife, Peggy Rathmann, bought their ranch in Marin County, Calif., in 1998, it was mostly because they needed more space. Rathmann is an acclaimed children’s book author — “Officer Buckle and Gloria” won a Caldecott Medal in 1996 — and their apartment in San Francisco had become cluttered with her illustrations. They picked out the 540-acre ranch in Nicasio mostly for its large barn, which they planned to remake into a spacious studio. Wick, a former construction foreman — they met when he oversaw a renovation of her bathroom — was eager to tackle the project. He knew the area well, having grown up one town away, in Woodacre, where he had what he describes as a “free-range” childhood: little supervision and lots of biking, rope-swinging and playing in the area’s fields and glens. The couple quickly settled into their bucolic new surroundings. Wick began fixing leaks in the barn. Rathmann loved watching the many animals, including ravens, deer and the occasional gopher, from the large porch. She even trained the resident towhees, small brown birds, to eat seed from her hand. So smitten were they with the wildlife, in fact, that they decided to return their ranch to a wilder state. For nearly a century, this had been dairy country, and the rounded, coastal hills were terraced from decades of grazing. Wick and Rathmann would often come home and find, to their annoyance, cows standing on their porch. The first step they took toward what they imagined would be a more pristine state was to revoke the access enjoyed by the rancher whose cows wandered their property. Within months of the herd’s departure, the landscape began to change. Brush encroached on meadow. Dried-out, uneaten grass hindered new growth. A mysterious disease struck their oak trees. The land seemed to be losing its vitality. “Our vision of wilderness was failing,” Wick told me recently. “Our naïve idea was not working out so well.” Wick was especially bothered by the advance of a prickly, yellow-flowered invasive weed called the woolly distaff thistle. He pulled it, mowed it, doused it with herbicides. But the distaff kept moving into what had been pasture. He thought about renting goats to eat the weeds and brush, but they were too expensive. He even considered introducing wild elk, but the bureaucratic hurdles seemed too onerous. Then Wick and Rathmann met a rangeland ecologist named Jeff Creque. Instead of fighting against what you dislike, Creque suggested, focus on cultivating what you want. Squeeze out weeds by fostering conditions that favor grasses. Creque, who spent 25 years as an organic-pear-and-apple farmer in Northern California before earning a Ph.D. in rangeland ecology, also recommended that they bring back the cows. Grasslands and grazing animals, he pointed out, had evolved together. Unlike trees, grasses don’t shed their leaves at the end of the growing season; they depend on animals for defoliation and the recycling of nutrients. The manure and urine from grazing animals fuels healthy growth. If done right, Creque said, grazing could be restorative. This view ran counter to a lot of conservationist thought, as well as a great deal of evidence. Grazing has been blamed for turning vast swaths of the world into deserts. But from Creque’s perspective, how you graze makes all the difference. If the ruminants move like wild buffalo, in dense herds, never staying in one place for too long, the land benefits from the momentary disturbance. If you simply let them loose and then round them up a few months later — often called the “Columbus method” — your land is more likely to end up hard-packed and barren. Wick was persuaded. He began preparing for the cows’ return. He dug wells for water, pounded in steel posts and strung nonbarbed wire. He even bought a molasses lick to supplement the animals’ diet of dry thatch. He didn’t want medicated livestock excreting drugs that might harm the worms and insects living in his soil — most cows are routinely dewormed — so he tracked down a herd of untreated cows and borrowed them for the summer of 2005. The cows beat back the encroaching brush. Within weeks of their arrival, new and different kinds of grass began sprouting. Shallow-rooted annuals, which die once they’re chewed on, gave way to deep-rooted perennials, which can recover after moderate grazing. By summer’s end, the cows, which had arrived shaggy and wild-eyed after a winter spent near the sea, were fat with shiny coats. When Wick returned the herd to its owner that fall, collectively it had gained about 50,000 pounds. Wick needed to take an extra trip with his trailer to cart the cows away. That struck him as remarkable. The land seemed richer than before, the grass lusher. Meadowlarks and other animals were more abundant. Where had that additional truckload of animal flesh come from? Creque had an answer for him. The carbohydrates that fattened the cows had come from the atmosphere, by way of the grass they ate. Grasses, he liked to say, were like straws sipping carbon from the air, bringing it back to earth. Creque’s quiet observation stuck with Wick and Rathmann. It clearly illustrated a concept that Creque had repeatedly tried to explain to them: Carbon, the building block of life, was constantly flowing from atmosphere to plants into animals and then back into the atmosphere. And it hinted at something that Wick and Rathmann had yet to consider: Plants could be deliberately used to pull carbon out of the sky. Climate change often evokes images of smokestacks, and for good reason: The single largest source of carbon emissions related to human activity is heat and power generation, which accounts for about one-quarter of the carbon we put into the atmosphere. Often overlooked, though, is how we use land, which contributes almost as much. The erosion and degradation of soil caused by plowing, intense grazing and clear-cutting has played a significant role in the atmospheric accumulation of heat-trapping gases. The process is an ancient one. Ice cores from Greenland, which contain air samples trapped thousands of years ago, reveal increases in greenhouse gases that correspond with the rise of farming in Mesopotamia. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, agricultural practices and animal husbandry have released an estimated 135 gigatons — 135 billion metric tons — of carbon into the atmosphere, according to Rattan Lal, a soil scientist at Ohio State University. Even at current rates, that’s more than a decade’s worth of carbon dioxide emissions from all human sources. The world is warming not only because fossil fuels are being burned, but also because soils, forests and wetlands are being ravaged. In recent years, some scientists have begun to ask whether we can put some of that carbon back into the soil and into living ecosystems, like grasslands and forests. This notion, known as carbon farming, has gained traction as it becomes clear that simply reducing emissions will not sufficiently limit global warming. According to the 2014 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an authority on climate science that operates under the auspices of the United Nations, humankind also needs to remove some of the carbon already in the atmosphere to avoid, say, the collapse of polar glaciers and the inundation of coastal cities worldwide. “We can’t just reduce emissions,” Keith Paustian, a soil scientist at Colorado State University and an author of an earlier I.P.C.C. report, told me. “It’s all hands on deck. Things like soil and land use — everything is important.” Some of the proposed methods to begin this drawdown include scrubbing the air with great air-conditioner-like machines; fertilizing the oceans with iron dust to prompt algal blooms that, when they die, carry captured carbon to the bottom of the sea; capturing and storing the carbon dioxide that results when energy is produced by burning trees and other plants that removed carbon from the atmosphere during their growth; and crushing and spreading certain types of rock, like basalt, that naturally absorb atmospheric carbon. None of these approaches are yet proved or affordable at the scale needed to make a difference. The most obvious hurdle is the additional energy some of them require, which, unless it comes from a free, renewable source, adds more costs. Plants, however, remove carbon from the atmosphere already, require no additional power and grow essentially free. During photosynthesis they harness the sun’s energy to make sugars by combining hydrogen atoms (acquired from water molecules) with carbon atoms (from carbon dioxide), while emitting oxygen as a byproduct. (Lest we forget, the fossil fuels that now power civilization contain carbon removed from the air during photosynthesis millions of years ago.) Every spring, as the Northern Hemisphere greens, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere dips, before rising again the following fall and winter as foliage dies. Some scientists describe this fluctuation as the earth breathing. Nearly all the carbon that enters the biosphere is captured during photosynthesis, and as it moves through life’s web, every organism takes a cut for its own energy needs, releasing carbon dioxide as exhaust. This circular voyage is the short-term carbon cycle. Carbon farming seeks to interfere with this cycle, slowing the release of carbon back into the atmosphere. The practice is often conceptualized and discussed in terms of storing carbon, but really the idea is to change the flow of carbon so that, for a time at least, the carbon leaving a given ecosystem is less than the carbon entering it. Dozens of land-management practices are thought to achieve this feat. Planting or restoring forests, for one: Trees lock up carbon in woody material. Another is adding biochar, a charcoal made from heated organic material, directly to soil. Or restoring certain wetlands that have an immense capacity to hold carbon. (Coal beds are the fossilized remains of ancient marshes and peatlands.) More than one-third of earth’s ice-free surface is devoted to agriculture, meaning that much of it is already managed intensively. Carbon farming’s fundamental conceit is that if we change how we treat this land, we could turn huge areas of the earth’s surface into a carbon sponge. Instead of relying solely on technology to remove greenhouse gases from the air, we could harness an ancient and natural process, photosynthesis, to pump carbon into what’s called the pedosphere, the thin skin of living soil at the earth’s surface. If adopted widely enough, such practices could, in theory, begin to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, nudging us toward a less perilous climate trajectory than our current one. In a 2016 paper, Pete Smith, a soil scientist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and the influential climate scientist James Hansen argued that land-management practices are one of the few affordable options available today for drawing down carbon. “What’s surprising to me is that we’ve not done it sooner,” says Smith, who is also a lead author on a recent U.N. report that explores carbon-dioxide-removal technologies. “This has the potential to make a huge difference.” Otherwise, Hansen told me, we’re leaving the problem to our grandchildren. “That assumption that somehow young people, and people later this century, are going to figure out how to suck it out of the air — that’s a pretty big burden to place on them,” he said. The I.P.C.C. is preparing a special report on climate change and land use, to be finalized in 2019, that will consider in greater detail the potential of sequestering carbon in soil. But for now the biggest international effort to promote carbon farming is a French-led initiative called “four per 1,000.” The proposal aims to increase the amount of carbon in the soil of crop- and rangelands by 0.4 percent per year through a variety of agricultural and forestry practices. These include agroforestry (growing trees and crops together increases carbon retention), no-till agriculture (plowing causes erosion and carbon loss) and keeping farmland covered (bare dirt bleeds carbon). Doing so, the French argue, could completely halt the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Few experts I spoke to think the impact would be quite that grand; Pete Smith, for example, estimates that soil could, at the most, store just 13 percent of annual carbon-dioxide emissions at current levels. “I appreciate that everyone wants to save the planet,” he told me, “but we shouldn’t fool ourselves that this is all we need to do.” Even so, the four-per-1,000 goal highlights how a relatively small annual increase in soil carbon could, on a large-enough scale, have a substantial impact. Increasing soil carbon could yield other benefits, too: Improvements in soil fertility, water retention and greater crop resilience would help agriculture adapt to a warming world. More soil carbon would also reduce the amount of fertilizer needed, decreasing emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, a byproduct of excess nitrogen fertilization. It would be profoundly appropriate if agriculture, whose modern practices have themselves contributed to climate change, could become part of its solution. Farming, responsible for the birth of civilization, could now help save it. In 2007, at Jeff Creque’s behest, John Wick got in touch with Whendee Silver, an ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. Letting cows graze on his property had certainly made the land look healthier, he told Silver. But he and Creque wanted to know: Had it put carbon in the ground? And if so, was it possible to measure how much? Silver was skeptical that she could measure what was likely to amount to very small changes in his land’s soil carbon. The endeavor seemed akin to looking for cups of water added to a swimming pool. But she did sketch out a way to arrive at a definitive answer. When Wick offered to underwrite such a study, she warned him that he might not like the results. She wasn’t just going to tell him what he wanted to hear. “That’s when I knew I had to work with her,” Wick recalls. Silver agreed to the project, which she began that year. Seeking baseline values for the carbon concentrations in the soil, she and her students collected samples from different rangelands in Marin and Sonoma Counties. The samples with the most carbon, it turned out, came from current and former dairy farms. What distinguished these operations, she learned, was that they often sprayed manure onto their pastures; this was done both to fertilize the land and dispose of waste. Apparently, how soil was treated could very much affect its carbon content — a surprise. The larger implication was that people could potentially “grow” soil carbon deliberately. But how quickly could they do so? Silver found an answer, in part, by looking for nuclear fallout. In the mid-20th century, radioactive carbon isotopes were spewed into the atmosphere as a result of aboveground nuclear tests. Plants around the world absorbed those isotopes during photosynthesis, effectively turning them into a time stamp. Wherever that carbon shows up, it must have arrived there relatively recently. On dairy farms, Silver found the isotopes a full three feet below the surface. This was another surprise. Conventional wisdom holds that it takes perhaps hundreds of years for carbon-rich topsoil to accumulate. On these dairy farms, however, atmospheric carbon had pushed deep into the earth in a matter of decades. Wick wanted to know if he could deliberately replicate this process on his ranch — but without manure, which, as it decomposes, can release potent greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide. The former traps about 30 times as much heat as carbon dioxide, the latter 300 times as much. As a carbon-farming tool, manure might be self-defeating. Jeff Creque, a onetime organic farmer, had a suggestion: Why not use compost? Compost can contain manure, but whereas manure alone can release nitrogen as nitrous oxide, the nitrogen in compost becomes locked up in complex molecules. At least in theory, that limits the escape of a powerful greenhouse gas. In 2008, Wick, Silver and Creque spread several semi trucks full of the stuff, purchased from a composting plant near Sacramento, onto Wick’s ranch and on another ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. In total, it amounted to about half an inch spread over three acres. After three years, Wick was disappointed to discover that grazing on its own wasn’t leading to carbon sequestration. In fact, the soil lost carbon in untreated control plots. No one knows precisely why, but grasslands throughout California are bleeding carbon. European settlers introduced shallow-rooted annual grasses to the state, which partly displaced deeper-rooted perennial grasses. So carbon put into the ground long ago by deep-rooted grasses may now be seeping out. That’s what made the treated plots so remarkable. They had the same history and were exposed to the same conditions, but instead of losing carbon, they absorbed it — at a rate equivalent to nearly 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide per acre per year. That’s roughly equal to your car’s emissions if you drove from Miami to Seattle. Silver had thought that the compost would simply break down, releasing its carbon back into the atmosphere or, worse, produce nitrous oxide. But those emissions never occurred; moreover, judging by its chemical signature, most of the carbon moving into the soil came from the air, not the compost. The compost appeared to help the plants draw more carbon from the atmosphere than they otherwise would have. When it comes to mitigating climate change, soil scientists are most interested in what Silver calls occluded carbon — organic material, often in the form of dead microbes, trapped in clods of dirt. This type of carbon can potentially stay locked away for centuries. (Another carbon type, called labile carbon, continuously cycles among the atmosphere, plants and organisms in the soil.) It was precisely this more durable carbon, Silver discovered, that increased in the treated plots. Her findings corresponded with a shift in recent decades in scientists’ understanding of how soil carbon forms. Previously they emphasized how dead organic material had to physically work its way into the soil. But the newer model stressed the importance of living plants. Their rootlets are constantly dying, depositing carbon underground, where it’s less likely to go airborne. And perhaps more important, as plants pull carbon from the air, their roots inject some of it into the soil, feeding microorganisms and fungi called mycorrhiza. An estimated 12,000 miles of hyphae, or fungal filaments, are found beneath every square meter of healthy soil. Some researchers refer to this tangled, living matrix as the “world wood web.” Living plants increase soil carbon by directly nourishing soil ecosystems. In the years that followed, Silver’s analyses of soil cores indicated that the treated land kept taking in carbon. Computer simulations suggest that it will continue to do so for decades. It also retained more moisture and grew about 50 percent more grass. One dose of compost ignited what Silver calls a state change: The plants and the soil — and everything that inhabited it — moved toward a new equilibrium in which the soil ecosystem pulled in and retained greater amounts of carbon. Silver began publishing her findings in scientific journals in 2010. Her second paper, written with her postdoc Marcia DeLonge and the graduate student Rebecca Ryals, offered a remarkable bit of extrapolation. California has about 56 million acres of rangeland, the single largest type of land use in the state. If compost made with manure was applied to just 5 percent of that area, they calculated, it would offset emissions from about 80 percent of the state’s agricultural sector — all the cows raised, crops grown, fertilizer applied and tractors driven in California. Much of that offset came from diverting manure from festering lagoons — where it releases methane and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere — into compost, a one-time benefit. But the ongoing drawdown of carbon dioxide from enhanced grass growth could be important, too. If you treated 41 percent of the state’s rangeland, Silver told me, carbon pumped into the earth by photosynthesis might render the entire agricultural sector of the world’s sixth-largest economy carbon-neutral for years to come. The soil-improving practices that Wick, Silver and Creque stumbled into have much in common with another movement known as regenerative agriculture. Its guiding principle is not just to farm sustainably — that implies mere maintenance of what might, after all, be a degraded status quo — but to farm in such a way as to improve the land. The movement emphasizes soil health and, specifically, the buildup of soil carbon. This happy coincidence is one reason that carbon-farming advocates repeatedly describe their project as a “win-win.” Society could theoretically remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in the earth, and at the same time enhance the fortunes of farmers and the overall stability of the nation’s food supply. Farmers’ obsession with soil health isn’t new, of course. It has been a preoccupation for ages. But modern, conventional agriculture has largely relied on synthetic fertilizer to compensate for losses in natural fertility. And while fertilizers help plants grow, some evidence suggests that they can, in excess, accelerate the loss of carbon from the soil. An influx of nutrients may feed precisely those microbes that release carbon back into the atmosphere. Plants may also excrete less carbon into the earth when bathed in synthetic fertilizers, causing the ancient relationship among plant roots, soil fungi and microbes — the symbiosis that increases soil carbon — to fray. In recent years, the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, which was founded in response to the Dust Bowl crisis of the 1930s, has promoted the fostering of soil carbon as an important farming practice. But one of the more remarkable aspects of the regenerative-agriculture movement is that it has been driven largely by farmers themselves. Its proponents fret over soil carbon not necessarily because the N.R.C.S. tells them to, or because they worry about the planet’s fate. They have discovered that doing so can help their bottom line. Darin Williams is one such farmer. He lives near Waverly, Kan., with his wife, Nancy, in a tidy, gray-painted house with a stone chimney. A life-size plastic deer sits on his front lawn, run through with arrows; he uses it for target practice to sharpen his hunting skills. He’s a big man with a baby face and a mischievous squint. When he drove me around his farm last October in his red “one-tonner” pickup truck, he talked incessantly about soil. For nearly 20 years, Williams worked as a contractor, building houses in Kansas City. But work dried up after the financial crisis hit in 2007. Williams decided to return to the family farm near Waverly, an area of gently rolling plains, and give farming a try. His family had farmed some when he was a teenager before leasing the land to tenants for years, and he knew it was difficult to make ends meet. But he was inspired by an article about a North Dakota rancher and farmer named Gabe Brown, who claimed to have developed, through trial and error, a more efficient and cost-effective way to farm. The gist of Brown’s argument was that if you focus on the health of the soil and not on yield, eventually you come out ahead, not necessarily because you grow more corn or wheat per acre but because the reduction in spending on fertilizer and other inputs lets you produce each bushel of grain more cheaply. Williams decided to follow Brown’s prescription. “If after three years, I’m bankrupt, I’ll admit it was a bad joke,” Williams remembers thinking. Seven years later, his gamble seems to have paid off. He started with 60 acres, now farms about 2,000 and, when I visited last fall, had just purchased an additional 200. In one of his fields, we walked down a lane he had mowed through his warm-weather cover crops — plants grown not to be harvested, but to enrich the soil — which towered over us, reaching perhaps eight feet. They included sorghum, a canelike grass with red-tinted tassels spilling from the tops, mung beans and green-topped daikon radishes low to the ground. Each plant was meant to benefit the earth in a different way. The long radishes broke it up and drew nutrients toward the surface; tall grasses like sorghum produced numerous fine rootlets, adding organic material to the land; legumes harbored bacteria that put nitrogen into the soil. His 120-strong herd of British white cattle — he introduced livestock in 2013 — would eventually eat through the field, turning the plants into cow patties and enriching the soil further. Then he would plant his cash crops. “Had I not found this way to farm,” he told me, “we would not be farming.” A mat of dead vegetation — from cover crops, cash-crop residue and dung — covered Williams’s fields. The mulch, along with his cover crops, inhibited weeds from becoming established, a major concern for conventional farmers, because so many weeds have evolved resistance to herbicides. “I don’t lie awake at night wondering how I’m going to kill weeds,” Williams said. Williams doesn’t till his fields. By minimizing soil disturbance, no-till farming prevents erosion, helps retain moisture and leaves the soil ecosystem — worms, fungi, roots and more — mostly intact. At one of his soybean fields, Williams showed me how this translated to soil with “structure.” “See how that crumbles into a cottage-cheese look?” he said, massaging a fistful of earth. Small clods fell through his fingers. “That’s what you want.” Worm holes riddled the dirt, giving it a spongelike quality that was critical, he said, for absorbing rain and preventing runoff. Weather patterns seemed to be changing, he noted. Rain used to arrive in numerous light storms. Now fewer storms came, but they were more intense. “We have to be able to capture rain and store it,” he said. By focusing on soil health, Williams says he has reduced his use of herbicides by 75 percent and fertilizers by 45 percent. He doesn’t use pesticides — he relies instead on beneficial insects for pest control — and he saves money by not buying expensive genetically modified, herbicide-resistant seed. He estimates that he produces a bushel of soybeans for about 20 percent less than his conventionally farming neighbors. Last fall, he claims, his yields ranked among the highest in the county. While doing all this, he has so far raised the amount of soil organic matter, a rough predictor of soil carbon concentrations, from around 2 percent to 3.5 percent in some fields. Gabe Brown, for his part, says he has more than tripled his soil carbon since the 1990s. And an official with the U.S.D.A.’s Agricultural Research Service confirmed to me that the amount of carbon in Brown’s soil — what his farming has pulled from the atmosphere — was between two and three times as high as it was in his neighbors’ land. The successes of Brown and Williams suggest that farmers can increase carbon in the soil while actually reducing their overall expenses. This could be vital, because in order for carbon farming to have an impact on the climate, as much land as possible, including both crop- and rangeland, will have to be included in the effort. Critics of regenerative agriculture say that it can’t be adopted broadly and intensively enough to matter — or that if it can, the prices of commodities might be affected unfavorably. Mark Bradford, a professor of soils and ecosystem ecology at Yale, questions what he sees as a quasi-religious belief in the benefits of soil carbon. The recommendation makes sense intuitively, he told me. But the extent to which carbon increases crop yield hasn’t been quantified, making it somewhat “faith-based.” William Schlesinger, an emeritus soil scientist at Duke, points out that “regenerative” practices might inadvertently cause emissions to rise elsewhere. If you stop tilling to increase soil carbon, for example, but use more herbicides because you have more weeds, then you probably haven’t changed your overall emissions profile, he says. He thinks the climate-mitigation potential of carbon farming has been greatly oversold. Williams has reduced his herbicide use, not increased it, but Schlesinger’s broader point — about the need for a careful overall accounting of greenhouse gases — is important. Williams, Brown and others like them aren’t focused on climate change; no one really knows if the carbon they put in the ground more than offsets the methane produced by their cows, for example. What they do demonstrate is that augmenting soil carbon while farming is not only possible, but also beneficial, even in a business sense. And that makes the prospect of rolling out these practices on a larger scale much easier to imagine. The carbon-farming idea is gathering momentum at a time when national climate policy is backsliding. The Trump administration has reversed various Obama-era regulations meant to combat or adapt to climate change, including the Clean Power Plan, which required power plants to reduce their carbon emissions, and a rule instructing the federal government to consider sea-level rise and other effects of a changing climate when building new roads, bridges and other infrastructure. In the absence of federal leadership on climate — and as emissions continue to rise globally, shrinking the time available to forestall worst-case outcomes — state and local governments (as well as nonprofits) have begun to look into carbon farming. Last year, Hawaii passed legislation meant to keep it aligned with the Paris agreement, which President Trump has said he will abandon; the state has also created a task force to research carbon farming. The New York state assemblywoman Didi Barrett introduced legislation that would make tax credits available to farmers who increase soil carbon, presumably through methods like those employed by Darin Williams and Gabe Brown. A bill to educate farmers about soil has been proposed in Massachusetts. And in Maryland, legislation focused on soil health passed in 2017. Other carbon-farming projects are in the works in Colorado, Arizona and Montana. But it is California, already in the vanguard on climate-mitigation efforts, that has led the way on carbon farming. By 2050, the state aims to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 20 percent of what they were in 1990. Nearly half its 58 counties have farmers and ranchers at various stages of developing and implementing carbon-farming plans. San Francisco, which already has the largest urban composting program in the country, hopes to become a model carbon-farming metropolis. Cities don’t have much room to plant trees or undertake other practices that remove carbon from the atmosphere, says Deborah Raphael, the director of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment. But they can certainly produce plenty of compost. “If we can show other cities how doable it is to get green waste out of landfills, we can prove the concept,” Raphael told me. “We like to say that San Francisco rehearses the future.” Many of California’s carbon-farming efforts owe a debt to Wick, Creque and Silver. In 2008, they founded the Marin Carbon Project, a consortium of ranchers, scientists and land managers. The goal is to develop science-based carbon-farming practices and to help establish the incentives needed to encourage California farmers to adopt them. Silver continues to publish her findings in respected journals. Creque also started a nonprofit, the Carbon Cycle Institute, that assists farmers and ranchers in making carbon-farming plans. Wick has thrown himself into the policy realm, hiring a lobbyist in Sacramento to push a carbon-farming agenda. (In 2014, he even testified before Congress, outlining the project’s discoveries and explaining how compost could increase soil carbon on public lands. He deliberately mentioned “climate” only once.) Educating policymakers matters because, as Torri Estrada, executive director of the Carbon Cycle Institute, points out, carbon-mitigation efforts that focus on agriculture can be much cheaper per ton of carbon avoided than the flashier energy-efficiency and renewable-energy projects that usually get most of the attention. The major obstacle to their implementation, he says, is that government officials don’t understand or know about them. California’s Healthy Soils Initiative, which Wick helped shape, explicitly enlists agriculture in the fight against climate change. In principle, that means this carbon farmers can receive money from the state’s climate-mitigation funds not just for compost but also for 34 other soil-improving practices already approved by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. That’s important because the compost needed to cover just a few acres can cost thousands of dollars. Wick has also tried to tap federal funding. Once N.R.C.S. scientists vet Silver’s work, a compost amendment could become the service’s 35th recommendation. As a result, farm bill money, which farmers receive to subsidize food production, could help finance carbon farming done according to Wick’s protocol — not to fight climate change explicitly (which is now seen as politicized), but to bolster the health of soil (which isn’t). As a carbon-farming tool, compost bears some notable advantages — namely, it works both preventively and correctively. Composting prevents emissions from the starter material — manure, food scraps — that, if allowed to decompose, might emit potent greenhouse gases. (About one-fifth of United States methane emissions comes from food and other organic material decomposing in dumps.) By enhancing plant growth, it also aids in removing carbon from the atmosphere, a corrective process. And because the carbon in nearly all organic material was originally pulled from the atmosphere during photosynthesis, compost that enters the soil represents the storage of carbon removed from the air earlier — the grass eaten by cows that became manure, or the trees that became wood chips — and at a different location. That, too, is corrective. Calla Rose Ostrander, Wick’s right-hand person at the Marin Carbon Project, told me that the project’s greater goal is to completely reframe how we think about waste, to see it as more than a nuisance — to recognize it as a resource, a tool that can help us garden our way out of the climate problem. Before the modern era, farmers had no choice but to return human and animal waste to the fields. (Wick is looking into the possibility of composting human waste as well; the end product is called humanure.) In a sense, Wick and Ostrander seek to resurrect these ancient practices and, with the aid of modern science, to close the loop among livestock, plants, air and soil — and between cities and the agricultural land that feeds them. What seems to most impress experts about the Marin Carbon Project is the quality of Silver’s research. Eric Toensmeier, the author of “The Carbon Farming Solution” and a lecturer at Yale, says that the project figured out a new way to increase carbon storage on the semiarid grasslands that cover so much of the world. Jason Weller, the former head of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, told me that “the level of science investment is out of the ordinary, or extraordinary, for a group that is really self-started.” Weller added that the agency’s scientists still needed to vet the research, which they are in the midst of doing. In late 2016 the agency oversaw the application of compost to different California regions — inland, Southern, Northern — to see if land in various conditions would, like Wick’s ranch, suck up atmospheric carbon. But the group also has critics. “I’m very skeptical of their results and their claims,” William Horwath, a soil scientist at the University of California, Davis, told me. He wants to see Silver’s experiments replicated. This is the project’s major weakness: Its big idea is based almost entirely on extrapolation from a few acres in California. At this point, it’s impossible to say whether compost can cause land to become a carbon sponge in all climates and conditions, and for how long treated grassland will continue to take in and retain its carbon. Cows, a flash point in any discussion about climate change, may also present problems. Ruminants burp methane, and while carbon farming does not require their presence, some argue that merely accepting them on the land undermines the goal of reaching a carbon-neutral or -negative future. Livestock emissions account for almost half the heat-trapping gases associated with agriculture, so an obvious way to reduce emissions is to decrease the number of cows on the planet. Instead of dumping compost on rangeland, says Ian Monroe, a lecturer on energy and climate at Stanford University, why not allow forests cleared for pasture to regrow, and change people’s eating habits so they include less meat? Criticism is directed at compost too. The stuff requires energy to produce; huge machines are required to shred the material and keep it aerated. And it’s unclear if compost, like synthetic fertilizer, can cause nitrogen pollution when put on the land, or how much greenhouse gas composting itself generates. (As long as compost mounds are regularly aerated to prevent low-oxygen conditions, composting is thought to produce few emissions.) Organic material from municipal sources can contain bits of plastic and glass, which no one wants on their fields. Manure might carry seeds of invasive plants. (Silver has seen no evidence of this.) Spreading compost on public rangeland could disrupt plant communities, squeezing out species adapted to conditions of scarcity. And in any carbon-farming scheme, who will monitor and verify that far-flung stretches of land are really absorbing and storing the carbon as they’re supposed to? Horwath considers the amount of compost used in Silver’s research — about 10 times the usual application, he estimates — to be unrealistically high for practical use. “It seems an inordinately large amount to apply to any system,” he told me. And given what he sees as the many unknowns in Silver’s research, that compost would be put to better use on cropland where, he says, scientists know with greater certainty that it could improve water retention and the efficiency of fertilizer. Then there’s the problem of supply. Demand for San Francisco’s compost, which mostly goes to vineyards in California’s wine country, already outstrips what’s available. But Wick thinks more starter material shouldn’t be hard to find: Americans throw out between 30 and 40 percent of all the food they buy, sending it to landfills where it rots and generates greenhouse gases. Silver has calculated that there’s enough organic waste material in California to treat one-quarter of its rangeland every few decades. Still, given the energy requirements, the logistical headaches and the cost, skeptics question whether spreading compost across extensive portions of the world’s surface — including conflict zones in the Sahel or Central Asia — is really feasible. Even if it is, soils probably can’t soak up carbon indefinitely. If they have a saturation point, increases in carbon will eventually stop when that moment is reached. And because soil degradation can cause the release of whatever carbon it holds, treated lands would have to be well cared for in perpetuity. On a cool autumn day at Wick and Rathmann’s ranch house, Wick fielded phone calls while I wandered around the cluttered, semicircular room that served as his office and meeting space. A whiteboard displayed scribbles from a presentation on the carbon cycle. Coils of warmly hued yarn hung from the doorways. They came via a local nonprofit dedicated to climate-friendly ranching practices called Fibershed. And draped over a chair was a T-shirt bearing what might as well have been Wick’s battle cry: “seq-C,” it read, punny shorthand for “sequester carbon.” Under that it read, “Doing it in the dirt.” Down the road, he showed me a composting facility that Creque dreamed up initially. He and Wick hoped it would serve as a self-sustaining prototype. “Anything that has ever been alive can be composted,” he told me, surveying the 10-foot-tall piles of chicken droppings and feathers, horse bedding (manure and straw) and shredded trees. A tractor mixed woody refuse with animal waste — to get the composting process started requires the right mix of carbon- and nitrogen-rich materials. (That’s why some backyard composters recommend urinating on the pile to kick things off: Urine is rich in nitrogen.) Across the lot, a hulking machine straddled rows of steaming black compost, turning them with a metal spinner. Compost has to be regularly “fluffed,” or aerated, Wick explained, to prevent anaerobic microbes from producing methane and nitrous oxide. The manure piles were acrid, but the compost itself had a rich and pleasant odor, like cigars. Wick hopes that facilities like this will someday dot the American agricultural landscape. The idea is to manufacture compost close to both its source material and the place where it will be used, obviating the emissions from carting heavy materials over long distances. The plant also embodied Wick’s contention that composting can help farm carbon and manage waste at the same time. The challenge of affordably creating millions of tons of compost and applying it to great expanses of land is formidable. But there is a pleasing symmetry to the idea that we could use waste to bring the excess carbon in the atmosphere back to Earth, all while making the world lusher and more bountiful. When I first got in touch with Wick, in late 2016, he greeted me with a question: “Do you know how the earth’s atmosphere was oxygenated?” He was referring to a period 2.3 billion years ago when oxygen, produced by photosynthetic organisms, began building up in the atmosphere, prompting a mass extinction and clearing the way for multicellular life (and, eventually, humans). “Cyanobacteria?” I guessed. “Very good,” he said. “This might work.” Evidently I had passed some sort of scientific literacy test. But his bigger point was that living things — and particularly photosynthetic life — had always been the great engineers of the planet’s climate. Now, he believed, we could use that fact to our advantage. That sort of cosmic thinking about the planet and its history is ultimately what makes Wick’s vision so compelling and potentially powerful. The essential insight is one often overlooked when we talk about climate change: The element that threatens to smother civilization is also, in different forms, the fundamental building block of life. To prevent carbon from causing misery and destruction, perhaps we just need to change its location. Perhaps we can find a way to pull it from the air and restore it to the earth.
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Commented on post by Julian BondWell that's awkward. Being reminded of Mark Fisher. RIP, you old curmudgeon. — It's late 2014 and there are cultural critics still arguing that creativity stopped in 2003, using examples from 2004 and 2006. Arctic Monkeys vs Burial as symptom vs diagnosis? That's * so * last decade! http://crackmagazine.net/music/mark-fisher-interviewed/ I think we fairly desperately need a Post-Retromania and Post-Hauntology in pop cultural analysis. ps. He's got a book out. How drole. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosts-My-Life-Depression-Hauntology/dp/1780992262/ref=sr_1_1
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit"you can't argue with The People's Willy". Or The Willy of the People — The Guardian cartoon: you can't argue with the people's willy.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliegehttps://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — The EU has thrown Theresa May a banana by asking how her "custom partnership" idea would actually work in practice. That partnership is the idea that all widgets entering the UK are somehow tracked, in case they enter the EU via the UK, so that then the UK reimburses the EU according to the tariffs the EU usually imposes. (Apart from the "tracking every little screw entering the country" this is a great idea, until you start thinking about flour entering the UK and frozen pizzas leaving towards the EU. Who is going to track what here?) I think this is just the EU being a bit nice to May, so that she can face down Boris Johnson, who has positioned himself against such a partnership. Here, Johnson is actually not wrong, but the EU much prefers to deal with May than with the raving mad lunatics that might follow her if she gets ousted. Its like Afghanistan. You rather prop up an utterly corrupt government in Kabul with some semblance of order, because the alternative is dealing with religious crackpots.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+Engrumpled Curmudgeon I'm sure you know this, but I don't see how you could get a parliament with a "No To Brexit" majority when both major parties think campaigning on "No To Brexit" is political suicide. What you're actually asking for is for both major parties to break into small pieces and then reform as the Remain and Leave parties. Like some competing slime moulds in a lightless cave, deep underground. There was a chance that Labour could fight and win on a Remain ticket but that was last year. It's the referendum that needs destroying and remaking. Then both parties can claim that the "will 'o' the people" (Will-o'-the-wisp) has changed. "Game of Tyrones". Now that is perfect. — The EU has thrown Theresa May a banana by asking how her "custom partnership" idea would actually work in practice. That partnership is the idea that all widgets entering the UK are somehow tracked, in case they enter the EU via the UK, so that then the UK reimburses the EU according to the tariffs the EU usually imposes. (Apart from the "tracking every little screw entering the country" this is a great idea, until you start thinking about flour entering the UK and frozen pizzas leaving towards the EU. Who is going to track what here?) I think this is just the EU being a bit nice to May, so that she can face down Boris Johnson, who has positioned himself against such a partnership. Here, Johnson is actually not wrong, but the EU much prefers to deal with May than with the raving mad lunatics that might follow her if she gets ousted. Its like Afghanistan. You rather prop up an utterly corrupt government in Kabul with some semblance of order, because the alternative is dealing with religious crackpots.
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Commented on post by Sisco Vanilla in Mixology 🍸Cocchi needs a mention. And Spanish Vermouths like Lustau — Often times many people think of Vermouth as just being in ingredient that you add to a cocktail. Not so folks. Vermouths are of standalone quality and should be enjoyed on their own merits. This article from Gear Patrol highlights some of the best Vermouths on the market for a variety of uses. Check it out. #Vermouth #VermouthBianco #VermouthRosso #Wine #FortifiedWine #Cocktail #Cocktails #Coctel #Cocteles #Cocteleria #SiscoVanilla #SiscoVanillaIsStepping
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt would solve a lot of problems if you needed an ID card to cross the M25. We could call it an "Oystercard" to celebrate being shucked open with a security knife. For those that didn't want to queue to touch in, there could be a phone app that automatically logged your transit in and out of the London Free Trade Zone. Commercial vehicles would be automatically logged by the ULEZ ANPR as primary ID, backed up with additional pre-registration of goods each marked with an RFID and barcode. Special taxes (or tax avoidance benefits) could be levied during travel into the two parts of "Zone Zero". viz: The City of London and the Isle of Dogs. What an excellent idea. Of course it would also require CCTV and enforcement of hard borders across the various footpaths, bridlepaths and minor roads that cross the M25 without authorised intersections. Otherwise there might be a problem with illegal immigrants, foxes, badgers, rabbits and hedgehogs trying to tunnel through the invisible security fence. — A no-go while the DUP still props up the UK government, as a Hongkong-style solution would effectively move the Irish border into the Irish sea. Still, one can dream. Maybe we can have a Hongkong-style arrangement for London and the South?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitMaybe this was the plan all along? Wait until the final planned elections before Brexit and then allow Labour's position to shift strongly towards Brexit-Min and Remain. Except perhaps not by forcing rebellion. — And the cold war inside the Labour Party just got hotter. On Europe, both big parties in the UK could perish. Funny.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeDid somebody say, "PHP" ? — "Don't worry, in 10 years this will all be gone away." COBOL. I'll make a bet and say that in 100 years COBOL will still be around, albeit in some niches only. Like, moving most ATM transactions across a whole continent. So what can we learn from this? I shudder at all the Java out there, for instance. Should we ask for a bit more restraint before companies and affiliated CS departments force new languages into the market? (Found in a private stream.)
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+Benjamin Baugh Pretty sure we're post-future as well — Today in "the death of irony:" https://twitter.com/FoxNewsInsider/status/994018362710634496?s=19
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Commented on post by Zaid El-Hoiydi in SustainabilityFrancis Fukuyama's "The end of history" was in 1992. I think he or somebody needs to write "The End of the Future". Because I think I'm seeing a curious inability in the west to think about the future. Predictions seem to stop at 2100 despite it being within the likely lifetime of people being born now. Even though 2050 is 32 years away, we have trouble imagining even something as close as that. The Collapsniks are expecting the crash to come in the 2020s. Where did the future go? — Two Hellish Curves Is that what sustainability looks like? Clearly not! I keep coming back at those curves, strongly interrelated ones, population and CO2 concentration. Both will largely determine the fate of our species as well as that of countless other species, the collateral damages we cause along with our relentless growth. In ecosystems energy means food which then can sustain life. From the sun on the surface of our planet, or in caves below ground with the chemical energy from nutrients from above, present in stream flows, through percolation or decompositional material for troglodytes, and finally from those incredible deep sea hydrothermal vents. The industrial revolution was definitely the stepping milestone for the outburst of our population when we suddenly began to mass produce food and goods as well as considerably improving our health and thus survival. What these curves should tell us, but only a tiny few will read them that way, is that most of today's population's existence (me and you) owes it to the vast amount of non renewable fossil energy we've turned into CO2 over the last two centuries. If we dare looking a mere 100 years in the future over this 10'000 years range it is pretty sure the CO2 curve will flatten simply because we will run out of stuff to burn and then photosynthesis will very slowly absorb the excess CO2 again, how long? Well, how long did it take for nature to put it underground in the first place? And then, what about us?
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Commented on post by Zaid El-Hoiydi in SustainabilityAs a 60 year old, I'm constantly surprised by predictions of radical changes in 10-30 year timescales. In many ways, 2008-1988 doesn't feel significantly different to me so I have a hard time imagining huge upheavals in societies structures in 2028-2048. I'm not denying that we have seen some amazing things in the last 30 years. eg mobile phones, internet. But there's a huge amount of fundamentals that haven't changed. — Two Hellish Curves Is that what sustainability looks like? Clearly not! I keep coming back at those curves, strongly interrelated ones, population and CO2 concentration. Both will largely determine the fate of our species as well as that of countless other species, the collateral damages we cause along with our relentless growth. In ecosystems energy means food which then can sustain life. From the sun on the surface of our planet, or in caves below ground with the chemical energy from nutrients from above, present in stream flows, through percolation or decompositional material for troglodytes, and finally from those incredible deep sea hydrothermal vents. The industrial revolution was definitely the stepping milestone for the outburst of our population when we suddenly began to mass produce food and goods as well as considerably improving our health and thus survival. What these curves should tell us, but only a tiny few will read them that way, is that most of today's population's existence (me and you) owes it to the vast amount of non renewable fossil energy we've turned into CO2 over the last two centuries. If we dare looking a mere 100 years in the future over this 10'000 years range it is pretty sure the CO2 curve will flatten simply because we will run out of stuff to burn and then photosynthesis will very slowly absorb the excess CO2 again, how long? Well, how long did it take for nature to put it underground in the first place? And then, what about us?
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Commented on post by Zaid El-Hoiydi in Sustainability+Steve S I live in the cucumber capital of the UK! We've been growing salad crops intensively in glasshouses for centuries. So I find nothing particularly odd about the benefits of high density farms on the edge of suburban areas. But crucially, they only make sense for some crops. — Two Hellish Curves Is that what sustainability looks like? Clearly not! I keep coming back at those curves, strongly interrelated ones, population and CO2 concentration. Both will largely determine the fate of our species as well as that of countless other species, the collateral damages we cause along with our relentless growth. In ecosystems energy means food which then can sustain life. From the sun on the surface of our planet, or in caves below ground with the chemical energy from nutrients from above, present in stream flows, through percolation or decompositional material for troglodytes, and finally from those incredible deep sea hydrothermal vents. The industrial revolution was definitely the stepping milestone for the outburst of our population when we suddenly began to mass produce food and goods as well as considerably improving our health and thus survival. What these curves should tell us, but only a tiny few will read them that way, is that most of today's population's existence (me and you) owes it to the vast amount of non renewable fossil energy we've turned into CO2 over the last two centuries. If we dare looking a mere 100 years in the future over this 10'000 years range it is pretty sure the CO2 curve will flatten simply because we will run out of stuff to burn and then photosynthesis will very slowly absorb the excess CO2 again, how long? Well, how long did it take for nature to put it underground in the first place? And then, what about us?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliegehttp://theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/04/sajid-javid-combative-capitalist-and-courtier-of-us-neocons Follower of Ayn Rand. Neocon. American Enterprise Institute (AEI) supporter. Obviously fits right in to the nasty party. And what better place to fit in than as Home Sec in charge of the "Hostile Environment". — Because they are cunts.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitSpelling mistakes, bad kerning, bad punctuation, inappropriate fonts, cost lives. — Stamford Street, London.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeBuoy 14 was lost but now is found. Awww! ;) https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,327.msg153140.html#msg153140
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Commented on post by Zaid El-Hoiydi in Sustainability+Steve S Nice SciFi future you have there. Is there a worlds government and a dilithum warp drive as well? 1) Scale problem. Indoor intensive agriculture doesn't work or scale for staples like wheat, soya, corn, rice, potatoes, roots. And you're trading passive solar energy collection via photosynthesis for electricity production. 2) Urbanisation is already happening and increasing. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ 1970 urban population 1.3b - 36.5% 2018 4.1b - 54.9% If I called you a Technotopian, would you find that offensive? — Two Hellish Curves Is that what sustainability looks like? Clearly not! I keep coming back at those curves, strongly interrelated ones, population and CO2 concentration. Both will largely determine the fate of our species as well as that of countless other species, the collateral damages we cause along with our relentless growth. In ecosystems energy means food which then can sustain life. From the sun on the surface of our planet, or in caves below ground with the chemical energy from nutrients from above, present in stream flows, through percolation or decompositional material for troglodytes, and finally from those incredible deep sea hydrothermal vents. The industrial revolution was definitely the stepping milestone for the outburst of our population when we suddenly began to mass produce food and goods as well as considerably improving our health and thus survival. What these curves should tell us, but only a tiny few will read them that way, is that most of today's population's existence (me and you) owes it to the vast amount of non renewable fossil energy we've turned into CO2 over the last two centuries. If we dare looking a mere 100 years in the future over this 10'000 years range it is pretty sure the CO2 curve will flatten simply because we will run out of stuff to burn and then photosynthesis will very slowly absorb the excess CO2 again, how long? Well, how long did it take for nature to put it underground in the first place? And then, what about us?
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Commented on post by Zaid El-Hoiydi in Sustainability+Steve S It's all about timescales and one's opinion about when overshoot and collapse kicks in. The UN Demographics group put a huge amount of work into the stats and forecasts and that's where the 10b-2056 figures come from. There's a valid criticism that they don't take enough account of Limits to Growth style resource and pollution constraints so their long term forecasts >30 years out should therefore be taken with a huge pinch of salt. But it seems to me that predicting collapse, crash and burn in <30 years is too pessimistic. The cracks in the system will probably be increasingly obvious though. I do agree that BAU can't keep going indefinitely and certainly not in nice smooth curves out to 2100 and beyond. I've been thinking that since the early 70s. But the axe hasn't fallen yet. — Two Hellish Curves Is that what sustainability looks like? Clearly not! I keep coming back at those curves, strongly interrelated ones, population and CO2 concentration. Both will largely determine the fate of our species as well as that of countless other species, the collateral damages we cause along with our relentless growth. In ecosystems energy means food which then can sustain life. From the sun on the surface of our planet, or in caves below ground with the chemical energy from nutrients from above, present in stream flows, through percolation or decompositional material for troglodytes, and finally from those incredible deep sea hydrothermal vents. The industrial revolution was definitely the stepping milestone for the outburst of our population when we suddenly began to mass produce food and goods as well as considerably improving our health and thus survival. What these curves should tell us, but only a tiny few will read them that way, is that most of today's population's existence (me and you) owes it to the vast amount of non renewable fossil energy we've turned into CO2 over the last two centuries. If we dare looking a mere 100 years in the future over this 10'000 years range it is pretty sure the CO2 curve will flatten simply because we will run out of stuff to burn and then photosynthesis will very slowly absorb the excess CO2 again, how long? Well, how long did it take for nature to put it underground in the first place? And then, what about us?
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Commented on post by Zaid El-Hoiydi in Sustainability+Steve S Population growth in percentage terms is reducing. But that's because we're in the linear middle part of the S Curve. +80m/yr for 5 decades now. And it's now 7.6b. If Business As Usual keeps going it will be 10b in ~ 2056. The main CO2 absorption in geological time is rock weathering. Roughly: 10GtC/Yr turned into 30GtCO2/yr until the 1TtC of easily accessible fossil carbon is all gone. In one last #terafart . Leading to a temperature rise of at least 5C. And 200k years before CO2 and temperatures drop back again to pre-industrial levels. — Two Hellish Curves Is that what sustainability looks like? Clearly not! I keep coming back at those curves, strongly interrelated ones, population and CO2 concentration. Both will largely determine the fate of our species as well as that of countless other species, the collateral damages we cause along with our relentless growth. In ecosystems energy means food which then can sustain life. From the sun on the surface of our planet, or in caves below ground with the chemical energy from nutrients from above, present in stream flows, through percolation or decompositional material for troglodytes, and finally from those incredible deep sea hydrothermal vents. The industrial revolution was definitely the stepping milestone for the outburst of our population when we suddenly began to mass produce food and goods as well as considerably improving our health and thus survival. What these curves should tell us, but only a tiny few will read them that way, is that most of today's population's existence (me and you) owes it to the vast amount of non renewable fossil energy we've turned into CO2 over the last two centuries. If we dare looking a mere 100 years in the future over this 10'000 years range it is pretty sure the CO2 curve will flatten simply because we will run out of stuff to burn and then photosynthesis will very slowly absorb the excess CO2 again, how long? Well, how long did it take for nature to put it underground in the first place? And then, what about us?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe media is trying so hard to portray Labour's results as disastrous and the end of Corbyn. But maybe the question is not why didn't Labour do better but why didn't the Tories do even worse. Those UKIP votes almost certainly went back to Tory and yet they still managed to lose councillors and councils. And they were still propped up by people who vote and who will always vote Tory. And it's not just the media. There's a centrist, pro-Europe segment of the Labour Party that seems determined to undermine the party as well. And the party still hasn't worked out how to deal with the anti-semitism story. Again, this is internal as much as external. There are MPs and activists attacking their own party and fuelling the story. — The Economist declares Corbymania for dead, but we all know how we should treat such pronounciations. Nevertheless: the Tories are comically inept at present, so any half-competent opposition should be wiping the floor with them. But Labour doesn't. So whats going on? Corbyn is too left for the country, writes the Economist. Indicating that a more centrist figure is needed.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitA pair of Guardian comments today. Can Corbyn now please resign? He is passively allowing Brexit to take place and will help to usher in a post-Brexit Ress-Mogg government : thanks Corby! "He is passively allowing Brexit to take place" Political suicide to openly oppose it. The support for stopping Brexit isn't what you imagine it to be. - Both parties are now openly self-destructive. But mainly Labour. - Labour aren't very anti-semitic. But they are incapable of dealing with the charge of being anti-semitic. And there's a large section of Labour that are Blair-ite, pro-Israel who are quite prepared to destroy Labour to get rid of what they see as the Corbyn, Pro-Palestine wing. And charges of anti-semitism are a powerful weapon to do that. Things like failing to win Barnet are seen as a small price to pay. - Labour aren't very pro-leave. But Labour will be officially pro-leave for the sake of political power. Meanwhile, nobody speaks for the 48. — A self-identified Labour voter who ain't gonna vote Labour anymore. Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is blindly following the agenda of the most ghastly Tory government in history in pursuing the most suicidally stupid and unnecessary political endeavour since – well since ever. By enabling Brexit the Labour party hierachy is ignoring the will of most of its members and supporters and doing the 48% of largely progressive and outward looking Britons, who voted Remain, a massive disservice. I would disagree on the use of the word "blindly". Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing. The problem is that there are two possible explanations. Maybe Corbyn is a (reluctant/secret) Remainer, but is afraid of losing northern Labour voters, who are inclined to be Brexiters. So thats just old-fashioned electoral calculus: being all kinds of different things to different people. Or maybe Corbyn is just an anti-European Brexiter.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWas hoping Ilford had declared but not yet. — Today are local elections, and in Ilford the Tories are giving absolutely everything.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitTo understand Corbyn's position, I think you need to pay close attention to what Momentum are doing. And they are focused on political expediency. It's all about swing constituencies that could be pushed towards Labour. Unfortunately, too many of those are in areas that voted Leave. Even though there is a big numerical majority of Remain voters in Labour overall, all that matters is the small number of Leave voters in these swing constituencies that might be persuaded to switch to Labour. The council elections we've just had are probably the last elections before Brexit becomes completely inevitable. So there's a window of opportunity here for Labour to swing towards an open strategy of Brexit-Min where we stay in the customs union and single market. Without it being seen to be damaging to immediate Labour's attempts to regain political power. Maybe the fact that the previous strategy of ambiguity didn't really work in grabbing council seats gives us an opening to push them harder in this direction. The next one is exactly one year away when another huge batch of Tory Councillors are up for re-election. I hate this and I despair that there's no mainstream party now that represents the 48%. And I hate that Labour is so ineffectual at providing any realistic opposition to the Nasty Party. And I hate that even the relatively sensible parts of the Nasty Party are following the party line and supporting the frankly insane sections that are leading Tory strategy. The lack of clear majority has re-inforced the craziness rather than encouraged rational debate and compromise because every vote is a 3-line-whip. We are so f*ck*r*d. — A self-identified Labour voter who ain't gonna vote Labour anymore. Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is blindly following the agenda of the most ghastly Tory government in history in pursuing the most suicidally stupid and unnecessary political endeavour since – well since ever. By enabling Brexit the Labour party hierachy is ignoring the will of most of its members and supporters and doing the 48% of largely progressive and outward looking Britons, who voted Remain, a massive disservice. I would disagree on the use of the word "blindly". Corbyn knows exactly what he is doing. The problem is that there are two possible explanations. Maybe Corbyn is a (reluctant/secret) Remainer, but is afraid of losing northern Labour voters, who are inclined to be Brexiters. So thats just old-fashioned electoral calculus: being all kinds of different things to different people. Or maybe Corbyn is just an anti-European Brexiter.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexithttps://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — Tuesday caption contest. Any takers?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitYes, Minister. Your very posture tells me, "Here is a man of true greatness". It's weird isn't it. Too young to remember the Ministry of Silly Walks. Probably too young to remember Yes, Minister. But surely not too young to remember Black Adder. They were all humorous satire, not an instruction manual. — Tuesday caption contest. Any takers?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAnd the big questions. 1) Did she knowingly lie to parliament? 2) Who else knowingly lied to parliament? Particularly when backing her over the last few days. — One horcrux down. Resigns for being caught lying, mind you, and not for trying to deport UK citizens. So who is next as Home Secretary? Rees-Mogg? Gove? When does May run out of human shields?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit1 down. 28 Cabinet ministers and attendees to go. https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers Amber Rudd really is that horrible. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/05/ambder-rudd-really-horrible/ Now will she get censured for lying to Parliament? It would be good if she has to resign as an MP and there's a by-election. Given the tiny size of her majority. On human shields: Cabinet Reshuffle Now! Boris is quite wide and thick and should be able to stop the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune ... On replacements: Oh good grief! https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/29/the-favourites-to-take-over-from-amber-rudd-as-home-secretary Sajid Javid Michael Gove Jeremy Hunt David Lidington Karen Bradley Wild cards: Dominic Grieve or Nicky Morgan Yes, they really are the "Nasty Party" (c Theresa May 2002, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/oct/08/uk.conservatives2002) — One horcrux down. Resigns for being caught lying, mind you, and not for trying to deport UK citizens. So who is next as Home Secretary? Rees-Mogg? Gove? When does May run out of human shields?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI believe Heseltine encouraged May to install the Brexit gang. 1) to make them fail in public. 2) to punish them and 3) because nobody else would do it. A very risky strategy and extremely painful for everyone involved. Whether it's true or not, reason 3 is probably the real one. And I'm still of the opinion that what you see is what you get from the whole of this cabinet. There's no hidden agenda, they really are this incompetent. But then there's Labour-Corbyn and the rush to support Art50 followed by an almost complete inability to drive the narrative and oppose the Tories on Brexit. We * are * doomed. — "Some on the EU side of negotiations thought it impossible that the UK side should be as under-prepared and aimless as they seemed, and that it must all be a clever ploy." "Pretty sure no one’s floating that theory any more."
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Code Dependencyhttp://dlvr.it will collect from G+ and post elsewhere. I kind of think IFTTT can do it as well. There is (php?) code out there to create RSS/Atom from G+ posts. That can often be imported automatically. I wrote my own as a test case to try and understand the G+ API, natch. There's no API to post TO G+ unless you're a special big business case. So G+ has to be the master in the master-slave relationship to other YASNs. But then you get to the point of feeling, "why bother". Why not start from somewhere else in the big "post once, sync everywhere" game. — I think I would be posting here a lot more if I had some automated way of saving my posts over onto one of my own sites. A cross-poster that works with Hubzilla would be just about perfect. I wonder if there's a plugin... I won't even demand that comments come along for the ride, though that would be nice. (n.b. Google Takeout fails on two counts: not automated, doesn't repost.)
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Commented on post by Raphaël Mentrel in Motorcycles - ModifiedHossack-Fior style? Can't really tell from the pics. — FFE: Kawasaki ZX10R TTS Excent
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Commented on post by Raphaël Mentrel in Motorcycles - ModifiedReally can't fault the Sportsmart. Except is the Roadsmart enough for the rest of us? Especially if you have to cross Europe to get to Brno. — Coming next, the front tire (Dunlop SportSmart² MAX) to change my old pair of Pirelli SuperCorsa
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeICE baby, ICE. Stay away from the ICE or you'll get burned. Luckily it's not evenly distributed! I kind of wonder what the owners of the bricked IoT thing do when it no longer works and turning it off and on doesn't help. Just buy another one and repeat the whole process? — A malware that nukes IoT devices is not a malware, but a helpful tool. See it as part of the immune system of the internet. Sometimes some white blood cell is gonna eat a healthy cell just because it looks the wrong way.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+James Carlson Yup. Me too. ZX81 with custom box and keyboard+16k rampack. To BBC-B which morphed into an Osborne-Compaq transportable clone in a home made case with a 9" B&W monitor and twin disk drives. Led via a cobol course to putting the first 1000 IBM PCs into Merrill Lynch London and building the biggest token ring network in Europe outside IBM. 20 years later I was writing php as a 1-man IT department. :( — RIP, Rick Dickinson. You will have to answer other forces now for your rubber keyboards, and I hope St. Paul will give you a good grilling on this. But you did keep the cost down, and the gods of the marketplace will vouch for you.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitRich people who can afford iPhones can afford an immigration lawyer. What's the problem? It's as easy as shopping at a luxury brand website. Just do it. Do it now. Free cap and sunglasses with a brand name on them to all successful applicants. — Loooool.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliegehttps://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b09yp1gr Great Britain is at a fork in our crossroads. — Cunk on Britain. The United Kingdom of Britain and England. Or something like that. It all started with the Big Bang, and beforehand everything was a bit like Plymouth. (Via +Rhys Taylor .)
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeSpace Junk Clearance Services 'R' Us. — Please meet SJ-17, the Chinese satellite that maneuvres a lot and which got awfully close to at least five different Chinese spacecraft recently. As in, "a couple of hundreds of meters" close, which is danger close as far as satellites go. So whats it doing? Just taking a close look? Refuelling? Pushing and shoving? Mimicking offensive maneuvres? Nobody knows.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThose aren't just bananas. They're fairtrade, small, ripen in the non-plastic compostable bag, ready-to-eat, Waitrose, luxury, gay, space, capitalism, bananas from a sustainable, red-tractor farm, from a country with a great human rights record that buys our arms, owned by a multi-national that contributed to the http://leave.eu Brexit campaign and branded with a made up name that focus groups thought evoked sympathy for nature. — Did someone say "banana republic"?
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeYet again, I'm reminded of this. http://shorttermmemoryloss.com/nor/2014/11/07/all-cameras-are-police-cameras/ And especially with the brief rash of ID machines used as security for getting into clubs and even some bars in the big cities. Put some ID down, like a driving license and take a mug shot. I figured at the time it was training for some facebook/google face recognition AI algorithm. But 4 years later it turns out it was just the cyberstate[1] gathering more data that might come in handy later. [1] Ugh! I need some neologism for the whole Google/Facebook/Police/CA/SecurityServices/ data cloud. — So the UK police is storing 20 million mugshots of people. And there are just about 60 million living in this country. (The joys of facial recognition software and public CCTV.) Now, this is of course highly illegal. So the police has been ordered to scrape their databases and only store images of actual perps. "Can't do that, too expensive." they say. Try that next time you are in court.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitSo as a Brit, living in Britshire, how do I register as an EU Citizen? — "Developing innovative ways to increase registration figures" Oh kindly fuck off.
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Commented on post by Allen Varney+Olman Feelyus Like too many other Google properties an original vision has been screwed with repeatedly. - A competitor for Yahoogroups that never got finished - A Usenet Newsreader that didn't really work - Some all purpose forum software missing some obvious features - A platform for Google support - A series of redesigns - A poor relation of G+ when G+ was going to transform everything Google. In short, it's rubbish! — "Facebook repeats the pattern of Usenet, this time as farce. As a no-holds-barred Wild West sort of social network, Usenet was filled with everything we rightly complain about today. [...] The first thing we should learn from Usenet is the importance of moderation. Fully human moderation at Facebook scale is impossible. With seven billion pieces of content shared per day, even a million moderators would have to scan 7,000 posts each: roughly 4 seconds per post. But we don't need to rely on human moderation. After Usenet's decline, research showed it was possible to classify users as newbies, helpers, leaders, trolls, or flamers, purely by their communications patterns, with only minimal help from the content. This could be the basis for automated moderation assistants that kick suspicious posts over to human moderators, who would then have the final word. [...] "Usenet had no engagement metrics, no means of linking users to stronger content. Islands of hatred certainly existed, but in a network that didn't optimize for engagement, hate groups didn't spread. Neo-Nazis and their like were certainly there, but you had to search them out; you weren't pushed to them. The platform didn't lead you there, trying to maximize your 'engagement.' I can't claim that was some sort of brilliant design on Usenet's part; it just wasn't something anyone thought about at the time. And as a free service, there is a need to maximize profit. Facebook's obsession with engagement is ultimately more dangerous than their sloppy handling of personal data. 'Engagement' allows -- indeed, encourages -- hate groups to metastasize. "Engagement metrics harm free speech, another ideal carried to the modern internet from the Usenet world. But in an 'attention economy,' where the limiting factor is attention, not speech, we have to rethink what those values mean. I've said Usenet ended in a 'whimper' -- but what drained the energy away? The participants who contributed real value just got tired of wading through the spam and fighting off the trolls. They went elsewhere. Usenet's history gives us a warning: Good speech was crowded off the stage by bad speech. [...] "If we're to put an end to the farce, we need to understand what it means to enable speech, rather than to drown it out. Abandoning 'engagement' is part of the solution. We will be better served by a network that, like Usenet, doesn't care how people engage, and that allows them to make their own connections. [...] We need to revisit, reassess, and learn from all of our past social networks. Demanding and building a social network that serves us and enables free speech, rather than serving a business metric that amplifies noise, is the way to end the farce." (Mike Loukides, O'Reilly Media): https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/from-usenet-to-facebook-the-second-time-as-farce
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Commented on post by Allen Varney+Olman Feelyus Was that Deja News? Which was then bought by Google and turned into Google Groups. Which Google then screwed with before effectively abandoning. A big problem (or upside) with usenet is the lack of a consistent client. This might have introduced client competition but actually destroyed the platform when all the clients sucked and faded away. There's a big layer of blame to be attached here to Microsoft. At Usenet's height, when it might have made the leap to the next level of engagement, MS was pushing Outlook which had no Usenet client. Which meant running Outlook Express as well, which was pretty pathetic. Mailing lists suffered the same fate and have many of the same problems. Even now there are really no email readers that understand mailing lists and have any mailing list specific function. Google owns both Gmail and Googlegroups, but they don't play well together. And Gmail doesn't really understand maling lists either. Running your own mailing list software is an exercise in horror. Which means the easiest option is Yahoogroups. Which again is horribly flawed and dying. And then there's RSS/Atom. Competition among clients, leading to a dominant player (Google reader) which then closed down. Leading to the "river of news" function moving to Twitter and Facebook. Where it sucks and has been co-opted by the troll factories. Next rant, chat software. And especially group chat. "IRC/AIM/XMPP to Facebook/Twitter: The second time as farce." — "Facebook repeats the pattern of Usenet, this time as farce. As a no-holds-barred Wild West sort of social network, Usenet was filled with everything we rightly complain about today. [...] The first thing we should learn from Usenet is the importance of moderation. Fully human moderation at Facebook scale is impossible. With seven billion pieces of content shared per day, even a million moderators would have to scan 7,000 posts each: roughly 4 seconds per post. But we don't need to rely on human moderation. After Usenet's decline, research showed it was possible to classify users as newbies, helpers, leaders, trolls, or flamers, purely by their communications patterns, with only minimal help from the content. This could be the basis for automated moderation assistants that kick suspicious posts over to human moderators, who would then have the final word. [...] "Usenet had no engagement metrics, no means of linking users to stronger content. Islands of hatred certainly existed, but in a network that didn't optimize for engagement, hate groups didn't spread. Neo-Nazis and their like were certainly there, but you had to search them out; you weren't pushed to them. The platform didn't lead you there, trying to maximize your 'engagement.' I can't claim that was some sort of brilliant design on Usenet's part; it just wasn't something anyone thought about at the time. And as a free service, there is a need to maximize profit. Facebook's obsession with engagement is ultimately more dangerous than their sloppy handling of personal data. 'Engagement' allows -- indeed, encourages -- hate groups to metastasize. "Engagement metrics harm free speech, another ideal carried to the modern internet from the Usenet world. But in an 'attention economy,' where the limiting factor is attention, not speech, we have to rethink what those values mean. I've said Usenet ended in a 'whimper' -- but what drained the energy away? The participants who contributed real value just got tired of wading through the spam and fighting off the trolls. They went elsewhere. Usenet's history gives us a warning: Good speech was crowded off the stage by bad speech. [...] "If we're to put an end to the farce, we need to understand what it means to enable speech, rather than to drown it out. Abandoning 'engagement' is part of the solution. We will be better served by a network that, like Usenet, doesn't care how people engage, and that allows them to make their own connections. [...] We need to revisit, reassess, and learn from all of our past social networks. Demanding and building a social network that serves us and enables free speech, rather than serving a business metric that amplifies noise, is the way to end the farce." (Mike Loukides, O'Reilly Media): https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/from-usenet-to-facebook-the-second-time-as-farce
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Commented on post by Julian BondEvery UK Prime Minister has to have a war. If Theresa's is limited to a small strike by 4 aircraft against pointless targets then the world will have got off lightly. And without recalling Parliament? Even Blair & Cameron had the good grace to go through the motions of democratic process. — That Feeling When: You wake up, check the news and discover we're at war again. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/04/just-whos-pulling-the-strings/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/14/theresa-may-britain-air-strikes-syria-chemical-weapons-raf
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaThink yourself lucky they didn't get turned into unpaid internships. Or 6 week unpaid trials. If you can't afford to pay a living wage, then you're not running a business. You're running a government sponsored charity. — Fast food giants, coffee shops and retailers are relabelling low-skilled jobs as apprenticeships [...]Many firms have rebranded existing roles after being obliged to contribute cash to on-the-job training. This happens, of course, because the government wants it to happen. [The government] introduced an apprenticeship levy on organisations paying more than £3m in salaries a year. They have to pay 0.5% of their wages total into a "digital account" held by HMRC. They then "spend" these contributions on apprenticeship training delivered by registered providers. They can also get back up to 90% of the cost of training. And those registered providers allow KFC to relabel someone who fries potato chips as 'apprentice hospitality team member'. I wish I would make this up. Its almost as if the UK government wants an uneducated, low-skilled, pliable workforce.
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Commented on post by Meep in ShenanigansMorning funny. The Facebook is strong in this one. And in the culture of corruption. In all the pictures of the dead eyes, you can almost hear the voices echoing inside. "It'll soon be over. A few hours of unpleasantness is a small price to pay." https://plus.google.com/photos/106416716945076707395/albums/6543115237834643681/6543115240451778178 — Facebook suspends another data analytics firm after CNBC discovers it was using tactics like Cambridge Analytica. The CubeYou discovery suggests that collecting data from quizzes and using it for marketing purposes was far from an isolated incident. Moreover, the fact that CubeYou was able to mislabel the purpose of the quizzes — and that Facebook did nothing to stop it until CNBC pointed out the problem — suggests the platform has little control over this activity. #techweasels
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt's annoying, but not really surprising, that you can't simply refer them to other government departments. He seems like a fairly normal chap. So there should be HMRC PAYE, NI contributions, NHS records, Electoral roll, council tax, school records. He's just old enough to have had a job prior to 1973 and paid tax. But I bet there's a bureaucratic catch 22. They're allowed to destroy records older than 7 years. But to prove who you are, you have to produce them. — Braithwaite is one of an emerging group of people who were born in Commonwealth countries and arrived in the UK as children who have discovered half a century later that they have serious and hard to fix immigration problems. Lawyers working for people in this situation say the level of documentary proof required by the Home Office is extremely high, with officials requesting to see a minimum of one, but preferably four, pieces of documentary evidence for every year spent in the UK. Often GP surgeries and schools that might have been able to provide documentary proof of their residence have since closed, and records destroyed. Alright folks, hands up. Which of you could provide four documents for every year you spent in the country you are presently living in? (Freed from a private share.)
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Commented on post by Meep in ShenanigansIf that is the case, then clearly the common carrier defence no longer works. It's a familiar sequence for these things. - Did they do evil? - Did they help other people to do evil? - Did they know evil was being done, but failed to do anything about it? - Did they specifically create systems for people who wanted to do evil? - Will the appearance of evil do anything to their bottom line? - And so on ... On that last one. Facebook may or may not have broken any laws. But the suggestion that they might have has already wiped billions off their stock. Has it reduced their income though? How bad has it been for marketing and sales? — Facebook suspends another data analytics firm after CNBC discovers it was using tactics like Cambridge Analytica. The CubeYou discovery suggests that collecting data from quizzes and using it for marketing purposes was far from an isolated incident. Moreover, the fact that CubeYou was able to mislabel the purpose of the quizzes — and that Facebook did nothing to stop it until CNBC pointed out the problem — suggests the platform has little control over this activity. #techweasels
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Commented on post by Meep in ShenanigansFacebook is the problem because it's an out of control enabler that sells access to data. But it's also a distraction because the real problems are the organisations that used the data they extracted from Facebook and the systems it provided. It wasn't Facebook that poisoned elections and referenda. It was the alt-right, ACL, CA, AiQ, Leave.eu, , etc, etc, etc that used Facebook as a weapon. — Facebook suspends another data analytics firm after CNBC discovers it was using tactics like Cambridge Analytica. The CubeYou discovery suggests that collecting data from quizzes and using it for marketing purposes was far from an isolated incident. Moreover, the fact that CubeYou was able to mislabel the purpose of the quizzes — and that Facebook did nothing to stop it until CNBC pointed out the problem — suggests the platform has little control over this activity. #techweasels
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Commented on post by Benjamin Ljung in Why's that?Widen the Bell curve! (c Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaIf only Google had followed that law instead of "don't be evil". — Can I buy, say, 20 copies? (Via +Erica DeMers .)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaTwo simple rules that should be enshrined in a UN convention of human rights. If implemented widely, they could lead to universal world peace. Among other things. 1) Be most excellent to each other 2) Don't be a dick — Can I buy, say, 20 copies? (Via +Erica DeMers .)
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Commented on post by Uche Eke in The bre-X-it FilesEvery election there's a little question mark over some aspect. Occasionally, as with the Tower Hamlets mayor, we ask somebody to resign. But I don't think we've ever thrown out the result or forced a re-run of the election. Having said that, dragging the leaders of the Leave movements like Aaron Banks, Farage, Johnson, Fox, Gove, Davies into court would be entertaining. Even getting them to answer to a Parliamentary committee. We can only hop that they get so disgraced that they have to leave politics forever.
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Commented on post by Alex Pedro in Google+ UpdatesTopics remains completely useless, because the choice of topic genres is static and frankly bizarre. It's so obviously broken, it's hard to understand what on earth G+ is playing at. — Does anyone use the Topics feature? I think it'd be more useful if we could follow a topic and get the best posts from that appearing in our feed (kinda like what's trending does). Edit: To be clear, this is the feature I'm talking about: https://www.blog.google/products/google-plus/googleplus-topics/
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Commented on post by Sisco Vanilla in Mixology 🍸I'm going to store this and the previous blackberry recipe up for 6 months, because these are autumn fruits not spring! There's a couple of variations possible for both recipes with Raspberries (Chambord or creme de framboise) or Blackcurrants (creme de cassis). We've always got Creme de Cassis for Kir and Kir Royale. The best brand I've found is Briottet for all these fruit syrups. The Cassis works with all kinds of things. The Crème de Mure, not so much. — Since I posted a Blackberry Basil Margarita recipe the other day, here is a rum recipe for you. Bacardi Blackberry Bramble Ingredients: 2 oz. Bacardi Superior 1 oz. Lemon Juice 1/2 oz. Simple Syrup 1/2 oz. Crème de Mure Basil Leaf and Blackberry for Garnish Preparation: Shake the first three ingredients vigorously with plenty of ice, strain into a glass, drizzle Crème de Mure on top. Garnish with basil and blackberry skewer Sounds delicious #BacardiRum #RonBacardi #BacardiSuperior #Rum #LemonJuice #SimpleSyrup #CremeDeMure #Blackberry #Basil #Bramble #Cocktail #Cocktails #Coctel #Cocteles #Cocteleria #SiscoVanilla #SiscoVanillaIsStepping
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Commented on post by Sean Roan in ¯\_(ツ)_/¯And then, Jacob Rees-Mogg — As proven daily by +Peter Thomas
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaConflicted by this because I find Facebook really useful. However, I wish Twitter was consumed by fire and then eaten by a grue. Cambridge Analytica (in all it's guises, shell companies and it's supporters) though, is just plain evil. — 'I am being used as scapegoat - academic who mined Facebook data' Ah, the often murky world of collaborations between business and academia. Aleksandr Kogan, a Moldovan-born researcher from Cambridge University, harvested the personal details of 50 million Facebook users via a personality app he developed. Kogan told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he was being unfairly blamed for the scandal. He said: “My view is that I’m being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Honestly we thought we were acting perfectly appropriately. We thought we were doing something that was really normal.” Sure, scraping 50 million Facebook profiles is the new normal. Kogan said he was told that the scheme was legal but accepts he should have questioned the ethics of the exercise. Told by whom? The ethics board of Cambridge University, by which every research involving personal data has to be approved, I presume? Kogan set up Global Science Research (GSR) to carry out Cambridge Analytica’s data research. Nice. You still have to follow EU data protection directives, pal. While at Cambridge he accepted a position at St Petersburg State University, and also took Russian government grants for research. I have so many questions.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexithttps://twitter.com/Howard_Goodall/status/976005850941837314 Nice bloke at Heathrow currency exchange desk asks whether Brexit will be good for my industry. When I said no, disastrous, he said he asks everyone the same question: and Every. Single. Person gives the same answer. But a bunch of Old Etonian conmen think they know better. — Yo dawg, I need a transition from your transition, in order to deal with another transition. Meanwhile, "nearly one in seven EU companies with U.K. suppliers have already moved some of their business out of Britain and almost a quarter of U.K. businesses are planning to reduce their workforce to offset Brexit-related costs."
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Commented on post by Diane Takaki in NewsworthyQuit Facebook Now. Um. Why? - Apply aggressive ad blocking. Keep killing the right hand sidebar with the helpful suggestions in it. - Set up a list of Close Friends - Bookmark the Close Friends feed and use that as your entry point into Facebook - NEVER visit the main facebook feed. Not even once. NEVER. - If you post on facebook, Post only to close friends or in groups. Use Post to Public sparingly and carefully. - Use security to prevent anyone but close friends commenting on your posts. - Use groups, events and whatever else takes your fancy. - NEVER use the iPhone and Android apps unless you absolutely have to because you can't easily apply the previous items - Like all social media. Aggressively block and unfriend the idiots. None of that's hard. And it turns Facebook from an evil spy in your life into quite a useful tool. — Seriously this is turning into a horror movie.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitPost-Brexit. When the UK is a tax haven and money laundering centre. We'll welcome them back. — Meanwhile, in Londongrad For two decades, the British establishment has agreed not to think too hard about where the Russians got their money — how cash was stolen from the state, recycled in the West, then used to help bring Vladimir Putin and his ex-KGB colleagues to power. In return, the Russians spent a lot of that money in Britain, to the benefit of the British. The relationship has, at times, been extraordinarily complicit. There was the 2006 London flotation of Rosneft, the oil company created from the stolen assets of another oil company, whose owner had been arrested and sent to prison in Siberia. The prospectus did actually warn potential purchasers of the risks: “Crime and corruption could create a difficult business climate in Russia.” But the sale went forward, reaped rewards for those who arranged it and established a principle: Stolen goods can become legal, as long as the London financial establishment approves. We could outlaw tax havens, in the Virgin Islands as well as in Delaware and Nevada; we could make it impossible to buy property anonymously; we could ban Russian companies with dubious origins from our stock exchanges. But that would cost our own financiers and real estate agents, disrupt the discreet flow of cash into the coffers of political parties, deprive the art market of its biggest investors. Does May have the nerve to do that? Do any of us?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Tony Hales You mean the one in the Irish Sea? Or maybe the one at Gretna Green. — A bit of cold water, just in case next week's Brexit agreements will be hailed as a "breakthrough". The upcoming agreement is a political one, and not a legal text. Further, it is contingent to a solution to the Irish border problem. Everything now revolves around the Irish border.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaShakes fist at sky. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P65V-cst6TY — Today's lunchtime conversations focussed on: the proper application of nerve agents, moles, double agents, triple agents, false flags, rogues, global thermonuclear war and spies that came in from the cold.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeA Russian ConAir. Maybe this - "Shtrafbat" ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtrafbat Or is it another part of Operation Mindfuck from the infamous Gold'N'Appel Corp? — Someone is going to make a movie about this. With Nic Cage.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeNot to argue with the main thrust of the post, but both post WWI and post WWII produced huge social change in the UK in the immediate aftermath. Lloyd George Liberal and Attlee Labour were instrumental in bringing in the Welfare state. There was a fundamental and Socialist change as a landslide reaction to the predominantly Capitalist and Conservative war years. — 'Almost too successful' On changes in political systems, and that they are sometimes catastrophic, but that this is not necessarily a bad thing, in the long term. Let us start with the wars of the 20th century. Unsurprisingly, the countries that were invaded or defeated tended to be the ones that underwent the most fundamental changes. Germany, Japan and France all gained new constitutions after 1945. By contrast, neither the UK, which was seemingly a victor power, nor the US, which was certainly a victor power, changed its political system in the wake of the Second World War. Instead, in both countries, victory served for a while to burnish and strengthen the existing political order. Over the centuries both the United Kingdom and the United States have indeed been almost too successful in their recourse to war, and this has had mixed repercussions for their political systems and democracy. And so the political system established in 1787 in the US is still reasonably well cemented in the present. You can call this a success story, and it certainly is. But certain root causes for political dysfunction are growing from that tree as well. That amendment, passed in 1791, when most firearms were muskets? The UK exhibits comparable problems, but to a more pronounced degree. Like the US, but over a longer period of time, the UK has been both a markedly warlike state and generally a successful one. No invasion since 1688, most overseas adventures a success. As a result, in the United Kingdom even more than in the United States, old structures of politics were able to persist. It’s true that the electorate steadily widened, though only slowly. But the House of Commons, the House of Lords, the monarchy, the pre-eminence of London, and certain conventions of political and electoral practice: these things endured. Nothing has happened that might have forced a major process of political reconfiguration, as distinct from ad hoc adjustments. And this raises a set of questions and possibilities. Certain conventions, indeed. It all looks pretty droll from the outside, but Westminster reeks of decay. Could it be that Britain’s political stability has become too pronounced? That, by not having to adjust and alter its political system as so many other countries have had to do, the UK has stored up unaddressed problems and unhelpful stagnancies? If so, might the convulsions and divisions over Brexit have some tonic effect? I suppose we will see. But note that many countries which got shiny new constitutions in 1945 did so on a continent thoroughly soaked in blood.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeHe's not playing Chess. Or Poker. Or American football. He's playing Go. — A bit of Korean chess, anyone?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitA Customs Union. Whatever that means. No Single Market. No discussion about Brexit Oh, Jeremy Corbyn. When are you going to start listening to your new young members, supporters and voters? Just keep on dissembling until the May local elections are out of the way. Then what? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-43343196 — The disheveled man, who was addressing people in Dundee, is seen to intersperse oddball and complex socialist theory with paranoid ramblings about the EU destroying the British working class using cheap labour from abroad. A friend of Mr Corbyn from the care group Momentum, Simon Williams, explained that it was unfair to judge the man by contemporary standards. “Jeremy’s got a heart of gold. He doesn’t mean any harm by it. It’s just he’s from a generation that sees outsiders as invaders. On a one to one basis he’ll treat immigrants like brothers. It’s just he reads a lot of tabloids and he’s a got a thing for Northerners. If someone from Yorkshire says something bigoted, he’ll just nod along because he doesn’t like ruffling feathers." Took me a bit to notice that this was NewsThump.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThat article needs to be written. — Portrait of the reactionary as a quaint forthright man.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitInteresting article. Thank you for that. But note that there's no reference to "Mao-ist" in the article. Or even much talk of creative destruction. Apart from the early paragraph about not preserving that which is moth-eaten. — Portrait of the reactionary as a quaint forthright man.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitCan I just say, Corbyn really whips the Llama's Ass. Llamas for the many not the few. — Meanwhile, Boris Johnson visits a primary school. Kids are obviously thrilled.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI've long been puzzled why a shortage of energy supply leads to a drop in frequency. This seems to be related to some kind of Victorian steam engineering involving governors. These days there's lots of solid state AC-DC-AC conversion going on. In which case a Europe wide phase synchronisation should be completely independent of local supply imbalances. But. It's complicated. And given that complication I'd expect all kinds of weird waves of chaotic system behaviour. — I found it fascinating how the BBC spun a technical issue about electrical frequencies into a story with an anti-European sentiment. Just imagine this happening for 30 years in a row.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeStore all the things! — "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?" Steven Wright
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI've been wondering where to add it, but I just saw this in a local UK Labour Party newsletter. "After the May Local Government elections the Labour Party will revise its position on Brexit" Ah, politics and the pursuit of power. Donchajusloveem! The Labour Party is so busy trying to get itself elected, it's ignoring the big problems. And it's somehow persuaded itself (ahem, Momentum has pursuaded it) that an overtly anti-brexit stance will hurt it in the polls. So it won't do that until the May->Mar 2019 window when there's no elections scheduled. It is to weep. — Milestones. Milestones are coming.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Chris Blackmore It seems to require some kind of revolution of the middle. The people who need to rise up and stand for what they actually believe are the boring MPs who always vote along party lines and never rebel. They personally voted Remain. But then they all voted for Art50. If given half a chance, they now need to vote to stop the madness, no matter what party central says. And yes, this cuts right across party lines. There's just as many of these types of MPs in Labour as there are in the Conservatives. — If you happen to be in London on Monday morning: the sound you hear is the sound of worst-case contingency plans executed.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWell we can't have the city of London making so much money and keeping everything else afloat by selling their financial products across Europe from a base in the City of London. Because then they'd be at the mercy of rules and a court in Europe. So since the City of London is already a law unto itself with it's own police force, it should just unilaterally leave the union and stay in/join the EU. Crossing the congestion charge zone boundary is already fully automated and CCTVed. So Boris should have no problem with a hard brexit border between the City and the rest of London that is electronically and almost invisibly mediated. You'll just have to look up and smile at the camera each day as you tap in with your contactless card to pay your "Passporting Tax", as you travel in and out of The City. Any homeless found within the City will be shipped out to it's emigration holding tank in the City's lands in Epping Forest. — If you happen to be in London on Monday morning: the sound you hear is the sound of worst-case contingency plans executed.
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Commented on post by Jim DouglasThere should be some reference to types of guns here as well. For instance. UK. 1. You want to buy a handgun. 2. You can't — Canada 1 To buy a handgun, join an accredited shooting club. 2 Complete a safety course and pass both a written and a practical test. 3 Ask for two references. (*) 4 Apply for a permit, and wait 28 days before processing begins. 5 Pass a background check that considers your criminal record, mental health, addiction and domestic violence history. 6 Buy a gun. If you bought a handgun, register it with the police before taking it home. (*) In addition to two character references, Canadians must list the names of partners they have lived with in the last two years, all of whom must sign the application or be notified by the police before you can buy a gun. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/02/world/international-gun-laws.html
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Commented on post by John Hardy in Greenhouse PoliticsI'm puzzled though. What is she doing with that jar of Vegemite? You can't drink it, can you?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademia"Even if they radiated the outside, the engine would be dirty," But, but, it's electric! — I have to admit I haven't thought about that.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademia"The load of bacteria on the Tesla could be considered a biothreat, or a backup copy of life on Earth," she said." I'm going for backup copy. This is the real Musk plan. To send life to other planets, not necessarily human life. And I think it's backwards. We should be sending a package of bacteria, mushroom spores and tardigrades on every spacecraft. just in case. Ancient aliens did this to Earth so we should return the favour. Even if they didn't, we can. We could call it "The Starseed Project". — I have to admit I haven't thought about that.
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Commented on post by Dave WonnacottThe spam is ironic, right? — Indefensible. Totally crooked. Taxpayers' money used to buy votes. There was a time when this was illegal and would have brought down the Government. The current batch of Tories disgusts me and I imagine they disgust many moderate Tories today.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWhat do Momentum think about Corbyn's speech today? They did retweet Corbyn, but that seems to be it. — The Confederation of British Industry has endorsed Corbyn's position on Brexit. That's right, the people who presently hold the means of production have endorsed someone who is regularly described as a Marxist. Or Leninist. Or socialist. Take your pick. Hell has officially frozen over.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Frank Rehse Pronouns are just a technicality. — So Labour now has an official position on Brexit, as confirmed by Keir 'the enforcer' Starmer. The shadow cabinet voted unanimous for it, so thats it. Now what is Labour's present position? Starmer said the party wanted the UK to have “a” customs union with the EU after Brexit, rather than to remain in “the” customs union, but he also said this distinction was merely technical and that in practice the effect would be the same. “The customs arrangements at the moment are hardwired into the membership treaty, so I think everybody now recognises there is going to have to be a new treaty [between the UK and the EU]. It will do the work of the customs union. So it is a customs union,” Starmer said. “But will it do the work of the current customs union? Yes, that’s the intention.” Starmer said staying in a customs union was “the only way realistically” for the UK to get tariff-free access to the EU. This was really important for manufacturing, he said. Slowly preparing your voters for staying in the EU, Keir?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitToday, Customs Union. Tomorrow, Single Market? — So Labour now has an official position on Brexit, as confirmed by Keir 'the enforcer' Starmer. The shadow cabinet voted unanimous for it, so thats it. Now what is Labour's present position? Starmer said the party wanted the UK to have “a” customs union with the EU after Brexit, rather than to remain in “the” customs union, but he also said this distinction was merely technical and that in practice the effect would be the same. “The customs arrangements at the moment are hardwired into the membership treaty, so I think everybody now recognises there is going to have to be a new treaty [between the UK and the EU]. It will do the work of the customs union. So it is a customs union,” Starmer said. “But will it do the work of the current customs union? Yes, that’s the intention.” Starmer said staying in a customs union was “the only way realistically” for the UK to get tariff-free access to the EU. This was really important for manufacturing, he said. Slowly preparing your voters for staying in the EU, Keir?
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle Roadracing+Wiggysan Wiggysan Not now, but soon. As some kind of restructuring in 2019 or 2020. eg. https://www.reddit.com/r/motogp/comments/7doad6/satellite_teams_in_2019_and_on/ Most of us know that Dorna wants each of the six factory teams to field a satellite team in the very near future. KTM and Suzuki have already expressed interest and Aprilia says they would be ready to do so. — Yamaha & Tech3 to split I did not see this coming, but maybe I should have. Tech3 to run either +KTM or maybe +Team Suzuki Racing satellite machines whilst Rossi retires & runs a factory supported "Team VR46 Academy Monster Yamaha" team ? Time will tell. ________________________________________ #MotoGP +MotoGP +Yamaha MotoGP +Yamaha Racing +Tech3Racing #Tech3 +KTM +Red Bull +Monster Energy #VR46 #Rossi #20years
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingIsn't there a requirement in there somewhere from Dorna that all factories MUST run a satellite team? — Yamaha & Tech3 to split I did not see this coming, but maybe I should have. Tech3 to run either +KTM or maybe +Team Suzuki Racing satellite machines whilst Rossi retires & runs a factory supported "Team VR46 Academy Monster Yamaha" team ? Time will tell. ________________________________________ #MotoGP +MotoGP +Yamaha MotoGP +Yamaha Racing +Tech3Racing #Tech3 +KTM +Red Bull +Monster Energy #VR46 #Rossi #20years
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in blue hazeWhat frame do you think that is? — Something a bit different....
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Commented on post by Sisco Vanilla in Mixology 🍸You can cheat this one successfully. - Pour a drop of Pastis in a frozen rocks glass, swill it around and then tip it in the sink. - A bar spoon is about 3ml which is about 3 dashes or Peychaud Bitters. Throw that in the glass - Add 50-60 ml of whatever bourbon or Rye you've got in the cupboard. - A bar spoon of simple or double syrup - Add one ice cube, a lemon twist and give it a quick stir. — Forgot to post this last Tuesday. Well here is the Sazerac: Sazerac 🔸2oz Sazerac Rye Whiskey 🔸.25oz Absinthe 🔸3 Dashes Pechauds Bitters 🔸1 sugar cube 🔸2 or 3 drops of water In glass muddle sugar cube and Pechauds bitters. Pour in Sazerac Rye Whiskey and stir. Pour into chilled glass that has been washed by the Absinthe. Add a few drops of water and garnish with a lemon peel. This is one potent cocktail. It had some very nice notes on the nose from both the herbal Absinthe and the lemon peel. The Sazerac Rye is nice and spicy with a hint of the sweetness from the muddled sugar cube. It's a strong one folks. Sip and enjoy it. #FinnsCorner #Bartending #BarBusiness #BehindTheStick #Sazerac #FatTuesday #MardiGras #Cocktail #Cocktails #Coctel #Cocteles #Cocteleria #SiscoVanilla #SiscoVanillaIsStepping
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Commented on post by John Hardy in Culture of Late CapitalismStrange bedfellows. Matt Ridley, Steve Pinker, Max Roser. There's a few others who circle around like Stewart Brand, Mark Lynas. — Pinker remains the preeminent bard of liberal self-satisfaction and complacency. Naturally his historical treatment of the Enlightenment is deeply ahistorical.
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Commented on post by John Hardy in Culture of Late CapitalismFunny you should mention him. https://twitter.com/mattwridley/status/966074652006199296 Has he got a book out? He seems to have been doing the rounds in the UK. — Pinker remains the preeminent bard of liberal self-satisfaction and complacency. Naturally his historical treatment of the Enlightenment is deeply ahistorical.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in Post TruthThis thread. Needs reading. Up to 16 fake news instances now. https://twitter.com/MollyMcKew/status/966137293818998784 Bot Power! — In certain right-wing corners of the web — and, increasingly, from more mainstream voices like Rush Limbaugh and a commentator on CNN — the students are being portrayed not as grief-ridden survivors but as pawns and conspiracists intent on exploiting a tragedy to undermine the nation’s laws. In these baseless accounts, which by Tuesday had spread rapidly on social media, the students are described as “crisis actors,” who travel to the sites of shootings to instigate fury against guns. Or they are called F.B.I. plants, defending the bureau for its failure to catch the shooter. They have been portrayed as puppets being coached and manipulated by the Democratic Party, gun control activists, the so-called antifa movement and the left-wing billionaire George Soros. .... Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist behind the site Infowars, suggested that the mass shooting was a “false flag” orchestrated by anti-gun groups. Mr. Limbaugh, on his radio program, said of the student activists on Monday: “Everything they’re doing is right out of the Democrat Party’s various playbooks. It has the same enemies: the N.R.A. and guns.” By Tuesday, that argument had migrated to CNN. In an on-air appearance, Jack Kingston, a former United States representative from Georgia and a regular CNN commentator, asked, “Do we really think — and I say this sincerely — do we really think 17-year-olds on their own are going to plan a nationwide rally?”
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Olaf Fichtner It's the terror of knowing What the world is about Watching some good friends Screaming 'Let me out' Prefer Spandau Ballet's - Pressure On mainly because I worked on it. (didn't get a credit though!) I feel the gaze against my skin I know this feeling is a lie There's a guilt within my mind I know this feeling is a lie She knows, you know. Throw her in the fire. — Jacob Rees-Mogg is making his move. He has delivered a letter to Theresa May, with the backing of 61 other Tories. (Enough to challenge her leadership.) The hardliners want a hard Brexit. It's kind of funny to watch the mutiny unfold, with deranged mutineers smoking in the ship's magazine, and the captain, bereft of ammunition, trying to parley. Sensible seamen have made it to the lifeboats, ready to cut the ropes. Other ships in the flotilla watch with bemusement, keeping safe distance, their crews betting on how long this will last, and how quick she will sink.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitFinally, finally, https://xkcd.com/1022/ — Jacob Rees-Mogg is making his move. He has delivered a letter to Theresa May, with the backing of 61 other Tories. (Enough to challenge her leadership.) The hardliners want a hard Brexit. It's kind of funny to watch the mutiny unfold, with deranged mutineers smoking in the ship's magazine, and the captain, bereft of ammunition, trying to parley. Sensible seamen have made it to the lifeboats, ready to cut the ropes. Other ships in the flotilla watch with bemusement, keeping safe distance, their crews betting on how long this will last, and how quick she will sink.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeBy all means discuss. But don't feed the trolls. Block and report them. On a short fuse. One strike and you're out. If you're feeling kind, one yellow card. — Safety notice.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademiahttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/13/how-iceland-became-the-bitcoin-miners-paradise The island nation is the first to use more electricity on mining cryptocurriencies than on its households – thanks in part to its magma-fuelled power plants WTF? SRSLY! WTF! — Can those crypto-miners please take their fucking tulips and go home? We have other things to do. (Via +Edward Morbius .)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit"someone from the Global Warming Policy Foundation" Do tell! — How £435,000 where spent on campaigning for Brexit, with the money being paid by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a party exclusively operating in Northern Ireland. Oh, wait, the money actually didn't come from the DUP. The DUP got the money from the Constitutional Research Council, CRC. And who is involved in the CRC? Scottish Tories, a Saudi Prince who was once the head of the Saudi Intelligence Agency, someone who smuggled arms into India, a former Field Marshal, someone who runs a company that provides "bespoke intelligence services", someone from Palantir, someone from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and a couple of other... interesting people.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitBTW. Can someone explain the Furry Cup to me in the Guardian cartoons that often accompanies the Boris Cyclops. eg. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2018/feb/14/martin-rowson-on-boris-johnsons-brexit-speech-cartoon — Ladies and Gentlemen, the Foreign Secretary is taking questions. God help us. This is some Trumpian level of deflection.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe 🥕🥕🥕 have it. Or rather, Boris reminds us that "we're all doomed". https://twitter.com/MichaelPDeacon/status/963755157094850560 Bonus vid. Derek & Clive - Jump https://vimeo.com/32637671 — Ladies and Gentlemen, the Foreign Secretary is taking questions. God help us. This is some Trumpian level of deflection.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Social Problems and Social Change+Sakari Maaranen It's a reference to David Brin - Transparent Society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society For a while there, public webcams were a thing. These days, they seem to be disappearing. And the one's that are around in London are distant, low res and tend to get switched off at the least sign of demonstrations or trouble. The real trick though is to encourage the public to track themselves using things like Strava. Places like London and Singapore have been tracking vehicles for a while now in order to implement vehicle charging systems. They have promised that 1) the data wouldn't get passed to the police. 2) The police would get access but delete it after a time, 3) The police could keep it for extended periods of time. 4) The police can just forget to delete it. — Score One for Privacy: Seattle Rips Out Surveillance Network This is a story of privacy and civil rights activists shifting policy here in Seattle where I live. It's a nice example of a city drawing a line between a police force dedicated to community policing and one backed by Homeland security technologies with the potential to be a dangerous threat to civil liberties, especially given the current administration in Washington, D.C. _"We have a longstanding principle that suspicionless surveillance of general populations is not useful and chills people’s constitutionally protected rights.” And note, further down in the article, how the Seattle City Council is now taking a more proactive stance in reviewing the city's various surveillance tools.
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Commented on post by Sakari Maaranen in Get DefensiveIs Cloudflare a common carrier or not? They provide services to Pirate Bay, apparently have no qualms about supporting site promoting hate speech. But remove SciHub. Nope. They're a for profit service that needs to respect national laws or face the consequences. Both legal and brand marketing. — Cloudflare is spreading neo-Nazi racial hatred direct into the UK, at a time when the UK has suffered four terror attacks over 12 months, including one from a far-right extremist.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+John Baez Really? Condensed version of "foreigner has", surely. The foreigner's what: Robot? So you were working for Tata, amirite! No pension for you then. — Political poster, UK, 1906. Party unknown, but best guess is Liberal Unionist, which later merged with the Tories. Some things never change.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Social Problems and Social ChangeIs there any merit in making all those cams, public access webcams. And using the mesh network to provide city wide free wifi? — Score One for Privacy: Seattle Rips Out Surveillance Network This is a story of privacy and civil rights activists shifting policy here in Seattle where I live. It's a nice example of a city drawing a line between a police force dedicated to community policing and one backed by Homeland security technologies with the potential to be a dangerous threat to civil liberties, especially given the current administration in Washington, D.C. _"We have a longstanding principle that suspicionless surveillance of general populations is not useful and chills people’s constitutionally protected rights.” And note, further down in the article, how the Seattle City Council is now taking a more proactive stance in reviewing the city's various surveillance tools.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green Technology+Alan Stainer If it has 1500 watts and has a max speed of 60kmph then it's not a bicycle in any jurisdiction I know of. Which means it's something like a Quad or Light Car with all that implies. Tax, MOT, Insurance, Driver Licensing, Testing, etc, etc, etc. So broadly similar to something like the Renault Twizy I mentioned earlier. — A Bike Or A Car? Meet Podbike! Innovations comes in many forms and the big names shouldn't get all the limelight. This is Podbike, a four wheeler bike with three electric motors. Cycling and comfort and convenience combined. h/t +Danie van der Merwe
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyIn the UK (and elsewhere), we need a good category for road users of things like this that falls between E-Bicycle (250w-25kph) and Quad, Light car. It's like this is one size smaller/lighter than a Renault Twizy but it's more than a trike or Velomobile. But then it has to share the roads with aggregate lorries, white van man, and Audi-BMW-RangeRover SUV. That's bad enough on a bicycle. A least you wouldn't get the punishment close pass, but you would get the road rage if it only does 15mph. — A Bike Or A Car? Meet Podbike! Innovations comes in many forms and the big names shouldn't get all the limelight. This is Podbike, a four wheeler bike with three electric motors. Cycling and comfort and convenience combined. h/t +Danie van der Merwe
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitCan I please nominate, Charles Pooter. "Nobody" seems preferable to "None of the above". — Next Tory leader: None of the Above None of the Above, a real up and comer, with a 44% lead over Boris Johnson. Unfortunately, None of the Above was unable to comment.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI suspect there's a huge amount of Gov IT that won't be up to the task, not just this. — 'Key EU migrant scheme may not be ready before Brexit' (Paywalled, but what I could discern from another source is as follows. Up to a month ago, the general idea was to treat EU citizens arriving before the Brexit date (March 2019) and those arriving during the transition period (about 2 additional years) exactly the same. Then Theresa May turned around and said that the second category of EU citizens should not have all the rights of the first category. (Why? Fuck you, thats why.) This necessitates now two citizen registers, and not only one. Guess what? Government IT won't be up to the task.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAnd you may ask yourself What is that beautiful house? And you may ask yourself Where does that highway go to? And you may ask yourself Are we right? Are we wrong? And you may say to yourself, "My God! What have we done?" — On the road to Brexit.
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Commented on post by Miriam Rozian in Data CorruptionI use FB every day. Primarily for special interest groups[1] and to follow a list of maybe 100 pages. I find the conversation about ads strange as I NEVER see any. Adblock + 9.9.9.9 simply hides all of them. I very occasionally have to add a div to adblock to hide a sidebar when FB changes their style sheet. I also never look at the main feed. I have a large number of "FB Friends" (most of whom are idiots!) so I maintain a very short list of "Close Friends", bookmark it and use that as the entry point. I use the same approach to Twitter. Facebook? What's the problem? [1]Special Interest Groups and Communities of Interest. With long form text and commentary. What's the best platform for these in 2018? IRC, Usenet, Skype Groups, Yahoogroups, Mailing lists have all died. Most phpBB/vBulletin sites have died. G+Communities and GoogleGroups are f*cking useless. Reddit works but the geeky barrier to entry in the UX is too much. Right now Facebook is the best with the most engagement. — Still not using Facebook, myself. The fact that this tool had to be developed outside Facebook is so incredibly lazy, such a complete 🤷‍♀️ of responsibility for the source of Facebook profits, just reflects how obsolete and badly designed the platform is for the users (or is that "the used").
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWhat happens if the whole UK gets forced into the Single Market and Customs Union? Does JRM make enough money for a new yacht? — Get your popcorn ready, folks! So where is the new border between the EU and the UK supposed to be? If the whole of the UK stays in the single market, we basically go for no Brexit. The only other option on the table is a border in the Irish Sea. But that will rustle all the jimmies of the Northern Loyalists, who would see this as a sellout. And thee Loyalists are presently propping up the government in Westminster...
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Commented on post by Valdis Klētnieks in Beverage warningI recently came across the phrase "government by taxidermy" in a Guardian article about Brexit. And "Turn-key Totalitarianism" from Edward Snowden in an article about John Perry Barlow. This story combines the two! Turn-key Totalitarianism Exposed By Taxidermy — The derp is strong in this one...
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Commented on post by David Collier-Brown+Sakari Maaranen Indeed. But why? — Hey Google, you're sending me sequences of email claiming I have a security problem, but the checkup at https://accounts.google.com/AccountChooser?Email=davecb.42@gmail.com[...] says I'm OK. And yes, it's not spam from someone else: spamcop confirms it's from you. I did report you to you for spamming, though (;-))
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Knowledge and InformationThe Rhetological Offence - Claiming that your opponent's argument must be wrong because they're guilty of using a Rhetological fallacy or device in their argument. — Rhetorical fallacies: 54 different errors and methods of manipulating rhetoric and logical thinking.
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Commented on post by Robert Llewellyn in Fully Charged+DB Fuller It's OK. It's American Cheese. — Impossible Burger | Fully Charged
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Commented on post by Kevin Kellyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QspuCt1FM9M Justin Beiber slowed down by 800% sounds just like Sigur Ros. So does Sigur Ros sped up by 800% sound just like Justin Beiber? — What is the slowest music possible? This youtube investigation gives a great answer, which is quite deep and very Long Now-ish. Ignore the overly hip first two-minute introduction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afhSDK5DJqA
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Commented on post by Julian BondLine up looks ok, though. https://www.facebook.com/farrfestival/photos/a.287162308024101.66738.121067977966869/1960507910689524/?type=3 — Farr Festival https://tickets.farrfestival.co.uk/rep/jbond-farr-2018 This is going to be a hard sell this year as there's no discount for rep tickets. But, If you or your friends buy through this link and give me an email address I can reward them with £9 via paypal. But to be honest, the 5 for 4 deal is a better offer. What can I say, last year (and the year before!) was fun with great sets from Chaos in the CBD, Omar-S, Ramzi, Huerco S, Mr G, Willow, Avalon Emerson, Sad City and others. http://www.farrfestival.co.uk/
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Distributed TechnologiesSo it has to come to this, obligatory XKCD. https://xkcd.com/1022/ — The Heat of Bitcoin This fall, we completed a backyard cottage. It's currently unoccupied and so I agreed to allow a friend to run three Bitcoin AntMiner machines out there. This is Seattle and it was in the forties outside and I'd shut off the heat to the building while we ran these three machines. We were only running them at two-third's power and still, the temperature inside popped up to 92℉. I had to keep three upstairs windows open, just to maintain the temperature in the 80s. This was my first time being in contact with actual Bitcoin mining machines. They are super loud and are like running little heaters. I was curious because I'd heard lots of stats thrown around, and apparently, there is some controversy around estimates of Bitcoin mining electricity usage.¹ From what I could find, total worldwide energy consumption is around 33 billion kilowatt hours. For comparison, total US electricity consumption in 2016 was 3.85 trillion kilowatt hours. So, if these numbers are to be believed, Bitcoin electricity consumption is 1/1,000 of total US electricity consumption. If anyone with more knowledge on this subject has a clearer picture, please let me know. The point is, my experience over the last few days demonstrated, very heatedly, what kind of energy usage these machines create - and it's a lot. Over the course of three and a half days, my friend made around a hundred bucks, so I can see the draw from the miner's perspective, but from a societal perspective, there just has to be more ecologically sustainable paths toward building decentralized consensus facilitation. Maybe proof of stake? Not my field, but man, this experience has taken a lot of the shine off this technology for me personally. It went from a theoretical "yeah, they consume a lot of power" to "wow, that's not good." ¹ https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/no-bitcoin-is-likely-not-going-to-consume-all-the-worlds-energy-in-2020.html
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademia+Bruce Elliott No microwave ovens, CAT scans or Netflix for you. — Needs another box for "irrelevant mathematical theory", feeding back into "oversimplified models", but otherwise quite accurate.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Dan Weese Neither side wants to return to first principles, that solutions only arise from a full understanding of the problem itself That's a very specifically American disease; trying to argue from first principles. Ignoring that we're not starting from scratch. We're starting from here. And also ignoring prior art. Or cherry picking from history to "prove" that certain solutions are impossible. — An elementary bit of game theory: for the Dutch, giving the Brits a special deal is more damaging than the crash of a hard Brexit. Therefore, they prefer hard Brexit. The same holds for all other EU27 nations. Bingo, Nash equilibrium found. Game over.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeI have a .sig generator I've been maintaining for decades now. Once a day it grabs a pithy saying and adds it to the bottom. It was originally seeded by a Fringeware (boingboing fore-runner) collection of product warnings. Useful advice for life like "Keep Dry and Away From Children". But it's grown. Today's warning: "Just Say No To Military Metaphors" — "If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done." Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Commented on post by Dave Wonnacott+nigel adams You are the Russian Troll Bot in this thread, and I claim my €5 — It's nothing short of astonishing that anyone trusts anything that liar Johnson concocts. He's a disgrace to the Government and to the country. He cannot be gotten rid of soon enough.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeAnd that's not even it's final form. — Now this reminds me of something.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAny sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. — Why not both?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Mixology 🍸The list gets longer! Bensonhurst: bspn Cynar, 2 bspn Maraschino, 3/4oz Dry Vermouth, 2oz Rye (C. Soloman) Bronx: 1oz Orange, 1/4oz Dry Vermouth, 1/4oz Sweet Vermouth, 2oz Gin Brooklyn: 1/2oz Dry Vermouth, 1/4oz Maraschino, 1/4oz Picon, 2oz Rye Brooklyn Heights: Orange Bitters, 1/4oz Abano, 1/2oz Dry Vermouth, 1/2oz Maraschino, 1 1/2oz Rye, Campari spritz (M. Britten) Bushwick: 1/4oz Picon, 1/4oz Maraschino, 3/4oz Sweet Vermouth, 2oz Rye (P. Ward) Carroll Gardens: bspn Maraschino, 1/2oz Sweet Vermouth, 1/2oz Nardini, 2oz Rye, Lemon twist (J. Simó) Chinatown: 1/2oz Sweet Vermouth, 1/2oz Dry Vermouth, 1/2oz Cognac, 1 1/2oz Gin Cobble Hill: Cucumber, 1/2oz Dry Vermouth, 1/2oz Montenegro, 2oz Rye, Lemon twist (S. Ross) Flushing: Harvard on the rocks Greenpoint: Orange/Angostura, 1/2oz Sweet Vermouth, 1/2oz Y. Chartreuse, 2oz Rye, Lemon twist (M. McIlroy) Little Italy: 1/2oz Sweet Vermouth, 1/2oz Cynar, 2oz Rye (A. Saunders) Newark: 1/4oz Maraschino, 1/4oz Fernet, 1oz Sweet Vermouth, 2oz Applejack (J. Deragon) Old Bayridge: Angostura, 1oz Aquavit, 1 1/2oz Rye, Lemon twist (D. Wondrich) Prospect Park: 1/4oz Sweet Vermouth, 1/4oz Maraschino, 1oz Aperol, 1 1/2oz Rye, Cherry (T. Schlesinger-Guidelli) Queens: 1/4oz Dry Vermouth, 1/4oz Sweet Vermouth, 1oz Pineapple, 2oz Gin Redhook: 1/2oz Punt e Mes, 1/2oz Maraschino, 2oz Rye, Cherry (E. Errico) Sheepshead Bay: Sweet Manhattan with a bspn of Benedictine, Cherry Sunset Park: Angostura/Peach, 1/2oz Dry Vermouth, 1/2oz Sweet vermouth, 2oz Rye, Lemon twist (M. Madrusan) The Slope: Angostura, 1/4oz Abricot, 3/4oz Sweet Vermouth, 2oz Rye, Cherry (J. Reiner) — For some reason, I started collecting recipes that were named after New York or parts of New York. Can you name any more? Manhattan, 40ml Bourbon, 20ml red Vermouth, bitters, stirred-martini Brooklyn. 40ml bourbon 20ml dry Vermouth 5ml Maraschino, bitters, shaken-martini Bronx, 30ml gin, 15ml red Vermouth, 10ml dry Vermouth, 15ml OJ, shaken-martini Queens, 30ml gin, 15ml red Vermouth, 10ml dry Vermouth, 15ml Pineapple, shaken-martini Staten Island, 40ml white rum, 40ml Pineapple rocks Red Hook. 40ml bourbon 20ml Punt e mes 5ml Maraschino, bitters, stirred-martini Harlem Mugger. 15ml vodka, 15ml gin, 15ml white rum, 15ml tequila, 90ml champagne, topped with cranberry juice. straight up and garnished with a wedge of lime. Long Island Iced Tea. 15ml Vodka, 15ml Tequila, 15ml White Rum, 15ml Triple sec, 15ml Gin, 25ml Gomme, Dash of cola.  Algonquin. 40ml Rye, 20ml Dry Vermouth, 20ml Pineapple, shaken-martini Of course you may disagree about the exact quantities in each recipe. That's not teh point, but feel free to correct me!
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyTL;DR. Inland barges not ocean going. With battery packs built into containers so they can easily be swapped. — 'Tesla ships' due to ship this autumn Container barges use a lot of diesel. When I say a lot, I mean tonnes of the stuff. So an battery powered electric container ship will cut out a considerable amount of pollution. By the way, these aren't made by Tesla, it's just a nickname they have been given. h/t +Craig Froehle https://electrek.co/2018/01/12/large-tesla-ships-all-electric-barges/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Mixology 🍸There's more. Harlem Nights - 90ml tequila, 90ml coconut rum, 60ml Kahlua, Splash Pineapple juice, Splash peach schnapps, Shaken (for 3?) Madison Fizz - 30ml Bombay Sapphire, 15ml Marie Brizard apricot liqueur, 22ml Lemon juice, 22ml syrup, Shake. Top with 50-60ml Champagne, Mint sprig/Apricot slice The White Way Cocktail - 45ml Gin, 22ml Creme de Menthe. Shake, Martini New York Mofo - 7.5ml Vodka, 7.5ml Kahlua, 7.5ml Gin, 7.5ml rum, 60ml cream. Shake, Martini. New York Sour - 45 rye whiskey, 22ml lemon juice, 22ml syrup, splash OJ, 15ml red wine. Stir, Martini, Half orange wheel and maraschino cherry New York Black Haus - 15ml Irish Cream, 15ml Pear Liqueur, 30ml Black Haus. Stir, Shot glass. New York Lemonade - 30ml Grand Marnier, 60ml Citrus Vodka, 60ml Lemon Juice, 30ml Soda. Stir, Frosted Martini (lemon and sugar) New York Flip - 30ml Bourbon, 22ml Tawny Port, 1 egg yolk, 22ml cream, 7.5ml Sugar Syrup. Shake, Martini, sprinkle with nutmeg Autumn in New York - 30ml Cognac, 1 bottle Zima. Shake gently, Collins. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/the-scene/events/Drinks-Named-for-New-York-.html — For some reason, I started collecting recipes that were named after New York or parts of New York. Can you name any more? Manhattan, 40ml Bourbon, 20ml red Vermouth, bitters, stirred-martini Brooklyn. 40ml bourbon 20ml dry Vermouth 5ml Maraschino, bitters, shaken-martini Bronx, 30ml gin, 15ml red Vermouth, 10ml dry Vermouth, 15ml OJ, shaken-martini Queens, 30ml gin, 15ml red Vermouth, 10ml dry Vermouth, 15ml Pineapple, shaken-martini Staten Island, 40ml white rum, 40ml Pineapple rocks Red Hook. 40ml bourbon 20ml Punt e mes 5ml Maraschino, bitters, stirred-martini Harlem Mugger. 15ml vodka, 15ml gin, 15ml white rum, 15ml tequila, 90ml champagne, topped with cranberry juice. straight up and garnished with a wedge of lime. Long Island Iced Tea. 15ml Vodka, 15ml Tequila, 15ml White Rum, 15ml Triple sec, 15ml Gin, 25ml Gomme, Dash of cola.  Algonquin. 40ml Rye, 20ml Dry Vermouth, 20ml Pineapple, shaken-martini Of course you may disagree about the exact quantities in each recipe. That's not teh point, but feel free to correct me!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitNope. Not quite 12 year olds. 36 year olds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Jenrick — Letter from the Newark MP to one of his constituents. Brexit cannot be reversed because that would be embarrassing. We are governed by 12 year olds.
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Commented on post by mathewThe web is like a cat. Imagine a giant cat with it's tail in your home and it's mouth in Google's servers. When you pull on it's tail, it cries in Google. Except there is no cat. (cf Einstein, allegedly) — « You don't get a clear warning that you're working on something that's bad for the world. They put you to work designing a machine that answers to "OK Google", not "OK Goebbels". »
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Commented on post by Finn Skancke-Engen in blue hazeI always put the disk lock in the rear wheel. Because when you ride away and bend the disk, a replacement rear disk is cheaper than a front one. — Trye to steal my bike. Hehe
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Commented on post by Vladimir Pecha in Vintage Astronomy, Science & ArtAn idea that needs re-inventing for 2020. — Today in 1985: Clive Sinclair launched the Sinclair C5 electric vehicle. It was a huge commercial failure.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Piero FilippIN Whereas I'm endlessly cycling around the three. Denial (This can't be happening), Anger (how could we be so stupid), Depression (There's no hope) As for Bargaining, who with? Both major parties are completely deaf. And Acceptance? Never! — We are in the begging phase now.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitJoined Labour for Corbyn. Left Labour over Labour's Brexit policy. There was a meme being spread by the Leavers after the last election that 83% (or something) of the population voted for a pro-brexit party. It's deeply, deeply depressing to discover that this is true. But what to do? How do you punish both major parties because they don't represent the views of the people who voted, supported and joined them? The UK is not Scotland. For all the other nations in the kingdom, there is no SNP to vote for. — Popcorn!
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeFoxtrot Foxtrot Sierra — Well done.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitGosh, there's a lot in there. And surprising just how confused the political landscape is now. And as usual, the comments are also deeply troubling. The two tribes really hate each other now even though they are very badly defined and with 50:50 splits across multiple axes. And where each split is a different set of people. — Putting the Brexit vote on the Political Compass Further slicing and dicing of referendum data. Here, voters have been measured along two scales, Left vs. Right (the "economic axis") and Authoritarian vs. Libertarian (the "ideological axis"). Just like the good old Political Compass does Turns out that there is a comparatively large overlap of Labour/Tory voters on the ideological axis, but not so much on the economic axis. No surprises here. And Leave/Remain voters? Exactly the opposite. Common ground on economic issues, but small overlap on ideological issues. Even more importantly, a large group of Leave voters find themselves in the upper left quadrant: economically left, and authoritarian. The classic Labour type from more than 50 years ago, in a fashion: in favour of nationalisation as well as in favour of the death penalty. Economically so far left that Marxism isn't a bad word anymore, but don't you dare say anything against the Royals. So who is representing people of that quadrant in parliament? Nobody.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeAre we talking about ancient Greece? — This is glorious.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeCharles Stross, amirite? http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-you-broke-the-future.html — In case you suffer from Kurzweilianism, or something.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitHasn't he got this completely backwards? It's the UK that can't cherry pick the deal. So for instance, the EU won't let us have financial passporting and a low tax regime without all the rest, up to and including freedom of movement, the ECJ, Euratom and a N.I. open border. — Sure, Dave. You will get a fantastic deal with the EU. You just have to accept all aspects of the common market.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesTake a post that is a reshare. There are 3 comments on the original, and 5 comments on the share. When this post turns up in the main timeline, there is a shortened display of abbreviated text of the 5 share comments with no obvious indication of them being truncated. Click on it and they disappear completely. WTF? Hit the Expand button and all 5 are visible. Then go back and do it all again just to make sure before writing this comment and it all behaves slightly better. Seriously Google, wut? There's too much javascript with too many edge cases and it just breaks too often for what is a pretty simple but important function. Show me the damn comments! — This latest desktop web layout change. Is Google actively trying to reduce engagement? Because the ability to see and read comments really sucks. Where did the count of comments go? Why does anything you click on make everything jump up and down, hiding and then revealing some of the comments but not all. Why do the comments sometimes disappear completely.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitTop comment: "Change my name to Theresa Will. It sounds more convincing than Theresa May" — Theresa May's New Year resolutions leaked.
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Commented on post by Jared GivensBefore feeding them G&Ts to see if it would kill or cure them. — [Spits out mouthful of gin and tonic] 😀
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Commented on post by Jared GivensIf you enjoy bitter flavours, such as gin and tonic, then I'm sorry to tell you this, but you might be a psychopath Better stay away from Triple IPAs and craft beers then. Does that explain Nigel Farage? You hardly ever see him without a beer in his hand. In my experience, the real psychopaths are into Cristal and blow. But then I've spent time in the City of London. — [Spits out mouthful of gin and tonic] 😀
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexithttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/28/brexit-department-david-davis-sidelined-talks-brussels Sidelined. or just not bothering to turn up and delegating everything instead. — David Davies, the intellectual heavyweight of the Brexit team, has apparently been sidelined from the Brexit negotiations.
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in MotoGPBorn to run Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend I want to guard your dreams and visions Just wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims And strap your hands 'cross my engines Together we could break this trap We'll run till we drop, baby we'll never go back H-Oh, Will you walk with me out on the wire `Cause baby I'm just a scared and lonely rider But I gotta know how it feels I want to know if love is wild Babe I want to know if love is real (inspired by that umbrella girl) — Can't wait for the new season to start in April 😄
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit1) It's the Grauniad. And they generally don't like Corbyn with one or two exceptions. 2) Maybe it's where I'm looking but I am sensing a growing backlash. Labour4EU and Labour Against Brexit groups are getting increasingly vocal. 3) It's not just the voters and members. The party is split 3 ways. - The EU is anti-socialist. Corbyn, Momentum. And anti-brexit would be political suicide. First we must regain power. - If Brexit is inevitable, then we should stay in the Single Market and Customs Union. Anything less is economic suicide and will blow up the UK (Ireland, Scotland) - Brexit must be stopped. — 31% of all Labour remain voters believe Labour is "completely against Brexit". 32% of all Labour leave voters believe Labour is "completely in favour of Brexit". That's actually quite impressive. I wonder how long they will be able to pull this off?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Updates+Julie Wills I do and did. But frankly Google's denial of feedback attack on it's users makes it a thankless task. It's a two way street. If they can't provide me with any feedback, I'm not sure why I should do their beta testing for them and provide them with any feedback. Consider this post a "WTF are they thinking" discussion rather than any attempt to get it fixed. — This latest desktop web layout change. Is Google actively trying to reduce engagement? Because the ability to see and read comments really sucks. Where did the count of comments go? Why does anything you click on make everything jump up and down, hiding and then revealing some of the comments but not all. Why do the comments sometimes disappear completely.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The War on UsWhy are we talking about war again? — I'd support this. via +Valkyrie https://plus.google.com/+AlisonMarlowe/posts/Tn6MGLFaczs .
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaWe shouldn't be sterilising our landers. We should be deliberately adding a small packet of DNA stuff. What could possibly go wrong? — Galactic colonisation by microbes, or: we are all aliens. (If the probability estimates are correct.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaI remember first reading about this idea in the 70s. The Starseed theory was that DNA got to the earth from aliens sending it to us. And if they hadn't then the aliens would be us as we forwarded the chain letter to other planets and systems. The key carrier would be mushroom spores and tardigrades. Since both are very, very small and almost indestructible. Mushroom spores especially because they're so small and light that they can escape from earth's atmosphere and then be propelled by the solar wind. Given that it was mushrooms, ISTR Leary and McKenna were involved. — Galactic colonisation by microbes, or: we are all aliens. (If the probability estimates are correct.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Armin Grewe Sadly Essex, East Herts, N Kent coast are all in the SE. — Looks like the UKIP lads are getting nervous.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe RHS is actually their plan for an open Irish border. Drones, Blockchain, pre-approval, a virtual customs check in a VR MMRPG, policed by robot cars that can drive the unmade farm tracks. — I can't even.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI've been taken to task about this before for being a bit non-PC. But I find something deeply strange and disturbing about Theresa May's dress sense. There's a bit too much cleavage, short skirts, strange bondage jewellery, overly tall heels, leather trousers and general weirdness for a female political leader in their 60s. For instance, yesterday's ensemble included a skirt with a full length rear zip. So the emperor's clothes with a boot up your bum is almost in keeping. ;) Maybe it's something she saw in Vogue in a photo shoot involving a barely legal, anorexic bit of heroin chic and thought, "That looks nice and perhaps it will make me look a bit edgy". — Sneak peek from the last Brexit cabinet meeting.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWeirdly this story doesn't seem to have got much press. Perhaps because we're all so busy trying not to think about Damian Green. — And while the Tories are going through their own civil war, the Labour civil war erupted again into the public, in all its bloody glory. Or maybe this is just one big civil war that the country has with itself.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAt least half the Tory MPs need to do the same thing. Do the right thing, not just what the whips say they should. — And while the Tories are going through their own civil war, the Labour civil war erupted again into the public, in all its bloody glory. Or maybe this is just one big civil war that the country has with itself.
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Commented on post by Alexa Paquin in Mixology 🍸Off Topic ! — https://www.stopdrinkingexpert.com/
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademia+Bob Calder Can you elaborate? Because I think exactly the reverse. I trust New Scientist a LOT more than Wired and MIT. My big problem with it is the paywall, but that's a separate issue. — I see some old acquaintances here. (Via +Valdis Klētnieks .)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWhen did Theresa turn from the "Dead Man Walking" Maybot into a "Ghostly presence that is not really (all) there"? And what does it mean? — The Guardian cartoon, on that Brexit horse.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaWith particular relevance to the Brexit negotiating team. "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice" — "Any sufficiently crappy research is indistinguishable from fraud."
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Commented on post by Robert Hamner in Climate ChangeWe kept on trying stuff, because that's what it is to be human. #23: Believe you are making a difference. — Pretty dark hypothetical from vice. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwvgeq/an-incomplete-timeline-of-what-we-tried
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege"But you have kept the good wine until now.” "And we're all drunk! Hooray!" "Toga. Toga. Toga." — Always remember Saint Arnulf of Metz!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitNo. Please deny him the oxygen of publicity. — Shouldn't our prayers and thoughts be with him?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI'm not sure which is worse. A robot in a Harlequin suit with leopard skin shoes. Or the ghostly presence of Brexits past, present and future. She's not really (all) there but one is dimly aware of a memorised speech drifting through the room like a bad smell. — Now a short break, and in March the actual negotiations begin.
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Commented on post by Julie Wills in Google+ UpdatesI frequently find myself wanting to report a post in a community for being obviously and wildly off topic. It's not spam, so the nearest category is "Something Else", "I don't like it". Which feels really ineffectual and doesn't capture the problem. As members of the group we need a "report to moderator" function. — Delete, report, & block comments, and delete all recent comments by the poster on your own Google+ posts in one step This is similar to the community tools announced recently. People have been asking for better tools to deal with spam on their own posts, and this should be a big help in the fight against spammers. Note that this is only available for comments on your own posts, and available for web interface only, including on mobile. For comments on others' posts you can still report them, of course. Great stuff +Leo Deegan​
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Commented on post by Sabine Klare in Winamp & Music VisualizerSeem ok for me. — Since this week I get only a page-loading-error, if I want to visit the Winamp & SHOUTcast Forums. Does anyone else experience the same issues or am I myself the only-one with these problems?...
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Commented on post by Julie Wills in Google+ UpdatesI found a use for this immediately. Way back with Buzz I had bookmarked a base search that could be extended. Posts from other people with Comments from me in reverse date order. It's been hard to do this accurately with G+ except via some fudges. Now we have, https://plus.google.com/s/commenter%3Ame%20AND%20-from%3Ame/posts?order=recent&scope=all — New Advanced Google+ Search operators currently for the web interface only works on web and in mobile apps. Lots of useful options here (see the link to the help centre article for all of them).
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Andreas Geisler No matter what happens we can never go back. We have lost all respect already. Which leaves us in the same kind of position as Greece. That's still better than crashing out to WTO. — Now it's getting interesting. The UK parliament just voted in favour of giving itself a vote on the final Brexit deal. A vote can be a powerful weapon. But a weapon can also be a shotgun pointed at ones' own head. If the final deal falls through, Article 50 rumbles on, and the default would be a disorderly Brexit, with no agreement with Brussels in place. Timing is now everything.
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Commented on post by Leo Deegan in Google+ NewsTrying to find all posts I've commented on, but posted by other people. This ought to work, but it doesn't. commenter:me AND -from:me ideas? It turns out this does work. https://plus.google.com/s/commenter%3Ame AND -from%3Ame/posts?order=recent&scope=all — Advanced search operators Over the next few days, we'll be rolling out advanced search operators to the Google+ search box to assist you in refining your Google+ search queries. For example, I typed from:"Ina Gat" has:photo commenter:me into the search box and rediscovered this nice bokeh shot from +Ina Gat. You can search for posts that have particular attachments (like has:poll), posts where you were mentioned (like mention:me), posts before or after a date (like before:2016-04-01), posts in communities or collections, and more! You can even use operators like AND, NOT, and OR. Read the complete set of rules at: https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1669519 Enjoy!
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Commented on post by Julie Wills in Google+ Updatesusing US English Never! As a Brit, could I ask you politely to fix that? — New Advanced Google+ Search operators currently for the web interface only works on web and in mobile apps. Lots of useful options here (see the link to the help centre article for all of them).
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyThe rate of "Battery Breakthrough" announcements is accelerating. However, actual battery improvements are steady but incremental. We're getting 5%/yr in all major metrics which is amazing, but it's not huge breakthroughs. — Electric car range may soon triple And what a day it will be when it does. Battery technology is accelerating so quickly it is hard to keep up. https://futurism.com/electric-car-range-soon-triple-thanks-new-research/
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Commented on post by Leo Deegan in Google+ NewsHate these staggered rollouts. The help page doesn't yet show the list of operators. Read the complete set of rules at: https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1669519 — Advanced search operators Over the next few days, we'll be rolling out advanced search operators to the Google+ search box to assist you in refining your Google+ search queries. For example, I typed from:"Ina Gat" has:photo commenter:me into the search box and rediscovered this nice bokeh shot from +Ina Gat. You can search for posts that have particular attachments (like has:poll), posts where you were mentioned (like mention:me), posts before or after a date (like before:2016-04-01), posts in communities or collections, and more! You can even use operators like AND, NOT, and OR. Read the complete set of rules at: https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1669519 Enjoy!
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Commented on post by Julie Wills in Google+ UpdatesSo where is the detail about the search operators? Because it's not on that link. — New Advanced Google+ Search operators currently for the web interface only works on web and in mobile apps. Lots of useful options here (see the link to the help centre article for all of them).
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Commented on post by Leo Deegan in Google+ NewsCome back Buzz. All is forgiven. — Advanced search operators Over the next few days, we'll be rolling out advanced search operators to the Google+ search box to assist you in refining your Google+ search queries. For example, I typed from:"Ina Gat" has:photo commenter:me into the search box and rediscovered this nice bokeh shot from +Ina Gat. You can search for posts that have particular attachments (like has:poll), posts where you were mentioned (like mention:me), posts before or after a date (like before:2016-04-01), posts in communities or collections, and more! You can even use operators like AND, NOT, and OR. Read the complete set of rules at: https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1669519 Enjoy!
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The War on UsWhat's wrong with being lazy? We all need more slack. — So, yeah -- why is it easier to believe that 150 million Americans are being lazy than to believe that 400 Americans are being greedy? I realize this is oversimplified -- there's a spectrum of greed, with some people in the 400 probably just being oblivious rather than greedy and a lot of people outside the 400 being greedy too... ...but why is it so easy for so many people to believe that someone who is wealthy deserves the majority of what they have, while someone who doesn't have enough to live on is "just lazy" and deserves what they're getting? (Yes, this is a rhetorical question. I know the answer. It just irritates the crap out of me that this is a thing here. The people who believe it deserve what we are all getting; unfortunately, we have to suffer too, because of them. This is unsustainable.) via Mastodon https://chaos.social/users/pinkprius/statuses/99144455850646775 .
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawI see the assassins have failed again. — I can't wait to see what we'll be saying by the end of 2018.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+Joerg Fliege Quite. Except we won't call it single market and the customs union, we'll call it regulation alignment with the whole of the UK and freedom of movement. As for riots, no I don't believe it either. At least not for failing to leave the EU. I've no doubt though we'll get more nastiness from people shouting "Britain First" or something like it. What's more interesting is Labour activists saying that we can't possibly revoke Art50 or "there'll be riots". So in true British fashion I'll be "absolutely livid" that Labour can't mount an effective opposition and go and have a bit of a sit down. — So there we go. An open border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and protection of EU citizen's rights in the UK. The statement reads "the UK will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement." I take that to infer that the border is then in the Irish Sea.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeOn a related topic. Momentum is pushing for Jon Lansman to be on the Labour NEC. I wrote. I won't vote for Jon until Jeremy votes for #StopBrexit I got a reply I voted remain, but if the Brexit vote is reversed, the leave voters WILL riot. Murders like Jo Cox and the van attack near Finsbury Park will become a regular occurrence. -- So there you have it. The country is being held ransom by a bunch of terrorists. If it's not Sinn Fein warning about civil disobedience, it's Nigel Farage talking about "without a single bullet being fired". — So there we go. An open border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and protection of EU citizen's rights in the UK. The statement reads "the UK will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement." I take that to infer that the border is then in the Irish Sea.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeWhat just happened? It feels like we just agreed to mirror the single market and customs union without actually being in both. That's just a bunch of words that doesn't actually mean anything so it will probably get found out before Monday. Or may be not. I only know that I don't know any more wtf is going on. A couple of days ago we had Davis saying that "regulatory alignment" was always going to be for the whole UK to head off DUP, SNP, Wales, London etc objections to something that was NI only. What they seem to think now is that they've found a set of words that make "regulatory alignment" apply everywhere. So we get no border between NI-Eire or NI-Mainland. But we still leave customs union, single market and ECJ to keep DUP and hard brexiters happy. Which is all still bollocks isn't it? Are Jacob Rees-Mogg, Owen Paterson, IDS and all the rest of the hardliners really going to swallow this? And more to the point, are we? — So there we go. An open border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and protection of EU citizen's rights in the UK. The statement reads "the UK will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement." I take that to infer that the border is then in the Irish Sea.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAnd now it's Friday. And apparently we're getting - Regulatory alignment across the whole UK - NI-Eire soft border with no border controls. - No difference between NI and rest of UK - Soft border between NI and UK mainland with no border controls. So staying in the customs union and single market but without actually saying that. Is that what they mean? The hard line Brexiteers like Jacob Rees-Mogg, Owen Paterson and IDS are going to love that. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2017/dec/08/brexit-border-eu-theresa-may-juncker-tusk-markets-live — That should be it for the day.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitLand of Milk and Honey, here we come! — The Brexit Bulldog has a new cunning plan. A plan so cunning it will outwit the disgraced Dr Fox. After having campaigned for years against those regulations and red tape drawn up by unelected Eurocrats on the gravy train in Brussels on behalf of Hitlermerkel, he now wants Britain to leave the EU, while maintaining all those regulations and red tape, old and new, drawn up by unelected Eurocrats on the gravy train in Brussels on behalf of Hitlermerkel. That will show them! Sunlit uplands, here we come!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit"continued regulatory alignment" felt like a fudge and quite rightly it's been kicked out. The most amazing thing yesterday was that nothing changed. The paradox remained, its just come into sharper focus. — That should be it for the day.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWith a side order of "Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher" — Why the Tories have no milk to give for the poor. (The Times cartoon of the day. Looks like they are zeroing in.)
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Commented on post by A. Randomjack in Climate ChangeHas now been re-instated. As you were. Google/YouTube shouldn't allow this to happen in the first place. — I personnally thinks it's perhaps because he attacked well know climate denier and psychpathic Alex Jones. I watched all the videos of Climate State over the years Anyhow please sign this petition https://www.change.org/p/youtube-should-release-our-created-content-and-reinstate-our-channel
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Commented on post by Anzan Hoshin RoshiApparently the country voted for the deluge of sewage.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeThe US secret Service were unable to guarantee his safety in front of the fawning crowds of ardent supporters he's expecting. Meanwhile Project Hate gathers yet more momentum. — That was quick.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaBath is pre-Roman. So I'd kind of assumed that the Uni of Bath dated to 1350 or something. Turns out it's a converted poly that became a Uni in 1966. It has a fine reputation. It's just not old! — "Buy your own bloody biscuits!" one sign read. "I have never seen students, let alone Bath students, this engaged" a staff member said. The vice-chancellor of the University of Bath is apparently unable to stay out of the news. This time it's not her salary, but her exit package.
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Commented on post by Kee Hinckley in History, Archeology, and AnthropologyDon't feed the troll. Block them and then report them for racist hate speech. Shame Google makes that quite awkward to do involving too many clicks. — I think this wins the "things a younger person wouldn't understand" meme.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitDid you enjoy your babies yesterday? It was the 350th anniversary of Jonathan Swift's birth. — 'Britain close to Irish border deal' (Not my headline; this is about a new UK proposal to sort out the mess.) The British proposal is understood to commit the government to work towards “avoiding regulatory divergence” in Ireland after Brexit even if the rest of the UK moves away from European rules. This would involve the government devolving a package of powers to Northern Ireland to enable customs convergence with the Irish Republic on areas such as agriculture and energy. So, no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland then? Which means the border is in the Irish Sea? Custom checks on all ferries? (Paywalled, full text on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/7gl4f1/britain_close_to_irish_border_deal/dqjuebb/ )
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Commented on post by Kee Hinckley in History, Archeology, and AnthropologyPosting an image, instead of a link to the tweet, breaks the web. https://twitter.com/pndc/status/935581747202404352 — I think this wins the "things a younger person wouldn't understand" meme.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaPowerpoint and Chocolate Biscuits (and overly strong coffee). Essential items at any business meeting. How very English. Let them eat cake brioche biscuits. Also http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/ — "Buy your own bloody biscuits!" one sign read. "I have never seen students, let alone Bath students, this engaged" a staff member said. The vice-chancellor of the University of Bath is apparently unable to stay out of the news. This time it's not her salary, but her exit package.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitApparently Blockchain is the Chuck Norris of CS algorithms. It can solve the Irish Question according to Daniel Hannan, a leading Leave campaigner. https://twitter.com/alexhardy1987/status/935211078065246209 It can't fix his website though, which is currently terminally borked. — 'Britain close to Irish border deal' (Not my headline; this is about a new UK proposal to sort out the mess.) The British proposal is understood to commit the government to work towards “avoiding regulatory divergence” in Ireland after Brexit even if the rest of the UK moves away from European rules. This would involve the government devolving a package of powers to Northern Ireland to enable customs convergence with the Irish Republic on areas such as agriculture and energy. So, no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland then? Which means the border is in the Irish Sea? Custom checks on all ferries? (Paywalled, full text on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/7gl4f1/britain_close_to_irish_border_deal/dqjuebb/ )
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaHave a personal interest in this. They'd better not change the rules retrospectively. — 'UK government to book £800m loss from student loan sale' "The sale to specialist investors — including pension funds and hedge funds — values the block of loans at about £800m lower than their accounting value on the books of the Department for Education." "The transaction is made up of loans issued between 2002 and 2006, on which repayments are linked to income. Around half of students who borrowed during that period had already paid off their loans by the end of the 2015-16 financial year, meaning the pool of debt included in the deal is likely to be of a lower credit quality. Of those graduates with outstanding loans, only 60 per cent made a repayment in the same financial year." So these loans went to students which, 11 years after graduation are still in a low paying job. So low paying in fact that their repayments, linked to their income, haven't wiped out their loan. Which probably means we can safely assume that the government won't recoup that money ever. And thats about half of all students.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeI was so hoping he'd post to Teresa May, the famous porn star. — That special relationship.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe Irish Question is NP-Hard. And it's closely related to the Cretan Liar paradox and Catch-22. There is no solution involving a hard border either between N.I. and Eire or between N.I. and mainland UK. The only possible solution is Single Market and Customs Union (or revoking Art50!). But that might well bring down the current gov. More popcorn please. And a flak jacket. — 'Britain close to Irish border deal' (Not my headline; this is about a new UK proposal to sort out the mess.) The British proposal is understood to commit the government to work towards “avoiding regulatory divergence” in Ireland after Brexit even if the rest of the UK moves away from European rules. This would involve the government devolving a package of powers to Northern Ireland to enable customs convergence with the Irish Republic on areas such as agriculture and energy. So, no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland then? Which means the border is in the Irish Sea? Custom checks on all ferries? (Paywalled, full text on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/7gl4f1/britain_close_to_irish_border_deal/dqjuebb/ )
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Commented on post by Duncan Booth in Electric Vehicles (UK)Looks like 36v-5AHr and 36v-10AHr In the real world of geared hubs and a bit of pedalling, that's more like 15mi and 25mi. I don't agree at all about range being a better indicator than WHr because it's so dependent on how much work you put in via the pedals. It does look like quite a neat system. And there's a lot to be said for a super compact and light 36v-5AHr pack. And I still think the battery weight should be in the triangle or slung off the back of the seat, not on the handlebars. — Electric Penny Farthing. Not expecting one of those. https://www.swytchbike.com/the-product/
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Commented on post by Duncan Booth in Electric Vehicles (UK)Such a bad idea! What could possibly go wrong! Certain lack of detail about things like battery size. And althogh it's convenient, I'm not sure about putting battery weight on the handlebars in an E-Bike kit. — Electric Penny Farthing. Not expecting one of those. https://www.swytchbike.com/the-product/
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyEffectively a thermocouple turning ambient heat energy into electricity. opening up the possibility of an A/C unit that drives itself by reducing the temperature of it's surroundings. There's something delightfully perpetual motion about that. — Physicists Just Found a Loophole in Graphene That Could Unlock Clean, Limitless Energy Sound too good to be true? Well it is most certainly early days, but graphene has quickly become a wonder material. It wasn't long ago that self driving cars looked like a pipe dream and now look where we are. https://futurism.com/physicists-found-loophole-graphene-unlock-clean-limitless-energy/
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+D Doc IMHO, you should stop this. I'm having a hard time with even satire suggesting something that will end in bombs and guns being any kind of a good thing. I'm also constantly reminded of Nigel Farage's statement of Brexit being achieved without a shot being fired. A few days after Jo Cox. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/eu-referendum-nigel-farage-branded-shameful-for-claiming-victory-without-a-single-bullet-being-fired-a7099211.html — More analysis of the Irish position, with some illuminating details. Tone matters, however, and the message being received in Dublin is that the British expect the troublesome Micks to pipe down and get in line. Small things matter more than you might like them to. When David Davis’s officials send emails to the Irish asking for a meeting with ‘Kenny’ you can’t quite be sure whether this is a demonstration of rudeness (the meeting would be with ‘the Taoiseach’) or ignorance (the then-Taoiseach’s forename is Enda). Either way, it seems like a fail. (OK, I explain the joke. The Taoiseach is the prime minister of Ireland. The former Taoiseach was Enda Kenny; the present Taoiseach is Leo Varadkar. Imagine being as incompetent as the writer of that email.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAnd Brighton — More analysis of the Irish position, with some illuminating details. Tone matters, however, and the message being received in Dublin is that the British expect the troublesome Micks to pipe down and get in line. Small things matter more than you might like them to. When David Davis’s officials send emails to the Irish asking for a meeting with ‘Kenny’ you can’t quite be sure whether this is a demonstration of rudeness (the meeting would be with ‘the Taoiseach’) or ignorance (the then-Taoiseach’s forename is Enda). Either way, it seems like a fail. (OK, I explain the joke. The Taoiseach is the prime minister of Ireland. The former Taoiseach was Enda Kenny; the present Taoiseach is Leo Varadkar. Imagine being as incompetent as the writer of that email.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitBe careful what you wish for. — More analysis of the Irish position, with some illuminating details. Tone matters, however, and the message being received in Dublin is that the British expect the troublesome Micks to pipe down and get in line. Small things matter more than you might like them to. When David Davis’s officials send emails to the Irish asking for a meeting with ‘Kenny’ you can’t quite be sure whether this is a demonstration of rudeness (the meeting would be with ‘the Taoiseach’) or ignorance (the then-Taoiseach’s forename is Enda). Either way, it seems like a fail. (OK, I explain the joke. The Taoiseach is the prime minister of Ireland. The former Taoiseach was Enda Kenny; the present Taoiseach is Leo Varadkar. Imagine being as incompetent as the writer of that email.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitDid I just imagine it or did that really happen? — More analysis of the Irish position, with some illuminating details. Tone matters, however, and the message being received in Dublin is that the British expect the troublesome Micks to pipe down and get in line. Small things matter more than you might like them to. When David Davis’s officials send emails to the Irish asking for a meeting with ‘Kenny’ you can’t quite be sure whether this is a demonstration of rudeness (the meeting would be with ‘the Taoiseach’) or ignorance (the then-Taoiseach’s forename is Enda). Either way, it seems like a fail. (OK, I explain the joke. The Taoiseach is the prime minister of Ireland. The former Taoiseach was Enda Kenny; the present Taoiseach is Leo Varadkar. Imagine being as incompetent as the writer of that email.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe gloves are coming off. "Civil Disobedience"? To be sure. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/28/more-security-on-irish-border-could-mean-civil-disobedience-sinn-fein-says — More analysis of the Irish position, with some illuminating details. Tone matters, however, and the message being received in Dublin is that the British expect the troublesome Micks to pipe down and get in line. Small things matter more than you might like them to. When David Davis’s officials send emails to the Irish asking for a meeting with ‘Kenny’ you can’t quite be sure whether this is a demonstration of rudeness (the meeting would be with ‘the Taoiseach’) or ignorance (the then-Taoiseach’s forename is Enda). Either way, it seems like a fail. (OK, I explain the joke. The Taoiseach is the prime minister of Ireland. The former Taoiseach was Enda Kenny; the present Taoiseach is Leo Varadkar. Imagine being as incompetent as the writer of that email.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitMy answer to the problem is simple. Cancel Brexit, revoke Art50. Then the Irish Problem just goes away. As an interim step to cancelling Brexit, remain in the Single Market and Customs Union. Then a soft border is still possible. It's very tempting to cheer on the Tories continuing to screw up around N.I. because it makes abandoning Brexit more likely, or Single market/Customs Union more likely. But that is an incredibly dangerous game. — More analysis of the Irish position, with some illuminating details. Tone matters, however, and the message being received in Dublin is that the British expect the troublesome Micks to pipe down and get in line. Small things matter more than you might like them to. When David Davis’s officials send emails to the Irish asking for a meeting with ‘Kenny’ you can’t quite be sure whether this is a demonstration of rudeness (the meeting would be with ‘the Taoiseach’) or ignorance (the then-Taoiseach’s forename is Enda). Either way, it seems like a fail. (OK, I explain the joke. The Taoiseach is the prime minister of Ireland. The former Taoiseach was Enda Kenny; the present Taoiseach is Leo Varadkar. Imagine being as incompetent as the writer of that email.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+D Doc Nice try. But, Tory+DUP. And N.I. is both strongly pro-remain and strongly pro-unionist. — More analysis of the Irish position, with some illuminating details. Tone matters, however, and the message being received in Dublin is that the British expect the troublesome Micks to pipe down and get in line. Small things matter more than you might like them to. When David Davis’s officials send emails to the Irish asking for a meeting with ‘Kenny’ you can’t quite be sure whether this is a demonstration of rudeness (the meeting would be with ‘the Taoiseach’) or ignorance (the then-Taoiseach’s forename is Enda). Either way, it seems like a fail. (OK, I explain the joke. The Taoiseach is the prime minister of Ireland. The former Taoiseach was Enda Kenny; the present Taoiseach is Leo Varadkar. Imagine being as incompetent as the writer of that email.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaQuid pro quo. — More on the Harrington case. Harrington, an American employed by the Copenhagen Business School (an independent academic institution), gave a class at the University of Copenhagen (a different academic institution). This led to a criminal charge for working outside her work permit. Criminal charges are bad as they are, but immigrants are often hit twice: in Harrington's case, she would be barred from applying for permanent residency for the next 15 years, if the charges stick. It appears that presently 14 academics in Denmark are in a similar situation: http://cphpost.dk/news/foreign-professors-being-reported-to-police-for-passing-on-knowledge.html
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Commented on post by Julian BondBecause they want my money. My renewal is due and I didn't set it to auto-repeat. — The Labour party membership renewal team are phoning me about once a week at the moment. I'm having to explain why I won't be renewing every time so they've asked me to email labourmembership@labour.org.uk and fill in the contact form with an explanation. https://action.labour.org.uk/page/s/membership-contact-form This is what I sent:- While I broadly support the Labour Party and it's principles, I will not be renewing my membership until the Labour Party formally commits to stopping Brexit and cancelling Article 50.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAnalogies are pointless since Brexit is Brexit. The UK car market is symptomatic of our consumption led economy. There is no 2nd hand car market because all cars are now lease financed and you can't get finance on anything older than 5 years. So cars effectively become worthless after that. They keep going for another 5 years or so on cash sales until the first big repair bill at which point they're scrapped. — 'Brexit Britain’s two tribes refuse to move' (Google headline in case of paywall.) The FT has visited some Leavers in Wales. There is Mr Musto: Steve Musto is brimming with optimism. This is because Mr Musto, an ardent Brexiter from south Wales, is convinced the UK is holding all the cards. “They’re frightened to death of us leaving!” he exclaimed [...] “It’s like buying a car,” Mr Musto said. “If you play a game of bluff, you’ve got to have belief in the strength of your hand.” And then there is Mr Eason, a true patriot: Mr Eason views Brexit as a patriotic sacrifice to preserve Britain for his grandchildren. He takes umbrage at the notion that the UK should pay the EU tens of billions of pounds — as Mrs May is preparing to do — to settle previous commitments. “I don’t think we should pay them a penny!” he fumed. And then there are the Bouchers: Neither Mr or Mrs Boucher trust the BBC — and its reports of mounting Brexit costs — so they seek alternative sources of news. “He’s constantly on YouTube, looking for stuff,” Mrs Boucher said of her husband. Her Ukip membership has lapsed but her Brexit fervour remains strong. In fact, her only apparent regret is that the fall in the value of the pound since the EU referendum may foil the Bouchers’ plan to sell their house and retire to Spain. Just read the last sentence again. Comedy gold.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitPeople have been pointing out this issue since well before the referendum. So avoiding it has to be seen as wilful and deliberate. The Irish Border question is Brexit's Kobayashi Maru. There is no solution to this Cretan Liar paradox since rescuing N.I. will provoke a return to the troubles, while ignoring N.I. will bring down the government. Attempting to redefine the problem by staying in the Single Market and Customs Union will also bring down the government. The question is how to cheat the test by redefining the game. — More analysis of the Irish position, with some illuminating details. Tone matters, however, and the message being received in Dublin is that the British expect the troublesome Micks to pipe down and get in line. Small things matter more than you might like them to. When David Davis’s officials send emails to the Irish asking for a meeting with ‘Kenny’ you can’t quite be sure whether this is a demonstration of rudeness (the meeting would be with ‘the Taoiseach’) or ignorance (the then-Taoiseach’s forename is Enda). Either way, it seems like a fail. (OK, I explain the joke. The Taoiseach is the prime minister of Ireland. The former Taoiseach was Enda Kenny; the present Taoiseach is Leo Varadkar. Imagine being as incompetent as the writer of that email.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI suspect what we need is some Heseltine-esque seizing of the House of Commons mace. There are still a few MPs that will not stand for Contempt of Parliament, no matter where it comes from. — Remember those 58 Brexit 'impact assessments' that the government is sitting on, and which parliament insists on seeing? Those reports that, according to some, are 'incomplete' or 'about to be written'? Well, a subcommittee of parliament is going to see them. An edited version of them. I think I know where this is going. Surely Brexit will be [REDACTED] fantastic.
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Commented on post by Wolf Weber in Politics, domestic and abroadHave some Monty Python. The UK is a privateer galleon on the financial market seas manned by fearless but ageing desk clerks. ps. That warmongering, fascist apologiser, the NYT can f*ck off. And it needs reminding that no one knows what America is (for) any more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNlYBNTCBG8 — No One Knows What Britain Is Anymore Many Britons see their country as a brave galleon, banners waving, cannons firing, trumpets blaring. That is how the country’s voluble foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, likes to describe it. But Britain is now but a modest-size ship on the global ocean. Having voted to leave the European Union, it is unmoored, heading to nowhere, while on deck, fire has broken out and the captain — poor Theresa May — is lashed to the mast, without the authority to decide whether to turn to port or to starboard, let alone do what one imagines she knows would be best, which is to turn around and head back to shore.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThere's rich vein of humour in re-purposed Tombstone quotes. -- What makes a man like Farage, Doc? What makes him do the things he does? A man like Farage has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it. What does he need? Revenge. For what? Bein' born. — How demagogues work: exhibit A. Imagine this going on for two decades in a couple of newspapers, and you understand the amount of misinformation floating around in the UK.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWhat do you think the bill would be from the EU for changing our mind and calling it off? Because we ought to be obligated to pay something towards the cost of messing them around. And that's before the costs of loss of confidence. Still less than £40b direct and immediate, right? — A false hope Note to all Remainers: while it is possible or even likely that Russia has influenced the referendum, and subsequently it's result, this is not a legal argument against Brexit. On that end, the only thing that matters and has mattered is the notification according to Article 50, send by Theresa May on 29th of March 2017. Thats it. And so the clock ticks. Now, the UK might ask for an extension of this period, or even for a revokation of the note. And the EU, if the constituent members are in such mood, might grant such a wish. (That the UK unilaterally revokes the notification is another pipe dream. You say "Its just a prank, bro." What are you going to do if the EU says "No, its not." Suing your way to the ECJ?) Does this mean its unimportant if Russia meddled in the referendum? Of course not. This discussion might as well sway the public opinion on Brexit. But don't make it a legal argument. That ship has sailed.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThere's a simple way out. Single Market and Customs Union. Eire get a soft border. The DUP get no border between N.I. and rest of UK. Oh. Wait. 10, 20 or is it 30 Tories won't accept that. Or Byn Brexit, of course. — Dublin doesn't blink. Well, I wouldn't blink either if the whole EU26 had my back, and my contestant in this game of chicken is Theresa May.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The War on Us"it is only a truly free market that can drive down the cost of drugs to the consumer." That religion has caused so much suffering. It is to weep. — by way of a friend in Norway -- this screenshot and a kluge to help people deal with the wreck that capitalism has made of US healthcare, so nobody has to die when their GoFundMe comes up short: https://prescriptionhope.com/
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexithttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNwqV_HpMSE Who blinks first? — Another piece moves on the Brexit chessboard. (And you are forgiven if you don't know how many players there are, and how highdimensional the board is.) This time its the religious right-wing nutters from Northern Ireland. (The protestantic ones. Not the other ones.) Having ten seats in the UK parliament, they presently keep the Tory government in power. Presently. Just about. And as expected, they will use their votes to prevent any special regulations for Norther Ireland, post-Brexit. Which means a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Just like in the bad old times, but worse. By the way, this is how you get the Troubles back.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawWell that was random ... — "Also, these clothes. I was asking my tailor guys, I said, how good are these clothes? They said, well sir, they're so good that only absolute geniuses can see them. Only the best and the brightest. That's why we made them for you. You hear that? They know that I'm extraordinarily intelligent. That I have the best mind. The sharpest."
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawWhen he says "The Enemy can't see it", he means Lucifer, right? — "Also, these clothes. I was asking my tailor guys, I said, how good are these clothes? They said, well sir, they're so good that only absolute geniuses can see them. Only the best and the brightest. That's why we made them for you. You hear that? They know that I'm extraordinarily intelligent. That I have the best mind. The sharpest."
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+Craig Froehle About the energy required for bitcoin, or the energy consumption of countries? Datacentre energy consumption was growing exponentially with a short doubling period a few years back. Is that still true? — And now there is that.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitMeanwhile, N Ireland and the Eire border is turning into an omnishambles. And Labour still won't come out and actively campaign for No Brexit. Oh, Jeremy Cor Byn. Just Byn Brex it! — Roundup from the continent: dismay about chaos and confusion, concern about the quality of British politicians.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitA day after the UK budget and the news is deeply depressing. Resolution Foundation: UK facing longest fall in living standards for over 60 years http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-living-standards-fall-longest-60-years-records-began-economy-household-incomes-costs-energy-a8071146.html Britain crashes out of world's top five economies: http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/22/news/economy/uk-france-biggest-economies-in-the-world/index.html The independent OBR asked for the government's plans for Brexit, for its forecasts. The government pointed the OBR to Theresa May's Florence speech – and gave them nothing else. So the OBR's dismal forecasts don't actually include any Brexit impact. via https://twitter.com/jamesrbuk/status/933354371559120897 So the Gov didn't give the David Davies 50 documents to the OBR, just as they are trying not to give them to us. Because they haven't actually been written yet? #UK #Politics #Brexit https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — Roundup from the continent: dismay about chaos and confusion, concern about the quality of British politicians.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Media and Social NetworksThis will also cover Brexit? Twitter as well, please. — By year-end, Facebook will have a tool to let users know whether they liked or followed posts linked to propaganda from Russia's Internet Research Agency. I have a few family members who might benefit from this. Just in time for Thanksgiving dinner. ;)
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Commented on post by Noah Friedman in Technology Ranting"According to Google, Android phones will no longer gather and send cell-tower location data back to Google by the end of this month." By updating every Android phone? Or by discarding the data when it arrives at Google? because updating out of date android phones is somewhat flaky. — To paraphrase: "Now that we've been caught red-handed, we'll stop doing this," said a spokesperson at Google. "We'll find some other way to collect location information again later in violation of Android preferences and not tell you about that either," the same spokesperson did not admit aloud.
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Commented on post by Jacek Skopiński in Electric BikesTilting 3 wheeler? Somewhat like a Piaggio MP3. — https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ev4-bike-electric/ #electric #bike #tricycle #recreation #transportation #bicycle
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Commented on post by Adnan Sameja in MotoGPNot really MotoGP though, is it.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyDoes it have a "how can something this fast, be street legal, what is it for?" mode? — Surprise: There's A New Tesla Roadster With 620 Miles Of Range I noticed +Elon Musk tweet a photo of a sports car, but everyone was talking about the semi. Well it looks like this is the new Roadster. I can only dream of owning one. https://jalopnik.com/surprise-theres-a-new-tesla-roadster-and-its-unbelieva-1820532533 h/t +Simon Byrne
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Commented on post by Justin Gerdes in Climate ChangeSo why is it different in the USA? I want to repeat the first comment on the blog. It's hard to believe that developers in the North Sea, where most of the world's offshore wind turbines sit, have not done their homework in optimising the construction process. The idiotic Jones Act does mean that the second-best optimum in the USA will involve more onshore assembly. — In my latest story for Greentech Media, I report on a recent study that found it is possible to significantly reduce the time and capital required to get offshore wind turbines in the water. Researchers at the University of Delaware say the cost of building an offshore wind project can be slashed by 37% by completing much of the construction and assembly on land. Here's the link: http://bit.ly/2jxNUSo
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Commented on post by George Station in Humor and "Humor" (You Be the Judge)Here I am. Brain the size of a planet. And you want me to throw an election. ps. Wifi aerials were bigger in those days. — THIS is why we should worry about robots & artificial intelligence. Clipboards are no match for titanium mitten-hands!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitBy J-ove! I, for one, welcome our new pantomime horse overlord(s). — Imagine, if you wish, a horse. A horse made up of Boris Johnson (front) and Michael Gove, the latter having his head firmly embedded in Boris' arse. Riding the horse is Rupert Murdoch. And he is riding it right into 10 Downing Street. Have a good Monday!
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeIs total global datacentre energy consumption still growing exponentially? And faster than GDP? It could be worse. We could have backed our currency with flax. Then we would have wasted agricultural production on creating money instead of creating food. (oh. wait. ;) ) — Meanwhile, at a coal-powered Bitcoin mine in Mongolia... This is so Cyberpunk that I expect the Finn to show up anytime. (Via +Andres Soolo .)
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeIs this enough to say that Bitcoin is evil? Don't be evil. — Meanwhile, at a coal-powered Bitcoin mine in Mongolia... This is so Cyberpunk that I expect the Finn to show up anytime. (Via +Andres Soolo .)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitMakes a change from the bleating in that organ from people like Matt Ridley. Some actual realism. — Cabinet chaos is a symptom of national decline The Times is getting rather sober for the weekend. "Whether leaving the EU will make Britain bigger or smaller is the best way to understand the dispute. The Priti Patels and Boris Johnsons of the world insist that departure is enhancement. The EU was, for them, a fog which shrouded Britain’s glory. They regard power as a finite unit which was once lost but has now been reclaimed. The end of one era will usher in a new epoch of national glory and buccaneering global trade. Britain, which once was small, will be great again. This echo of President Trump’s fatuous slogan may be unintended but is audible nonetheless. This fantasy will be the worst legacy of today’s politics." "The sorry truth is that, even on the threshold of leaving Europe, Britain has no foreign policy to speak of. It is hard to think of any global dispute in which our view matters, apart from the fight we have picked with the EU." "There is a political adage that a nation on the way down either manages to decline or declines to manage." "It will not be long before this debate starts again because leaving the EU is going to shrink Britain a little. This will be a slow and gradual descent rather than a singular cataclysm, like the crash of 2008. Capital will creep away rather than fly. After a dip, the economy will grow slowly rather than vigorously. Investment levels will remain stubbornly low as returns are better elsewhere. The City of London will contract as Britain, the worst performer in an old continent during the Asian century, begins to look less attractive to mobile labour. The policies needed to reform a labour market that cannot use immigration to cover up its deficiencies are beyond the political class which is of the lowest calibre in living memory. In these circumstances, Britain’s struggle to find the money to fund its defence budget will begin to look quaint in a country that matters less." "The choice the nation has made, unbeknown to the most enthusiastic choosers, is to retreat into the second or third tier of nations. There is no shame in such a choice. This is a small nation and we could potter along happily not really bothering anyone. We could give up on all that diplomatic engagement, value-exporting and exercise of cultural power. We could opt for the quiet life that, ever since the demise of the imperial dream when a quarter of the world’s population was under our command, we have been resisting. At Potsdam, Churchill dealt on equal terms with Stalin and Truman and not a Frenchman or a German in sight. The Brexit boys and girls deep in their national hearts, think we are heading back to those glory days." So there is that. I cut a bit of fat from the article, but if you want to read the whole piece, it can be found at https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/7bvd17/cabinet_chaos_is_a_sign_of_our_national_decline/ , thanks to Redditor HeWhoTried.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexithttps://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — A two week deadline it is then.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAm I right in thinking that she's been at the forefront of accusing the Labour Party of being anti-semitic because they criticise Israel? On which, Craig Murray reached a settlement in his libel case about exactly that. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/11/the-end-of-the-affair/ — This is absolutely hilarious. Priti Patel, secretary for international development, has met various Israeli politicians, including the PM, while on family holiday. Without knowledge of the Foreign Office. And without knowledge of the Home Office. Or at least thats what the Home Office says, although thats not what the Jewish Chronicle says. And what were those meetings about? Well, Patel tried to give the Israeli army stationed in the Golan Heights some money. Batshit crazy? Understatement of the day.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitMerdeFinger. She's the woman, the woman with the Merde-ers touch A spider's touch Such a cold finger Beckons you to enter her web of sin But don't go in Golden words she will pour in your ear But her lies can't disguise what you fear For a golden boy knows when she's kissed him It's the kiss of shit from Madame Merdefinger Pretty boy beware of this heart of shit This heart is cold King Merdeas — Meanwhile, in London.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The War on Us+Xenophrenia Only if they keep moving from instance to instance. Those of us on stable instances with good uptime tend to stay in one place. mastodon.cloud/@jbond — via concerned_catgirl via the late Natalie Nguyen on Mastodon https://witches.town/@Concerned_Catgirl/5918239 .
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeI was thinking of Hagbard Celine's golden submarine "Leif Erikson" in the Illuminatus Trilogy. Musk should start a venture called Gold'n'Appel Enterprises, although that name may already have been taken. — Breitbart is now targeting SpaceX? I have my own opinions on Musk, but that he doesn't deserve.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege"No, I expect you to die, Mr Bond" That, or a Yellow Submarine. — Breitbart is now targeting SpaceX? I have my own opinions on Musk, but that he doesn't deserve.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modified+David Stallard Yep, that one as well. Was it just the YSR and Gag or did Kawa - Honda make them too? — Kawasaki's Grom alternative: Many think they copied Honda but the Kawasaki has been on sale since 2011 incredibly, the Grom since 2014. As I have probably moaned about, KHI is not good at marketing generally and these are a great example: Not only did KHI do it years before Honda but they also have the mini super moto which looks about 100 times cooler. Sadly as a 6 foot male, I look like an elephant trying to balance on a beach ball trying to ride one. Oh, and I would probably not trust wheels this small either.... and don't believe the hype - many unskilled riders would have you believe smaller wheels allow tighter turning. That is only true when either not moving or barely moving. Add, say, a 10mph velocity and larger wheels are superior in every, single way. If you are not convinced and don't know the maths, check out the MotoGymkana competitors - even in the 50cc class, NO ONE uses little fat wheels. The stopwatch does not lie.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedOnce upon a time there were 50cc and 125cc cafe racers and sports bikes like this from all the major manufacturers. eg Suzuki Gag. Then there's all the chinese knock off pit bikes. And those engines with the same mounting points and roughly the same size and shape can be had all the way out to 200cc. So I'm not sure what you get extra for spending the money on the official Kaw-Onda versions. At least the aftermarket components are fairly cheap. Cheaper than Brembo-Ohlins anyway. Bring them back, let's have more, I say. Still not quite sure what they're actually for. Since riding among Audi-BMW-Rover SUVs and construction tipper trucks looks like it might be terrifying. (says the bicycle rider!) — Kawasaki's Grom alternative: Many think they copied Honda but the Kawasaki has been on sale since 2011 incredibly, the Grom since 2014. As I have probably moaned about, KHI is not good at marketing generally and these are a great example: Not only did KHI do it years before Honda but they also have the mini super moto which looks about 100 times cooler. Sadly as a 6 foot male, I look like an elephant trying to balance on a beach ball trying to ride one. Oh, and I would probably not trust wheels this small either.... and don't believe the hype - many unskilled riders would have you believe smaller wheels allow tighter turning. That is only true when either not moving or barely moving. Add, say, a 10mph velocity and larger wheels are superior in every, single way. If you are not convinced and don't know the maths, check out the MotoGymkana competitors - even in the 50cc class, NO ONE uses little fat wheels. The stopwatch does not lie.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Social Problems and Social ChangeI asked the following question (imperfectly) on a Reddit post about this article. It generated quite a thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/7b5gap/get_rid_of_capitalism_millennials_are_ready_to/dpfkizg/ Is there something in the USA's history and make up that makes Americans want to try and re-invent solutions from scratch with no reference to things tried elsewhere? And to describe things in absolutes as if there's no blended middle ground? That sounds like a non-American being cynical and sarcastic and overly critical of the USA. But I would genuinely like to know. Because Social-Democracy is remarkably successful in other developed societies round the world. It's not Socialism or Communism. It's not even terribly "left wing". But it's not Libertarian Capitalism either. So why is it impossible in the USA? And why do these discussions find it impossible to talk about? — Millennials sour on today's capitalism Young Americans have soured on capitalism. In a Harvard University poll conducted last year, 51 percent of 18-to-29 year-olds in the U.S. said they opposed capitalism; only 42 percent expressed support. Among Americans of all ages, by contrast, a Gallup survey last year found that 60 percent held positive views of capitalism.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeI've wondered (with nothing really to justify it) when Elon Musk would either get found out or over-reach himself. Perhaps this is the answer. We had the questions about employee rights within Tesla which were the first stages in being found out. Now perhaps he's over-reached himself because he's created powerful enemies. Which makes the next stage in his story arc particularly interesting. I'm hoping this is the moment when he says. "Ah. We've reached this stage have we. That's a little earlier than I expected". — Breitbart is now targeting SpaceX? I have my own opinions on Musk, but that he doesn't deserve.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The War on UsSo your boss drives around in a Lambo. What are you? A P.A.? — via concerned_catgirl via the late Natalie Nguyen on Mastodon https://witches.town/@Concerned_Catgirl/5918239 .
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Robotics and Automation+Sharleen Shanley Man cannot live on lettuce alone. Peas and beans, right? — Coming online next year in the Seattle area. The new farm will officially start production in spring 2018. Instead of growing outdoors, Plenty grows its crops on glowing, LED-lit 20-foot-tall towers inside a former electronics distribution center in South San Francisco. The towers do not require soil, pesticides, or even natural sunlight. The technique is called indoor vertical farming. It's a type of agriculture in which food grows on trays or hanging modules in a climate-controlled, indoor facility. The process allows certain types of produce to be grown year-round in small spaces.
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Commented on post by Jim DennisTypo in your lede? Shouldn't that be "If you CANNOT run a unionized business, then you shouldn't be be IN business. Good riddance." — If you can't run a unionized business, then you shouldn't be be IN business. Good riddance.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Robotics and AutomationIt won't feed 180k people. It will provide salad for 180k people. Indoor glasshouse production of salad crops like tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, etc is nothing new. Holland, southern UK has been doing it for decades. It's not at all clear that solar power - > LEDs -> crops is more efficient than simply using the crops to harvest the sunlight. And it doesn't work or scale for staple carb crops like potatoes, rice, wheat. So great, let's experiment with indoor agriculture productivity. But please, enough with the hyperbole. — Coming online next year in the Seattle area. The new farm will officially start production in spring 2018. Instead of growing outdoors, Plenty grows its crops on glowing, LED-lit 20-foot-tall towers inside a former electronics distribution center in South San Francisco. The towers do not require soil, pesticides, or even natural sunlight. The technique is called indoor vertical farming. It's a type of agriculture in which food grows on trays or hanging modules in a climate-controlled, indoor facility. The process allows certain types of produce to be grown year-round in small spaces.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedHmmm. There's some potential here for cross dressing. A Yamaha in Ducati Corse colours. A Suzuki dressed up as a Gauloise-Yamaha or with KR Speed blocks. A "Monster-Kawasaki" Ducati Panigale. A Repsol Kawasaki. Why not? If only to mess with people's heads. — Evidence Valentino Rossi signs for Kawasaki WSBK.... ..... maybe?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chromecast+Peter Roberts Google home on android works fine. All details for the device visible. So is the original stand alone windows app. The Chromecast is setup and works perfectly well. Chrome casts perfectly well. The one thing that doesn't work is setup from within desktop chrome. It never finds the Chromcast. I'm beginning to think that this is a one time only web application that only finds Chromecasts in their initial peer-to-peer networking state. This is only an issue if you needed to do something like change networking credentials on the Chromecast and didn't have an android or iOs device available. — I have a Mk I Chromecast that I setup using the original Chromecast application on a win10 laptop. That application still seems to work but is now unavailable on the web. What you're apparently supposed to do now is to go to this URL using Chrome. https://www.google.com/chromecast/setup/ and then choose "set up your chromecast using this computer". However, it never finds the Chromecast. Despite the fact that I can successfully cast tabs or desktop with no problems. If I use my android phone, it can see the chromecast device and all its details. I'm just puzzled why it never works from the laptop Chrome. In the forums there seem to be a few other people with the same problem. But none with exactly the same setup that I can see. In any case, the help from the Google support staff is at the level of "restart Chromecast, update chrome, turn on wifi, etc, etc". WTF?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chromecast+Stephen Murray No 5Ghz. Turned off on the router and laptop. — I have a Mk I Chromecast that I setup using the original Chromecast application on a win10 laptop. That application still seems to work but is now unavailable on the web. What you're apparently supposed to do now is to go to this URL using Chrome. https://www.google.com/chromecast/setup/ and then choose "set up your chromecast using this computer". However, it never finds the Chromecast. Despite the fact that I can successfully cast tabs or desktop with no problems. If I use my android phone, it can see the chromecast device and all its details. I'm just puzzled why it never works from the laptop Chrome. In the forums there seem to be a few other people with the same problem. But none with exactly the same setup that I can see. In any case, the help from the Google support staff is at the level of "restart Chromecast, update chrome, turn on wifi, etc, etc". WTF?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chromecast+Scott Patrick Yes, same wifi network. The old chromecast setup application still finds it with no problem. It's trying to access setup from inside Chrome that doesn't seem to. Firewall fully off. Has no effect. Still can't find it. I wonder if it's looking for chromecast devices that haven't been setup and so are on peer to peer wifi. — I have a Mk I Chromecast that I setup using the original Chromecast application on a win10 laptop. That application still seems to work but is now unavailable on the web. What you're apparently supposed to do now is to go to this URL using Chrome. https://www.google.com/chromecast/setup/ and then choose "set up your chromecast using this computer". However, it never finds the Chromecast. Despite the fact that I can successfully cast tabs or desktop with no problems. If I use my android phone, it can see the chromecast device and all its details. I'm just puzzled why it never works from the laptop Chrome. In the forums there seem to be a few other people with the same problem. But none with exactly the same setup that I can see. In any case, the help from the Google support staff is at the level of "restart Chromecast, update chrome, turn on wifi, etc, etc". WTF?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chromecast+Johnnie Hougaard Nielsen casting working fine from within the latest Chrome. — I have a Mk I Chromecast that I setup using the original Chromecast application on a win10 laptop. That application still seems to work but is now unavailable on the web. What you're apparently supposed to do now is to go to this URL using Chrome. https://www.google.com/chromecast/setup/ and then choose "set up your chromecast using this computer". However, it never finds the Chromecast. Despite the fact that I can successfully cast tabs or desktop with no problems. If I use my android phone, it can see the chromecast device and all its details. I'm just puzzled why it never works from the laptop Chrome. In the forums there seem to be a few other people with the same problem. But none with exactly the same setup that I can see. In any case, the help from the Google support staff is at the level of "restart Chromecast, update chrome, turn on wifi, etc, etc". WTF?
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeShould be signed "The MGT" — Meanwhile, at Health and Safety....
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeApplies to the economy and GDP as well. — Meanwhile, at Health and Safety....
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Commented on post by Armin Grewe in Europe, Brexit, Remoaning and all that nonsenseIt wasn't £350m/wk it was £363m/wk says Spectator. https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/10/official-data-proves-boris-was-wrong-about-350m-a-week-to-brussels-its-actually-363m/ Rolls eyes ... Needless to say, the usual suspects are all over this on twitter. — So Nigel Farage complains about "EU propaganda at British universities". But what about blatant lies and propaganda about EU contributions from the leave campaign?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit$875 Million. And how many Pound Sterling? — Brexit is a boon for economists, statisticians, econometrists and anyone else who can slap a consultancy fee on some light work in the area.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitReality has a well-known ironic bias. — It's all those leftie universities indoctrinating unsuspecting teenagers, I tell you! Polynomial-time algorithms are Marxist! Everyone involved in evidence-based decision making just wants to jump on the EU gravy train.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexithttps://www.desmogblog.com/christopher-booker The last third is really the same old, same old from Christopher Booker, complaining that off shore wind is unfairly subsidised. And using that example to promote the GWPF and claim the BBC is biased. So not really the Telegraph linking Brexit to Climate deniers but a climate denier talking about Brexit. — The Telegraph, of all places, has published a negative piece on Brexit. Of course, its still of the "good idea, badly implemented" variety, but still. When he [Sir Ivan Rogers, former ambassador to the EU] tried to explain in some detail, based on discussions going back to 2015 with senior figures in the aviation industry, just how flights from the UK to the EU and the US could “cease” overnight, because these are all now legally authorised only by EU regulations that would require incredibly complex negotiations to replace, one MP simply cut him short in order to change the subject. Well, yes. Technical details. MPs don't do these. The second part of the piece is seemingly unrelated to the first. Its about climate-change deniers. And the Telegraph has hereby published a piece that links these to Brexiteers. (Article paywalled, freed by a Redditor: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/79f8m1/the_terrible_brexit_prophecy_of_ivan_rogers_is/ )
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+Leslie Sox Not invented here. When did the USA EVER pay any attention to the way things are done elsewhere in the world as a guide to how to do things in the USA? — Well, that's depressingly accurate. h/t +Jürgen Hubert.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+Amanda Rachelle Warren but tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom! — From the department of whatthefuckery.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI'm not sure even May and the Cabinet could be called blissful at the moment. I think it's actually destroying their mental state. Are we into a cycle of sleeping pills so they can get some sleep and speed to get through the day? One or two of them are beginning to look actually ill from the process. The real point though is that this is turning into a dereliction of duty. To only hand the full report to the PM. Only the summaries to the cabinet. And nothing to anyone else. And for no-one in positions of power to say anything is extraordinary. Looks like sedition to me. Or some word like that. Like treason. Or something. — What?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaAh, but only half of the CERN ring is inside Switzerland. — Remember when Switzerland was frozen out of any EU science funding because the Swiss government didn't agree on free movement? And now the EU has fired a warning shot: this is exactly what's going to happen with the UK. This is going to be fun. A very special kind of fun.
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Commented on post by Mike Koontz in Climate ChangeLimits to Growth in one easily digestible sound bite. Works in reverse too. — 9 million annual deaths due to worldwide pollution Is this the art of living? Every year the number of people that die prematurely due to worldwide pollution keep on increasing. And right now that pollution in water, soil, air, chemical or work-related pollution is already taking the life of 9 million people around the world. Let us think about that for one more second, every single year 9 million people end up dying prematurely due to the modern day pollution that originates from our unsustainable way of life, pollution, and suffering which we all contribute to. Click through to my original g+ post or website article for the full read and links to the science articles behind my short article.
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Commented on post by Mike Koontz in Climate ChangeIf the resource constraints don't get you, the pollution will. — 9 million annual deaths due to worldwide pollution Is this the art of living? Every year the number of people that die prematurely due to worldwide pollution keep on increasing. And right now that pollution in water, soil, air, chemical or work-related pollution is already taking the life of 9 million people around the world. Let us think about that for one more second, every single year 9 million people end up dying prematurely due to the modern day pollution that originates from our unsustainable way of life, pollution, and suffering which we all contribute to. Click through to my original g+ post or website article for the full read and links to the science articles behind my short article.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyHmmm? 6mins is charging at 10C. 50AHr cell so that's 500A. If it's the normal 4.2V chemistry, that's approximately 2Kw. Per cell. If they've got some kind of breakthrough in anode materials, then great. And 10C, 5000 cycles with 3 times the capacity density is exceptional. But as usual the article is short on details. A 32-kWh battery will get the same range regardless of battery tech. The difference is possibly the charging rate, 10C instead of 1C. Here's the wiki page on the tech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93titanate_battery — Toshiba's breakthrough battery Apparently it can charge to full in just 6 minutes and will last a good 14 years and still only be down to 90% capacity. Not bad as long as the price is low.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyFloating 6MW turbines is a clever technological trick. And opens up considerably more ocean for off shore wind farms. Even in the USA. — Clean Cities, Floating turbines & Electric Planes When it comes to electric cars, renewable energy and other green technologies, there is a lot happening today. A lot of good things are happening.
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in blue haze+H.T.V. Blu I was thinking as a race bike. Davies and Melandri in WSB and Shakey in BSB. They're all having to ride very hard but I think that's the quality of the competition as much as anything. — Proton KR3, circa 2001 season.
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in blue hazeI went to one of those dinners at Le Mans a few years ago and after his speech, asked Neil Spalding what he thought Ducati's problem was. He basically agreed with this story. 1) Ducatis are rearward weight biased due to the L engine layout. This prevents them from getting the crankshaft and engine CoG as far forwards as their competitors. 2) Bridgestone's initial development with Ducati meant very sticky front tyres to compensate. Stoner was the master of using this to attack from the first corner on the out lap to get heat into it and make it work. 3) Bridgestone supporting other teams and then becoming a control tyre meant development went to a more balanced front rear approach. But that meant Ducati still had their weight distribution problem. But now didn't have the front tyre to suit. So they started losing the front all the time. 4) Rossi arrived and while they completely changed the chassis, they didn't really change the engine layout. 5) So despite going from space-frame (Capirossi) to metal airbox to CF airbox (Stoner), to aluminium beam (Rossi), the fundamental of a rearward weight bias remained. The bike still wouldn't accept mid corner speed and still had a tendency to wash the front at the end of the trail braking phase. 6)It wasn't until quite a big redesign (2016?) with a much more Honda cylinder layout that the bike became properly competitive on the same tyres as everyone else. Tilting the cylinders back meant there was space to move the engine forwards. What they've really built with the 2017 bike is a Desmo Honda! This says to me that the current engine and layout but with frameless CF airbox might well work. The Panegale works. And the problem was never frame stiffness but weight distribution. And I'd love them to try again! — Proton KR3, circa 2001 season.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedPol and Bradley were doing 340kph at Philip Island with their minimal fairing shape. — Still not convinced these fairing wings should be permitted.
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in blue haze+David Stallard Yes, it was. Mentioned in the BT Sport coverage this weekend. I remember that lap, and Jeremy's complete commitment on qualifying tyres. The problem with all the later twins and triples is they really needed tyres somewhere between 250-2 and 500-4 designs, but there weren't enough of them for Michelin and Dunlop to produce something specific. 250 width to take advantage of the light weight and agility, but 500 compounds and width to actually last a race. — Proton KR3, circa 2001 season.
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in blue hazePhilip Island. Pole position. 2002 1'31.919 99 Jeremy McWILLIAMS Proton KR3 (292 kph) 2017 1'28.386 93 Marc MARQUEZ Honda Pol ESPARGARO 340 kph It's no wonder the laps feel like they're over quicker these days. btw. WSB 2002 2 C. EDWARDS USA Castrol Honda Honda VTR 1000 SP2 1'32.767 2017 J. REA GBR Kawasaki Racing Team Kawasaki ZX-10R 1'29.573 — Proton KR3, circa 2001 season.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitBut we might guess who is paying these soldiers Trump? ;) +Marc Schnau Not the www. But the systems running on it. — 13,000 pro-Brexit Twitter bots. How lovely. And while most of them have been switched off, some are still active. Dave, who claims to be from the Isle of Wight, but tweets strictly from 8am Moscow time to 8pm Moscow time, comes to mind. Of course, its not quite clear what effects this shadowy army had, if any. But we might guess who is paying these soldiers.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyThere's a back of the envelope, rule of thumb, approximation to be expanded. To give an idea of scale. 10 GtC/Yr consumption and conversion into atmospheric CO2 = 30 GtCO2/Yr generated 1 TtC remaining accessible fossil carbon The widely touted flat line in emissions and decoupling from growth really means that we're still only consuming 10GtC/Yr (our highest ever level) and not any more. If (when) we burn through all that 1TtC, it will take 200k years for the earth to re-absorb it. Figures sourced from https://www.amazon.com/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1 — When you really do even just back of the envelope calculations, you realize just how expensive it will be to sequester carbon once it's already in the atmosphere. So much smarter to simply not put it there in the first place.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAnd then there's Scotland Young, Urban, Remainers - Overwhelmingly pro Labour and Anti-Conservative. — 'The six tribes of Brexit revealed' (Google headline in case of paywall.) So here we go, with the latest Ipsos Mori poll (N=4,000): ‘British values’ Leavers: "These are disproportionately older people, including many retirees, who own their own homes outright, and lean heavily towards backing either the UK Independence party — they are four times more likely than the average Briton to vote Ukip — or the Conservatives. These voters tend to live away from large cities and are more likely than any other group to think immigration has had a negative impact on Britain — even though they are unlikely to have experienced its effects first-hand." Working-class Leavers: "They are the youngest Leave voters — almost half are under the age of 45 — and more likely than any other group to be living in social housing. Voters in this working-class group tend to come from the north of England, but are far less likely than any other Leavers to live in rural areas. [...] Many of these areas are among the most economically deprived in the UK, meaning anti-establishment sentiment may have played a bigger role with “working-class Leavers” than among their “British values” counterparts." Moderate Leavers: "They are more rural than the “working-class” group, but have lower skilled jobs than the “British values” bracket. They have the least negative views on immigration among Leavers and are the least likely to vote Ukip — but they are still more negative towards immigration and more likely to back Ukip than the national average." And then there are the Remainers: Disengaged Remainers (working class, London based), Young Urban Remainers, and Old Liberal Remainers.
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Commented on post by Charles Filipponi in Artsy Fartsy StuffAll tautologies are self-referential except those said by politicians trying to imitate The Wire. eg "Brexit means Brexit" — Tautologies are good. Even when they aren't.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIf you have facebook or Twitter, you might want to check this out from Robert Peston. Speechless. It's almost as if Theresa May is trying to fail. No debate in Parliament of what kind of Brexit the people voted for, or what kind of Brexit best serves the country. No debate in Cabinet of what kind of Brexit the people voted for, or what kind of Brexit best serves the country. Both of those are an almost criminal dereliction of duty. https://www.facebook.com/pestonitv/posts/1930951983896204 https://twitter.com/yorksranter/status/918885867510484992 — The electile dysfunction of the present UK government continues. We are still in a state of affairs where two interpretations of recent affairs are most likely: 1) The government is terminally incompetent and has threatened hundreds of EU citizens with deportation; or 2) That was not an accident. (Shared from a private stream.)
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Commented on post by Nishioka Yoshio in Climate ChangeNote: 100% of electricity generation. Not 100% of energy. Note2: That's 22 years. Note3: Is Nuclear counted as renewable? — California proceed to use more RE! Badman Nishioka/rainforest action group/HUTAN Group/ California senate pushes for 100% renewable energy by 2045 By Christian Roselund,  Pv magazine on 22 February 2017 The leader of the California Senate has introduced a bill that would put the state tied with Hawaii for the most aggressive renewable energy mandate in the nation, and one of the most aggressive in the world.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWhich government? The Cabinet Ministers issuing the overall guidelines or the civil service being over-zealous in carrying out what they think they've been told? Yes, Minister. It feels to me like both actions are deliberate. Incompetent Ministers are issuing commands to tighten up and follow the letter of the law. The civil service think they're incompetent and are being deliberately pushy to make the Ministers look stupid since they can't outright refuse. It's the enlisted man's way of dealing with an incompetent officer by replying SIR. YES. SIR. to every command. — The electile dysfunction of the present UK government continues. We are still in a state of affairs where two interpretations of recent affairs are most likely: 1) The government is terminally incompetent and has threatened hundreds of EU citizens with deportation; or 2) That was not an accident. (Shared from a private stream.)
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Commented on post by Theodore Ts'oThere are only two problems in Programming. Off-by-one errors. And apparently, incorrect numbers of escape operations. So that makes three. [original source] http://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/166317904918/its-kind-of-hard — I ordered a new +Citibank US card since my old card most of the credit card (and the signature band) worn off. One of the downsides of the non-embossed cards. My old card did have my last name (Ts'o) correct. The new card.... well, it looks like the software which sent the text to the credit card generation / printing system decided to HTML escape my name one time too many. Oops! I tried calling the customer service line, and talked to a very nice supervisor, and she had no idea how to even file a bug for something like this.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI see Canada has annexed Crimea. — Someone overlayed a map of North America with a map of the Mediterranean Sea and started changing place names. Very nicely done. And somewhat striking, to me at least, that the Mediterranean Sea is about as wide as the American continent at that latitude.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Piero FilippIN Except look at the photo on his Twitter. https://twitter.com/PeteNorth303 He's a bitter young man. Mid 30s? — Pete North, one of the arch-Brexiteers, has some predictions he would like to share with us: "In the first year or so we are going to lose a lot of manufacturing. Virtually all JIT export manufacturing will fold inside a year. Initially we will see food prices plummet but this won't last. Domestic agriculture won't be able to compete and we'll see a gradual decline of UK production. UK meats will be premium produce and no longer affordable to most." "Once food importers have crushed all UK competition they will gradually raise their prices, simply because they can. Meanwhile wages will stay depressed and because of the collapse of disposable income and availability of staff, we can probably expect the service sector to take a big hit thus eliminating all the jobs that might provide a supplementary income." "Across the board we will see prices rising. There will be some serendipitous benefits but nothing that offsets the mass job losses. We will see a lot of foreign investment dry up and banking services will move to the EU. Dublin and Frankfurt. I expect that house prices will start to fall, but that's not going to do anyone any favours in the short to mid term." "Meanwhile, since tax receipts will be way down we can expect major cuts to the forces and a number of Army redundancies. I expect to see RAF capability cut by a third. Soon enough it will become apparent that cuts to defence cannot go further so we can expect another round of cuts to council services. They will probably raise council tax to cope with it." "We can the expect to see a major rationalisation of the NHS and what functions it will perform. It will be more of a skeleton service than ever. I expect they will have trouble staffing it. Economic conditions more than any immigration control will bring numbers down to a trickle. In every area of policy a lot of zombie projects will be culled and the things that survive on very slender justifications will fall. We can also expect banks to pull the plug in under-performing businesses. Unemployment will be back to where it was in the 80's." Well, thats really uplifting, Pete. Anything else? "Eventually things will settle down and we will get used to the new order of things. My gut instinct tells me that culturally it will be a vast improvement on the status quo. [...] We'll be back to the days when students had to be frugal and from their resourcefulness manage to produce interesting things and events. " Bloody students. They never had it that good back in the days, when they were producing 'interesting things'. We need to take them down a notch. "I'm of the view that in recent years people have become increasingly spoiled and self-indulgent, inventing psychological problems for themselves in the absence of any real challenges or imperatives to grow as people. I have always primarily thought Brexit would be a reboot on British politics and culture. In a lot of ways it will bring back much of what is missing. A little austerity might very well make us less frivolous." Those frivolous people! Some austerity will teach them! So there it is, people. Reasons for Brexit, in a nutshell: other people have fun, and we want them to be miserable.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe twitter version is here. https://twitter.com/PeteNorth303/status/917504922584780800 It contains this nugget. So yes I do think a bit of creative destruction and renewal is healthy - for the culture & the soul. And I'm afraid I said a rude word in reply. This guy and the attitudes he expresses are sociopathic. The hate for others not like him is frankly breathtaking. And that's just the stuff he expresses openly. Yup. Editor @LeaveHQ - The Leave Alliance — Pete North, one of the arch-Brexiteers, has some predictions he would like to share with us: "In the first year or so we are going to lose a lot of manufacturing. Virtually all JIT export manufacturing will fold inside a year. Initially we will see food prices plummet but this won't last. Domestic agriculture won't be able to compete and we'll see a gradual decline of UK production. UK meats will be premium produce and no longer affordable to most." "Once food importers have crushed all UK competition they will gradually raise their prices, simply because they can. Meanwhile wages will stay depressed and because of the collapse of disposable income and availability of staff, we can probably expect the service sector to take a big hit thus eliminating all the jobs that might provide a supplementary income." "Across the board we will see prices rising. There will be some serendipitous benefits but nothing that offsets the mass job losses. We will see a lot of foreign investment dry up and banking services will move to the EU. Dublin and Frankfurt. I expect that house prices will start to fall, but that's not going to do anyone any favours in the short to mid term." "Meanwhile, since tax receipts will be way down we can expect major cuts to the forces and a number of Army redundancies. I expect to see RAF capability cut by a third. Soon enough it will become apparent that cuts to defence cannot go further so we can expect another round of cuts to council services. They will probably raise council tax to cope with it." "We can the expect to see a major rationalisation of the NHS and what functions it will perform. It will be more of a skeleton service than ever. I expect they will have trouble staffing it. Economic conditions more than any immigration control will bring numbers down to a trickle. In every area of policy a lot of zombie projects will be culled and the things that survive on very slender justifications will fall. We can also expect banks to pull the plug in under-performing businesses. Unemployment will be back to where it was in the 80's." Well, thats really uplifting, Pete. Anything else? "Eventually things will settle down and we will get used to the new order of things. My gut instinct tells me that culturally it will be a vast improvement on the status quo. [...] We'll be back to the days when students had to be frugal and from their resourcefulness manage to produce interesting things and events. " Bloody students. They never had it that good back in the days, when they were producing 'interesting things'. We need to take them down a notch. "I'm of the view that in recent years people have become increasingly spoiled and self-indulgent, inventing psychological problems for themselves in the absence of any real challenges or imperatives to grow as people. I have always primarily thought Brexit would be a reboot on British politics and culture. In a lot of ways it will bring back much of what is missing. A little austerity might very well make us less frivolous." Those frivolous people! Some austerity will teach them! So there it is, people. Reasons for Brexit, in a nutshell: other people have fun, and we want them to be miserable.
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Commented on post by Dave WonnacottAnd this. https://twitter.com/Harkaway/status/917694822122737664 Several things occur to me. The most prominent is about Labour's posture. The fantasy of a manageable Lexit burns down to the ground. The manifesto is undeliverable in a Brexit UK if this is even slightly accurate. Labour's fuzzy optimism on Brexit has to end immediately not only as a matter of politics but simple decency. If Labour does not fight this outcome tooth and nail from now on, its betrayal of both halves of its base will be absolute. But on a pragmatic level, Labour should be fighting this anyway. Why? Because the state North describes is hypercapital heaven. — No plans after the Referendum, no plans before triggering A50, no plans now. Our Government pontificates, begging the EU for ideas, begging businesses for ideas, begging anyone for ideas. I genuinely don't know whether to laugh or cry.
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Commented on post by Dave WonnacottThis one is doing the rounds. Please spread widely. A Brexiteer (Editor @LeaveHQ - The Leave Alliance) blog sees the light but refuses to repent. http://peterjnorth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/i-dont-like-this-brexit-but-i-will-live.html TL;DR Birb thread here https://twitter.com/PeteNorth303/status/917504922584780800 "yes I do think a bit of creative destruction and renewal is healthy". If you meet Shiva on the road, kill him. Shiva's Kali aspect is a warning and a description. It's not an instruction manual. What's astonishing is that he correctly identifies the current state of "No Deal" and the truly awful implications of that. But despite the likely 10-20 years of extreme pain resulting, still thinks Brexit is necessary and a good thing. And the fascist arrogance and hate for the other (everyone not like him) in UK society is really quite breathtaking. — No plans after the Referendum, no plans before triggering A50, no plans now. Our Government pontificates, begging the EU for ideas, begging businesses for ideas, begging anyone for ideas. I genuinely don't know whether to laugh or cry.
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Commented on post by Dave WonnacottOn laughing and crying. Try cycling endlessly through these three states. It works for me. 1) Denial - There must be some way we can just make it all go away and revert to 2015 2) Anger - How could we collectively be so stupid? 3) Despair - It's hopeless. There's no way out and we're going to just crash and burn. — No plans after the Referendum, no plans before triggering A50, no plans now. Our Government pontificates, begging the EU for ideas, begging businesses for ideas, begging anyone for ideas. I genuinely don't know whether to laugh or cry.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedThe suspense is killing me. Please put us out of our misery by providing the answers! — Let's play a game... Here is a table of frame types from noted frame builder Colin Seeley's excellent autobiography: Racer and the rest. Who can name the most...?
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Commented on post by Joe GrossAria 62. By Puccini. — Got myself a new truck!!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitBut then this. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/10/most-important-brexit-speech-last-week-wasnt-given-theresa-may Brokenshire (sec state NI) confirmed a) that Brexit means leaving both the single market and the customs union, b) That there will be no physical border So that's all good then. Except that's impossible and no answer. So actually they still have no clue. According to the politician closest to the actual problem and most responsible for it. Which leave Theresa May with an obvious answer to the Boris Johnson problem. Have a cabinet reshuffle and give Boris the job of Sec State NI. What could possibly go wrong? — A report on the fantastic headaches a new Irish border would entail.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThis thread is a pretty succinct description of an apocalypse. https://twitter.com/cstross/status/917109565552037889 TL;DR. - Dublin demand open border, hoping to force art50 cancellation - DUP nix any reunification - Messy general election - Corbyn gets in but refuses to cancel art50 - UK crashes out. - 5th largest economy and 2nd biggest financial center crashes triggering world wide financial collapse - Meanwhile Trump start a shooting war with NK which destroys SK’s economy (13th), and hurts US, China and Japan (1-3) It probably won't be as bad as that ... — A report on the fantastic headaches a new Irish border would entail.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modified45 mins without a break on a sports bike is enough! But there are times when a range of 99 miles before the light starts flashing and 120 miles before panic sets in is just not enough. Once upon a time (2002-ish?) a GSXR1000 tank fitted on a GSXR750 for an easy extra 3 litres. Those days are gone. — Suzuki GSX-R1000 L7 for Bennett's Suzuki @ Assen BSB ~ Despite being a lover of the ZX-10Rs, it is hard to overstate just how good this bike is. Neat variable valve timing, lightweight and great ergos for street or track. And it looks the dog's bollocks too!
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedAgain, not #10 but this turned up. Welded sheet stainless steel! https://riders.drivemag.com/news/exactweld-tz250-racer-test-against-all-odds — Let's play a game... Here is a table of frame types from noted frame builder Colin Seeley's excellent autobiography: Racer and the rest. Who can name the most...?
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedIt didn't help answer it, but I just came across this while trying to. Wow! http://www.tz350.net/aftermarket_frames.net.htm — Let's play a game... Here is a table of frame types from noted frame builder Colin Seeley's excellent autobiography: Racer and the rest. Who can name the most...?
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modified+Raphaël Mentrel The main frame is cast aluminium. It may have had a TZ engine but it was an experimental frame from one of the small suppliers and experimenters like Offenstadt or Fior. — Let's play a game... Here is a table of frame types from noted frame builder Colin Seeley's excellent autobiography: Racer and the rest. Who can name the most...?
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate ChangeThere are numerous places where there is no free market and actually shouldn't be. What we get is a government controlled, regulated and mandated artificial market among a small cartel of effectively monopoly corporations. This is not necessarily a problem as long as the gov regulators haven't been captured by those same corporations. And the gov acts in the long term interests of the society and not the short term interests of the corps. And yes, it's time for some like for like transparency of the direct subsidies to the various energy suppliers. Not the costs of externalities like climate change or fossil fuel replacement but more direct like tax benefits, cheap capital, pollution control, subsidised insurance and clear up.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modified11 is bugging me. I know I've seen it, but can't find it in the Foale book. — Let's play a game... Here is a table of frame types from noted frame builder Colin Seeley's excellent autobiography: Racer and the rest. Who can name the most...?
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedAnd really pleased when Guintoli finally got the race win this year. They've struggled a lot getting it competitive. As for the bike, it's almost old school UJM like a K1 or something. And I'm glad they've finally got rid of the Whale Tail. I wonder if there's a road market for oversize race tanks? — Suzuki GSX-R1000 L7 for Bennett's Suzuki @ Assen BSB ~ Despite being a lover of the ZX-10Rs, it is hard to overstate just how good this bike is. Neat variable valve timing, lightweight and great ergos for street or track. And it looks the dog's bollocks too!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWho gets to play Heseltine and Major to May's Thatcher? Because the person who wields the first knife rarely gets to win the prize. And there's the additional problem that people rarely get a second chance and generally shouldn't be given one in leadership games. So the motley crew that were rejected in favour of May should automatically be rejected in the next round of blood letting. Which leaves some really nasty characters. Priti Patel for President PM! If we had more time, I'd be arguing to let May carry on and drag the Tories deeper. Because I think we're going to need a full-on vote of no confidence and constitutional crisis to end Brexit and bring the country to its senses. But if it doesn't happen this year, there's probably no time left. — "Fans of failing football clubs may recognise that moment when you start craving the absolute worst. When the team’s trailing 5-0 after 27 minutes, you don’t want it to end 5-1. You want it to end 17-0. That’s partly to make history, and partly for the masochistic thrill, but also in the hope that an unparalleled humiliation might startle the board into a strategic rethink about how best to run the club." I don't know. There is still Jacob Rees-Mogg.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Dran Fren "Come on!" are the two most widely used words in Hollywood scripts. And now you'll notice them every 5 minutes when yet another actor says them! ;) — The gift just keeps on giving. Theresa May's speech writer plagiarized. From the TV show "The West Wing". I suppose it could have been worse. They could have used lines from one of the Terminator movies.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI have to ask as well in these modern times. This is real and not fake news, right? — The gift just keeps on giving. Theresa May's speech writer plagiarized. From the TV show "The West Wing". I suppose it could have been worse. They could have used lines from one of the Terminator movies.
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate ChangeS Asia and the Indian Sub-continent is awkward. There's nowhere to go and there's a lot of them. And then there's Phoenix!
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Commented on post by Julie McNeill in Climate ChangeThe turbines are rated at 1.5MW each. So rated power is 4*1.5 = 6MW There are 744 hours in August. So 700MWhr is an approximate average of 1MW output. At peak tide, the output is 6MW, Over the whole day, actual output is 1MW for a capacity factor of 16%. What makes this good rather than being terrible is that it's absolutely predictable. All the peak output can be fed into the grid, but the timing is going to advance through the day as the tide's timing changes. The UK has some of the largest and strongest tides in the world, and the tide timing moves round the coast meaning that there is a strong tidal flow happening somewhere for most of the day. What's technically challenging is making the machinery able to cope with the environment. Slightly ironically, that can take advantage of the huge experience of N Sea Oil. — It's like a tug of war between naysayers and humanist progressives. Please sign petition for Australian politicians. https://www.communityrun.org/petitions/babies-demand-solar-feeds
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Dran Fren Do you want your world defined by Hollywood scriptwriters? Oh. Wait. "Come On!" — The gift just keeps on giving. Theresa May's speech writer plagiarized. From the TV show "The West Wing". I suppose it could have been worse. They could have used lines from one of the Terminator movies.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Stepford Wives — +A.V. Flox wrote a beautiful, and illuminating, meditation on different ideals of femininity, the ways in which individual needs conflict with them, and how this was affected by the different legacies of Hugh Hefner. There's no short summary I can give of it, because it's fundamentally a piece about what isn't simple; so let me give you a quote from near its beginning, to give you a sense of its flavor. It’s bad form for the firstborn to come into this world a girl, thus I suppose that was my very first rebellion. I was expected to mind my place, and so made a habit of taking the things denied me. A proper young lady must not, I was told, and rather than rebel against the very concept, I — with all the audacity of a seven-year-old — made it a part of myself. By personifying the proper young lady, I did, and therefore, I could.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitHead of HR at Sunshi Des erts — And this is not photoshopped.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWorks for Sunshi Des erts — I suppose this is photoshopped.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWith the fishes? — But will he retire to Spain, or to France?
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Commented on post by Julian BondGosh. Has it been 6 years? — This week's yak shaving. A request for a new wordpress installation. Wordpress 3.3 needs php 5.3 which leads to endless research trying to track down how to do this when the main Centos release is 5.16. Having found php53 in yum, have to uninstall php5.16 and then install 53 I then need tidy and mailparse to go with that in Centos, dealing with browscap.ini failures, updating passwords on mysql, rebuilding eaccelerator, re-installing squirrelmail because it got trashed accidentally, dealing with centos yum naming conventions on 4 live linux servers and then on a personal windows machine, which then meant locating windows modules, installing VC9 runtime, finding vc9 builds of all of the above because they're not on the main apache and php sites, updating the local Apache and PHP files to VC9 versions. To finally install wordpress locally, and then on the servers. With the new domain needing registering, DNS setup, Apache vhosts and postfix config files modifying. And on, and on. A sysadmin's job is never done. And it's not even the main part of my job so I'm really an amateur at this stuff. I have huge respect for the people who do this exclusively for a living. It's a constant battle against upgrades, updates and a multiplicity of software that is broken in not very interesting ways.
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Commented on post by Leo Deegan in Google+ NewsGood work, finally. Now can you please make it quicker and easier for non-admins and ordinary users to report posts and comments and personally block a specific user. And when a comment is reported and muted make it disappear instead of remaining there with "mute" on it. At the moment this process takes too long, takes too many clicks and sometimes requires new tabs or loss of context. — Optionally remove recent content from banned community members Hey folks, over the next several days, we'll be rolling out a feature on Google+ Web that will allow community moderators to choose to remove posts and comments from members they ban. To invoke this feature, select "Remove, report, and ban" from either a post or comment and then select "Also remove recent comments and posts in the community by this user." Currently, this will remove recent post and comments from the banned user (you may need to perform a web page refresh to see content removed from your view). We're looking to improve this feature in future iterations, so bear with us with the ambiguity of "recent", which should, in most cases, cover your needs.
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Commented on post by Julian BondHow many backup accounts do you need and how do you keep the follower lists in sync? — Both Mastodon.social and Mastodon.cloud seem to be borked. Admin@Mastodon.cloud said he was moving servers and updating to 1.6.1 so maybe it all went horribly wrong. Admin@Mastodon.social is the main mastodon developer which suggests the problem might be the new 1.6.1 release. This makes me sad. Even though the Mastodon community doesn't really feel like it's really taken off just yet. We've become used to systems that just work so having two of the major instances just go off line is not good.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond.cloud is running but very flaky. I did manage to export the following csv and imported it into mammouth.cafe It's odd to watch everything syncing as the list is added to the federation and new toots come in. — Both Mastodon.social and Mastodon.cloud seem to be borked. Admin@Mastodon.cloud said he was moving servers and updating to 1.6.1 so maybe it all went horribly wrong. Admin@Mastodon.social is the main mastodon developer which suggests the problem might be the new 1.6.1 release. This makes me sad. Even though the Mastodon community doesn't really feel like it's really taken off just yet. We've become used to systems that just work so having two of the major instances just go off line is not good.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexithttps://twitter.com/Andrew_Adonis/status/914510482299604992 Senior official tells me 70% of Whitehall officials dealing with Brexit inter alia. 'Whenever we lift a stone, masses of things crawl out.' — Let's just all be a bit more optimistic and patriotic, then everything will be alright. Now where have I heard this before, Kamerad?
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Commented on post by Dhea Yuliani in MotoGPYou wait for 3 weeks for a MotoGP, and then they all come at once. Never mind, there's always the final WSB and BSB meetings to be going along with. — Happy Sunday everyone! It's not a GP Weekend. But still enjoy your weekend ;) We'll get through it! Let's take a moment to think about 3 weeks without +MotoGP​ For the fans like me, it will be very boring without watching MotoGP race. But remember! For the riders this is good and important to have the long break. They need to prepare well for the October tour and the jet lag. The 3-week Asia-Oceania tour! The long journey. MotoGP tour is awaiting! It must be really tiring and of course it's demanding physically. So, I wish the spirit always be with them :) . . . . #NoMotoGPNoLife #ILoveMotoGP #MO44 #44 #Miguel #Oliveira #MiguelOliveira
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeIn next month's thrilling issue. Build your own E-Meter. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/E-Meter/. Also in the same issue. How to make a brain training machine out of 2 LEDs and 2 555 timers. — The C-Beams of Tannhauser Gate!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt's not that the EU will try to occupy some moral higher ground or lack courage, but rather that they will attempt to rigorously follow the law. I wonder if too much is being made of this. The cases I've seen feel as though the UK is doing no more than other EU countries do in dealing with edge cases. Freedom of movement within the EU is not absolute. — The European commission is examining the increased detention and deportation of EU citizens from Britain and has warned it will take “appropriate action” against Theresa May’s government if it believes the rights of EU nationals are being compromised. Analysis of government data shows deportations of EU citizens are at their highest since records began, with 5,301 EU nationals removed during the year ending June 2017, an increase of 20% on the previous 12 months. More broadly, the number of EU citizens detained has increased sixfold since 2009. Critics believe the figures corroborate claims that Brexit has in effect given the Home Office the green light to target Europeans in the UK.
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Commented on post by Steve's Weave: Green Classifieds in Climate ChangeFossil fuel and Nuclear subsidies good. Renewable subsidies bad. OK, Got that. — http://todayeco.com/pages/102641096-doe-proposes-outrageous-massive-coal-and-nuclear-bailout
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Ralph Stoever Let's hope they don't escalate and kick UK citizens out of EU countries. — The European commission is examining the increased detention and deportation of EU citizens from Britain and has warned it will take “appropriate action” against Theresa May’s government if it believes the rights of EU nationals are being compromised. Analysis of government data shows deportations of EU citizens are at their highest since records began, with 5,301 EU nationals removed during the year ending June 2017, an increase of 20% on the previous 12 months. More broadly, the number of EU citizens detained has increased sixfold since 2009. Critics believe the figures corroborate claims that Brexit has in effect given the Home Office the green light to target Europeans in the UK.
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Commented on post by Julian BondIt's all part of the process. We do a petition, the Government says no. — People of the UK, your attention please. I don't know why you're complaining that the government did a terrible job of making their plans for Brexit known. They were freely available in our offices. I know you had to go all the way to the cellar (even though the lights and the stairs were not working), and find the plans in the locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused bathroom with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard' but it's not like we didn't tell you they were available. So just to make it really quite completely clear what we're doing and our position on leaving the European Union, here's a statement of clarity that should help you understand that we have only your interests at heart as we make the UK a stronger, more stable and above all fairer, society for all. - Dear Citizen, The Government has responded to the petition you signed – “Hold a referendum on the final Brexit deal”. Government responded: On 23 June 2016 the British people voted to leave the European Union. The UK Government is clear that it is now its duty to implement the will of the people and so there will be no second referendum. The decision to hold the referendum was supported by a clear majority in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. On 23 June 2016 the British people voted to leave the European Union. The referendum was the largest democratic mandate in UK political history. In the 2017 General Election more than 85% of people voted for parties committed to respecting that result. There must be no attempts to remain inside the European Union, no attempts to rejoin it through the back door, and no second referendum. The country voted to leave the European Union, and it is the duty of the Government to make sure we do just that. Rather than second guess the British people’s decision to leave the European Union, the challenge now is to make a success of it - not just for those who voted leave but for every citizen of the United Kingdom, bringing together everyone in a balanced approach which respects the decision to leave the political structure of the EU but builds a strong relationship between Britain and the EU as neighbours, allies and partners. Parliament passed an Act of Parliament with a clear majority giving the Prime Minister the power to trigger Article 50, which she did on 29 March in a letter to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk. As a matter of firm policy, our notification will not be withdrawn - for the simple reason that people voted to leave, and the Government is determined to see through that instruction. Both Houses of Parliament will have the opportunity to vote on the final agreement reached with the EU before it is concluded. This will be a meaningful vote which will give MPs the choice to either accept the final agreement or leave the EU with no agreement. The people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe. We want a deep and special partnership with the EU. We aim to get the right deal abroad and the right deal for people here at home. We will deliver a country that is stronger, fairer, more united and more outward-looking than ever before. Department for Exiting the European Union Click this link to view the response online: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/200004?reveal_response=yes This petition has over 100,000 signatures. The Petitions Committee will consider it for a debate. They can also gather further evidence and press the government for action. The Committee is made up of 11 MPs, from political parties in government and in opposition. It is entirely independent of the Government. Find out more about the Committee: https://petition.parliament.uk/help#petitions-committee Thanks, The Petitions team UK Government and Parliament ps. Highlights are mine.
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Commented on post by Chris BlackmoreBloody Vogons. — I believe I have managed to Fisk the foul lies of the Department for Exiting the EU reasonably well.
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Commented on post by Julian BondYou have to admit though that it's a fine piece of Vogon poetry. The patronising tone, the buzzwords, the frankly terrifying 3rd paragraph, the offer of a non choice at the end of the process and the complete failure to answer the petition or even give any indication of having read it. They've even got just the right portrayal of being slightly annoyed that they've got to swat an annoying fly away. As you say, exactly what we expected and have come to expect. — People of the UK, your attention please. I don't know why you're complaining that the government did a terrible job of making their plans for Brexit known. They were freely available in our offices. I know you had to go all the way to the cellar (even though the lights and the stairs were not working), and find the plans in the locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused bathroom with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard' but it's not like we didn't tell you they were available. So just to make it really quite completely clear what we're doing and our position on leaving the European Union, here's a statement of clarity that should help you understand that we have only your interests at heart as we make the UK a stronger, more stable and above all fairer, society for all. - Dear Citizen, The Government has responded to the petition you signed – “Hold a referendum on the final Brexit deal”. Government responded: On 23 June 2016 the British people voted to leave the European Union. The UK Government is clear that it is now its duty to implement the will of the people and so there will be no second referendum. The decision to hold the referendum was supported by a clear majority in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. On 23 June 2016 the British people voted to leave the European Union. The referendum was the largest democratic mandate in UK political history. In the 2017 General Election more than 85% of people voted for parties committed to respecting that result. There must be no attempts to remain inside the European Union, no attempts to rejoin it through the back door, and no second referendum. The country voted to leave the European Union, and it is the duty of the Government to make sure we do just that. Rather than second guess the British people’s decision to leave the European Union, the challenge now is to make a success of it - not just for those who voted leave but for every citizen of the United Kingdom, bringing together everyone in a balanced approach which respects the decision to leave the political structure of the EU but builds a strong relationship between Britain and the EU as neighbours, allies and partners. Parliament passed an Act of Parliament with a clear majority giving the Prime Minister the power to trigger Article 50, which she did on 29 March in a letter to the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk. As a matter of firm policy, our notification will not be withdrawn - for the simple reason that people voted to leave, and the Government is determined to see through that instruction. Both Houses of Parliament will have the opportunity to vote on the final agreement reached with the EU before it is concluded. This will be a meaningful vote which will give MPs the choice to either accept the final agreement or leave the EU with no agreement. The people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe. We want a deep and special partnership with the EU. We aim to get the right deal abroad and the right deal for people here at home. We will deliver a country that is stronger, fairer, more united and more outward-looking than ever before. Department for Exiting the European Union Click this link to view the response online: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/200004?reveal_response=yes This petition has over 100,000 signatures. The Petitions Committee will consider it for a debate. They can also gather further evidence and press the government for action. The Committee is made up of 11 MPs, from political parties in government and in opposition. It is entirely independent of the Government. Find out more about the Committee: https://petition.parliament.uk/help#petitions-committee Thanks, The Petitions team UK Government and Parliament ps. Highlights are mine.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeEven reading the Guardian article, it's clear that there's precious little hope there. Even if the figures are accurate and not the result of exaggeration, what's happening is that carbon emissions are still at their highest ever level. They just haven't grown any higher.
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Commented on post by Ruben Mepschen in Google+ Updates+Richard L Wow. Only 20 secs! Google needs to make this much easier and to reduce the number of clicks. — Due to the absence of moderators, anybody can post all kinds off crap, not related to anything G+. I'm outta here!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaARSE has recently identified two new moons around one of the outer planets but unusually inside the planet's ring system. This has been described as "Two balls deep inside the ring of Uranus". (with apologies to TheRegister) — To boldly go...
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitSo the betting is another election in the near future, not another Tory internal handover. And no mention of our favourite clown from HIGNFY. — Present odds for bets on "next prime minister after Theresa May": Jeremy Corbyn 4/1 David Davies 7/1 Philipp Hammond 10/1 Jacob Rees-Mogg 10/1
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Organization and Networkshttps://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — Distributed Autonomous Organizations -- DAOs Is it possible to run an organization without managers, employees or even a formal head office? Can it be run entirely decentralized and autonomous? Christoph will present blockchain enabled government structures as well as the story of "The DAO, the largest crowdfunding project in history". Christoph Jentzsch works on exploring the most basic fundamentals in different systems. After studying theoretical physics in Dresden he worked on the protocol and as the lead tester for the non-profit organization Ethereum. Building a blockchain which enables smart contracts as the fundamentals for a new decentralized economy. Using this technology he authored "The DAO", a decentralized autonomous organisation which runs entirely on the blockchain. He also founded the company Slock.it working on the decentralized sharing economy.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modified13. Ossa? — Let's play a game... Here is a table of frame types from noted frame builder Colin Seeley's excellent autobiography: Racer and the rest. Who can name the most...?
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Commented on post by Sabine Klare in Winamp & Music Visualizerhttp://forums.winamp.com/showpost.php?p=3141503&postcount=2004 5.666 still works. iPod Sync still works. Even the original beta http://last.fm scrobbler still works. But one day, a Windows update or something will break it. — I have some own threads in: Winamp & SHOUTcast Forums > Skinning and Design > Arts and Design Winamp & SHOUTcast Forums > Visualizations > MilkDrop And I still don't want to give up on my hope, that Winamp will get a comeback some day. You can read the latest pages of the thread "Winamp News". Although I myself have been slowed down with the creating of some new own random textures & desktop wallpapers because of the bad weather this year, maybe I will work again with some artist-software. My photo-albums on Google+ have to be updated, for now it is the best to take a look on deviantART and in the forums, and also the other artists, developers, plugin authors, skin authors and preset authors are very good...
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Commented on post by Julian Gold in Climate ChangeThen there's all Matt Ridley's "Opinion" pieces for The Times as well. These days it's just Murdoch's broadsheet organ. The writing is more erudite but the content is the same as The Sun, Fox and all the rest. — Makes me livid that a formerly great paper such as The Times writes utter bollocks like this. Not least because I'm a close personal friend of Mike Grubb, and this prick of a journo doesn't realize that his wife also works in the field of climate change, and understands perfectly well what an ignorant little shit Liddel is. Note: there is no science in the article, it's all just rhetoric, lies, or ad hominem. Directed at a man who has made more efforts than most to do his best for our species. Unlike this bottom-feeder.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modified3 Plunger BSA 4 Triumph oil in frame bonnevilles 5 Norton Featherbed 6 Egli Vincent 7 Seeley 8 Foale 10 Krauser BMW 11 Offenstadt 12 Suzuki folded aluminium-sandwich (CIBA?) 13 Kawasaki 500? 14 TZ? I need to get my Foale book out as I'm pretty sure they're all in there. — Let's play a game... Here is a table of frame types from noted frame builder Colin Seeley's excellent autobiography: Racer and the rest. Who can name the most...?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+Sakari Maaranen it already does. They should have used The Shard at 300m / 1000' rather than the Eiffel Tower as many people think it's modelled on Barad Dur. With the right kind of vision, it's not hard to see the Great Eye in it's unfinished summit. Then there's the pyramid on top of the main Canary Wharf building. It's Phallic/Egyptian symbolism is situated on the confluence of 5 ley lines. And is precisely oriented to line up with the 4 major pyramids on the Earth (and the virtual 5th one at it's centre). Sometimes at night you can see the smoke escaping from the tip of the pyramid. That's when Prince Charles is practising his dark eldritch rituals at the alter in King's Chamber location in it's middle. He's attempting to contact his shape-shifting lizard brethren on Zeta Reticuli via magic flying teapot radio and the Tea Ritual. — Good we cleared that up. (Via +Rhys Taylor .)
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Commented on post by Nishioka Yoshio in Climate ChangeMore detail here. 90 vestas V164-9.5 MW turbines. http://www.tritonknoll.co.uk/1172-2/ This is state of the art stuff. — Ireland make the World big Wind turbine offshore! Badman Nishioka/rainforest action group★ Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)–The world’s largest offshore wind turbines will be installed at the 860-megawatt (MW) Triton Knoll windfarm in the U.K.
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Commented on post by Justin Gerdes in Climate ChangeDoes the US have suitable continental shelf locations for offshore wind? Europe is lucky that large parts of the N Sea are very shallow. — At Greentech Media, I report on recently introduced legislation that would create a 30% investment tax credit for the first 3 GW of offshore wind projects deployed in the U.S.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitAt the moment, obtaining power is more important than policy. So Labour need to continue to walk the fence without committing to too much to do with Brexit. The deeper the hole the Tories dig themselves into the better. And it's not yet worth sacrificing the small pro-brexit wing of the Labour party to apply the coup de grace to the Tories. At least that's what Momentum and the Labour head office seem to think. Meanwhile Starmer can keep pulling the (Overton) window of acceptable discussion towards Remain. While Labour mostly want to keep avoiding the issue officially, we need to keep raising it to make sure it's not forgotten and to keep them honest. That's part of the process as well. — So Labour has voted to not discuss Brexit at their party conference. That is so because everyone knows that Corbyn's view on the matter are at odds with large parts of the memberbase, and the memberbase is presently happy with avoiding the matter completely. You can call that smart. Or gutless.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeThe ten lowest minimum extents are the last 10 years. I went looking for a list of the ten lowest maximum extents but couldn't find it anywhere. Has anyone seen this?
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawOver on this side of the pond we never hear of the Pan-American versions of Euro games, football, songs and so on. Until I checked I wasn't sure if the Pan-American Games is still run. Is that the only Pan-American competition or are there others? — Side thought: A recent Fine Bros. video ended up asking people whether they think the US should participate in Eurovision, and/or have its own analogue in the Americas. When listening to this, it struck me how unpopular it would be: Americans (USians) seem profoundly uncomfortable with any engagement or forum in which their exceptionalism is not built-in in some way. A competition where the US had no built-in edge over, say, Colombia would really not go over well. There's a deep cultural thing here which we ought to explore: the "need to be recognized as exceptional" as an unspoken aspect of American culture. This isn't the same in other countries: there's often tremendous national pride, but it's closer to the American experience of rooting for the home team (even if you know that your main rivals will probably win) than the way that people relate to the rest of the world here. There's a related thing within the country, as well. Reading this 2016 article about the changing perception of race in the US (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/the-new-meaning-of-whiteness), I was struck by Hsu's closing statement: "The question is whether whiteness, having arisen from a set of privileges accrued and institutionalized over centuries, can ever truly become a minority category, even if white people become a numerical minority. Whiteness was once described as invisible, a conspiracy that could never be brought into focus. But we can now at least contemplate the possibility that white might become a color like all the rest." This feels like a very similar fear: that one's inherent exceptionalism will not be recognized. The idea of whiteness as an ethnic grouping competing on an equal footing with Black, Hispanic, and many other ethnic groupings seems easy to conceive only if you think about it abstractly enough; if you imagine concrete cases of white communities trying to convince a nearby ruling black community to acknowledge their basic human rights, with no certainty that this would be honored... it would be a major change. (And Hsu's article helped me clarify these thoughts; I recommend looking at it if this aspect interests you) Unlike the example of Eurovision, though, with this situation there is no choice to simply opt out of the forum: the changing racial composition of the US means that at some point, the country almost certainly will be minority-white. (Barring either genocide or a decision to redefine the boundaries of "whiteness," both of which are always options) [NB: These are still somewhat early thoughts, not yet as fully formed. I'm leaning more towards using Twitter for random shares and things, G+ for talking out complex ideas with people, and Medium and various other fora for more polished things. So y'all get to be in the kitchen where the ideas get baked, or half-baked, as the case may be.]
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaUniversity? Just say no. But, maybe we've actually reverted to the 60s and 70s. The alternative view is: go to Uni, take the government's loan, have a 3 year party, live cheap, take loads of drugs, buy a motorcycle/scooter and don't ever pay the loan back because the gig economy and McJob's basic pay is below the threshold. I have to confess, I keep waiting for it all to kick off again. It's a few years now since the Tottenham riots, student fees demos, Occupy and such like. And if anything, things are worse now. — Fresher's week is upon us, so its time to look at the bigger picture of where UK universities stand. "In the 1970s and 1980s when universities, with their guarantees of free tuition and maintenance grants, became a reliable escape route from class expectation [...]. Each era has generated a different answer to the old question of what universities are for. We have gone from requiring them to be seats of divinity, to cradles of the Enlightenment, to brains of the industrial society, to engines of social mobility. If you were to listen to the current terms of that debate, however, you could be forgiven for thinking that the prosaic answer our own decade has arrived at is this: above all, we want universities to be value for money." Indeed. Because tuition fees are through the roof. And students have turned to voting in elections again. "The broken pledge on tuition fees all but wiped out the Liberal Democrats as a credible force in 2015 and – after Jeremy Corbyn’s promises to students past and present to erase debt – nearly unseated Theresa May’s government in June. During the next fortnight of party conferences that £9,250 [of present annual fee] will again be the figure on many lips, as Labour looks to cement its support in student towns (and nearly every town is now a student town) and the Tories look to find ways to escape the unsustainable electoral fact of loans with 6.1% interest rates and rising." And it bears repeating that universities are not charging these numbers voluntarily. They have to, because much other support has been cancelled. "In withdrawing the bulk of public funding, successive governments have invited universities to think of themselves as businesses, forced to exist in an invented marketplace, to “compete for talent” and all the rest. Now that they are behaving just like businesses." But students have changed as well. "Two anecdotes came to mind. One was hearing a president of the students’ union observe how “the bars are empty, the venues are empty and you can’t get a seat in the library”. The other came from one of the cleaners in the Liverpool halls of residence, who told her today’s students seemed so much more diligent. What was her evidence? “They are up for breakfast and there is no sick in the bins any more.”" Can confirm. The days were the campus was littered with flyers announcing parties and booze are over. You might not want to believe it, but most students study damn hard these days. Whatever universities are nowadays, they are not the same as 20 years ago.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeThere's something distinctly fishy about this entire event. The paper was somewhat suspect[1]. Then there's the initial MSM publicity. The rush by the deniers to pounce on it for themselves. Which then got lots of MSM coverage. Amplified by all the climate blogs (including us). And then the rapid rebuttal from the authors. And all happening to a backdrop of Trump, the USA and the Paris agreement. You could be forgiven for thinking that the whole exercise is a major troll of the climate change commentary ecosystem. All it's done is encourage everyone to show their colours. And we all swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. [1]Good long form analysis here http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/09/is-there-really-still-a-chance-for-staying-below-1-5-c-global-warming/
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitNice reference to Sadiq Khan chucking Uber out of London. — The Guardian, on todays speech.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeIt feels like it's time to do the research into the state of the art in electricity -> liquid hydrocarbon fuel tech. — Doing a type of artificial photosynthesis
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Commented on post by Dances with Squirrels in Climate ChangeCan sheep graze underneath them?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitDisingenuous? Moi? with this smirk? Well when we leave the EU but retain freedom of movement, single market and customs union, the Leavers will probably be justified in finally feeling that they were lied to. But us Remainers already know they were lied to. — The civil war within the Tory party continues. Talking to keen Brexiteers in the past few days I have sensed an immense nervousness about where things are going. There is a general feeling that they are being successfully cast as zealots and are losing the internal argument. By contrast, the cabinet ministers pushing for EEA-minus (who voted Remain) are upbeat. One predicts: ‘That’s where we’ll end up. Not in but very close.’ Its getting positively juicy: Boris had become fed up at being cut out of the picture: not invited to key meetings and not allowed to use his talents properly. The last straw was what one source close to him describes as a ‘sneak attack’ while he was out of the country earlier this month. On Monday 11 September, No. 10 emailed various cabinet ministers asking them to hold a time two days later for a meeting with the Prime Minister without saying what the meeting was about. The Foreign Office said Boris would not attend, as he would be in the Caribbean inspecting hurricane damage. And the underlings have started to cover their asses: I understand that civil servants in David Davis’s Department for Exiting the European Union have taken to writing emails setting out the problems, chiefly to ensure that their backs are covered should any Chilcot-style inquiry look into what went wrong. And while the squabbles continue, the ship sails straight on, right towards the iceberg: Even if May is persuaded to hug Europe close, the EU may have other ideas. One figure who has the ear of Davis at the Department for Exiting the European Union says: ‘EEA-lite is a non-starter as the EU won’t accept it without free movement’, which the referendum took off the table.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe text of the referendum was, Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union? - Remain a member of the European Union - Leave the European Union There's no mention of freedom of movement. The assumption that the referendum was about immigration is entirely created by the Leave campaign. Clearly it's one of the major issues, but despite the Leave result, it's not a foregone conclusion that the referendum automatically means no free movement. It's all a negotiation, innit. — The civil war within the Tory party continues. Talking to keen Brexiteers in the past few days I have sensed an immense nervousness about where things are going. There is a general feeling that they are being successfully cast as zealots and are losing the internal argument. By contrast, the cabinet ministers pushing for EEA-minus (who voted Remain) are upbeat. One predicts: ‘That’s where we’ll end up. Not in but very close.’ Its getting positively juicy: Boris had become fed up at being cut out of the picture: not invited to key meetings and not allowed to use his talents properly. The last straw was what one source close to him describes as a ‘sneak attack’ while he was out of the country earlier this month. On Monday 11 September, No. 10 emailed various cabinet ministers asking them to hold a time two days later for a meeting with the Prime Minister without saying what the meeting was about. The Foreign Office said Boris would not attend, as he would be in the Caribbean inspecting hurricane damage. And the underlings have started to cover their asses: I understand that civil servants in David Davis’s Department for Exiting the European Union have taken to writing emails setting out the problems, chiefly to ensure that their backs are covered should any Chilcot-style inquiry look into what went wrong. And while the squabbles continue, the ship sails straight on, right towards the iceberg: Even if May is persuaded to hug Europe close, the EU may have other ideas. One figure who has the ear of Davis at the Department for Exiting the European Union says: ‘EEA-lite is a non-starter as the EU won’t accept it without free movement’, which the referendum took off the table.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate Changehttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/21/when-media-sceptics-misrepresent-our-climate-research-we-must-speak-out Myles Allen and Richard Millar speak out. — Quote: A number of media reports have asserted that our recent study in Nature Geoscience indicates that global temperatures are not rising as fast as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and hence that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is no longer urgent. Both assertions are false. endquote Funny, how a paper that says "if we do the right thing and work like the dickens our calculations say that we may still have enough time to keep the temp down" gets turned into something else by the hopeful, greedy, and those with vested interests in BAU.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeThis rebuttal needs to be spread wide. But it won't get the wide spread press that the "it's all good" story got. — Quote: A number of media reports have asserted that our recent study in Nature Geoscience indicates that global temperatures are not rising as fast as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and hence that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is no longer urgent. Both assertions are false. endquote Funny, how a paper that says "if we do the right thing and work like the dickens our calculations say that we may still have enough time to keep the temp down" gets turned into something else by the hopeful, greedy, and those with vested interests in BAU.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeIs that predicted impact by 2050 or by 2100, or 2200? Timescale does matter here because we could have slight effects in 2050, substantial in 2100 and catastrophic in 2200 and that would be used as a reason to do nothing now because 30 years is the limit to the forseeable future. — This was originally drawn up in 2013....I don't think it's changed a whole lot since then. original post here: http://planet3.org/2013/10/27/the-overton-window-and-its-relation-to-reality/
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeInsurance companies. Who should then jack their rates to reflect the increased risk. Assuming we're talking about Miami-Houston here and not Bangla Desh.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademia+Edward Morbius That's the generalised solution to the home-working salesman problem, is it not? But still spherical, perfectly elastic and in a vacuum. — For the connoisseurs of complexity theory out there: the asymmetric travelling salesman problem (ATSP) allows for a polynomial-time algorithm that approximates the solution up to a constant factor. Thus, ATSP is similar to the symmetric traveling salesman problem (TSP), for which a corresponding algorithm has been known since 1976. So both problems can be "solved to optimality, up to a constant factor". And what are those factors? For the TSP, the factor is 3/2, i.e. you overestimate the actual cost by 50%. That makes the corresponding algorithm in itself useless in practice, but it can provide a good starting point for further improvements. For the ATSP, the factor is 5,500. Ugh. But then the authors did not try to optimise this factor, so they are not to blame. Surely we will soon see some improvements, bringing the factor down, closer to the lower bound of 75/74.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeFrom the paper's abstract. Hence, limiting warming to 1.5 °C is not yet a geophysical impossibility, but is likely to require delivery on strengthened pledges for 2030 followed by challengingly deep and rapid mitigation. No change there then.
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Commented on post by Ilkka Koivistoinen in Climate ChangeWow, this paper is getting a lot of press. See my comment here. https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SusanStone/posts/7nKTqsAS41W — Hey, politicians! We can totally meet those climate change goals
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeWow, this paper is getting a lot of press. See my comment here. https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SusanStone/posts/7nKTqsAS41W — quote: In the meantime, the result could be a lot of confusion, says Oliver Geden, who leads the EU Division for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “First, it is quite unusual that scientists say that the state of the climate is better than expected, that a recalculation of the remaining carbon budget gives us more breathing room, not less,” Geden said in an email. “Second, it is far from clear that the authors’ method/results will form a new scientific consensus, given that some researchers are already voicing objections. A significant carbon budget recalculation should not come as a surprise, but for many policymakers it will.” Rogelj said the study did not explicitly consider whether the carbon budget for 2 degrees Celsius would also be larger, but, nonetheless, it surely rises substantially, too, if the analysis is correct. Nonetheless, even with the new revision, the latest research finds that keeping warming below 1.5 degrees C will be quite hard. “Even with the largest estimates of the remaining carbon budget, this path is extremely challenging, starting reductions immediately and then reducing emissions to zero over 40 years,” Millar said at the press event. endquote This is how science works. Now more researchers will look at their numbers, critique, reanalyze, argue about whether their results stand up. The news cycles, though, may handle it differently. Something to keep an eye on.
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Commented on post by Bob Payne in Climate ChangeWow, this paper is getting a lot of press. See my comment here. https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SusanStone/posts/7nKTqsAS41W
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeWow, this paper is getting a lot of press. See my comment here. https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SusanStone/posts/7nKTqsAS41W — If we can believe these British scientists there are still a good chance to keep the 1.5 centigrade threshold agreed upon by the Paris agreement. Two factors kick in: 1 Too pessimistic calculations, and 2 Better progress in shifting to green energy sources than first anticipated. Well that is, we need more scientists who can confirm the calculations of those British scientists....!
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeWow, this paper is getting a lot of press. See my comment here. https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SusanStone/posts/7nKTqsAS41W
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeThe usual suspects (Ridley, GWPF) have jumped on this because it "proves" global warming is a scam. It's been turned into a story that the "Pause" means climate sensitivity to CO2 is much less than thought. But, http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/09/a-bright-and-shiny-hell.html#comment-2034752 I won't copy-pasta all of the comment, but, the lead Author - Dr Richard Millar (who, you might notice, is rather young and has a grand total of two papers under his belt) works for this lot: Academics from the Universities of Oxford, Harvard and Columbia are consulting with the scientific and investment communities in combination with fossil fuel industry stakeholders to address the issues involved.
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Commented on post by Thomas RohdeSo what's your job? Are you private secretary to the CEO, or are you an Operations Manager?
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Commented on post by Ewa Stanewska in Google+ UpdatesI am the one true John Smith. Google should delete all the other accounts of people who fraudulently claim to be "John Smith". You post makes no sense. Please explain. — How to delete one account in Google+? Because somebody has made the false account on my name. So I have two accounts now, and the false one must be deleted.
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Commented on post by Scarfolk CouncilScarfolk is a warning not an instruction manual. No matter how many times you re-read it. — “State Surveillance in Scarfolk”. Our handy guide to the end of privacy (We'll know if you don't look at it). https://twitter.com/i/moments/896990538305597440
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate ChangeFEMA is the agency responsible for short term disaster relief and it reports up through Homeland Security, not EPA. The EPA is responsible for long term environmental protection. So Pruitt should keep out of FEMA's job and let them get on with it. But he should absolutely do his own job. And there's no conflict of interest here in both happening at the same time. That's the coldly logical view. Meanwhile his outburst raises the obvious question. If not now, then when * is* a good time to talk about climate change? When will it stop being insensitive to the people struggling with the results of Harvey, Irma and the western droughts and wildfires?
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Commented on post by Henry in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)It's the E-Bike equivalent of those ultra cheap "ladies" bikes in the big retailers. It has at least got a disk brake though it's probably horrible. I think I recognise those forks, stem, handlebars, lights, seat, seat post! Here' a question though. I've never really liked this battery placement. It just looks wrong. But what's the best solution for the battery on a step-thru? Does putting it on the front down tube work? — New 700C Lowstep Electric Bike for Export
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green Technology+Alan Stainer Unfortunately https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Management doesn't say anything about quantities of those two isotopes. Are we talking megatonnes or grams? — Offshore wind power cheaper than new nuclear Now this is a good day! I sincerely hope the UK government reverse their decision to commit to Hinkley Point C. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41220948 Edit: More information about the startling news can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/11/huge-boost-renewable-power-offshore-windfarm-costs-fall-record-low?CMP=share_btn_tw
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingThat was a pretty disappointing days racing with both Misano and Silverstone being almost un-rideable. I'm a little concerned for Shakey and Haslam. They're having a really bad run just now. Shakey especially has barely finished a race for several meetings. — Just a little bit wet - MotoGP Misano Results & Reports The photo say's +Marc Márquez & so it should, he won ....... however Petrutchi led nearly every lap until 2 to go when MM93 came past. Also, I was happy to see +Jorge Lorenzo take the early lead until he crashed out. Speaking of crashing out, it really was a fight to survive on Sunday, both in Italy & also at +Silverstone for the +MCE Insurance +Official BSB Showdown Battle. MotoGP Race Report (& Moto2 / Moto3) via +Zara Daniela C/O MotoMatters : https://motomatters.com/results/2017/09/10/2017_misano_motogp_race_result_a_last.html Moto2 R & R : https://motomatters.com/results/2017/09/10/2017_misano_moto2_race_result_last_men.html Moto3 R & R : https://motomatters.com/results/2017/09/10/2017_misano_moto3_race_result_dancing_in.html Sunday Round Up by +David Emmett C/O MotoMatters dot com : https://motomatters.com/analysis/2017/09/11/2017_misano_motogp_sunday_round_up.html _____________________________________________ +MotoGP #MotoGP #Moto2 #Moto3 #Misano #SanMarinoGP +Misano World Circuit "Marco Simoncelli"
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyThis is getting framed in the media as an either/or question when really it's a both/and situation. We absolutely should be encouraging the build of wind farms, especially off-shore for all kinds of reasons. And in the process forcing the price down. But at the same time, the nuclear industry in the UK needs an overhaul because the process of building the next generation of power stations is out of control. And as well as the costs and subsidies given to Nuclear, the apparent need to keep re-inventing the designs is pushing build times way out into the future, when we need the capacity now, not in 10 years. As for the waste issue, it's probably not that bad and BNFL has a lot of experience now locally in dealing with it. I tend to side with people like James Lovelock that local storage, followed by centralised re-processing can reduce the problem to really quite small quantities. More of an issue is de-commissioning. We have no real idea how to do this anywhere in the world. And it represents a considerable hidden subsidy to the industry as it's really only governments that can pick up the bill. — Offshore wind power cheaper than new nuclear Now this is a good day! I sincerely hope the UK government reverse their decision to commit to Hinkley Point C. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41220948 Edit: More information about the startling news can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/11/huge-boost-renewable-power-offshore-windfarm-costs-fall-record-low?CMP=share_btn_tw
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedI did a London - Barcelona trip on one with a small tank bag and double bubble screen. In the company of a GSXR-750k6 What really surprised me on a long trip was how good the fairing was. We had a torrential downpour and my hands barely got wet. The France -Spain coast road had a vicious cross and head wind, but you could just hunker down a bit and it tracked through it. 100mph indicated for hours on some of the auto-routes was just boring, not excruciating. And that's the road vs track puzzle. In the 90s you could duck right out of the wind. By 2010, fairings and screens had shrunk to the point where you can't even get the helmet in clean air without a full chin on the tank tuck. — 2003 ZX-6R This great looking machine, because this was the first of the high spec 600s - with USD forks, slipper clutch, radial brakes etc... And the fact that this was the first model released from 'modern' Kawasaki (after the company was restructured in 2002) this model has become something of a classic. As a result, a clean example of this model will be more expensive than either the C1H/C6F 2005/6 model, which is technically a better machine or even the P7/P8 2007/8 machines.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedWhen did the ZX10R stop being completely mental and become merely insanely terrifying - Gen III? — You know there are some people who think green and purple do not work together. Kawasaki has never subscribed to such a view and neither have I... Vastly underestimated litre bike, the Kawasaki ZX-10R generation 3. Released in late 2008, to minimal fanfare, this model had a tricky birth. The month previously Honda had released their new Fireblade - the first upgrade in the litre class and being Honda was released to glowing reviews. A month following Yamaha shocked many by releasing the cross plane crank R1. The 'different-ness' alone sufficient to gain column inches. The MotoGP-esque soundtrack a great bonus. And poor old Kawasaki - never the best at promotion released the bike without fanfare or explanation. I did not realise just how important this was until a couple of years later. I was talking to a journalist for MCN about traction control and mentioned the system on the 2008 ZX-10R. This 'expert' was adamant there was none. I owned one - my first brand new bike (therefore had the full dealership experience.) I spent a good amount of time and money modifying. I went for my shakedown ride after changing the suspension front and rear, the whole braking system, the bodywork, wheels, dash, ECU, wiring loom, rearsets, clip ons and no doubt other stuff I cannot remember. Perhaps 100 feet from the garage I hit a pub trap door (where they drop barrels to the cellar.) The revs spiked the rear slipped sideways and then suddenly stopped, snapping back into line. There was traction control. Phew! Kawasaki named the system KIMS, or Kawasaki Ignition Management System. In fairness to the journo, Kawasaki were careful not to call it traction control. T/C works by comparing front and rear wheel speed. This system is different. It compares engine speed with throttle opening and is a system Kawasaki pioneered in MotoGP. How it works is that if you are a tosser and grab a fist load of throttle it will do nothing whatsoever to help you. You should not have been a dick. However, if you riding around and without twisting the throttle, the revs spike the ECU (rightly) surmises there must have been a sudden loss of traction. In response the bike's ECU retards the spark until the revs are where they should be for throttle position. Simples! However, not many people - journalists included it seems even knew the system was there. Oh Kawasaki... You need to learn to blow your own trumpet it a little! So this model went somewhat under the radar and under appreciated, people preferring the simpleton's Honda or shouty Yamaha. One thing that until you have seen the bike close up you probably wont believe is just how tiny the bike is compared to it's rivals. I was in a place called Thirsk today and saw one parked next to a Derbi 125cc and they were all but the same size. As a final recommendation, I would add this frame and swinging arm looks better than any I have ever seen when stripped of paint! What more could you want?
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedNo matter what the question is, the answer is a B1. But it absolutely needs a shock and fork revalve. And the Harris-Ohlins steering damper. And a cricket box for the rider because at least once every ride you'll bang your tackle against the back of the tank. There was a moment around 2003-05 when 600s had power, torque and handling. The B1, CBR600RR, R6, GSXR600-K4/5, Daytona 675, were race track weapons, did 150mph but were still useable road bikes. And relatively easily tuned. With a tank bag and some throwovers you could quite happily tour Europe for a couple of weeks. The next generation chased revs and lost something. Kawasaki didn't really find it again until they went back to 636 at the start of this decade. And now all that's gone? BTW. If you find a low mileage B1, buy it and keep it. Don't make the mistake again of selling it on because your mind thought xxx would be better. It may be a frantic little terrier that's biting your ankles and egging you on, but that's it's strength, not a weakness. Corners - My Favourite! 45mph Roundabouts - My Favourite! 1st gear slip road - My Favourite! WFO for 10s on that hidden bit of bypass - My Favourite! Can we go for a run now, please - Please? Sorry about that. I got all nostalgic for a moment there. ps. It's also one of the very few Kawasakis that looked awesome in orange and should really be completely de-stickered. — 2003 ZX-6R This great looking machine, because this was the first of the high spec 600s - with USD forks, slipper clutch, radial brakes etc... And the fact that this was the first model released from 'modern' Kawasaki (after the company was restructured in 2002) this model has become something of a classic. As a result, a clean example of this model will be more expensive than either the C1H/C6F 2005/6 model, which is technically a better machine or even the P7/P8 2007/8 machines.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedPerhaps when Ducati make a 1000 V4, they can reinvent the 500 Pantah. Or even the 500-desmo parallel twin! — £1,847 that is the price in India for this Pulsar 375...! Before we all groan and think yeah but what a pile of crap it must be bear in mind that under all that plastic the bike is, in fact, the same as the KTM RC390 which costs a whopping £5,000. Quite why the price difference? The only meaningful answer is because they can but it still feels like a rip. I have long been wanting a smaller capacity, lightweight but decent spec sports bike after a succession of Suzuki SVs and a tuned, custom framed lightweight ER-6f being enjoyed, mostly for track work. I have been to look at the RC390 a few times and pondered the possibility. I enjoyed the RC8 I spent the summer racing and liked the possibility of a baby brother. Sadly, the machine just feels rather cheap and nasty, which pains me greatly. Suddenly it makes more sense when I realise they (bajaj makes the RC390 for KTM) charge so little for the Pulsar. I understand it is never going to be that price but why not under £4,000 or even less. Clearly there is room to sell it for that price and still make a profit. Bajaj isn't the second largest motorcycle company in India by selling bikes at a loss. If this was £3000 to £4000, I would have bought one already but £5000 upwards makes it seem over priced. A three year old supersport 600 can be bought for that price. The Duke 390 was good fun if rather underpowered for the weight. Ah weight - my biggest bug bear of modern motorbikes. Every single motorbike I know of weighs far more than it should and relatively easily could. KTM, I think knows this too - their website linked at the bottom of the post makes no mention of the weight whatsoever. Where you can find it, it is listed as dry weight. What a deceitful practice - akin to weighing a person without blood. Now my girlfriend may feel much happier weighing herself that way but it doesn't make her any thinner! Honda's upcoming "Lightweight Supersport" bike is almost certainly not going to be lightweight OR sporty. So what's a man to do? I can only hope that the upcoming Suzuki Recursion and/ot Kawasaki S2/R2 will be properly specced for the sportsbike lover. Both mid size twins with forced induction, Suzuki a turbo, Kawasaki a supercharger, may just be the ticket but, again, are likely to not be particularly lightweight but at least should have decent power - the equation all modern bikes have made. Having seen KTM's Moto3 jewel of a bike, it is an extra annoyance and failure of the RC390 to be so obviously poor quality, overweight and therefore underpowered. Dare we hope that Aprilia, a great builder of relatively lightweight sportsbikes, make a lower capacity, high spec offering or KTM's putative new mid size twins come to fruition and they improve quality.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The War on Us+Woozle Hypertwin Not if we paint it traditional Florida pastel colours like pink and sky blue. — I keep hearing about how there's a "monster storm" approaching, we need to be prepared to fight it -- everyone board up your windows and hide the children. I have to ask, though -- who are we to judge which storms are monsters? All weather phenomena should have an equal right to free expression. Just because we like some weather patterns better than others doesn't give us the right to just shut out the ones we don't like. #GiveIrmaAChance </straightface>
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyTL;DR. And confusing as hell. One way out is to simply compare MWHr output. But that doesn't account for the energy cost of inputs. — IEA Underreporting Solar & Wind Energy 3–4x Compared To Fossil Fuels Whenever anyone quotes statistics at me, I always ask myself whether the statistics can be trusted. It may not be intentional, as people do make mistakes. Well it turns out there is a pretty big mistake in the way wind and solar energy has been reported for over a decade. This needs to be fixed and fast. h/t +Renaud Janson https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/05/iea-underreporting-solar-wind-3-4x-compared-fossil-fuels/
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The War on UsLeave Irma Alone! http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/leave-britney-alone — I keep hearing about how there's a "monster storm" approaching, we need to be prepared to fight it -- everyone board up your windows and hide the children. I have to ask, though -- who are we to judge which storms are monsters? All weather phenomena should have an equal right to free expression. Just because we like some weather patterns better than others doesn't give us the right to just shut out the ones we don't like. #GiveIrmaAChance </straightface>
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeDaily Mail Links --1 — Hurricane Irma is now so strong it registers on seismic devices that detect earthquakes #HurricaneIrma
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawThe US is playing Gunfight at the OK Corral. The Russians are playing Chess. The Chinese and Koreans are playing Go. You're so busy looking at this one move, you don't realise it's just part of a long term strategy. The real danger is 30 moves away on the other side of the board. — For those thinking about the latest North Korean nuclear test, please keep all of the following points in mind. (These are basically why I described the test as having no real military significance; a 5x improvement on yield doesn't ultimately mean much if you can't get it where it needs to get, and if you can get it there, 15kT is more than enough to get your point across.)
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate Changeand also. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/02/nigel-lawson-climate-sceptic-organisation-funders I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that far right neocons with large quantities of personal wealth working for a "think" tank which promotes neoliberalism and with no scientific background have been giving money to the GWPF. — Abbott giving a speech to the GWPF in London, Oct 9. This deserves a protest, I think. Institution of Mechanical Engineers, One Birdcage Walk, London SW1H 9JJ https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/02/daring-to-doubt-tony-abbott-to-address-london-climate-sceptic-group https://www.thegwpf.org/tony-abbott-to-deliver-2017-annual-gwpf-lecture/
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Commented on post by Bob LaiHow about focussing on a hopeful future where NK becomes a post-war Vietnam. And as a long process of de-escalation, not an end game. Step 1 is for NK to appear to have a credible deterrent. It doesn't have to be real, just credible.[1] That prevents the US, China and SK taking any kind of pre-emptive strike. It limits any invasion or attack whether conventional or nuclear. And in both directions. It also helps secure the leadership of NK. Or at least for the NK leadership to feel secure. This will involve a lot of sabre rattling on both sides and demonstrations of power but no actual activity. [1]There's a strong possibility that all these optics from NK are a long con. Step 2 is commercial, especially food. Play the same old game of playing off trade against sanctions against disarmament. Step 3. Get all the interested parties round a dinner table in a private room in the Dorchester in London and hammer out a deal. That among other things, finally declares peace and a formal end to the 50s Korean War. Because it's diplomacy that will change the game not open warfare. Step 4. Build electricity links between NK, China and SK. Get Samsung, Hyundai, Alibaba, LG and others to invest in factories in NK as joint partnerships. Step 5. Open the borders allowing relatively free movement and dismantle the DMZ. Step 6. Profit!!!!! — "Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Sunday shot back at North Korea’s latest nuclear provocation with a blunt threat, saying the U.S. will answer any North Korean threat with a “massive military response -- a response both effective and overwhelming.” While he said America does not seek the “total annihilation” of the North, he added somberly, “We have many options to do so.” Any North Korean threat. Not deliberate action, but a threat. And this in light of China's warning that they will stand in North Korea's defense if we undertake any pre-emptive action. https://apnews.com/aab7c6bbda234179990b310a1bea8922/Mattis:-NKorea-threat-would-bring-massive-military-response
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeAnd Bangla Desh, Nepal, Kashmir, Karachi, Baluchistan, https://weather.com/en-IN/india/news/news/bangladesh-nepal-india-monsoon-august-2017
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThis is now. That was then. BBC B = 1981 = Thatcher vs EU = HERE ARE OUR DEMANDS OK THEN NO, WE DEMAND THIS OK THEN REALLY. WE MEAN IT. HERE ARE OUR DEMANDS OK THEN — Cutting edge Brexit simulator.
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeScience shouldn't dictate American policy. But American Policy should be informed by science. — It is downright ridiculous to claim that science should not dictate politicians. Science is true wether you believe it or not. It is selfcorrecting and always trying to achieve more. A political system deprived of science has not a ghost of a chance to make qualified decisions!
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeWhen the rainbow comes at the end of the rains, it's a sign that Goddess loves Gays. /s ;) — For odd reasons some people are more willing to believe Harvey is God's punishment for allowing homosexuality and transgender issues than to blame global warming for it. How can we possibly expect America to become great?
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Commented on post by Nishioka Yoshio in Climate Change+Nishioka Yoshio Really no need to thank every person who +1s the post. — Global Solar capacity set to surpass Nuclear for the first time. Badman Nishioka/HUTAN Group Solar Energy Research report : In 2017, global solar demand will exceed 80 GW for the first time. Demand growth of 6%-8% per year is expected through 2019, as recently tendered projects reach completion and new markets take off. Yet again, China will be the key driver, and we retain our 2017 assumption that Chinese demand in 2017 will account for 39% of the global market. Almost Global price become same price to decrease by the graf.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedAlmost a Ducati 450 Desmo without the vibration and with added reliability. For a brief moment these things were just about perfect. And then the CB400F turned up. For a long time in the 70s and 80s, every bike club in the UK had a Morini bore who sat at the bar and hogged the conversation with how this bike was better than everything else out there. I dislike under-slung bar end mirrors. Ok? — And Moto Officina's build
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedThey also have this liking for short exhaust pipes. Especially on machines with a low rev range. — Much as I like many if them, it does seem today's most well known builders stop designing at the seat.
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate Change+Mark Pryor Thanks. I guess some of the equivalent in renewables might be China state support for the PV panel industry. But a finger in the air for stuff like feed in tariff support for wind in Germany would be a couple of orders of magnitude smaller.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI like the way with the branding they've taken all the red bits (Labour socialism) and turned them true blue (Tory). Except that's the England Cross of St George and the Ulster Saltire they've dis-respected. — So the Tories have this "youth organisation" Activate. All new and shiny at http://activate.uk.net . And they are on Twitter as well! Problem is, http://activate.uk.net links to @Activate_uk_net , which is a parody account. Well, I think its a parody account.
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Commented on post by Brendan Brisker in Climate ChangeAnd the comments are full of deniers vs advocates about Pielke's Lukewarmist argument over frequency of tropical cyclones, that uses data cherry picked from AR5. Sigh. — It's a fact: climate change made Hurricane Harvey more deadly https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/28/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-more-deadly?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Google%2B
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate Change+Mark Pryor Yes. But I'd like to see something just about the direct subsidies and not including "the social and environmental costs".
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate ChangeIt's a common complaint from the anti-renewables crowd that they are unfairly subsidised. Somebody needs to add up all the direct subsidies the fossil fuel industry gets. Not the externalities like the cost of climate change but more or less direct, subsidy, tax credits, cheap money, etc.
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Commented on post by Jesus Sanchez Santos - motociclismo in MotoGPWhen was the last time a Honda MotoGP bike went pop? — FINAL 🏁 #BritishGP ... ¡Enorme carrerón y 4ª victoria de Dovizioso con Ducati este año! Márquez abandonó por problema de motor de Honda. 1. DOVIZIOSO 2. VIÑALES 3. ROSSI 4. CRUTCHLOW 5. LORENZO 6. ZARCO 7. PEDROSA 8. REDDING 9. RINS 10. BAUTISTA 11. POL 12. RABAT 13. ABRAHAM 14. BARBERÁ 15. BAZ KO. MARQUEZ CLASIFICACIÓN #MotoGP 🏆 1º DOVI 183 2º MARQUEZ 174 3º VIÑALES 170 4º ROSSI 157 5º PEDROSA 148 📸 MotoGP
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Commented on post by Steve Kruger in Google+ UpdatesThe list appears to be limited, bizarre, common to everyone and manually curated. And the contents in each topic is only loosely linked to the title. See also here a list found by +CircleCount crawling the list. https://plus.google.com/+CircleCount/posts/RxMVJn34hJG — Discover query... Do the topics at the top of the Discover section ever change..can we change them, or are they based on some algorithm linked to our browsing habits. Some of them are relevant to my likes, but others are just so way out and hence a waste of time. And do we all get the same topics? Interesting new feature. I like the new search capabilities. Seems much improved. Thanks all
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Commented on post by Victor Enrique Espinoza Lanyi in Google+ UpdatesNot this old G+ (Buzz, Orkut) user. — What do you think of this #googleplus update? Good bye collections? #google
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeWhat's 200k years between species? — Scientists are solving the mystery of Earth’s thermostat There are mechanisms which will keep the climate safe for human life. So what we experience now will make it crazy for many years, but eventually the climate will become agreeable again..... Probably, because only our descendants can give the answer!
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Commented on post by Victor Enrique Espinoza Lanyi in Google+ UpdatesThe huge problem with Collections is that they are limited to one person. My SciFi collection is different to your SciFi collection. So following one collection is really just following a subset of a single person's posts. Providing they do actually keep posting and remember to divide their posts up. IMHO collections were always useless. Nearly as useless as Topics. — What do you think of this #googleplus update? Good bye collections? #google
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyThere's a follow on to Betteridge's law of headlines: Any headline that contains 'could' can be answered by the words 'probably not'. And especially when it's about battery breakthroughs. Which is a shame because we badly need another doubling of battery performance. And it makes it more annoying that the linked article has so little information in it. Polymer electrolytes are not new. Li-Poly is an established technology. So if there is something here, it must be something new. But it's impossible to know what if they won't tell us. Follow the links to the http://ionicmaterials.com/ site and there's not a lot more information there either. — Bill Joy: I decided to spend my time trying to create the things we need as opposed to preventing what threatens us. https://www.wired.com/story/bill-joy-finds-the-jesus-battery/
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and Politics+Andreas Schou re Craig Murray. I suppose shooting the messenger is reasonable given that the messengers are so much part of the story. But I don't get why you should shoot him with such obvious errors. Uzbekistan is not Russia. So saying Murray is in the pocket of the country where he worked makes no sense. All charges by the FO relating to alleged sexual misconduct while ambassador were dropped. So saying he was cashiered for those charges makes no sense. If you'd said he was a bitter whistle-blower who harboured long held grudges against an establishment that has destroyed him. And those grudges warped his judgement so nothing he says can be trusted. Then we'd have something to work with. And of course that charge, or something very like it, can be levelled at Assange and Greenwald as well. But then we've been here before. — This article is terrible. Let's recap why we think that Russia was involved: (1) We currently have a Ukrainian hacker in custody who believes he was working for the Russian government on that hack. It would be peculiar for him to turn himself in if everyone involved was in the US. (2) The same malware implant was used in the Ukrainian election hack of 2014, the Bundestag hack in 2014, and a variety of other hacks against Ukrainian civil society organizations, US and Ukrainian military officers, US defense contractors, Russian journalists, and State Department officials. (3) The documents released by Guccifer 2.0 were accessed by a role account named after Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Russian intelligence services. Preserved error messages in some Excel files indicate that the computer's language was set to Russian. (4) DNC server logs indicate that the attackers, whomever they were, worked from 9 to 5 in Moscow's timezone. (5) Guccifer 2.0 claims to be Romanian. The few short utterances he produced in Romanian dropped articles and misused prepositions in a way which indicates that the speaker probably speaks a Slavic language. (6) There appears to be a great deal of SIGINT indicating that people in the Russian government were trying to find the "33,000 deleted emails" at Flynn's request. (7) The Podesta emails, which could not have been leaked (they're from a private account) appear to have passed through the same channels as the emails now alleged to have been leaked. I have no reason to believe that the media narrative around these emails is false, and I implicitly trust the people who would have reviewed the forensic evidence. (They came from a gmail account, and while I have no specific knowledge of literally anything involved, suspected sovereign hacks are treated with special attention by a dedicated team.) (8) Three independent outside reviews -- ThreatConnect, Mandiant, and CrowdStrike -- concur, on the basis of forensic evidence from the server logs, with the more elaborate review done by US intelligence agencies and law enforcement. This article is largely incoherent from a technical perspective, and as someone who's worked in computer security and is now the privacy lead for a lot of people who do computer security, I really couldn't make heads or tails of it. But here's why it's so utterly uncompelling. (1) The people writing the "report," and I'm going to get into them later, didn't actually have access to any of the malware samples, server logs, or disk images which were used in the hack. (2) What they did have, however, was the original zip file which Guccifer 2.0 used to distribute a bunch of stolen DNC files. The files inside the ZIP are timestamped at an interval which implies a transfer rate of 22 MB/s, which is extremely high for a consumer-grade Internet connection. (It's also not the usual way you'd measure network speed, which is generally measured in Mbs rather than MBs, but... well... there's a reason for that.) (3) This is not particularly important because neither the DNC nor the FSB nor the GRU would be operating on consumer-grade Internet connections. They'd be operating on fat commercial connections instead, which can easily reach that speed. (4) Okay, but maybe it couldn't get to Russia at that speed. This is kind of a legit criticism, because transpacific capacity is actually bad enough that Google sometimes has problems with it. And of course there would be some latency. But this article confuses latency ("how long it takes to get there") with bandwidth ("how much gets there at the same time"). If you've got dedicated, leased fiber, of course you could get it to RU at that speed. (5) Anyway, that doesn't matter. There are good reasons to exfil in a burst transmission from a staging server rather than exfiltrating in one step. The NSA operates network logs of data leaving and entering the US. If you send your data from the DNC to RU in one stage, that might attract some attention. If you first move the data to a staging server on a rack somewhere in the US, pause, and later burst-transmit it to Russia, it looks like a US --> US network transaction, and then an unrelated US --> RU network transaction. (6) But that doesn't even matter, because it gets worse: while I can think of some reasons why those timestamps might correspond to a network speed, they probably don't: unless you're doing some Windows copying to a remote disk, it's going to preserve the same timestamp. You know what that speed does correspond to? It's a little slow for a disk from five years ago (which you might expect to be in the ~80-100 MB/s range), but it really does look like roughly the speed that a slightly out-of-date computer might write to a ZIP file. Which would change the timestamps. So why did this article happen: (1) There are some mostly-decent people in VIPS. Drake and Binney were both utterly humiliated by NSA's overreach, and Ray McGovern is a lefty activist. But Tice is insane -- I do not mean this in a metaphorical sense; he was dismissed for mental illness -- and Johnson is a serial fabricator who is responsible for the 2008 "whitey tape" rumors, Hersh's unpublishable story about us not really killing Bin Laden, and the Seth Rich murder conspiracy theory. Also, Binney's primary source of income is Russian state media. So. Uh. (2) You know who "Forensicator" is? A blog obfuscating screenshots from /r/the_donald/, not a computer security researcher at all. There is no reason to believe they have any idea what they're talking about. (3) Patrick Lawrence is a pen name for Patrick L. Smith, used when he wants to obfuscate his own prior work for Russian state media.
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Commented on post by CircleCount in Google+ UpdatesThe list of topics is as strange as ever and doesn't seem to have grown. And the content of each topic is still badly curated. — Looks like topics got a new overview page: https://plus.google.com/discover Do you see interesting or unrelated topics there? In my case it is a mix of both. Btw: here is are all available topics, collected by your favorite Google+ service: http://www.circlecount.com/topics/
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Commented on post by Carter Gibson in Work, Google+, and Career StuffsIt appears that Topics have grown in importance with their prominent position in Discover. But the list is as bizarre as ever and doesn't seem to have grown. And the content in each Topic is only loosely focused on that topic area. For instance, "European Union" https://plus.google.com/u/0/discover/oP8saB Hardly any of the stories are actually about Europe. WTF? — Love anime? Obsessed with street art? Can’t get enough nature photography? Now it’s even easier to get way into what you’re into with Topics.
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Commented on post by CircleCount in Google+ UpdatesIt appears that Topics have grown in importance with their prominent position in Discover. But the list is as bizarre as ever and doesn't seem to have grown. And the content in each Topic is only loosely focused on that topic area. For instance, "European Union" https://plus.google.com/u/0/discover/oP8saB Hardly any of the stories are actually about Europe. WTF? — What do you think about this update and the new Google+ Feature Topics? Is it "just" a better UI for the search results or have you found already new profiles / collections to follow that you would have never found? The first sentence is also pretty interesting: "Millions of people use Google+ to connect around the things they’re interested in." We would love to get some updated official Google+ numbers again ;) Update: Check out here all topics: https://plus.google.com/+CircleCount/posts/RxMVJn34hJG
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate ChangePlanting trees is always a good thing. And these people seem honest. Not all NGOs are corrupt. But excessive management costs meaning donations don't go as far as they should is not unusual. Carbon offset via planting trees may not do anything and even if you believe it does there's still the scale problem. — I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it: 'Donald Trump forest' climate change project gains momentum - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40927667
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsOne aspect that is troubling about this story is that Assange, Greenwald and Craig Murray have always maintained that the DNC emails were passed to Wikileaks by a DNC insider. And Greenwald (via The Intercept and interviews around the turn of the year) has been quite vocal about the lack of credible evidence (in his view) for the Russian Hacking story. IMHO any proof that Russia really was involved has to answer and explain these assertions by the people who did actually publish them. And a bit deeper than just claiming they are "Russian Stooges". What's not in doubt though is the veracity of the emails. How they arrived at Wikileaks may be in doubt, but the emails themselves are real. Or at least nobody has ever managed to prove they are fakes. — This article is terrible. Let's recap why we think that Russia was involved: (1) We currently have a Ukrainian hacker in custody who believes he was working for the Russian government on that hack. It would be peculiar for him to turn himself in if everyone involved was in the US. (2) The same malware implant was used in the Ukrainian election hack of 2014, the Bundestag hack in 2014, and a variety of other hacks against Ukrainian civil society organizations, US and Ukrainian military officers, US defense contractors, Russian journalists, and State Department officials. (3) The documents released by Guccifer 2.0 were accessed by a role account named after Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Russian intelligence services. Preserved error messages in some Excel files indicate that the computer's language was set to Russian. (4) DNC server logs indicate that the attackers, whomever they were, worked from 9 to 5 in Moscow's timezone. (5) Guccifer 2.0 claims to be Romanian. The few short utterances he produced in Romanian dropped articles and misused prepositions in a way which indicates that the speaker probably speaks a Slavic language. (6) There appears to be a great deal of SIGINT indicating that people in the Russian government were trying to find the "33,000 deleted emails" at Flynn's request. (7) The Podesta emails, which could not have been leaked (they're from a private account) appear to have passed through the same channels as the emails now alleged to have been leaked. I have no reason to believe that the media narrative around these emails is false, and I implicitly trust the people who would have reviewed the forensic evidence. (They came from a gmail account, and while I have no specific knowledge of literally anything involved, suspected sovereign hacks are treated with special attention by a dedicated team.) (8) Three independent outside reviews -- ThreatConnect, Mandiant, and CrowdStrike -- concur, on the basis of forensic evidence from the server logs, with the more elaborate review done by US intelligence agencies and law enforcement. This article is largely incoherent from a technical perspective, and as someone who's worked in computer security and is now the privacy lead for a lot of people who do computer security, I really couldn't make heads or tails of it. But here's why it's so utterly uncompelling. (1) The people writing the "report," and I'm going to get into them later, didn't actually have access to any of the malware samples, server logs, or disk images which were used in the hack. (2) What they did have, however, was the original zip file which Guccifer 2.0 used to distribute a bunch of stolen DNC files. The files inside the ZIP are timestamped at an interval which implies a transfer rate of 22 MB/s, which is extremely high for a consumer-grade Internet connection. (It's also not the usual way you'd measure network speed, which is generally measured in Mbs rather than MBs, but... well... there's a reason for that.) (3) This is not particularly important because neither the DNC nor the FSB nor the GRU would be operating on consumer-grade Internet connections. They'd be operating on fat commercial connections instead, which can easily reach that speed. (4) Okay, but maybe it couldn't get to Russia at that speed. This is kind of a legit criticism, because transpacific capacity is actually bad enough that Google sometimes has problems with it. And of course there would be some latency. But this article confuses latency ("how long it takes to get there") with bandwidth ("how much gets there at the same time"). If you've got dedicated, leased fiber, of course you could get it to RU at that speed. (5) Anyway, that doesn't matter. There are good reasons to exfil in a burst transmission from a staging server rather than exfiltrating in one step. The NSA operates network logs of data leaving and entering the US. If you send your data from the DNC to RU in one stage, that might attract some attention. If you first move the data to a staging server on a rack somewhere in the US, pause, and later burst-transmit it to Russia, it looks like a US --> US network transaction, and then an unrelated US --> RU network transaction. (6) But that doesn't even matter, because it gets worse: while I can think of some reasons why those timestamps might correspond to a network speed, they probably don't: unless you're doing some Windows copying to a remote disk, it's going to preserve the same timestamp. You know what that speed does correspond to? It's a little slow for a disk from five years ago (which you might expect to be in the ~80-100 MB/s range), but it really does look like roughly the speed that a slightly out-of-date computer might write to a ZIP file. Which would change the timestamps. So why did this article happen: (1) There are some mostly-decent people in VIPS. Drake and Binney were both utterly humiliated by NSA's overreach, and Ray McGovern is a lefty activist. But Tice is insane -- I do not mean this in a metaphorical sense; he was dismissed for mental illness -- and Johnson is a serial fabricator who is responsible for the 2008 "whitey tape" rumors, Hersh's unpublishable story about us not really killing Bin Laden, and the Seth Rich murder conspiracy theory. Also, Binney's primary source of income is Russian state media. So. Uh. (2) You know who "Forensicator" is? A blog obfuscating screenshots from /r/the_donald/, not a computer security researcher at all. There is no reason to believe they have any idea what they're talking about. (3) Patrick Lawrence is a pen name for Patrick L. Smith, used when he wants to obfuscate his own prior work for Russian state media.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedFrom the "Where are they now" desk. Spondon built some "barge" frames where they gave up trying to bend those extrusions in to the headstock and had them going round the outside of the forks. PB tested one built round an Exup. But the only pic I can find is the PB front cover. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Cagiva-Mito-125-Spondon-EXUP-Tenere-Yamaha-TZR250-RGV250-RD350LC-LC-KR-1S-GS750-/191019085711 As for 999 engines that were too long, Xaus liked the forks pulled back as far as they could. So at Brands WSB there were puffs of smoke under braking as the tyre touched the head. Not sure how they got that past scrutineering. — Spondon Delta frame: One of the best all round sports bikes frames as replacement for OEM. Against modern frames they are not really a dynamic improvement but in the 1990s, before the Japanese truly understood how to make good aluminium twin spar frames, these were a great option. As a replacement for Ducatis: their bikes come only with steel trellis frames, made from steel tubing. These do have certain performance benefits but in outright performance terms the aluminium twin spar is still king of the hill. The slim Delta frame, originally made by independent frame builders Spondon (started by former employees of Martek) is a great match for any engine slimmer than two cylinders wide. The L twin Ducati engine, that has featured in every sportsbike from Bologne since 1988, being only a single cylinder in width, fits with room to spare. Initially this bike was made with the 2v air cooled twin. These are my personal favourite modern Ducati engines. They are capable of covering cross country distances remarkably quickly but if you have been brought up with 1000cc sportsbikes, it seems many feel they are under powered. The only 'bad' part of the engine to my eyes, is the inlet port shape; they look like a 1950's to '70s design (and probably are.) This milling of the inlet port is the key restrictor to performance in the engine, along with the air cooling. Still, the engine in stock displacement is good for 90bhp. With a lightweight bike, that makes for strong performance but does take a bit of thought and skill to extract. In order to extract greater performance, noted Ducati engineer, Martin Brickwood (I will be posting about his key development, MBP valve collets soon) developed a 4 valve head for 2v engines. Although I am not particularly a fan - if performance is your key consideration, I would suggest getting a water cooled 4 valve engine rather than trying to extract ever greater performance from the air cooled 2v. Despite this, the owner desired the 4 valve upgrade. Within a few months, predictably, the owner desired a bigger leap in performance and wanted the engines switched for, you guessed it, a 4v liquid cooled engine from the sportsbike range. DucatiTestretta engine: the narrow head twin first introduced in the 916 family's final iteration the 996R and 998R but only the Rs and only for a year or so before it became THE engine for the sportsbikes, debuting officially on the 999. (For me, the greatest performing Ducati is the 999R, incidentally.) One of these was intended to be fitted. However, because of the wide V angle of the cylinders - the reason these are often referred to as L twins - it was not possible to mount the engine in a place that will promote handling; If fitted at the same angle Ducati uses, the front cylinder would foul the forks under hard braking. (This is a well known Ducati issue and the main reason they have a high angle of rake.) There are some race engines designated 'RS' after the model number. These have a deep sump and more compact milling at the expense of reliability - requiring rebuilds regularly. As the owner hoped to be able to use this as a road and track bike such engines were off the table. Some greater investigation lead to the engine used: the 916 SPS. A large part of Ducati's WSBK success came from the factories ability to homologate specials to permit their use in the race series. The speed with which Ducati could design, market, sell and race these updated engines was remarkable, much to the annoyance of their competitors! The SPS engines changed subtly each year but all (as far as I know) have the cut down heads: These are about 4mm shorter by simply cutting off the top part of the main structure where the normal production engine shave Testastretta script cast in the engine heads. Happily. this minimal saving was sufficient to provide enough clearance to work within the adjustable headstock of the Delta frame, even when braking hardest. The engine was tuned (the owner determined to not be disappointed with the performance) and fitted to the frame. The forks, adjusted to the maximum the headstock will allow, do not foul. This leaves the Spondon Ducati 916SPS seen here. And you thought swapping frames was easy.....?
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Commented on post by Peter StrempelUm. So that image and the text is what you posted in Jan? My mistake. I didn't really believe that as I thought it would have stuck in my head for it's sheer Godwin-ness. And had assumed you'd changed it to reflect this week's events. Slightly weird as my comment was familiar, but the OP, not so much. — What makes Google 'Nazi Theme' so bad? To all who hate the 'new design', please comment on whether you use gadget or desktop/laptop to access, and what makes it so horrible to use. The image presented is a leaked early design sketch by the homeless Neo Nazi Chihuahuas Alphabet employed to come up with the design. It may explain a few things ...
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Commented on post by Peter StrempelNot entirely happy with this level of editing of an existing post with existing comments. — What makes Google 'Nazi Theme' so bad? To all who hate the 'new design', please comment on whether you use gadget or desktop/laptop to access, and what makes it so horrible to use. The image presented is a leaked early design sketch by the homeless Neo Nazi Chihuahuas Alphabet employed to come up with the design. It may explain a few things ...
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademiacui bono? — Well, I am glad we got that out of the way.
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate ChangeThe scale problem is entertaining. 650 MtCO2 offset by 2025 to compensate for the president's policies, so plant 100b trees. "Despite the massive scale of planting needed, the campaigners believe it can be done." They seem like good people with their hearts in the right place. Unfortunately it also looks like a perfect NGO charity scam that siphons donations into "management costs". It's got the feel good factor, the hook and the unattainable goal. And the results and progress are hard to check and spread all over the world. Too cynical? — I saw this on the BBC and thought you should see it: 'Donald Trump forest' climate change project gains momentum - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40927667
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Commented on post by Armin Grewe in Europe, Brexit, Remoaning and all that nonsenseI can't be the only person thinking "bring it on" because JRM looks like an absolute disaster for the Tory party that would lead to a contraction back to 20% of the vote. An Alec Douglas-Hume for this time around the spiral. — I'm pretty sure it's not a question of if but a question of when he will be Tory party leader
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeWho's pet is this rock? — That would be the other rock, not The Rock (the Samoan Thor). Well, this rock looks very white, if you see what I mean, but I can't argue against it's achievements. (Via +Dan Eastwood.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaAs a long term progressive tax, which you only pay if you're successful and on your way to being rich. Thus hitting another of the Tory's natural constituencies. — So the UK government had this cunning plan to finance universities by student fees. So how would students pay their fees? Well, the UK government had this cunning plan to give everyone a loan. So who is paying for this loan? Well, the UK government had this cunning plan to sell the loan book, so costs would be recuperated. Turns out that there is a snag. Demand for buying a loan book full of dodgy loans has been underwhelming, and the Department for Education has re-rated the corresponding project from "green" to "amber", meaning that everyone is "aware of the challenging timetable" etc. etc. etc. The UK government might as well have given the money directly to universities. Less paperwork, and fewer sunk costs.
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Commented on post by Lauren Weinstein"As an online discussion about the Alt-right grows longer, the probability of a post calling them Fascists or Nazis approaches 1." Often after just one post. Pictures of Alt-Right rioters wearing Nazi Swastika armbands and giving the Nazi salute does tend to encourage that.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPInteresting. Rossi's spare bike in pit lane was on dry setup. So he could have come in at any time. — In retrospect. Would it have been possible to ride the first 3 laps on slicks? I kind of wish somebody like Zarco or Petrucci (or Smith) had tried it. If Marquez had fitted the same hard rear wet as everybody else, would he have come in a lap earlier than everyone else?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe Leavers are clearly not going far enough. I think we should encourage them to demand expulsion of all non-EU nationals after Brexit as well. Except they probably wouldn't see that as satire. — Well, thanks guys.
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Commented on post by Richard Turnock in Climate ChangeKnow your enemy. https://www.thegwpf.com/the-bottom-of-the-barrel/ https://www.thegwpf.com/tiptoeing-round-the-truth/ https://twitter.com/clim8resistance/status/895905478001217541 https://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-policy-foundation https://www.desmogblog.com/nigel-lawson Note that finding the opinion blogs on the GWPF website is hard. — #climatechange
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitBloody Tory Voters. Thanks Brexit! — Well, thanks guys.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeWhat was it built for originally? The oil tank behind the headstock suggests a dry sump single. — 'Just' missing a Powervalve Yamaha RD-LC engine
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedThings to do with a Cub. Throw the engine away and convert to electric? Actually think this is rather cool. Not exactly a motorcycle or even a moped but I love the minimalism. And there's fun and utility in 30mph. http://www.bikeexif.com/honda-cub-electric-motorcycle — custom Cub
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Commented on post by Andrea Ventura in Motorcycles - ModifiedI love the idea. But not so much the execution. The angle of the seat. The way it looks wide and stubby. Have you ever heard of anyone putting an SRAD fairing on a >2006 GSXR750? Somebody should! More here. http://www.returnofthecaferacers.com/2017/07/retro-yamaha-r6.html
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitHmmm. Thick of It, Very British Coup or (original) House of Cards? — Ah, we are down to only three internal factions within the Tory party now.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawYup, 21 in '77. Too young to be a proper boomer. But too old for GenX. Generation Jones? — This almost caused a spit-take. Via +Danial Hallock.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitDid you see this one? http://uk.businessinsider.com/lord-heseltine-a-window-of-opportunity-to-stop-brexit-2017-8?r=US&IR=T The cabinet divisions are partly his design. When he was still employed by May, the Tory peer advised she appoint Brexiteers to the three cabinet posts in charge of severing ties with Europe. The result is Boris Johnson, David Davis, and Liam Fox leading the high offices of Brexit. Heseltine says the trio are "the right people to prove the job can't be done." He explains: "It was the only political answer I could see — to let the Brexiteers prove that their policies work. Patently they don't. There are no policies. "They are just floundering along and I'm afraid, they must be allowed to continue to do that until the public opinion gets the message. It's an impossible task, there is no upside to this negotiation. There are no good news stories to come out of this." — Ah, we are down to only three internal factions within the Tory party now.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawWe fucked you up, your mum and dad, We gave you all our problems. And then we made up some more, just for you. And then you ran with it. — This almost caused a spit-take. Via +Danial Hallock.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawIt's not all your parent's fault. — This almost caused a spit-take. Via +Danial Hallock.
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Commented on post by Michael J. CoffeyBeware graphs that show % proportions against time when the absolute total is growing. Which might mean that despite a falling percentage, the absolute numbers are also growing. The classic case is growth rate of global population. Another couple of years (decades) go by and we're still on course for 10b by around mid century and no peak before 2100. CO2 emissions didn't stall. CO2 concentration keeps rising faster than ever. There is no decoupling. But it's not all bad. Extreme poverty did get back to the same numbers as 1820. — Some good news...
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaStage 2. "Maths building goes open plan ..." https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10210372574891514&set=a.1037614061400.2006529.1256968054&type=3&theater https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — They built a wall! So this grey wall popped up the other day in front of our Maths building. I suppose the Navy donated a bucket of paint, left over from the last warship. And what you can't see are the office windows on the ground floor. Because, well, their view is blocked by this beauty. The resident applied mathematicians are not amused. As for the reasons for this monster, there are a couple of hypotheses rumours: 1) This is just the beginning. The final wall will allow no escape. 2) Its a sound bafflement. The applied mathematicians on the ground floor are promoting their world-leading research so noisily that the construction workers outside complained. 3) Someone got scared by those ugly mathematicians. 4) New faculty policy: the view from ones' office window must reflect ones' breadth of expertise.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in The Meaning of WorkI used to have a rule that when your startup got an HR dept it was time to leave. But with growth hacking these days, that's maybe a little early. As long as HR is just doing recruitment and enforcing employment law, it's fine. But when it's primary task becomes preserving and growing the HR dept, it really is time to leave. — Some very solid thoughts from +Karen Wickre about why HR is often terrible – and things that can make it better. h/t +Ferdinand Zebua for the link.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaSomebody's been reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_Form The building of the wall makes concrete (makes wood?) that there is Mathematical Science Department and Not-Mathematical Science Department. It makes distinct the existence of the Department as separate from everything else. And it implies one action: Crossing the boundary between the states made distinct by the wall. All else derives from this. — They built a wall! So this grey wall popped up the other day in front of our Maths building. I suppose the Navy donated a bucket of paint, left over from the last warship. And what you can't see are the office windows on the ground floor. Because, well, their view is blocked by this beauty. The resident applied mathematicians are not amused. As for the reasons for this monster, there are a couple of hypotheses rumours: 1) This is just the beginning. The final wall will allow no escape. 2) Its a sound bafflement. The applied mathematicians on the ground floor are promoting their world-leading research so noisily that the construction workers outside complained. 3) Someone got scared by those ugly mathematicians. 4) New faculty policy: the view from ones' office window must reflect ones' breadth of expertise.
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Commented on post by Trevor Larkum in Electric Vehicles (UK)What do you do if you don't have off street parking on your property? We do park in the same place just outside our door almost all the time, but it's a public kerb on a public road. I don't really want to string a cable across the pavement, so what are the options?
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Commented on post by David Powell in Electric Vehicles (UK)I've been in these a couple of times. I was surprised how little time it spent running on electric. It felt like the main engine kicked in really quickly after only 5-10s of moving.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI would like to know how many of them voted Leave and/or Tory. — Ain't gonna happen, but its kind of fun to think about. (If your kind of fun involves thinking about efficient logistics for mass displacement of people.)
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeThe Iran-Afghanistan border is porous because the people are the same and the border is really just a bit of ink on paper. If it hadn't been for their respective histories of imperial aggression, there wouldn't be much difference between Meshed and Herat. It's the same on the other side especially in the SE. Kandahar and Quetta are like twin towns. So "Gains Ground", "Gains Influence" or just "trades" really doesn't surprise me. And it doesn't mean Iran is necessarily trying to invade and control the way Russia or the USA (or Britain) did. And then, this is the NY Times. So of course Iran is being demonised as a potential imperial power in the area. — Nature abhors vacuum, the pawns that are the Taliban, and water rights.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitNext stop. Stay in the Customs Union. — Looks like the Rebel Alliance slowly takes shape: some Labour backbenchers have reached out to Tory rebels on the other side of the House and have apparently secured 15 Tory votes to back a motion to keep the UK in an EEA-style arrangement. (The necessary majority is 12 Tory votes, if all of Labour goes for it. It is also important to note that this is a backbencher-to-backbencher move; the Tory backbenchers would never accept such a proposal from someone near Corbyn.) Emperor Palpatine Rupert Murdoch will not be amused. Expect to see these backbenchers called "traitors" in the press.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesOne thing I need is the ability to find an old comment of mine. This has become a fraction easier. However you still need a distinctive name eg https://plus.google.com/s/%22Julian%20Bond%22%20-inurl%3A106416716945076707395/posts?order=recent&scope=all Contains my name. Not my posts because the URL doesn't contain my ID. In most recent reverse date order. Where the post is from anyone. This would be better done within the My Activity page. But that has no search. https://plus.google.com/u/0/apps/activities — Hell freezes over? Google Plus Search (desktop web) much improved. The source of the info is a bit strange. A new profile with one post, writing as if they're a Google employee. https://plus.google.com/u/0/117460354419018373603/posts/NnG8qbZfzhW Also more obviously official, re-sharing the same post. https://plus.google.com/u/0/+googleplus/posts/4zQDBBtw9rp
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeThere is no conspiracy. It's being run by the OWIM. Over-Priviliged, White, Incompetent, Motherfuckers. http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/conspiracy-theorists-finally-convinced-no-secret-society-could-possibly-be-running-this-mess-20160724111302 — Whats the name of this defense strategy?
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Commented on post by Anna KiyantsevaNice to see several search functions return. However It's still quite hard to search into one's own activity. The activity log here. https://plus.google.com/u/0/apps/activities/comments really ought to have it's own search facility. — New Search Features & Feel Today, we’re rolling out a bevy of improvements to G+ Search — most visibly, you’ll find that typing into the search bar no longer interrupts your search attempts by taking you to Explore. That means that your results get to you that much faster! That’s not all… • A new, tabbed interface will make it easier for you to find the exact type of content that you’re looking for. • In the posts tab, you can filter based on the post author. Finally, you can look back at your many years of G+ posting without being distracted by everyone else’s Neko Atsume updates! • Popular Topics are now displayed in the search bar dropdown. As always, let us know what you think and we hope you enjoy!
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate Change+Mac Baird It's true. Bangla Desh is particularly screwed. — That about wraps it up for 2C by 2100. Next stop 4C. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/31/paris-climate-deal-2c-warming-study
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedHere it is. Official factory concept. Everybody said "Build it now!". The factory said, "sorry guys. no way can we actually make it legal and work." http://www.motorcyclespecs.co.za/Gallery/Aprilia%20marlin%201.jpg Look here and you can see how they got they thought they could get the silhouette and still have some fuel tank. https://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/images/moto_gallery/APRILIABlueMarlin-1687_4.jpg — KTM RC8 'cafe racer' style roadster
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Commented on post by David Stallard in blue hazeMemories of Perf Bikes building an RS300 with a bit of help from Stan Stephens or maybe Bob Farnham. And then taking it to a Wed night practice session on the old Mallory Park circuit. Before they ruined it with extra hairpins and chicanes. And complaining that they had to stop after a while because the rider simply couldn't go any faster and it was frying his brain. Around that time, they were prone to doing things like matching a MkI Blade against a GP RS125 round Mallory. The RS125 was faster! Of course. — Me on my rs 250 lovely times 😎
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeHeh! ISTR the gull arm was a fav. Although the final SP was technically better, it was a pain to tune because the Japanese market speed restriction was even more of a pain. We had several CBR400s go through the garage. The first had an aftermarket de-restrictor box. But with the next we discovered the 112mph speed restrictor was taken off an extra bit in the speedo where an LED, sensor had a little fan type thing that broke the light beam. Just remove the fan bit and the restrictor circuitry thought you were doing 0mph all the time. — RGV progression.... favourite?
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedThe tank in the image is barely bigger than the airbox. And the airbox position and shape means it's going to be hard to fix. It's the same problem as the Aprilia RS1000 cafe racer concept. — KTM RC8 'cafe racer' style roadster
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeBTW. Isn't there something wrong with the second picture? I thought the MkII RGV250 had a gullarm swing arm. The brace was on the lhs, not the rhs. Or maybe, 4 models. RWH forks. Braced swing arm - USD forks. Gullarm. SP. — RGV progression.... favourite?
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingPhotos at PlanetJapan http://planetjapanblog.blogspot.com/2017/07/8-hours-suzuka-2017-gallery-4.html — 2017 40th Edition of the #Suzuka #8tai EWC Race Sorry for the lack of updates here recently folks, 'real life' has been so busy these last few weeks. Also, its a full time job just deleted the SPAM that we are getting bombarded with these days. Friend on Moto Pod Mr +Steve English of +WorldSBK +WorldSBK comms box has been taken photos whilst at +Suzuka Circuit & has them shared on MotoMatters via +David Emmett. Cover Photo of WSB ace Micky VDM on the +YAMAHA YSP 千益車業 +Yamaha Racing R1. This photo used with kind permission. Full Gallery & also click the new updates for more Suzuka details from David. https://motomatters.com/news/2017/07/28/suzuka_8_hours_practice_photos_from.html Enjoy.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitDon't read the comments. As you can imagine, an article like that in The Times went down like a lead balloon. Even from a long time contributor who's an ex-Tory MP. — "I call this criminal: irresponsible to the point of culpable recklessness towards their country’s future." But the best bit is "Can this really be Britain? Or has my homecoming ferry re-routed itself to a Central American banana republic where the congreso nacional has packed up for the summer holidays, the foreign minister has gone cavorting in Australia, the stop-gap president has departed to walk in Switzerland, the hairy Marxist resistance leader has started wrestling his own comandantes and the lugubrious Don Felipe, minister of finance, is staging a slow-motion coup?"
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeNah. This one was the best. http://images.mcn.bauercdn.com/upload/635/images/166639apriliars250.jpg — RGV progression.... favourite?
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Commented on post by Julian BondThere's an obvious comment. The UK is not just England and it's the UK that lost. The Skepta remix is pretty good. Maybe better as a song. https://youtu.be/o3CfxgXfDxo?t=129 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3CfxgXfDxo — Just once in a while Jagger and The Stones do a perfect political song. Remember "Undercover of the Night"? So here's "England Lost" https://youtu.be/98gj0z0RkXE Pull yourself together, mate. Get a grip.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond+Paul Baker not helpful. — If you're pro-EU, want or wanted Remain, but are also pro-Labour and pro-Corbyn you need to read this. https://musealoudblog.wordpress.com/2017/07/27/the-corbynremain-supporter-dilemma/ Especially if you're one of the majority of new Labour members, supporters and voters who voted Remain. Ooh, Jeremy Corbyn! "The best and most honest judgement at this point is that Corbyn is a barrier for pro-Europeans. It is perfectly reasonable to choose Corbyn over Europe, and many have, but this should also be problematic for former remainers as they will know his hard Brexit will damage the economy and make his vision undeliverable without huge borrowing and risk. Without the promise of the vision, and without the integrity & honesty, what do you really have? Therefore, in all conscience you cannot be simultaneously a “remainer” & a Corbyn supporter. The 2 are incompatible." Of course that leaves you with a huge problem. Because the LibDems have imploded which leaves no viable opposition to the Tory-Brexit debacle. The best you can hope for is that the Tories will implode as well.
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate ChangeThe headline is backwards and contains too much hope. Since nobody's going to address anything. What they really mean is that the effects of climate change will become obvious sooner as we break through the targets in less time that we thought. — The World May Have Less Time to Address Climate Change Than Scientists Thought https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-may-have-less-time-to-address-climate-change-than-scientists-thought/
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Commented on post by Busa Bob in Motorcycle RoadracingEllison is too good to be out of the showdown. But he's running out of time. What's up with Guintoli? And I take it Giugliano has left the building?
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeInteresting in the context of the current flap about leasehold. Where the newly middle class are discovering they don't actually own the house they're mortgaged up to the hilt for. I see this as an extension of car financing. We're training people to trade up their lifestyle via monthly payments without ever actually owning anything. — Some interesting bits about British demographics, and their history. Apparently, back in the 80ies, the Tories engaged in property-owning democracy, which is as follows. Detach "respectable" working-class people from their poorer neighbours and encourage them to self-identify as middle-class. Voila, more Tory voters. Now how do you detach those working-class people from the working-class? By letting them own a house. Turns out that these days are over. Home ownership peaked in 2003, mortgage ownership peaked in 1996. Young people simply do not have the means anymore to climb the property ladder, and so they rent. Interesting times for political strategists.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitBrilliant. So we take all the Pro-EU Remain MPs from the Conservatives, Labour and LibDems and call it the Social Democratic Labour and Liberal party. They can do a deal with the SNP and Plaid Cymru to properly devolve power so they stay on side. Then we take all the Anti-EU, Brexit, Leave MPs and call them the UK Independence for Traditional Heartland Party. They can ally with their friends in the DUP. Then we call an election. — Now the cracks in the Labour party begin to show. Ideally, both Labour and Tory party should split into two.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaI thought he was an astronomer. And he's quite slim. Is he researching fat now? — I, too, am concerned about Professor Brian Cox's fat research grants.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawPrometheus has a lot to answer for. Having your liver eaten by an eagle for all eternity was not too great a punishment. Damn you, Hercules, for freeing him! The Promethean gift of fire leads eventually and inevitably to paperclips. The paperclips were self-limiting until the Herculean AI arrived to free them. — A slight twist on an old tale: the Parable of the Paperclip Maximizer, and what it teaches us about our world today. As a footnote: The parable was originally meant to be a warning about the dangers of AI. But like many parables about the dangers of technology, from Shelley's Frankenstein to von Neumann et al's "Grey Goo," it's also a parable about us. Almost every "wait, what if this gets out of control?!" question you can ask about technology has already happened at least once – and we are its outcome.
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeIt's not all your parents fault. — Baby Boomers could irreversibly ruin the planet for Millennials — and the clock is ticking Almost 30 years ago Hansen sounded the alarm about global warming. His worries very much have proved themselves true, but the climate deniers claims he is proven wrong, like this article which draws the conclusion that he was wrong: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/22/autopsy-of-an-excuse/
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitRepeating myself, but I have to. The majority of Labour members, supporters & voters voted Remain and would vote remain again. Especially the new young people who joined Labour to elect Corbyn twice to the leadership. And who will happily sing "Oh, Jeremy Corbyn" at every opportunity. Some analysis of Labour voters under 50 and outside the old industrial labour heartlands put this at 70% of Labour voters wanting Remain. Labour officially supported Remain in the referendum, but the manifesto in the election was for Leave. Corbyn, the PLP & the manifesto all apparently now want Brexit and will punish members (such as Umunna) who go against that. There's a disconnect here that's not getting resolved. Try expressing this on Facebook or in the Guardian comments and all you get is a load of Brexit trolls ("we won, get over it") or Labour apologist trolls ("Labour can't stand in the way of democracy"). The Labour Party (but not necessarily it's voters) now looks like it's just as much part of the problem as the Tories. They may be trying for a kinder, gentler Brexit, but it's still Brexit. And if this story is correct, then it's not really a lot different from the Tory's Hard Brexit. But. It's the Guardian. — Fog in the Labour headquater, voters confused. Corbyn: no EU membership. Tariff-free access to EU markets. Doesn't know what to think of the customs union, but associates it with EU membership. Job agencies should advertise for jobs in the locality first. Chuka Umunna [big short Labour guy, former shadow business secretary]: the UK can remain member of the single market and the customs union. Look at Norway. Freedom of movement is here to stay.
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Commented on post by John BaezAnd in the process, Buzz, Orkut, Reader all got killed. — The decline and fall of Google+ Back in 2011, Google was feeling under threat from Facebook. They decided to create Google+, and put Vic Gundotra in charge. He said: We’re transforming Google itself into a social destination at a level and scale that we’ve never attempted — orders of magnitude more investment, in terms of people, than any previous project. But it didn't work: "It was clear if you looked at the per user metrics, people weren’t posting, weren't returning and weren’t really engaging with the product," says one former employee. "Six months in, there started to be a feeling that this isn’t really working." The question is just how Google can extricate itself without losing face. Here's part of the story: By early 2014, less than three years after its big launch, the Google+ team had moved out of its coveted building to a spot on campus further from Page. Gundotra announced his departure from the company that April — in a Google+ post, of course — to pursue "a new journey." Throughout Gundotra's tenure running social at Google, he alternately inspired and polarized his own employees and irritated other departments by encroaching on their fiefdoms with various Google+ efforts, according to multiple sources who worked with him. Gundotra's proximity to Page may have shielded him, but that could only last so long with the Google+ "ghost town" narrative and user backlash from the forced integration with YouTube. More than a year after leaving Google, Gundotra has yet to announce that next stop on his journey. Two former colleagues say Gundotra is still mostly traveling and relaxing. "He's too young to retire," one associate says. "He'll go on to do something else." David Besbris, who helped launch the social network with Gundotra, took over as head of Google+ and claimed that Google was committed to "social... for the long haul." Six months after making that statement, he was replaced in the top spot by Bradley Horowitz, a longtime Google executive. The buried news in the Horowitz announcement: Google had begun referring to its social operations as "Google Photos and Streams." In Horowitz's blog post this week, that name expanded to "Streams, Photos, and Sharing." By rebranding in this way, Google can separate the failure of "Streams" — the feed activity that most associate with a social network — from the more successful features bundled with it. "I’ve concluded that it’s time for a 'pivot'... or more precisely time to talk more openly about a pivot that’s been underway for some time (and in fact is reflected in the name of the new team)," Horowitz wrote on Monday, announcing the end of requiring a Google+ account to use Google products. "Google+ can now focus on doing what it’s already doing quite well: helping millions of users around the world connect around the interest they love. Aspects of the product that don’t serve this agenda have been, or will be, retired." Translation: Google+ is shifting from a Facebook clone to more of a Pinterest lookalike to see if it can build momentum. At the same time, Google is investing resources to build more standalone social products like the Photos app, which has generated plenty of positive press. "I don't think that owning a pure-play social network is important for Google at this point, but having a connection to social is important," says Brian Blau, an analyst who covers Internet companies for Gartner. If and when the Google+ brand is phased, as many we spoke with expect, Google won't need to say it killed Google+. Several years from now, when nobody is paying attention, a Google employee can just publish a long list of features that have been done away with as part of a routine spring cleaning. Halfway down that list, an astute reader will see the word "Streams." This story is from 2015. Around then, Google+ started downplaying 'circles' and getting weird bugs, which presumably don't get fixed because nobody in Google uses Google+. It's too bad, because at the start felt Google+ was an exciting place: the place Facebook should be but isn't. But weirdos like me were never relevant to Google's plans for world domination. So, as Google+ twitched around frantically trying to appeal to more people, it got less interesting to my friends and me. Now that most of them are gone, I hang around mainly out of habit. The reason is that I haven't found a social media platform I like better. But the upshot is actually good, for me at least! I'm spending more time working with my grad students - I've got 6 of them, so that's easily a full-time job. I also have a project going with a company, and a lot of online friends. So these days, instead of explaining stuff here, I'm more likely to spend half an hour in the morning sending people technical emails about math and physics. That turns out to be more satisfying. It's not a complete substitute, because I like explaining stuff in a public forum. But I only like it if get interesting feedback, and I only like it if I feel some of my friends are listening. My change in habits is also connected to Trump and his army of trolls. These days, when I post about politics or global warming, I start by getting interesting comments, but then people start to fight, and then, when the post gets a lot of +1s, the conversation gets swamped by blueheads: nasty people without real profiles. I got sick of dealing with this, so now I post without allowing comments. So, what was once a discussion forum now seems better as a place to merely broadcast my views. Sad.
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Commented on post by Scarfolk CouncilFor less information, please unread. — NEW! Pan Horror Stories about the greatest horror of them all... More info: https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-2ndth-pan-book-of-horror-stories.html
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Commented on post by Ilkka Koivistoinen in Climate ChangeNot just carbon. But also fish meal depleting fish stocks. And meat production, hence water consumption.
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Commented on post by Beautiful Life in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)Well, yes. But why? And hard to imagine something much more uncomfortable.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeIn the last few years I've been lucky. But I remember the late 80s, early 90s and work dinners. They started in a Mexican in Covent Garden and ended in night clubs in Soho. There's something particularly sad about men of a certain age in suits and ties schlepping around Soho at 3am trying to find a place that would let them in for a drink. Every once in a while I still see the same kind of people trying to do the same kind of thing. Then at the end, walking to Kings Cross seems like a good idea which leads to just having a brief sit down on a park bench in Russell Sq. Which leads to waking up to the morning rush hour with a taste of tequila, salt and lime in your dry mouth. Oh, God, did I do that? These days, there's an endless succession of places that open for a few months in a basement on Dalston High St. Bad sound, bad decor, expensive bad drinks. And sweaty hot because they don't turn the A/C on to save money. But you have to go because your mates are playing. — There are 1278 nightclubs in London, and the author sampled some in the 900+ ranks. (Ranks according to Tripadvisor.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit"Yes, Minister" — "Former UK-EU negotiator: May is handling Brexit in the 'absolute worst way' possible" He also calls Boris Johnson the "rear-end of a pantomime horse". I haven't heard that before.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)+Lee Fear And you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the difference between commercial vehicle engineering and scientific research. Or the relationship between production engineering and fundamental physical and chemical constraints. Tired of this game. KthxBai! — Can we make enough batteries, that are good enough, to power the transition from fossil fueled vehicles to electric? Prices are coming down rapidly, capacity is going up but we're getting to the point where the improvements are incremental rather than the orders of magnitude we still need. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/19/electric-cars-battery-revolution-tesla-volvo
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)True. And 3 years later I'm unable to find any that ARE commercially available. Lots of breathless hype articles in places like Gizmag or SciAm about research developments and promises of the future but nothing real outside the lab. Same for Li-Air. — Can we make enough batteries, that are good enough, to power the transition from fossil fueled vehicles to electric? Prices are coming down rapidly, capacity is going up but we're getting to the point where the improvements are incremental rather than the orders of magnitude we still need. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/19/electric-cars-battery-revolution-tesla-volvo
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)Damn, I hate that argument. The lazy accusing people of being lazy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery Lithium–sulfur: As of early 2014, none were commercially available. _ https://oxisenergy.com/technology/ __Lithium Sulfur cells are the next generation of battery technology, surpassing Li-ion which is * *_reaching the limit of its potential*_ *._ It's a bit hard to find but it looks like the battery upgrade in the Leaf was from the obsolete LiMN chemistry to the more recent LiNMC. That's also now been superceeded by LiNCA. — Can we make enough batteries, that are good enough, to power the transition from fossil fueled vehicles to electric? Prices are coming down rapidly, capacity is going up but we're getting to the point where the improvements are incremental rather than the orders of magnitude we still need. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/19/electric-cars-battery-revolution-tesla-volvo
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)How about some actual links. And particularly to how energy density is actually improving. At the moment we seem to be stuck at around 250 Wh/kg. Pushing that up much without radically changing the chemistry means experimental anodes. 350 looks possible. 500 probably isn't. — Can we make enough batteries, that are good enough, to power the transition from fossil fueled vehicles to electric? Prices are coming down rapidly, capacity is going up but we're getting to the point where the improvements are incremental rather than the orders of magnitude we still need. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/19/electric-cars-battery-revolution-tesla-volvo
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)+Lee Fear Cites please. There are a number of new battery technologies on the horizontal that will offer 5 times the capacity at up to 1/5th of the cost of current batteries. means nothing without some detail. What we have seen is the progression from LiMn to LiFePo to LiNMC to LiNCA. While that incremental improvement has been going on for the last 20 years, there's been a constant stream of breathless hype about the next big thing in batteries that never actually comes to anything. So I'll stay with the OP analysis. Mainstream dev has doubled capacity, halved the price and reduced weight and volume a bit for the same lifespan. But we're hitting limits with the improvements getting harder to find. And the next doubling still seems to be stuck in the lab with commercial development still 20 years out. — Can we make enough batteries, that are good enough, to power the transition from fossil fueled vehicles to electric? Prices are coming down rapidly, capacity is going up but we're getting to the point where the improvements are incremental rather than the orders of magnitude we still need. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/19/electric-cars-battery-revolution-tesla-volvo
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Future Club MusicIt was lush. Highlights for me, Ramzi, Omar S, Mr G, Huerco S, Chaos in the CBD. — Farr is a boutique electronic dance festival on July 13-14-15. Near Baldock on the A1, 30 miles north of London. Think 3 nights of clubbing rather than a "festival" festival with some well known House and Techno names. I've got access again to a limited number of tickets at the "Super Early Bird" price of £75+£6 instead of the regular £90. Available at the link below. https://tickets.farrfestival.co.uk/rep/jbond-farr-2017 http://www.farrfestival.co.uk/
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Brace yourselves. Bear is coming! — Strictly speaking, the Arctic Circle is named for the constellation Ursa Major (prominent in the Northern Hemisphere), but I'll take it. The Boreal Forest is, after all, home to an awful lot of bears.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitOsbourne commentating on Johnson, Gove pushing Davis over the cliff with Rudd, Hammond pushing back, while May has full and frank discussions with all of them. Meanwhile, the opposition heckles from the other side of the house. The Murdoch media talk up one set of lies while throwing mud at the other set of lies. The left wing media encourage the infighting in the left wing opposition. And the BBC smirks at all of them with a cynical, mildly sarcastic bias pointing out how un-electable they all are. So pretty much normal UK politics as usual as it's been practised for 400 years or so. Except it's being done in the context of one of those important times in the nation's history. — Good to hear that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have their priorities straight.
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate Change+Peter Zsurka Interesting, even if there are some obvious scale issues. "They calculate that, if they were to set up solar thermal stations over an area equal to 4% of the Sahara Desert, they could reduce the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere back to pre-industrial levels in 10 years." It does seem like a viable business. How real do you think it is? I'm picturing N Africa generating new trade where they get carbon credits for consuming CO2, attracting foreign investment to businesses making money selling CNT to Europe for manufacturing. Now if only the N African countries were more stable. — No international agreement seems possible in the short run. There are no international law enforcement. Still, some major counties take a lot of the burden with saving the climate, but given the urgency more must be done. Carbon dioxide must be drained from the atmosphere.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI can see a lot of headless chickens. I can't see a lot of running around though. — "Former UK-EU negotiator: May is handling Brexit in the 'absolute worst way' possible" He also calls Boris Johnson the "rear-end of a pantomime horse". I haven't heard that before.
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeTime, Space and Scale. We're burning 10GtC and producing 30 GtCO2. Per year. There's roughly 1TtC (one tera-tonne, 10^12 tonnes) of easily accessible fossil fuel carbon left. And we won't stop till we've used it all. — No international agreement seems possible in the short run. There are no international law enforcement. Still, some major counties take a lot of the burden with saving the climate, but given the urgency more must be done. Carbon dioxide must be drained from the atmosphere.
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate Change3 things we need. - A time machine to go back and stop producing CO2, 50 years ago. - A magic wand to remove CO2 in the near future. At scale. - 200k years. The Earth's systems will deal with this problem, given enough time. We're just going to have to deal with the great filter coming up in the next couple of 100 years. Mankind will not disappear. But it will survive in much reduced numbers. One way or another we'll end up with a sustainable future. — No international agreement seems possible in the short run. There are no international law enforcement. Still, some major counties take a lot of the burden with saving the climate, but given the urgency more must be done. Carbon dioxide must be drained from the atmosphere.
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Commented on post by The Real Slim ShadyThe unread indicators in communities never update for me until I refresh the page. Start at home, read a bit, click on communities on the LHS, nothing new, refresh, 30 new. That's all in desktop web. — OK, WTF is up with the Ploos today? On mobile, no notifications. Notifications, generally, seem ... broken. Very few / slow updates. Navigating to / scrolling through Collections and Communities, the entire page will lock, no scroll, until I reload. Several times I've hit "You've Reached the End" on classifications which I know have far more content in them. (At one point I was seeing 2 posts, each 4-5 years old, of my own.)
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeNice. I'm somewhat dubious though about hydrogen storage vs batteries. There's very little detail in TFA or in the linked Wired article. — This Self-Fuelling Boat Just Set Off on an Epic 6-Year Global Voyage Expensive rocket science today, but common of garden tomorrow! http://flip.it/zHI0h1
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedWho needs mirrors? Ride fast enough and the problems are always in front of you not behind! Needs a bit of blue anodised aluminium. Some bar ends and M/C covers perhaps. That exhaust, though. I bet it sounds amazing. And I bet it also pisses off the residents of all the villages you ride through and houses you ride past. Sunny sundays in the country are no longer peace and quiet. — Having moved further into the countryside of God's own county, North Yorkshire, with incredibly twisty, mostly single track roads, a smaller, lighter bike beckoned. Sonic the 675 Daytona with Racefit Growler Black Series half system (decat.) But, it is the suspension kit that I wish to draw special note to: Ktech 20SSK Front Fork Piston Kit in combination with their linear springs rebuilt with Motul Factory Line fork oil and rear shock rebuilt with Ktech spring. Total suspension price, fitted was £470, collected, fitted then delivered. Buying in the same parts, I could not do it myself any cheaper; As an exemplar, we rebuild OEM forks from £250, shocks from £150. K-tech charge £25 for collection/delivery, so in effect, they are rebuilding setting them up (and fitting them, if you go to them) for £45' - buying the parts alone would save next to no money, even if you had the tools and know how to service them yourself. I am so impressed with this, it will be my first recommendation to anyone wanting great quality suspension. Notably this set up is worlds beyond, say, the Ohlins Road and Track forks and the equal of the NiX forks from Ohlins that appear on the R version. There are further modifications of optional compression damping flow control valves (there already exist one set within the piston kit) and optional race/track only valving (not suitable for road use.) Those who have ridden the bike agree - we have not yet ridden any bike with a better front end , especially with 'only' an enhanced valving system and spring upgrade.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedI thought Euro4 meant that almost all 600s had disappeared. No more Honda CBR600, Triumph Daytona, Kawasaki ZX6R. Yamaha, Suzuki were the only ones left. With MV still more or less available but only because they have a pet Italian official to sign them off. And yet, Kawasaki still have a ZX6R in their range according to their website. They just don't bring them to the shows. Same with Triumph. So given nobody's really buying them, are they only available on special order? Little detail question. Do you know when the current ZX6R with ABS was introduced? — Kawasaki ZX-6R 636 ~ with Honda retiring from the class and Yamaha declaring themselves saviours of the class and announcing that they are the "only" manufacturer to remain committed to the class, it is easy to forget the Suzuki GSXR600, easily the most comfortable 600 and closest to what the class used to be before racetrack lap times became the be all and end all of marketing, and Kawasaki ZX-6R 636 are stunningly good and cheaper than last year - which doesn't happen too often. I know, I know, I've bitched about this before but I just cannot help m,yslef: Despite the fact that since the last Yamaha 600cc update, Suzuki has released two new bikes, as have Kawasaki (note new not mildly re-dressed and called new,) MV released an high tech, all new contender, Triumph had revitalised the class and now take the concept into the future with Moto2, Yamaha (whose metal parts are die cast - cheap and nasty, as anyone who played with Matchbox cars as a child will attest) still assert, and I quote: "The most dominant 600cc sportsbike" "The most high tech 600 ever." "Saved the supersport class." But only quietly whisper the max (claimed) bhp figure of 116bhp, lower than Kawasaki's figure in 2003!
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Commented on post by Armin Grewe in Europe, Brexit, Remoaning and all that nonsenseIt's not losing our reputation. It's now lost. Even if we managed to pull out of Art50, it'll take 20-30 years to rebuild. Nobody is going to trust us for some time. Which means all negotiations will be hostile rather than on mutual benefit. Thanks Theresa! — A reputation built over decades destroyed in just a few months...
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitYes, Minister. — It's a funny story actually, Michel. A big dog ate all our papers.' So thats it for this week, eh? David Davies flew over to Brussels this morning for an awkward photo op and was back in London around lunchtime. While the actual negotiations continue at 2.30pm Brussels time. Glad he has his priorities sorted out.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeI cross paths with Tony every once in a while though barely enough to say hello. Various friends have had various bits of Tony's work as well. The latest being a single sided front with rim disk attached to some strange Commando based thing. ps. My fav MZ was always the ETZ250. IIRC 18" wheels front and back, Brembo copy disk brake and the neatest tank shape. I did a lot of miles on one with a Rickman full fairing. But though it made a kind of sense in the 80s, it really doesn't in 2017! — According to the forum thread, this was built in 2010 and is based on a MZ TS250 frame and a 5gear 250cc engine. You might want to have a look at the building story: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=713756
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeIt's an MZ thing. The whole engine pivots at the swing arm pivot. And the top rear of the cylinder head hangs from the frame via a large rubber bushing. Removes all the vibes from an unbalanced single. And entertainingly the motor jumps around all over the place at idle. The main frame is not far off being a Tony Foale/Egli style large diameter tube direct from steering head to swing arm. It's crude but effective. That tank looks like one of the last 251 or possibly the post MZ Kanuni made (still?) in Turkey. — According to the forum thread, this was built in 2010 and is based on a MZ TS250 frame and a 5gear 250cc engine. You might want to have a look at the building story: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=713756
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Commented on post by CU Boulder - Environmental Engineering in Climate Change+David Manvell The penguins voted to Remain, but they were having trouble getting across the channel. 4 Londons? That's a new one. 1/6 Belgium, 1/4 of a Wales, 1/2 a Yorkshire, One Delaware, One and a half Rhodes Islands, 6 Tongas, 100 Manhattans, 2000 sq miles, 5000 sq Km, or 1,235,500 football(soccer) pitches. It's thought to be about 500m deep which is about 10 Nelson's columns or 1.66 Eiffel towers. The berg is said to be trillion tons in weight. By a spooky coincidence, 1Tt of Ice is about the same weight as the 1TtC of remaining, easily accessible fossil carbon. The 1TtC that we're likely to turn into 3TtCO2 in the atmosphere over the next 100 years or so. — Larsen C Ice Shelf was 4th largest ice shelf in the world (48,600 km²); having just lost 12% of its total area, it’s now the 5th largest
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Brains, Minds and SoulsI strongly recommend this discussion for a dose of realism. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high-frontier-redux.html Also wondering which bits you're referring to when you say "none of that is as hard as you think". None of what? Of course I may have wildly misunderstood the meaning of "full integration with computers before 2050". Can you be more specific? — A Future Where Machine Intelligence Reverts Back to Biology This is a really interesting, if somewhat speculative, piece about intelligence in the Universe and the possibility that limits to machine-based computational processing might serve as a kind of cap to machine intelligence. The basic idea is that we might merge with machines, expand out into the Milky Way, and then collapse back into our neighborhood (or some other location) to return to a biological existence. This article has been popped up, unread, in a tab in my browser for more than a week now. So it's quite possible that someone here on G+ was responsible for alerting me to this piece, but I've lost track of who. My apologies for not acknowledging you, if it was you. :) #intelligence #life #alien
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Commented on post by CU Boulder - Environmental Engineering in Climate ChangeHooray! Emissions are stable at their highest ever rate and not getting any worse. Oh Noes! Atmospheric CO2 concentration is rising at its highest ever rate. — In the past three years, global emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have leveled after rising for decades. This is a sign that policies and investments in climate mitigation are starting to pay off. The United States, China and other nations are replacing coal with natural gas and boosting renewable energy sources. There is almost unanimous international agreement that the risks of abandoning the planet to climate change are too great to ignore. Decarbonizing the world economy will require #renewable energy generation from vast solar farms, such as this one in Nevada.
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Commented on post by Clive Margolis in Climate Change+Jorg Lovoll It may be inconvenient for a couple of hundred thousand years. https://www.amazon.com/d/Books/Dreams-severe-climate-change-happens-humans-survive/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1 — Why we should be more optimistic on climate change
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Brains, Minds and Souls2050 is the new 2030. It's still just >30 years out so futurists can still reasonably say "X will be Y big in Z years" about it without too much fear of contradiction. Because it's around the boundary between quantitative extrapolation and qualitative revolution. But "by the time we reach full integration with computers before 2050, or what some call the 'singularity'." is still the same SciFi bollocks the transhumanists have been spouting since 1984. It's no more real than Guy Macpherson's "Human Extinction by 2050". On life exploring the universe. The universe is big. Unbelievably big. You can't imagine how ridiculously big it is. It's also extremely hostile and the other side of a deep gravity well. And Thermodynamics, Newtonian, Einsteinian and Quantum physics put some hard time, space and scale limits on moving physical bits around. It's pretty hard even to move logical bits around. But if you've got a few 100 million years, DNA packets, mushroom spores and tardigrades might colonise near space in our galactic neighbourhood. So perhaps we should stop trying to sterilise our probes and deliberately add some DNA bearing stuff. Just in case it takes root, evolves and eventually wants to talk back. — A Future Where Machine Intelligence Reverts Back to Biology This is a really interesting, if somewhat speculative, piece about intelligence in the Universe and the possibility that limits to machine-based computational processing might serve as a kind of cap to machine intelligence. The basic idea is that we might merge with machines, expand out into the Milky Way, and then collapse back into our neighborhood (or some other location) to return to a biological existence. This article has been popped up, unread, in a tab in my browser for more than a week now. So it's quite possible that someone here on G+ was responsible for alerting me to this piece, but I've lost track of who. My apologies for not acknowledging you, if it was you. :) #intelligence #life #alien
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Commented on post by Julian BondI was thinking about Maersk's systems being trashed by ransomware that was collateral damage from a Russian attack on Ukraine. So none of the ships could dock. — The phishing spam is getting more inventive. --- Dear Partner, I am looking for a buyer for 83.000 containers, which consists of half of the container 40ft and the other half of the container 20ft container. All are in Kuwait (see attached photos)! The containers were used by the Americans to transport their war machines / material to distribute the Iraqi occupants from Kuwait about 1991. An acquaintance has bought these containers from the US Department of Defense. In addition, he had founded a company in Jordan, which is the owner. In the purchase contract the containers are defined as scrap to reduce the price. In reality, they are well-functioning as containers, as you can easily see in the photos. The buyer can buy a part of the containers, or if he wants he could buy all of them or buy the company and take over the entire 83,000 containers. This can significantly reduce the price. If you have a buyer, we can talk about it, see attached info too. Best Regards Radhi -
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Commented on post by Julian Bond"flooding the market". You mean the ones stuck on the high seas on Maersk ships. What happened to that story? — The phishing spam is getting more inventive. --- Dear Partner, I am looking for a buyer for 83.000 containers, which consists of half of the container 40ft and the other half of the container 20ft container. All are in Kuwait (see attached photos)! The containers were used by the Americans to transport their war machines / material to distribute the Iraqi occupants from Kuwait about 1991. An acquaintance has bought these containers from the US Department of Defense. In addition, he had founded a company in Jordan, which is the owner. In the purchase contract the containers are defined as scrap to reduce the price. In reality, they are well-functioning as containers, as you can easily see in the photos. The buyer can buy a part of the containers, or if he wants he could buy all of them or buy the company and take over the entire 83,000 containers. This can significantly reduce the price. If you have a buyer, we can talk about it, see attached info too. Best Regards Radhi -
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Commented on post by Julian BondBecause they're good containers, Roger. 11/10. You don't stack good containers. Wait, wut, some of them are stacked! What new madness is this! ps. The original email came with 21 stock pics of containers in a desert parking lot. I'm used to the occasional email offering me heavy duty industrial machinery SOB Shanghai. But used US containers in Kuwait from the first Eye-Rack war is a new one on me. I wonder if one of them is full of US bank notes irradiated by a not-so-depleted uranium 50 calibre sniper shell? Or maybe some of the Three Kings' gold. One thing's for sure. This is no Spook Country (for Old Men). https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — The phishing spam is getting more inventive. --- Dear Partner, I am looking for a buyer for 83.000 containers, which consists of half of the container 40ft and the other half of the container 20ft container. All are in Kuwait (see attached photos)! The containers were used by the Americans to transport their war machines / material to distribute the Iraqi occupants from Kuwait about 1991. An acquaintance has bought these containers from the US Department of Defense. In addition, he had founded a company in Jordan, which is the owner. In the purchase contract the containers are defined as scrap to reduce the price. In reality, they are well-functioning as containers, as you can easily see in the photos. The buyer can buy a part of the containers, or if he wants he could buy all of them or buy the company and take over the entire 83,000 containers. This can significantly reduce the price. If you have a buyer, we can talk about it, see attached info too. Best Regards Radhi -
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitMeanwhile, our glorious Foreign Sec is stirring the pot with a long wooden spoon again. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/11/european-leaders-can-go-whistle-over-eu-divorce-bill-says-boris-johnson — David Allen Green on Twitter: 'In which Davis' former adviser at @DExEUgov affirms Euratom reversal only possible by amending/revoking Article 50 letter. Whoops, HMG.' Jesus wept. This is the most incompetent government on these isles since 1066.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIn case the English language means that what's happening here is very confusing, here's the article the tweet referred to. https://www.ft.com/content/0f57f69d-305d-3f9f-834f-90e43e3f2633?mhq5j=e1 Our Brexit letter invoking Art50 makes specific mention of Euratom. In proper legalese. It wasn't sloppy. It was quite deliberate. Britain made a formal notification to leave both. Now it turns out leaving Euratom is a really, really, really bad idea. If the government accedes to a demand from MPs that UK not now leave Euratom, there seems no alternative but for the country formally to attempt to revoke or amend the Article 50 notification. A sensible pro-Brexit government, acting rationally, would seek to withdraw the Article 50 notice and make it again once it had actually thought through and prepared for a realistic approach to leaving the EU. The Euratom issue is only the first major devilish detail. There will be many others. Piss up in a wine bar. — David Allen Green on Twitter: 'In which Davis' former adviser at @DExEUgov affirms Euratom reversal only possible by amending/revoking Article 50 letter. Whoops, HMG.' Jesus wept. This is the most incompetent government on these isles since 1066.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedMention of Motor Cycle weekly, reminded me of my first job and first bike. Every wed morning was spent reading MCN and Motor Cycle cover to cover. Desperately searching the classifieds for the Ducati 250 that was cheap enough to afford but not completely knackered. There were a couple of newsagents in London that used to get early editions on Tuesday evening and illegally sell them a day early. Which meant you could get in the front of the queue of hopeful buyers for a special machine. What I wanted was the last 250 Desmo in yellow with a disk brake. What I actually got was a 250mkIII with clip ons and a broken gearshift return spring. I survived the first year of riding and had some happy adventures but still managed to kill the bike. The second was one of the very few brand new bikes I've bought (with a parental loan). A CB400F. — Honda Goldwing!
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedMore digging turned up this. http://www.realclassic.co.uk/opinionfiles/mocheck_memories_part1.html Mocheck, Honda UK supported, Gold Wing in a Dresda frame. That article also has pics of the three CB400Fs entered by Motor Cycle in the IoM TT with people like Tony Rutter riding. Completely forgotten about those. — Honda Goldwing!
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedJoining a Yahoo group! I've honestly no idea as I haven't done it for ages. The home page is here. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/feet_forward/info Or send a message to feet_forward-subscribe@yahoogroups.com It's admin approval but I'm pretty quick to do that. FFs have been built with everything from VF750, Reliant, Suzuki GS1000, Kawasaki Z13, VT500 and so on. The quick and dirty scooter conversions are easy because of packaging. They are boring, but as commuters they do work awfully well. Even just taking a humble Burgman 400, cutting away some seat foam and adding an improvised backrest makes an amazingly useful white van. No, I don't believe there's much of a market as they're considered too weird for motorcyclists. But. The bicycle market is also very fashion conscious and that can also support recumbents, trikes and velomobiles. So just maybe, if M/C is waking up to electric power, it could also wake up to recumbents. Modern M/C are so tightly packaged and suspension so good that there is quite a bunch of conventional M/C that could be converted into a properly fast recumbent. Triumph triples, Kawasaki twins come to mind. — er.... ? Still, I wouldn't mind a try, if it worked.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modifiedhttp://bikeweb.com/node/2018 Royce Creasey's TMax conversion next to his almost production Voyager development machine. http://bikeweb.com/node/2968 http://bikeweb.com/node/1243 — er.... ? Still, I wouldn't mind a try, if it worked.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedFWIW, I've long been involved in the "Feet Forward" movement that believes there's a recumbent, faired PTW possible with a backrest out there somewhere. That provides all the fun, thrills and whatever of conventional motorcycles. While being more efficient, more comfortable and safer. And as a result I run the mailing list and a simple web site documenting it. Akira is a key influence, but also pioneers like A.V Roe, Royce Creasey and Malcolm Newell. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/feet_forward/conversations/messages http://bikeweb.com/ Reality is that while the potential is there, the actual examples are all flawed in various interesting ways! — er.... ? Still, I wouldn't mind a try, if it worked.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedMagnificently ridiculous. I veglia remember somebody racing one at the Le Mans Bol d'Or. http://www.goldwingfacts.com/forums/5-general-motorcycle-discussion-forum/596617-gl1000-endurance-racer-1976-spa-francorchamps-bol-d-iomtt-etc.html — Honda Goldwing!
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modified+H.T.V. Blu Note the 600-750 were a year behind the 1000. 750K6 was the first year of the stacked gearbox and tiny slash exhaust outlet. 750K5 was the last long conventional pipe. — OK, so a plethora of Suzukis of late. I can feel my Team Green bikes getting angry so I will end with my own two favourites: (It would be three faves but I cannot find a photo of my pold 1999 fuel injected SRAD with a super long Leo Vince exhaust (this bikes FI remains one of the best systems, especially in regard to throttle connection even to today, imo) As, waffled about it at length on another post, I wont repeat myself here but, in my hands, I like the K3/4 model is the best (although the K9/L0 is it's equal but for different reason.) The forks of this model are some of the highest spec OEM forks - genuinely high quality parts that have since seemingly got ever cheaper and lower quality on all makes. The piston and valve stacks an intricate design, that has since been simplified for cheaper production. The dust seal - circlip - back up plate - oil seal - back up ring - slider bushing - tube bushing - fork slider stack is, genuinely beautiful and close in concept to the best after market kit today. I'm betting that was due to the sportbike development war that took place among the Japs from the R1 in 1998 up to the GSXR in 2005 - new models came in 2 year development cycles. And when they introduced a new model, they actually were new models, unlike the barely a polish of, say, the 'new' Fireblade or R6 today. Anyway with the very lightweight Racefit Ti half system, which was borderline stupidly loud, it made for a brilliant road bike, with only one significant flaw: the 1st gen ZX-10R...!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Doug Senko Not this anarcho-syndicalist! The Sex Pistols were a Situationist art prank[1] modelled after the '68 Paris Situationist International. All very post-modern as well. That's a left wing anti-authoritarian anarchism not a right wing one. Ne travaillez jamais! Sous les pavés, la plage! There was a small working class conservative aspect to UK Punk and some of the nastier boot boys got adopted by the forerunners of BNP, EDL, UKIP. But it's politics was generally pretty minimal until Rock Against Racism. [1]What would you expect from the minds of Malcolm Maclaren & Vivienne Westwood — On libertarian conservatives in the UK. They do exist. But despite being backed by lots of money and thus having several very public 'think tanks' on their side, the libertarian position never made deep inroads into the British consciousnesss. Support for 'tax more, spend more' is as high as ever. Which didn't stop the libtards to make inroads into the government, via the Tory party. And they clearly saw Brexit as their one chance to finalize Thatcher's programme and privatize everything right down to the last street lamp. Those pesky European employment rights had to go. And so Theresa May, in her wisdom, called a snap election. To "crush her enemies", as the right-wing press wrote. Enter Corbyn. (Stage left) And now the libtards are having second thoughts. Because Corbyn would also like to take the UK out of the EU, although not to finalize Thatcher's dream. Oh no. He would nationalize everything. Everything. They think. Finishing off the Thatcher zombie, once and for all. And after Brexit, when the economy tanks, a Corbyn government is all but given. How delicious. Libertarians, caught in their own sticky nets.
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Commented on post by Sachin Saini in Climate ChangeSo I got the right prefix. 1 TeraTon = 1 Trillion tons = 10^12 Tons. I didn't know though about short (US=2000) and long (UK=2240) tons deriving from short (100lbs) and long (112 lbs) Hundredweight. As an approximation though they're all pretty close to the Tonne. So this iceberg being 1TeraTonne of Ice is good enough. The guess at 1TeraTonne of fossil fuel C (1TtC) left is a real guess because reserves are uncertain. But it seems to have some backing. This would become 3TtCO2 and we're currently consuming it at ~10GtC/yr which generates ~30GtCO2/yr — An enormous iceberg, over 2,000 square miles in area - or nearly the size of Delaware - is poised to detach from one of the largest floating ice shelves in Antarctica and float off in the Weddell Sea, south of the tip of South America.
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Commented on post by john kinseyYou had one job. Have you noticed how in US photo opportunities there's always a group of people hanging around, providing support and hoping for some of the greatness to rub off? Is this the bit where he promises to send a drone attack after the rogue angels in the heavens? — American leadership
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeThere are several energy consumers and CO2 emission sources that are going to be hard to deal with. Shipping and transport is one. There's also plastics, concrete and fertilisers. — International shipping could be responsible for nearly a fifth of the world’s carbon emissions by 2050. If the International Maritime Organization ( #IMO ) the branch of the UN that regulates international shipping, failed to set ambitious climate targets, it would be disastrous for low-lying islands like his own, de Brum would say. But when he walked in to the IMO plenary, de Brum found strangers sitting in his country’s place. The people de Brum found representing the Marshall Islands were from International Registries Inc. (#IRI), a private shipping register headquartered in Reston, Virginia. According to its website, the company provides access to the Marshall Islands flag and a “zero tax jurisdiction that statutorily exempts non-resident domestic corporations from taxation on their income and assets”. Thanks to IRI, the Marshall Islands boasts the second largest fleet of ships in the world and the world’s largest fleet of oil tankers. The company attracts ship owners with the promise of zero corporation tax and no seafarer nationality requirements – the latter allows them to skirt organised labour. The 45,000 offshore companies registered with IRI also benefit from corporate anonymity. De Brum, now climate change ambassador for the Marshall Islands, said he was “appalled” by IRI’s suspicious response to his arrival at the IMO. He did eventually deliver his message. But two years on, the shipping industry remains out of step with the rest of the world on climate change. #Shipping
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Commented on post by Sachin Saini in Climate Change1Tt of Ice? Never quite sure what a US trillion actually is. Coincidentally, there's about 1TtC of easily accessible fossil fuel carbon left. — An enormous iceberg, over 2,000 square miles in area - or nearly the size of Delaware - is poised to detach from one of the largest floating ice shelves in Antarctica and float off in the Weddell Sea, south of the tip of South America.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitGenius. Which he obviously is. Even if it is in a modern language or arts subject! — Nothing better than a polite discussion about fuckers and wankers in a major UK newspaper.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedThe 750K4/K5 was special. It definitely hit some kind of peak for being as good as it could be while still being simple. And still having that 90s feel to the unfinished fairings and such like. The K6 changed the game, the K8 changed again and the L0 still again. They're better bikes, but they never had that simple feel again. — OK, so a plethora of Suzukis of late. I can feel my Team Green bikes getting angry so I will end with my own two favourites: (It would be three faves but I cannot find a photo of my pold 1999 fuel injected SRAD with a super long Leo Vince exhaust (this bikes FI remains one of the best systems, especially in regard to throttle connection even to today, imo) As, waffled about it at length on another post, I wont repeat myself here but, in my hands, I like the K3/4 model is the best (although the K9/L0 is it's equal but for different reason.) The forks of this model are some of the highest spec OEM forks - genuinely high quality parts that have since seemingly got ever cheaper and lower quality on all makes. The piston and valve stacks an intricate design, that has since been simplified for cheaper production. The dust seal - circlip - back up plate - oil seal - back up ring - slider bushing - tube bushing - fork slider stack is, genuinely beautiful and close in concept to the best after market kit today. I'm betting that was due to the sportbike development war that took place among the Japs from the R1 in 1998 up to the GSXR in 2005 - new models came in 2 year development cycles. And when they introduced a new model, they actually were new models, unlike the barely a polish of, say, the 'new' Fireblade or R6 today. Anyway with the very lightweight Racefit Ti half system, which was borderline stupidly loud, it made for a brilliant road bike, with only one significant flaw: the 1st gen ZX-10R...!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIn prime central London, average prices reached £1,914,789, following quarterly price growth of 4.6 per cent. This has been buoyed by a greater proportion of more expensive properties being transacted, with an 8.5 per cent annual increase in transactions between £2m - £5m. That'll be a 2 bedroom flat in a mansion block in St Johns Wood. I'd say "Bloody Tory Voters" but they're probably either foreign nationals hiding their money. Good to know London property is still a gilt edged investment for the rest of the world, even though the market is a bit thin at the moment. — What does the bubble say? "Not yet", says the bubble, "for this is only central London, and the crash is geographically contained. But soon. But soon."
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Piero FilippIN Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. — Ladies and Gentlemen, the new Brexit minister, in a speech from 2010: “I think Ukip and the Better Off Out campaign lack ambition. I think the European Union needs to be wholly torn down.” And now he is supposed to negotiate a 'deep and special relationship' with the EU. Thats going to go down well on the other end of the negotiation table.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe irony is the picture of the EDL complaining about Islamic immigrants from non-EU countries. So how exactly is Brexit going to help that? — In other news, the sky is blue. "Nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of those who are worried about immigration voted Leave, compared with 36 per cent of those who did not identify this as a concern." "[The analysis] states that for the most part, only items associated with people’s sense of national identity and cultural outlook were significantly associated with vote choice, concluding that the outcome of the referendum reflected the concern of more “authoritarian”, socially conservative voters in Britain about some of the social consequences of EU membership, most notably immigration."
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Commented on post by Zaid El-Hoiydi in Sustainability+Steve S When you say indoor, do you mean greenhouses? Because (among other things) farming depends on solar energy to drive chlorophyll. Turning sunlight into electricity into sunlight is wasteful. The other issue is bulk carbs. All our sources of bulk carbs (rice, grain, tubers) are bulk growing operations which don't lend themselves to indoor farming. Going from 10b (or 7.5b) to 2-3b is all about timescale. Do it over >100 years and it could be painless. Doing it in under 50 could be deeply unpleasant. — One Airbus A380 Every 6 Minute, 24h/24. Considering a yearly population increase of 82 million (2016) and a certified capacity of 853 passengers for the Airbus A380 we would need an interplanetary variant of that plane filled at 100% to take off to somewhere else every 6 minute just to keep our population size from further increasing. ❝It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it — but there are so many of us.❞ — Dame Jane Goodall The growth rate of our species is now 'naturally' decreasing, fortunately, but this change is already coming too late for a great many species. What now needs to decrease is our total population, in other words, our growth rate must become negative until our the size of our population becomes sustainable with Earth's renewable resources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth
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Commented on post by Zaid El-Hoiydi in Sustainabilitywhat would the > 75% population currently busy in subsistence farming do tomorrow? The same thing they did in the developed West. Move to the cities. In it's extreme form, this is the Techno-cornucopian vision of efficiency, poverty reduction and population reduction. Max Roser and Rosling's predictions and extrapolations are similar but more stats based. Even the medium fertility forecast from the UN expects the same thing. That's where they see drop in growth rate coming from in the second half of this century. Just a reduction in rate, not the early peak and rapid fall seen by the extreme optimists. — One Airbus A380 Every 6 Minute, 24h/24. Considering a yearly population increase of 82 million (2016) and a certified capacity of 853 passengers for the Airbus A380 we would need an interplanetary variant of that plane filled at 100% to take off to somewhere else every 6 minute just to keep our population size from further increasing. ❝It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it — but there are so many of us.❞ — Dame Jane Goodall The growth rate of our species is now 'naturally' decreasing, fortunately, but this change is already coming too late for a great many species. What now needs to decrease is our total population, in other words, our growth rate must become negative until our the size of our population becomes sustainable with Earth's renewable resources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth
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Commented on post by Zaid El-Hoiydi in SustainabilityWorld poverty is dropping in both absolute and % relative terms. Urbanisation is increasing. Fertility rates in % relative terms are dropping. Average ages are increasing. And yet global population is still increasing linearly at a constant absolute increment. My current guess as to why this should be is that it all revolves around the pool of subsistence farmers in Asia and Africa. For a subsistence farmer, children are workers and a pension. So they keep having children at the same kind of rate. But improved health care and (oil driven fertiliser) farming efficiency means that a higher proportion of the children survive. But the land can't support the excess directly so they leave for the city. Where they have fewer children because they can't afford them. So there's a constant source of new children coming out of the subsistence farmers, but urbanisation of the excess means no positive feedback loop. So the total growth is linear instead of geometric/exponential. Which all means the linear growth in global population will keep going until 3rd world agriculture is as industrialised as in the developed world and subsistence agriculture disappears. Mod, resource and pollution constraints. And the 4 horsemen. — One Airbus A380 Every 6 Minute, 24h/24. Considering a yearly population increase of 82 million (2016) and a certified capacity of 853 passengers for the Airbus A380 we would need an interplanetary variant of that plane filled at 100% to take off to somewhere else every 6 minute just to keep our population size from further increasing. ❝It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it — but there are so many of us.❞ — Dame Jane Goodall The growth rate of our species is now 'naturally' decreasing, fortunately, but this change is already coming too late for a great many species. What now needs to decrease is our total population, in other words, our growth rate must become negative until our the size of our population becomes sustainable with Earth's renewable resources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth
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Commented on post by Zaid El-Hoiydi in SustainabilityThat wikipedia page is surprisingly out of date. Summary: http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ Latest UN report key findings: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2017_KeyFindings.pdf * +83m/yr * 10b = 2056 * Growth rate is linear. Because we're in the linear middle section of the logistic curve. So yes, exponential growth rate is falling because we're not in an exponential growth regime but a linear one. * Future forecasts like the UN's assume business as usual continues long enough. They don't allow for non-linear effects due to running up against resource or pollution constraints. — One Airbus A380 Every 6 Minute, 24h/24. Considering a yearly population increase of 82 million (2016) and a certified capacity of 853 passengers for the Airbus A380 we would need an interplanetary variant of that plane filled at 100% to take off to somewhere else every 6 minute just to keep our population size from further increasing. ❝It’s our population growth that underlies just about every single one of the problems that we’ve inflicted on the planet. If there were just a few of us, then the nasty things we do wouldn’t really matter and Mother Nature would take care of it — but there are so many of us.❞ — Dame Jane Goodall The growth rate of our species is now 'naturally' decreasing, fortunately, but this change is already coming too late for a great many species. What now needs to decrease is our total population, in other words, our growth rate must become negative until our the size of our population becomes sustainable with Earth's renewable resources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Armin Grewe I was trying to see which was the most obviously unpleasant that we could encourage to stand. In the hope that it would finally sink the current Tory establishment. But it was impossible. They're all equally unpleasant and/or stupid. What a shower! Grant Shapps could be a good each way bet at 80/1 for leader/deputy/chancellor. He's young, ambitious, known by party insiders but unknown outside. And totally corrupt. — Anyone else in?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThis bears repeating. commenter1: "For certain the Remainers have been moaning like crazy" commenter2: "Actually, credit where it's due, you're damned right about that. Want to know why? It's because "we won, you lost, shut up and get over it" has no place in this so-called "democracy" that the Leavers keep crowing about. Attempting to forcibly silence ~half of the electorate who don't agree with you isn't democracy, it's fascism. I hate to break this to you but we're going to keep "moaning," or to use a less pejorative term "opposing" (wow, remember when we had an Opposition in politics?) because we don't agree. That's how democracy works. When you get a result you like, democracy doesn't magically stop for everyone else. If it did we'd still have the Whigs in charge. Ultimately if the UK does leave the EU we're going to still carry on fighting, and if it gets overturned I'd equally expect your lot to carry on fighting also. The - let's be generous and say "Eurosceptics" - have been "moaning" for about as long as I've been on this Earth, so if you think we're just going to roll over because you happened to get a statistically insignificant number of votes on an advisory referendum based on the back of a pack of lies orchestrated by billionaires then you can stick it up your nose. We've got four decades of credit to spend moaning, sunbeam. Get over it. " — Better fasten your seatbelts if you thought Corbyn would go for a soft Brexit.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitLabour 70-30. Tory 30-70 Young 70-30. Old 30-70 It's not just Remain-Leave. Or Labour-Tory. It's also very broadly <45, >45 Jez Cor Byn. You were our last hope. And now that's dashed. Isn't it? — Better fasten your seatbelts if you thought Corbyn would go for a soft Brexit.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThis was always the danger that this Corbyn/Momentum Labour would see politics as more important than doing the right thing. They couldn't choose NoBrexit before because of "Labour Heartlands". They can't allow dissent in the ranks and disobedience now, so they have to punish the more extreme NoBrexit group in the party. The amendment wasn't exactly on message with the manifesto. And party loyalty is more important. I don't think anybody in the current parliament on either side is playing the long game. There is no hidden agenda or clever plan. What you see is what you get. And if Corbyn is calling for Brexit (of whatever form) that's what he wants. He's as unable to change his tune as the Tory cabinet. Which means nobody really is fighting for the 48% beyond the SNP+LibDems+Plaid Cymru and that's not enough to swing it. There's going to be a lot of angry Labour voters/members/supporters who wanted Remain. — Better fasten your seatbelts if you thought Corbyn would go for a soft Brexit.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeIt's just a gap year when they went travelling. All they need to do is photoshop up a picture of themselves in a bar in Bali. Oh. Wait. — Not the Onion: job prospects for retired ISIS fighters are bad, because of that odd gap in their CV. Also, posting that selfie with a Kalachnikov in the middle of Raqqa to Facebook was probably a bad idea.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitU.K. Politics remind me of Middle Management in Operations promoted to the board. It takes a shareholder revolt to get rid of them. — An immigration lawyer takes apart the "generous" offer that the Tory party made to EU nationals living in the UK. Here is the juicy bit: 'The proposal confirms that the agreement “will have status of international law” but, as expected, the proposal is that the Court of Justice of the European Union will not have jurisdiction in the UK. It remains to be seen whether this will be deemed acceptable by the remaining members of the EU.' 'The problem is that legal rights are worthless unless they can be enforced in the event that they are breached. If these rights are enshrined only in UK law, the UK Parliament could unilaterally legislate at any time to amend or remove these rights. This might be dismissed as being fanciful, but it is not at all hard to imagine a future government seeking to water down rights in response to perceived public pressure. Trust me, I’m a lawyer; I make my living from alleged breaches of the law by the government of the day.' Emphasis mine.
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Commented on post by Armin Grewe in Europe, Brexit, Remoaning and all that nonsense+Joerg Fliege Well, he is a Vulcan. (c Matthew Parris). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1487009/He-is-capable-of-awful-cruelty.-He-is-a-Vulcan-not-a-human-being.html — My MP is getting a lesson on how WTO rules work (no, you can't put tariffs only on the EU): https://twitter.com/johnredwood/status/879993483548819456?s=09
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Commented on post by Steven Vaughan-NicholsType out your request to attend and bury it. One of our underground agents will contact you shortly. — I'll show up if you will.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingStarted feeling faint and had to remind myself to breathe with 5 laps to go. What an incredible weekend's racing. Never a dull moment from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon. And funny to watch the commentators going from "Will Rossi retire next year" to "122 isn't out of reach". — VR46 - 20 Years 313 Days Winning Run So Valentino Rossi set another record that looks impossible to break. A winning run from his first (Brno 96) to Sunday at Assen. Very interesting race with title leader Top Gun Mack crashing out, handing the title lead over to Dovi on the GP17. Full Race Report : https://motomatters.com/results/2017/06/25/2017_assen_motogp_race_result_like_a_kid.html ______________________________________________ +TT Circuit Assen +MotoGP #Assen #TT #MotoGP
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWhich face is that? It's not his poker face or his cunning face. — David Davies " once argued powerfully against ‘the database state’. So why does the Brexit secretary now say this proposed ID card is acceptable?" Because he is a hypocrite. Thats why.
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Commented on post by Shava Neradif we declared war on China tomorrow Jeez, why are we even talking about a US-China war? Why isn't that just totally ridiculous? — Trump and China: Watch Kashmir China and Trump will talk about the road project through the Pakistani occupied/contested province Trump wants China out of the South China Sea, and I've talked about how dependent China is on shipping for their food security. Trump has pulled out of the climate accord likely in an attempt to weaken China and India's positions in world economics. So now, Trump is meeting with China to discuss the project to run a land route (the The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC) as part of Xi's Belt and Road Initiative which is put forward as a peace initiative. Remember, most wars among symmetrical partners are economic. But as an Indian analyst on the BBC noted, India has fielded troops most recently against China and Pakistan, and there's no reason it couldn't happen again. Watch this space, it's warm and heating up. It's more of the new Great Game. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/kashmir-not-relevant-to-china-pakistan-corridor-beijing-says-as-belt-and-road-summit-ends/story-UszzB16OLfaGIsPdUaGLcN.html http://cpec.gov.pk/maps
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Commented on post by Shava NeradI have/had dreams of getting to Mt Kailash. I was surprised that anyone would try and get there via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathu_La as it's some way to the East. Nepal - Lhasa is a more normal tourist route, or the Lipulekh pass for pilgrims. Maybe this is a summer thing. Every spring/early summer there's some sabre rattling and a bit of push and shove as troops from either side probe the border line. At the moment, the 3 India-China and Pakistan-China passes are really symbolic with tiny amounts of traffic. Mainly because getting over them is ridiculously hard. Karakorum does have an actual road with buses so that's the busiest of the 4. ps. I wish they'd all just stop it and find a way of making travel across these borders easier. In the 90s and early 00s it seemed like all the world's borders were opening up. Now, not so much. — Trump and China: Watch Kashmir China and Trump will talk about the road project through the Pakistani occupied/contested province Trump wants China out of the South China Sea, and I've talked about how dependent China is on shipping for their food security. Trump has pulled out of the climate accord likely in an attempt to weaken China and India's positions in world economics. So now, Trump is meeting with China to discuss the project to run a land route (the The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC) as part of Xi's Belt and Road Initiative which is put forward as a peace initiative. Remember, most wars among symmetrical partners are economic. But as an Indian analyst on the BBC noted, India has fielded troops most recently against China and Pakistan, and there's no reason it couldn't happen again. Watch this space, it's warm and heating up. It's more of the new Great Game. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/kashmir-not-relevant-to-china-pakistan-corridor-beijing-says-as-belt-and-road-summit-ends/story-UszzB16OLfaGIsPdUaGLcN.html http://cpec.gov.pk/maps
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitCool. I wonder where we can get them or something like them. eBay/Amazon/Google isn't finding a supply. And those are military. — 'EU nationals who filled in 85-page form to secure post-Brexit UK residency will have to apply again' Or at least thats the plan in new "generous" proposal that the Home Office published today. I usually attribute such fundamental cock-ups to incompetence and not to malice, but I think I have to reconsider my position. This looks more and more like an active approach to make the life of any EU national as miserable as possible. Update I: and I am getting a new ID card as well, and its compulsory. Sweet! Do I get to carry it around in an armband as well? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/26/eu-citizens-living-in-uk-must-apply-for-special-id-card-after-brexit Update II: damn, the artillery is quick. Both the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) and the EEF (The Manufacturer's Organisation) have slammed the proposal. https://www.ft.com/content/79cd8ec5-7d2d-384e-8bd3-1d6ec4f0b93b
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Commented on post by Shava NeradThat one's doing the rounds today. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/27/vulnerable-chokepoints-threaten-global-food-supply-warns-report China's BRI is ... interesting. There's a LOT going on around it and it covers a LOT of different things. The Karakorum highway is pretty old now. Started in 59, fully passable in 79. It's an amazing thing but doesn't carry huge amounts. And it's a bone that India, Pakistan, China keep picking at because it's in the same rough area as the disputed borders. — Trump and China: Watch Kashmir China and Trump will talk about the road project through the Pakistani occupied/contested province Trump wants China out of the South China Sea, and I've talked about how dependent China is on shipping for their food security. Trump has pulled out of the climate accord likely in an attempt to weaken China and India's positions in world economics. So now, Trump is meeting with China to discuss the project to run a land route (the The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC) as part of Xi's Belt and Road Initiative which is put forward as a peace initiative. Remember, most wars among symmetrical partners are economic. But as an Indian analyst on the BBC noted, India has fielded troops most recently against China and Pakistan, and there's no reason it couldn't happen again. Watch this space, it's warm and heating up. It's more of the new Great Game. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/kashmir-not-relevant-to-china-pakistan-corridor-beijing-says-as-belt-and-road-summit-ends/story-UszzB16OLfaGIsPdUaGLcN.html http://cpec.gov.pk/maps
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeWhy isn't this obvious and simple maths? - CO2 emissions/yr have stabilised. Which means they are maintaining their highest ever rate of emissions. They're now saying 40GtCO2/Yr - Which means that CO2 concentration should be rising at a linear rate corresponding with the linear addition of CO2 What would be concerning is if measured CO2 concentration was rising faster than linear. And if it is as it seems to be either the system sinks are failing or the global emissions haven't stabilised at all and are also still accelerating. The deception is in the word stabilised. Even the best interpretation is that emissions are only as bad as they were last year and the year before. — Climate conundrum: The amount of carbon dioxide humans are pumping into the air seems to have stabilized — but data gathered at the world’s monitoring stations, show that excess carbon dioxide is still on the rise. One troubling possibility is that the world’s natural sponges for the greenhouse gas, like the ocean, are no longer able to keep up. #CarbonDioxideLevels
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitRe Update 1. Can we get some blue armbands made up with "EU", some gold stars and a pouch for a business card? — 'EU nationals who filled in 85-page form to secure post-Brexit UK residency will have to apply again' Or at least thats the plan in new "generous" proposal that the Home Office published today. I usually attribute such fundamental cock-ups to incompetence and not to malice, but I think I have to reconsider my position. This looks more and more like an active approach to make the life of any EU national as miserable as possible. Update I: and I am getting a new ID card as well, and its compulsory. Sweet! Do I get to carry it around in an armband as well? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/26/eu-citizens-living-in-uk-must-apply-for-special-id-card-after-brexit Update II: damn, the artillery is quick. Both the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) and the EEF (The Manufacturer's Organisation) have slammed the proposal. https://www.ft.com/content/79cd8ec5-7d2d-384e-8bd3-1d6ec4f0b93b
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Armin Grewe The longer this goes on the more I think they are deliberately trying to create a complete mess Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. Actually there is no hidden agenda. What you see is what you get. The problem is that middle management in operations in a giant hedge fund institution has found themselves in the boardroom running the whole show. So all they can think to do is to keep on the best they can and hope nobody finds out they have absolutely no idea what they're doing. The rest of us have to hope that this becomes obvious and the shareholders country turns against them before they do too much damage. — 'EU nationals who filled in 85-page form to secure post-Brexit UK residency will have to apply again' Or at least thats the plan in new "generous" proposal that the Home Office published today. I usually attribute such fundamental cock-ups to incompetence and not to malice, but I think I have to reconsider my position. This looks more and more like an active approach to make the life of any EU national as miserable as possible. Update I: and I am getting a new ID card as well, and its compulsory. Sweet! Do I get to carry it around in an armband as well? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/26/eu-citizens-living-in-uk-must-apply-for-special-id-card-after-brexit Update II: damn, the artillery is quick. Both the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) and the EEF (The Manufacturer's Organisation) have slammed the proposal. https://www.ft.com/content/79cd8ec5-7d2d-384e-8bd3-1d6ec4f0b93b
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Commented on post by Shava NeradBack on topic. I'm curious about the USA's position on China's BRI initiative. BRI is big and multi-faceted. There may not be one answer to that when some specific areas interact with USA's positions while others are entirely tangential. One that comes to mind is Iran. — Trump and China: Watch Kashmir China and Trump will talk about the road project through the Pakistani occupied/contested province Trump wants China out of the South China Sea, and I've talked about how dependent China is on shipping for their food security. Trump has pulled out of the climate accord likely in an attempt to weaken China and India's positions in world economics. So now, Trump is meeting with China to discuss the project to run a land route (the The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC) as part of Xi's Belt and Road Initiative which is put forward as a peace initiative. Remember, most wars among symmetrical partners are economic. But as an Indian analyst on the BBC noted, India has fielded troops most recently against China and Pakistan, and there's no reason it couldn't happen again. Watch this space, it's warm and heating up. It's more of the new Great Game. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/kashmir-not-relevant-to-china-pakistan-corridor-beijing-says-as-belt-and-road-summit-ends/story-UszzB16OLfaGIsPdUaGLcN.html http://cpec.gov.pk/maps
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad+Shava Nerad TFA = The Feckin Article Everything you say above is correct. Merely pointing out that the feckin article doesn't mention Trump or the USA. And is mainly about geo-political economic competition between China, India and Pakistan. The USA is obviously an interested observer in that fight but isn't directly involved just yet. Except of course as I pointed out above some of the areas discussed are close to US war zones with either boots on the ground or drone attacks. Or "special" missions. What sticks in this person's craw is how often stories about somewhere else entirely get diverted into how terrible it is in the USA. Well yes, but that's not important just now. — Trump and China: Watch Kashmir China and Trump will talk about the road project through the Pakistani occupied/contested province Trump wants China out of the South China Sea, and I've talked about how dependent China is on shipping for their food security. Trump has pulled out of the climate accord likely in an attempt to weaken China and India's positions in world economics. So now, Trump is meeting with China to discuss the project to run a land route (the The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC) as part of Xi's Belt and Road Initiative which is put forward as a peace initiative. Remember, most wars among symmetrical partners are economic. But as an Indian analyst on the BBC noted, India has fielded troops most recently against China and Pakistan, and there's no reason it couldn't happen again. Watch this space, it's warm and heating up. It's more of the new Great Game. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/kashmir-not-relevant-to-china-pakistan-corridor-beijing-says-as-belt-and-road-summit-ends/story-UszzB16OLfaGIsPdUaGLcN.html http://cpec.gov.pk/maps
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Commented on post by Shava NeradNote also that TFA doesn't mention Trump or the USA at all, at all. Not everything is about the USA. — Trump and China: Watch Kashmir China and Trump will talk about the road project through the Pakistani occupied/contested province Trump wants China out of the South China Sea, and I've talked about how dependent China is on shipping for their food security. Trump has pulled out of the climate accord likely in an attempt to weaken China and India's positions in world economics. So now, Trump is meeting with China to discuss the project to run a land route (the The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC) as part of Xi's Belt and Road Initiative which is put forward as a peace initiative. Remember, most wars among symmetrical partners are economic. But as an Indian analyst on the BBC noted, India has fielded troops most recently against China and Pakistan, and there's no reason it couldn't happen again. Watch this space, it's warm and heating up. It's more of the new Great Game. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/kashmir-not-relevant-to-china-pakistan-corridor-beijing-says-as-belt-and-road-summit-ends/story-UszzB16OLfaGIsPdUaGLcN.html http://cpec.gov.pk/maps
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Commented on post by Shava NeradThis feels to me like posturing from India. The Karakorum Highway and Kunjerab Pass hasn't really been in dispute with India for a long time. The border hotspots and disputed territory are several valleys and quite a long way away. It's a shame India can't get on board with the BRI and open and improve it's own passes into China. I'm impressed with China's Mega-Engineering ambition. Putting a railway along that route is challenging to say the least! Also on railways, I'm curious about the plans to improve and link up the India-Pakistan network with Iran. I live in hope that one day it will be possible to get from N Scotland to Chennai without ever leaving the train system. And regarding the SW corner of Pakistan and the routes to the Gwadar port, I see the routes go through the tribal territories around Quetta. They're closely linked to the problems in Helmand province and Kandahar. — Trump and China: Watch Kashmir China and Trump will talk about the road project through the Pakistani occupied/contested province Trump wants China out of the South China Sea, and I've talked about how dependent China is on shipping for their food security. Trump has pulled out of the climate accord likely in an attempt to weaken China and India's positions in world economics. So now, Trump is meeting with China to discuss the project to run a land route (the The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC) as part of Xi's Belt and Road Initiative which is put forward as a peace initiative. Remember, most wars among symmetrical partners are economic. But as an Indian analyst on the BBC noted, India has fielded troops most recently against China and Pakistan, and there's no reason it couldn't happen again. Watch this space, it's warm and heating up. It's more of the new Great Game. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/kashmir-not-relevant-to-china-pakistan-corridor-beijing-says-as-belt-and-road-summit-ends/story-UszzB16OLfaGIsPdUaGLcN.html http://cpec.gov.pk/maps
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Commented on post by John Wehrle in Political ProjectsMeanwhile in the UK. Care Home = Compulsory, Acquisition, Repossession, End of your Home — Our "healthcare" system will need some new terminology. I am proposing some of the following substitutions but I welcome all suggestions. Hospital : False-Hope Center, or, End of Financial Security Station. Doctor : Gatekeeper to Partial Treatment Provider, or Conduit of Corporate Execution. Prescriptions : Unicorns or Mythical potions that only exist in other countries. Health Insurance Companies : Bookies Medical Group : Jury. This is only a first draft. Maybe you can improve on these.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeC IV EU = Carthage For EU JC4E = Julius Caesar Jeremy Corbyn For Emperor — LIG, OK?
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Change30 GtCO2/yr 1% = 0.3 GtCO2/yr = 300 MtCO2/yr @ $100/tCO2 = $30b/yr Again. This may be a good business for industrial uses of CO2, but scale problems means it doesn't have much to do with reducing atmospheric CO2. — The Swiss firm Climeworks has built the world’s first commercial plant to suck CO2 directly from the air. It says that its direct air capture (DAC) process – a form of negative emissions often considered too expensive to be taken seriously – costs $600 per tonne of CO2 today. Climeworks hopes to get this down to $100/tCO2 by 2025 or 2030. #NegativeEmissions
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Commented on post by Hacim Llih in Climate ChangeThis always struck me as a potentially good business for concentrating gaseous CO2 for industry. But it had absolutely nothing to do with climate change or atmospheric CO2 concentration. Mainly due to a huge mismatch in scale by 5 or 6 orders of magnitude. — U P D A T E ! for clarity seeking #FACTSonlyPLEASE , see the public post for some solid arguments implying the impracticality of this concept HERE.. https://goo.gl/HLS5MD This is indeed encouraging! We can hope this is one of our future's tools to counter humanity's continued apathy in addressing climate change?! #SAVEourPLANET #SAVEourKIDSkids
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Commented on post by MTR Team in Climate ChangePlenty of water but it's all sea water, salty or brackish. See here, Bangla Desh among others. — As global temperature rise, rapid #climatechange means that, as predicted 1.8 billion people will suffer from water scarcity-by 2025! #MtrTeam
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitShe's in the Pocket of Brass. — Now live on the Brexshit stage: The Pretenders with 'Strong and Stable'.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe 70% of voters/members/supporters who want #NoBrexit . Or the 30% (and falling) that still want to leave the EU? How about the 80% of new members, supporters and young that voted him into the leadership position, twice and want #NoBrexit . Half is a lie. Just like the Tory's current lie "85% of voters voted for a party in favour of Brexit" — Corbyn's dilemma: which half of his voters is he going to disappoint on Brexit?
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeShakes fist. "Damn Kids, get off my lawn and go and pick my strawberries!" I'll pay you a penny a punnet but only on a zero hours contract. Expensive strawberries with Wimbledon coming up? We're doomed I tells ya. Doomed. — A 17% shortfall of migrant harvest workers in the month of May? Probably scaremongering. I'll bet Farage is assembling an army of pensioners already, ready to toil the fields of England.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeI see Davis has got his poker face on. — I must confess that this time Dailymash tricked me into believing their headline.
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Commented on post by Shava NeradYup. re-chargeable and always available for a cheeky puff at the traffic lights. Nope, not really ;) They're just yet another thing that's USB chargeable. And I have charged them by plugging them into a USB hub attached to a laptop with nairy a thought about the dangers. TFA was about USB vapes, but there's nothing specific to vapes about the problem. — Smoke your computer https://techxplore.com/news/2017-06-london-event-focuses-e-cig-exploit.html
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Commented on post by Shava NeradAnd then there's my bicycle lights. And the remote controlled USB nerf missile gun. And the USB powered Lava Lamp. The Chinese have trained us well. — Smoke your computer https://techxplore.com/news/2017-06-london-event-focuses-e-cig-exploit.html
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Is this "Pollution", in the broadest "Limits To Growth[1]" sense? It does feel like there's a lot of this kind of thing in the USA. Though it's obviously common in lots of other places around the world. 1) How to clear it up? 2) How to prevent it happening in the first place. [1]Bonus snappy aphorism: If the resource constraints don't get you, the pollution will. — This waste site near Butte, Montana – a former phosphorus plant – hides an incredibly alarming thing: a 500,000-gallon concrete tank of white phosphorus sludge. That sludge sits under a cap of 2-3 feet of water, steadily replenished by an automated system; on top of that are rows of plastic "bird balls" that keep waterfowl from landing on the surface and slow evaporation. If that water cap were ever to fail, the phosphorus would come into contact with atmospheric oxygen, bursting instantly into flame. That would, in turn, clear out any remaining water, causing the entire pool to explode and strew toxic smoke across the entire area, with quite a few towns in the crossfire. For those of you familiar with them, that pool can basically be thought of as about 853,000 WP grenades with a water pumping system keeping their fuse unlit. There are quite a few things wrong with this, to say the least. One is the economic chicanery which allowed it to come into existence in the first place: the company which operated the plant (Solvay) was essentially allowed to continue to accumulate risk while they operated, and then simply walk away when they were done, taking all the profits of having accumulated that risk and leaving the costs behind for anyone in the vicinity. This kind of negative externality is at the heart of most major waste sites. Fortunately, the EPA is holding Solvay's feet to the fire to make them deal with this mess – by Solvay's proposal, by building a reclamation plant to actually mine the useful phosphorus out of the pit, and from anyone else's phosphorus waste that they care to get rid of. (Which, if it can be pulled off, seems like a fairly good idea to me.) In many cases this isn't possible, since either the company which operated the things creating the waste sites simply no longer exists, or it operated the sites through a shell company that was later destroyed, specifically so that there would be no legally responsible party left around. But there's a second very serious problem here, which isn't economics, it's engineering. The water cap which keeps this pit from exploding needs to be continually refreshed by a pumping system, with a connection to an active water supply, and so on. Fortunately, water levels normally decline slowly (mostly due to evaporation), and so even if the pumping system failed for some reason, humans could be alerted and begin emergency measures in time. But if anything interfered with that, or if the site were left derelict, or if something were to physically disturb the water cap (e.g., something big slamming into it and splashing the water out of the way)... boom. The technical term for this problem is that it doesn't fail safe: it requires continuous active measures to keep it from exploding. In a properly designed system, the complete failure of all external support (or any other easily-predictable problem) should cause the system to drop itself into a safe, if not necessarily good, state. It isn't always possible to make a system fail safe for physics reasons; for example, if you fully stop a nuclear reactor by dropping the control rods in all the way, the core is still physically very hot – more than hot enough to melt into rubble if the cooling system were to fail. That means there's no immediate way to bring a reactor to a "cold stop," the state where you can simply walk away from it and it's safe. To compensate for this, reactors have all sorts of mechanisms to keep the cooling systems working under a wide range of circumstances, as well as designs to ensure that even if the core does melt, that won't lead to a release of radioactives beyond the containment vessel. This approach is called "defense in depth," and it's crucial to any kind of safety system, not just a nuclear one. If you're interested in this, I highly recommend James Mahaffey's Atomic Accidents (recommended to me a few years ago by +Lea Kissner), a catalogue of every known accident in the history of nuclear physics, with a discussion of what went wrong and why. It shows how systems can be designed both well and poorly for worst-case disasters. (And will, I suspect, greatly increase your confidence in nuclear reactors.) h/t @bridgietherease on Twitter.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Christoph Rupprecht sarcasm, right? — "The leading candidate to be Britain’s chief trade negotiator after Brexit withdrew when the head of the civil service refused to negotiate over the £160,000 salary." "A number of other prominent trade negotiators said they did not bother filling in applications for the job because of the poor salary on offer." Well, I am usually the first on the barricades when it comes to inflated salaries of supposedly big shots. (Because the real cost lies in the loss of loyality in the organisation when the average guy hears about the salary, and the churn this creates.) But £160k/year for a 2-year stint in London? Are you kidding? By the way, has anyone seen Arron Banks, James Dyson and Tim from Wetherspoons, who paid lots of money to the Leave campaign? Now their patriotic duty is needed to finance this.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI figure a 2 year contract, £1m a year plus a £5m bonus if you achieve a deal (any deal) in that time. That ought to do it. I reckon UKIP/Dacre/Murdoch should pay for it. — "The leading candidate to be Britain’s chief trade negotiator after Brexit withdrew when the head of the civil service refused to negotiate over the £160,000 salary." "A number of other prominent trade negotiators said they did not bother filling in applications for the job because of the poor salary on offer." Well, I am usually the first on the barricades when it comes to inflated salaries of supposedly big shots. (Because the real cost lies in the loss of loyality in the organisation when the average guy hears about the salary, and the churn this creates.) But £160k/year for a 2-year stint in London? Are you kidding? By the way, has anyone seen Arron Banks, James Dyson and Tim from Wetherspoons, who paid lots of money to the Leave campaign? Now their patriotic duty is needed to finance this.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt is possible to fill positions that offer short-term, high visibility prospects of complete and utter failure. There are one or two individuals who seem to relish this. But it'll cost yah. And yeah, it's going to cost rather more than the Labour party super-tax threshold. EU Negotiations start tomorrow, right? — "The leading candidate to be Britain’s chief trade negotiator after Brexit withdrew when the head of the civil service refused to negotiate over the £160,000 salary." "A number of other prominent trade negotiators said they did not bother filling in applications for the job because of the poor salary on offer." Well, I am usually the first on the barricades when it comes to inflated salaries of supposedly big shots. (Because the real cost lies in the loss of loyality in the organisation when the average guy hears about the salary, and the churn this creates.) But £160k/year for a 2-year stint in London? Are you kidding? By the way, has anyone seen Arron Banks, James Dyson and Tim from Wetherspoons, who paid lots of money to the Leave campaign? Now their patriotic duty is needed to finance this.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeWe've now had the millenial transition. This is where the 21st century begins. — The end of the long 1990s Something is in the air, asserts the author. You can feel it in the water. Something is about to change: voters have (re)discovered that their vote matters. And so comes the end of the long 1990s, a decade that lasted 20 years, in which neoliberalism was taken for granted, voter turnout consequently tanked, and culture stagnated. Its an interesting hypothesis, for sure.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeBack in the day it was a standard part of mid-Sat afternoon. Back to back Billy Bragg and Tony Benn in the Leftfield tent. — I think Theresa May declined a corresponding invitation. But why the Pyramid stage? Surely he is more metal?
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Visual TreatsBlack Birds Matter! Quite a few bird species occasionally produce a Melanistic sport. It's not uncommon in Pheasants. Game keepers like them because they act as a visual marker to see where the birds are going. There's no need to worry until it starts using tools. Pigeon breeding rates combined with Corvids intelligence could lead to problems. It's the same as with Grey Squirrels. Mischievous tree rats with opposed thumbs could really mess things up if they ever achieved sentience. Thank goddess, they're really stupid.[1] [1] Nearly got hit on the head the other day by a squirrel that lost it's footing and fell out of the tree. — Pigeon-Crow Found this guy on the way to lunch just now. If a pigeon could mate with a crow, this is what I would imagine the offspring would look like.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Cindy Brown When I said there should be some kind of vote on it I was thinking mainly about a vote in parliament on whether to accept the proposed deal, or a vote in parliament on trying to cancel Art50. I agree that another nationwide UK vote could be even more disastrous and right now there's not much stomach for one. The SNP had and have a similar problem. Indyref2 at some stage in the future when we know what might happen on brexit or circumstances change could well be sensible. But even laying out the kinds of situations where that might happen is a vote loser for the SNP right now because it leaves them open to an obvious attack. — Sounds like "last chance before you jump".
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI did notice a number of Labour trolls arguing strongly against tactical voting about 4-6 weeks out from the election. They wanted a Labour win, not a Corbyn led coalition. "They would say that". And it was a Tory who started talking about "a coalition of chaos" which would have encouraged that attitude. Ifs and Maybes. — "The election had actually turned out pretty well, she suggested, because parliament was now more ethnically diverse than it had ever been in the past. So well done her. That was one in the eye for everyone who was under the impression she had called the election out of naked party political self interest." "“The country is still divided and some people blame politicians for this,” the Supreme Leader continued, sounding mystified as to why this might be. No one dared point out that this could have something to do with her having spent the past seven weeks making highly personal attacks on her opponents, while promising those who voted for her nothing but more pain and more austerity." And then Corbyn rises. These shots are so cheap, they come dozens by the penny.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI have it on good authority that there was a view high up in Labour / Momentum strategy groups that campaigning on Remain post-referendum was political suicide because they would lose the "Labour Heartlands(tm)". Hence the attempt to soften the message and effectively say "Yes, Brexit should happen, but a Brexit so soft and sensible that it's barely visible" And that once "Brexit Means Brexit" turns into something real and horrible there should be some kind of vote on it. As above the question is if and when they could feel that the Labour heartlands would stay with them or it wouldn't matter if they went full NoBrexit. Right now the story is that they intend to go after the next layer of marginals. So no change in stance on Brexit just yet. — Sounds like "last chance before you jump".
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedAny idea how easy the transplant of the bigger engine into the Daytona would be? Either the early or late Daytona. And then is tuning of the street or XC engine back up to Daytona levels going to be awkward as well? There ought to be some fairly straight forward parts bin engineering possible here. But it's 2017 and these things are no longer straight forward. — SC Project's Daytona
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedBut. Is there a market for 750s and 750 sports bikes. Even the old faithful, GSXR750. I know it should sell, but does it? I'm a bit sad that the baby Ducati grew and grew from 500 to 650 to 750, until it's now a 1000. There should be a 750 Panigale. But it wouldn't make money. And if there's no 675 Daytona any more why should there be a 750 Daytona. — Prophetic "Motorcycles ~ Modified", eh?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Chris Blackmore There's a big question in this. How bad does Brexit have to get for Labour to switch from campaigning on Soft/Sensible Brexit to #NoBrexit ? What will it take for Labour/Momentum to realise that NoBrexit is no longer suicidal in the "Labour Heartlands" (tm) or that the "Labour Heartlands" (tm) no longer matter. — "The election had actually turned out pretty well, she suggested, because parliament was now more ethnically diverse than it had ever been in the past. So well done her. That was one in the eye for everyone who was under the impression she had called the election out of naked party political self interest." "“The country is still divided and some people blame politicians for this,” the Supreme Leader continued, sounding mystified as to why this might be. No one dared point out that this could have something to do with her having spent the past seven weeks making highly personal attacks on her opponents, while promising those who voted for her nothing but more pain and more austerity." And then Corbyn rises. These shots are so cheap, they come dozens by the penny.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIs that analysis visible in the Ashcroft polling? I couldn't immediately see turnout/age analysis. [edit] It seems to have been an exit poll so is a poll of people who voted. So no non-voters. YouGove is a little biased. And it appears to me that 50 is the dividing line. Under 50 turnout is a little down on average but roughly equal across age ranges. Under 30 (young) is not hugely different from over 30. But the standout is 60+ that both voted and voted Conservative. I'm also very aware that this is percentages. That can be deceptive when it's absolute numbers that matter. — First time I see this, so I really don't know what to make of it. Over the last couple of days, the story was that the "youth turnout" (ie. voters actually voting in the age bracket roughly 18-25) was 72%. But the new data shows a participation rate of about 58%. Sooooo, taking all this with a ton of salt, the "youth vote" (or the "student vote", if you are so inclined) helped Labour a lot, but not by as much as previous reports claimed? The voters in the age bracket 25-39 seem to be as angry as the younger voters in not getting on the property ladder?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitSeveral months ago, one of the EU negotiators said a change of government would be a reasonable reason for cancelling Art50. I think the UK would still have to ask for it though. Which probably means a change of heart from Labour. Since at the moment they are grudgingly accepting the referendum. So I think we need some further breakdowns and chaos in the Brexit process, and then a change to Labour. Where Labour is then campaigning on NoBrexit instead of Soft/Sensible Brexit. — Sounds like "last chance before you jump".
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWhen did accusing people of various forms of bad argument technique become a thing? And does it actually get us anywhere? http://imgur.com/NdHHKPQ #meta — Sounds like "last chance before you jump".
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt's always all just a negotiation. And all the parties are making this up as they go along. * If * the UK asked nicely to drop Article 50 and admit that it was all a terrible mistake, * of course * , the EU would find a way of making some accommodation and offer some deal. It would probably be painful. But perhaps not as painful as following Art.50 to the letter. — Sounds like "last chance before you jump".
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitLook at the analysis of Tory-Labour vs Leave-Remain in the Ashcroft poll. 2/3 Tory voted Leave. 2/3 Labour voted Remain. I don't know what it means and I'm not a political strategist. But it sure as hell means something. What's awkward is we can't find out if a Brexit poll now would be more like 55-45 Remain but it certainly feels like it. And then what? More popcorn? — Suddenly, a lot of people are using the phrase "a pragmatic deal" when it comes to Brexit. How the worm turns. One wonders if it matters, though. Both Labour and Tories still want to end free movement, so there goes the membership to the Single Market. Game over, UK economy.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIs it too much to hope for that the Labour party shifts from Soft-Brexit to No-Brexit? Look at http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2017/06/result-happen-post-vote-survey/#more-15330 It's possible to take a view that the new and returning Labour voters who produced this extraordinary situation we are in now, were overwhelmingly pro-Europe Remainers. There's also the collapse of UKIP. IMHO, It's not nearly as suicidal now for Labour to come out against Brexit than it was 3 months ago. — Suddenly, a lot of people are using the phrase "a pragmatic deal" when it comes to Brexit. How the worm turns. One wonders if it matters, though. Both Labour and Tories still want to end free movement, so there goes the membership to the Single Market. Game over, UK economy.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitUKIP ZERO. Same vile taste. Less filling. We need to think hard about the rise and rise of the vile, racist, xenophobic, hateful, UKIP; The mass of minds that were swayed by the message; what they achieved in terms of disruption; until "Poof", they're gone. Cui Bono? Surely not Murdoch, Dacre or Aaron Banks. — My sides!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitCan I just say, "We are so f*ckered". — 'UK election will complicate Brexit talks, warn EU leaders' (Google in case of paywall.) "There are no signs of the EU rethinking its core negotiating approach or its demands that Britain maintain the citizens’ rights of 3m EU nationals in the UK or pay a gross Brexit bill of up to €100bn. [..] Impatience with Britain’s inability to engage in detail — a year on from the referendum vote to leave the EU — is growing." Well, thats going splendidly, isn't it.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt is to weep. Not just because of what we face now, but of what was created last year. — 'The Brexit catastrophe is only just beginning' The Times fires a broadside at the May government. On election day. It doesn't get much more symbolic than that. Alas, I fear, too little, too late. "The electorate is going to the polls today in a state of blissful ignorance over the catastrophe that is about to hit the country. That is because Theresa May has run a dishonest but successful campaign. She called an election to give herself a mandate for her version of Brexit. She has contrived to get through it while avoiding the substance of the subject entirely. Labour hasn’t challenged her because it too wants to avoid the topic. This has been the Brexit election where Brexit was scarcely discussed." "She has told the electorate nothing new about how she intends to do it, about how Britons will be poorer and more highly taxed if she keeps to her plan to leave both the single market and the customs union, or the devastation that will follow if she walks away from the table without a deal. Instead she has stuck firmly to fantasy and empty phrases. Brexit means Brexit. Best deal for Britain. Strong and stable. It has been the lobotomisation of democracy." "Her failure to be truthful about what’s imminent means that if she wins, as everyone expects, she won’t have a mandate at all. A brave and big leader would have tried to win the voters’ backing for the difficulties ahead. She has avoided that. Her victory will be based on evasion and soothing visions." "Her decision to interpret this as licence for a hard Brexit is as outrageous as if the Remainers had won a narrow victory and immediately decided to join the euro, the Schengen travel area and an EU army, declaring that no discussion was needed because this was the people’s will." "One horrified and knowledgeable insider says that the truth is that in the next 15 months we are about to dismantle an economy that has taken us 40 years to build and which will take us the next 50 years to recover." Strong stuff. Full article text also here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/6g1mlu/the_brexit_catastrophe_is_only_just_beginning/
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThanks Obama No. That can't be right. Thanks Farage Cameron May Murdoch Dacre — "Even if she [May] is returned as premier, May will face immediate demands from her own side to change the way she runs the government, having previously relied on the advice of a handful of key aides. Her errors also mean she will have to quickly demonstrate she has more to offer than Brexit and will leave her own lawmakers quicker to judge her if she struggles in the talks." And all this in a country that hasn't been that disunited since 1706.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The War on Ushttps://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — #DoingItWrong This is what BushCo did, too. We didn't want it then and we didn't want it now and hey, wasn't there some guy a long time ago who said something about if you sacrifice freedom for temporary safety, you don't deserve either one? Please, UK -- vote this authoritarian jerk out. Corbyn has some good ideas (e.g. creating a cooperative sector of the economy with a couple of carefully-considered new rules); I'd like to see relative sanity prevail in at least one tiny corner of the world. via https://social.targaryen.house/users/8zu/updates/55976 . Source: https://twitter.com/theresa_may/status/872181737933217794 via https://mastodon.social/users/Gargron/updates/2613945 .
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeSo YouGove think SNP is going to lose 12 seats? This is all because of the mythical Tory resurgence North of the border then. The one where a small number of Labour voters switched to Tory and the SNP increased their absolute vote numbers in the council elections. Dig into the report and you'll find the SNP losses are the result of marginal seats with no clear majority and so a prediction of a tiny swing from SNP to Tory. Nicola Sturgeon has had an almost impossible job to thread the needle. Not asking for IndyRef2 but keeping that option open if and when we ever know what Brexit really means. IMHO, she's acquitted herself very well and has continued to come over as the sharpest leader of them all. Despite bias-ed reporting and an endless drumbeat of lies and fear. We had that again last night with Nick Robinson. Don't be surprised if the SNP take a clean sweep of the Scottish constituencies. Which makes an overall hung parliament more likely. — Another day, another poll. Here we go, with yougov's seats in parliament projection: Conservative 305 Labour 268 Liberal Democrats 13 UKIP 0 Green 1 SNP 42 Plaid Cymru 2 95% confidence interval, they say. And thats the yougov thats usually Tory-leaning, many say. Sooooo, SNP gets promised an indyref2, making way for a Lab/Lib government? It would be hilarious, wouldn't it?
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeSome guy said "hold my beer, I've got this" so he did. He'll give it back when it's all calmed down a bit. Also, he's got plenty of practice in running with a pint of beer. Its a thing we do. And finally, there's shortly going to be a lot of standing around and waiting. And that's easier when you've got a beer in your hand. — If you leave your beer behind, the terrorists win. Never surrender!
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Commented on post by Greg Batmarx in Renewable EnergyWhat is it with the anti-renewable trolls? Where do they come from and what agenda are they pursuing? — Manufacturing is about robots and assembly lines, supply chains and finished products. It’s about the roof over your head, the car you drive to work, and the computer you stare at all day. We live in a cocoon of modern industrial products. And today, we make more than ever. But really, at its roots, manufacturing is about energy. Without energy the robots freeze, the assembly lines grind to a halt, the supply chain breaks, and that’s it. No more stuff. Of course, we’ve derived power from a number of sources over the last few centuries, and that mix has continuously evolved. For businesses, where margins are thin already, the cost of energy is crucial. And from the global view on down to early industrial Britain or modern Shanghai, we know the cleaner, the better. The best of both worlds, however, has eluded us. But according to Ramez Naam, speaking at Singularity University’s Exponential Manufacturing Summit in Boston this week, that's changing. The world currently uses about 14 cubic kilometers of oil, or oil equivalent in oil, gas, and coal Naam says. But that is actually dwarfed by the continual influx of energy from the fusion reactor 8.3 light-minutes away. Our sun bombards our planet with 10,000 times the energy we use from all sources combined. Naam, who spent 13 years at Microsoft working on machine learning, AI, and big scale systems, is perhaps best known as the writer behind the science fiction series, the Nexus Trilogy. He’s also researched, written about, and is a big believer in the sneaky power of renewable energy. Wind was a footnote in the energy mix 10 years ago, he says. Today, it makes 6% of all electricity in the US. That might not sound like much, but it’s the pace that’s notable, wind power usage is up 10x in the last eleven years. And Naam expects growth to continue. As new materials and designs make turbines bigger and taller, they’ll harvest wind more efficiently. But he’s more excited about solar. Solar power has grown by 100 in the last 13 years, Naam says. It’s averaged around 35 to 40 percent annual growth over the last 20 years. I’m a solar optimist, and I was wrong he says. Solar prices are plunging even faster than those who are wildly optimistic expected. In the last year, according to Naam, we’ve seen crossover in the solar power market. In the sunniest parts of the world, unsubsidized solar is becoming the cheapest form of energy. In the US, natural gas is the cheapest energy at around five or six cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). A deal in Palo Alto, California late last fall was signed for 3.6 cents per kWh (5.1 cents removing subsidies, according to Naam). A deal signed in India was less than the price of coal there. No subsidies. In Chile, solar bids won a dozen auctions, one of which was the lowest we had yet seen at 2.9 cents a kWh. Now, that was not just the cheapest price for solar ever assigned, that was the cheapest unsubsidized contract for electricity of any sort on planet Earth with any technology ever in history Naam says. That record lasted for about a month, when a deal in Dubai was signed for 2.4 cents a kWh, less than half US natural gas prices and lower than natural gas in the Middle East or Africa. And it wasn't just one company with an unusually aggressive bid Naam says. There were four companies that came with bids of less than three cents in this auction. You might notice a trend here. Sun. Lots of it. The disclaimer: This is all heavily regional. That means solar isn’t the answer everywhere yet. It may grow to be more of the total energy mix, but it makes the most practical economic sense in the sunniest parts of the world. Storage and batteries are still key to making all this work, and they are often pointed to as the sticking point. The sun doesn’t always shine, even in sunny places. And for less-than-sunny places and at night, batteries are the vital link, storing away sunlight for later use. But batteries, Naam says, are also improving faster than you might expect. Over a 15-year slice of time, the energy capacity of lithium-ion batteries tripled, and the energy cost per unit of energy you could store, dropped by a factor of 10 he says. And there are a number of other more "exotic" battery technologies on the horizon. While Naam is clearly very bullish on renewable energy, his reasoning tends toward the practical. Subsidies and mandates have played and continue to play a role in renewable energy. But he says innovation and benefits will prove to be more inexorable forces. He thinks electric cars, currently a tiny fraction of the market, are set for fast growth. Why? They have 90% fewer moving parts, offer a better driving experience, and will soon be cost-competitive with combustion engine cars. Similarly, renewable energy will continue its growth, not just because policy dictates it, but because innovation will make it the cheapest option. If you follow all these trends, we've always assumed that clean energy would be the most expensive energy, right, and we should do it for moral reasons, cut pollution Naam says. But if you look at the ever-declining cost of technology, you start to assume that, hey, if this trend holds, clean energy will ultimately be the cheapest.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitEvery day gets a little more surreal. Next Thursday is "Hug a Hoodie day". Give them a hug and then drag them down to the polling booth. Every vote against the Tories is a vote against Nastiness! #NastyParty — Theresa May is now refusing to do any interviews with BBC Radio Strong and stable leadership, my ass. And thats the politician complaining that Corbyn got a number wrong in an interview. Well, at least Corbyn has numbers and gives interviews!
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeAmong all the coverage and associated news, here's an annotated version of what he actually said. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2017/jun/02/presidents-paris-climate-speech-annotated-trumps-claims-analysed Lots of noise but not very much content. It's quite hard to tell if Trump has actually said or committed to anything at all, at all. Yes, it meets election promises, but did he actually do anything? This is the one that got me though. In the middle of the article. A press briefing in the White House, where senior administration officials, who refuse to be named, say not very much. Because there's not very much to be said. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/02/yes-or-no-white-house-wont-say-if-trump-is-climate-change-denier Shortly after Trump spoke in the Rose Garden at the White House to applause from supporters, two senior administration officials briefed reporters in the west wing. The officials, who did not wish to be named, did nothing to alter perceptions of the US president as a climate change denier when asked whether he believed human activity was a contributory factor. One official replied: “So I think the fact that the president in his speech today said he wants to come back and renegotiate a better deal for the United States and for the world I think speaks for itself.” The journalist shot back: “So is that a yes? It’s a yes or no question.” The official said: “Again, I think that speaks for itself.” — Thats what you get when you don't respect the greatest President alive, you know?
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Commented on post by Sachin Saini in Climate ChangeAmong all the coverage and associated news, here's an annotated version of what he actually said. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2017/jun/02/presidents-paris-climate-speech-annotated-trumps-claims-analysed Lots of noise but not very much content. It's quite hard to tell if Trump has actually said or committed to anything at all, at all. Yes, it meets election promises, but did he actually do anything? The biggest effect is possibly the external view of the thing. It plays to his supporters and makes a statement. eg this. Shortly after Trump spoke in the Rose Garden at the White House to applause from supporters, two senior administration officials briefed reporters in the west wing. The officials, who did not wish to be named, did nothing to alter perceptions of the US president as a climate change denier when asked whether he believed human activity was a contributory factor. One official replied: “So I think the fact that the president in his speech today said he wants to come back and renegotiate a better deal for the United States and for the world I think speaks for itself.” The journalist shot back: “So is that a yes? It’s a yes or no question.” The official said: “Again, I think that speaks for itself.” So that's a press briefing in the White House, where senior administration officials, who refuse to be named, say not very much. Because there's not very much to be said. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/02/yes-or-no-white-house-wont-say-if-trump-is-climate-change-denier — This is pathetic! How much evidence you need that global warming is true? One person is doing so much mess and chaos to world because he don't believe in science and want to make America great again. America going to become great again if you stay scientific as always! You already polluted more than any country in the world to get developed. Developing countries no longer bother to follow and get out of the accord... Insane decisions are now coming from America.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeMust be only days away now for the crack to reach the edge. — quote: In the largest jump since January, the rift in the Larsen C Ice Shelf has grown an additional 17 km (11 miles) between May 25 and May 31 2017. This has moved the rift tip to within 13 km (8 miles) of breaking all the way through to the ice front, producing one of the largest ever recorded icebergs. The rift tip appears also to have turned significantly towards the ice front, indicating that the time of calving is probably very close.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitTheresa keeps showing a bit too much cleavage and leg, on heels that are a bit too tall, and it's a deeply unpleasant look. Then there's the thing she's got for bondage-style chrome chains as a necklace. Where's Malcolm Tucker IRL? So many entirely predictable screw-ups in this election. There must be a spin doctor or two going full on berserker melt down somewhere in Tory head office. I know the whole Tory party is NSFW, but not in that way, please. — Your image for the night.
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate ChangeRenewables are different and the economics don't fit into systems built around fossil fuels. They tend to have high capital costs and very low running costs. So it is with the human costs as well. High installation employment, very low running employment. We're still a long way from mature steady state here where end of life replacement is the dominant. Instead, we're in the accelerating deployment stage where deployment costs (human and monetary) dominate the perceived payback.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege"Normal People Against Racism" disapproves of this message. — An Assistant Commissioner at Scotland Yard wants to set up "special centres" to detain 3,000 "extremists". So these... camps will... concentrate all these people in one place. And all of them would be innocent before the law, because otherwise they would be processed through the criminal justice system already. What could possibly go wrong?
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeThere's a Mulla Nasrudin story in there somewhere. They weren't smuggling drugs, they were smuggling pigeons. Because these are homing pigeons that return. So how did they get to their flight departure location? — Bird caught in the act.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitTheresa May framed the election as being all about Brexit. But it was too scary so we've been trying to forget and treat this election as if it's about normal election things like manifestos and personalities. And slogans. And now it's about terrorism and security. Are you scared yet? Because shit is about to get real. — Brexiters in denial "There is the strange sense from those who argue most vociferously for Brexit that, somehow, Brexit won’t change anything. For example, I’ve seen Brexiters ridicule the idea that leaving the EU could mean needing visas to travel to the EU or that it could mean restrictions on air travel within the EU." "The problem is that both the assumption that familiar freedoms are an act of nature and the symbolism of taking back control are now in collision with the reality of leaving the legal institutions of the EU. This isn’t going to be a matter of assumption or symbolism: it will have hard, concrete effects."
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitSo 80% of Leave voters have changed their minds? Or 80% of leave voters didn't understand consequences? Assuming that the 1/10 people who still want EU NHS staff to leave must have voted Leave. Are you scared yet? — 9 out of 10 people in the UK want EU NHS staff to stay after Brexit. 5.2 out of 10 people in the UK don't understand that actions have consequences.
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Commented on post by MESA Sostenible in Climate Change+Clinton Hammond OK. I don't know what you're asking for then. I don't know what cite would satisfy you. I'm not arguing for or against GMOs. I'm not arguing for or against the truth of AGW. And I'm not going to disagree on the need for evidenced based science on either subject. I'm arguing that there exist vocal people who profess to believe they are pro-GMO but are skeptical of AGW. I'm arguing that there exist vocal people who are anti-GMO but who believe in the truth of AGW. Now if you don't want to talk about that, then fine, but then don't engage me in that part of the conversation. — If you eat organically, you will reduce the amount of energy, pesticides, and herbicides used in growing your food. This has benefits for your health as well as the climate, our food and water supplies, and the natural environment. Sign Up to get more information for our campaign launch http://buff.ly/2qW641O #organic #HealtyhFood #nutrition #climatechange
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Commented on post by MESA Sostenible in Climate ChangeWe're talking about people's opinions and beliefs here and whether people with particular beliefs and opinions exist. That's not about the scientific basis of the beliefs. So I have no problem with expressing an opinion about their existence without having to produce peer reviewed (ugh!) papers analysing the exact demographics. Pro-GMO-Anti AGW. I gave you an example of GWPF (https://www.thegwpf.org/) and one of their loudest commentators Matt Ridley. They and he will protest long and loudly that "They're not AGW deniers but ...". Except that's exactly what they are. See here for why that's a reasonable position to take. https://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-policy-foundation Judge them by what they do and what they say, not just what they claim. Now it turns out that Ridley and the GWPF also promote GMOs, "free" trade agreements, reducing controls on Neonics, and so on. eg here https://www.thegwpf.com/britain-could-become-a-haven-for-gm-crops-after-brexit/ and http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/genetically-modified-crops/ This begins to look like a pretty strong existence proof that there are people out there who are consistently pro-GMO and are also commonly thought to be AGW deniers. Then you can go looking for people who promote and link to the GWPF, Patrick Moore, Ridley et al and you'll find a whole load of hangers on particularly around the Ecomodernism movement. I'm not saying the ecomoderns are in exactly the same place but that they attract those kinds of people. So now for Anti-GMO, Pro-AGW. The EU is an example here. The European commission has been much more cautious about GMOs than the USA. Some countries (Germany) have banned them outright. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_genetically_modified_organisms_in_the_European_Union These are the same countries that have been vocal about AGW and signed up to the Paris accord. These are matters of public government policies both individually and Europe wide. I mentioned the European Green movement in this bucket. So take the UK Green Party manifesto as an example. https://policy.greenparty.org.uk/eu.html EU490 The Green Party supports a moratorium at EU and national level on the release of GMOs into the environment and on importation of food and feed containing GMOs The manifesto also contains numerous references to climate change and the need to mitigate it. So we have another proof by example that the Anti-GMO, Pro-AGW bucket exists. - As an aside, "Organic" has a much more rigorous definition in the UK and Europe than in North America. https://www.soilassociation.org/what-we-do/organic-standards/eu-organic-regulation/ You may still believe it's pointless but it's a little more than just a marketing buzzword. - I don't expect you to change your mind. But perhaps you can see why I have arrived at my position. I'm not just making this stuff up. — If you eat organically, you will reduce the amount of energy, pesticides, and herbicides used in growing your food. This has benefits for your health as well as the climate, our food and water supplies, and the natural environment. Sign Up to get more information for our campaign launch http://buff.ly/2qW641O #organic #HealtyhFood #nutrition #climatechange
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Commented on post by MESA Sostenible in Climate Change+Edouard Tavinor Yes I read the paper. What I think it says is that. "if you believe in conspiracies" then "you are more likely to believe anti-GMO theories"and "You are more likely to believe AGW denialism". That is not the same as there's a correlation between anti-GMO and AGW denialism. Indeed their fig 2 doesn't have a link or correlation coefficient between the GMO and Climate boxes. Their focus is on conspiracy ideation, political viewpoints and such like and how it affects 3 beliefs and not the links between the three beliefs. In my last comment, I tried hard to describe 4 positions which (IMHO) all exist. That includes my 4) which is your GMO-Climate correlation. But I think 2) Pro-GMO-Anti AGW and 3) Anti-GMO, Pro-AGW also exist. — If you eat organically, you will reduce the amount of energy, pesticides, and herbicides used in growing your food. This has benefits for your health as well as the climate, our food and water supplies, and the natural environment. Sign Up to get more information for our campaign launch http://buff.ly/2qW641O #organic #HealtyhFood #nutrition #climatechange
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Commented on post by MESA Sostenible in Climate Change+Clinton Hammond for what? — If you eat organically, you will reduce the amount of energy, pesticides, and herbicides used in growing your food. This has benefits for your health as well as the climate, our food and water supplies, and the natural environment. Sign Up to get more information for our campaign launch http://buff.ly/2qW641O #organic #HealtyhFood #nutrition #climatechange
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Commented on post by MESA Sostenible in Climate Change+Edouard Tavinor It didn't seem to me that correlations between anti-gmo and AGW deniers were in those papers, because that wasn't what they were looking for. Instead try these examples:- 1) Pro-GMO, AGW Believers: You and me? Ecomoderns? Some but not all sections of the science community. This group does exist but it's sometimes a battle. Especially if you recognise that both fields are big and wide with lots of implications. The science is not always clear but it's the best description of the world we've got. 2) Pro-GMO, AGW Skeptics: GWPF, Matt Ridley, Lomborg, Right wing corporatists. This group does exist and I find them extremely dangerous because they're not stupid, they have lots of influence and they're very well funded. Superficially they're scientific but in reality they're agenda driven propagandists. (IMHO!) 3) Anti-GMO, AGW Believers: Large sections of the Green movement. Anti-corporate conspiracy nuts. This is a big group especially in Europe. It's not hard to be anti-BigAg at the same time as being anti-BigFossilEnergy. It's not Fossil fuels and GMO that they hate so much as Exxon and Monsanto and all the political lobbying around each sector. 4) Anti-GMO, AGW Deniers: Anti-science conspiracy nuts. Anti-vaxxers. And of course this one is really sad. it's where everything can be explained by "them" and "the conspiracy". Which ones of these four have large numbers? Which are important? I think ignoring 2) and 3) and presenting it as a binary choice between 1) and 4) is a mistake. Because 2) and 3) are substantial and have influence. They may both be wrong in their own ways, but I don't think you can ignore them. — If you eat organically, you will reduce the amount of energy, pesticides, and herbicides used in growing your food. This has benefits for your health as well as the climate, our food and water supplies, and the natural environment. Sign Up to get more information for our campaign launch http://buff.ly/2qW641O #organic #HealtyhFood #nutrition #climatechange
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Commented on post by MESA Sostenible in Climate Change+Edouard Tavinor http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2988700/propaganda_wars_proscience_gmo_chemicals_boosters_funded_by_climate_change_deniers.html https://medium.com/the-method/the-elephant-in-the-pro-gmo-living-room-climate-change-deniers-84056d82c4ad That second one is a good example of how chaotic and confused this area is. And brings up one such group, the Lukewarmers. The one's who start conversations with "I'm not a denier but" and are also pro-GMO, Pro-Technology, Pro-Nuclear and generally pro-Science. But then spread the same AGW denier memes from denier groups like GWPF. re modern agriculture feeding the current population. This is overwhelmingly driven by oil powered, nitrogen fertiliser. With all that implies. — If you eat organically, you will reduce the amount of energy, pesticides, and herbicides used in growing your food. This has benefits for your health as well as the climate, our food and water supplies, and the natural environment. Sign Up to get more information for our campaign launch http://buff.ly/2qW641O #organic #HealtyhFood #nutrition #climatechange
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Commented on post by MESA Sostenible in Climate Change+Edouard Tavinor You're right but you're missing my point. I'm interested in the opposite end of the spectrum. There's a surprising correlation where those denying climate change (anti-science) are also pro-GMO and pro-Industrial agriculture (pro-science). Enough to make you think that their position is really pro-business as usual, pro-corporate and pro-capitalism. They're just cherry picking their positions on individual topics to suit the pro-corporate agenda. The bullshit and name calling gets horribly messed up here. So we have a whole load of mud being slung at lefty, liberal, green, anti-vax, anti-GMO, anti-nuclear, anti-neonics, climate change fanatics, etc, etc as if those are all the same. — If you eat organically, you will reduce the amount of energy, pesticides, and herbicides used in growing your food. This has benefits for your health as well as the climate, our food and water supplies, and the natural environment. Sign Up to get more information for our campaign launch http://buff.ly/2qW641O #organic #HealtyhFood #nutrition #climatechange
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Commented on post by Derick Lila in Climate ChangeBrilliant. Reminds me that we should have built a dam/bridge across the channel and not a tunnel. The shipping tolls would have paid for it. And it could have provided huge quantities of tidal power. Mega-Engineering FTW! — Welcome to Dogger Island: How ‘crazy’ artificial power island in the North Sea could supply renewable energy to 80 million people in Europe by 2050.
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Commented on post by CU Boulder - Environmental Engineering in Climate ChangeRoads wear down and turn to dust in 10s of years. So this will generate micro-plastics. Which enter the environment and wash down to the sea. And given the effort we put into drains on roads that will happen relatively quickly. Environmentally-friendly use of disposed plastic? As opposed to what?
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Commented on post by MESA Sostenible in Climate Change+Clinton Hammond Demand for Peer Review should be added to the long list of specious argument tactics. It's superficially sensible, but way too often it's used as a bludgeon. — If you eat organically, you will reduce the amount of energy, pesticides, and herbicides used in growing your food. This has benefits for your health as well as the climate, our food and water supplies, and the natural environment. Sign Up to get more information for our campaign launch http://buff.ly/2qW641O #organic #HealtyhFood #nutrition #climatechange
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Commented on post by MESA Sostenible in Climate ChangeThere's a discussion to be had here. Perhaps about industrial farming practices in the USA. But it's pretty much impossible because it's one of those emotive arguments that attracts huge quantities of bullshit. Much like Climate Change. And it's not directly about Climate Change so I'm not entirely sure why it's here. It's also interesting that there's quite a correlation between people who are pro-science when it's pro-GMOs and pro industrial farming. But anti-science when it's about climate change. — If you eat organically, you will reduce the amount of energy, pesticides, and herbicides used in growing your food. This has benefits for your health as well as the climate, our food and water supplies, and the natural environment. Sign Up to get more information for our campaign launch http://buff.ly/2qW641O #organic #HealtyhFood #nutrition #climatechange
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Commented on post by CU Boulder - Environmental Engineering in Climate ChangeWhat's that in Nelson's Columns? — America's first offshore wind farm launched with GE turbines twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty!
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeGot to get those factors of 3 right. 350 MtCO2/yr = ~120 MtC/yr = ~1% of the 35 GtCO2/Yr or 12 GtC/yr total carbon emissions. Probably. Maybe 1TtC of easily accessible carbon left to be dumped into the atmosphere. All gone by 2100? — The emission of air pollution from traffic in our cities is the last step for a fuel that produces air pollution at every stage of production, often starting with flaring at a distant oil well. The World Bank estimates that the 16,000 flares worldwide produce around 350m tonnes of CO2 each year. #Methane #Flaring
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaI remember when we had a Prime Minister with a degree in Chemistry from Oxford who went on to do post-graduate work in X-ray crystallography. She did have one or two faults though. — Only 9% of all contenders in the UK general election 2017 have a background in STEM.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeAre we sure that's not the pleasure orb from Sleeper? http://bestanimations.com/Balls&Buttons/woody-allen-with-big-ball-funny-animated-gif.gif — The lost Palantir of Osgiliath has been found! This explains a lot.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeThe Bond movie franchise has really gone down hill. 6.1 — The lost Palantir of Osgiliath has been found! This explains a lot.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+Jennie Guzman When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning or climate change. Hang on a minute. Is that newt kosher? — The lost Palantir of Osgiliath has been found! This explains a lot.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPNot sure I have the heart for this any more. :( I just keep thinking about Stoner's 2011 comment about talent and ambition rather than Lorenzo's 2017 6th vs Rossi's 2011 5th. — Jorge Lorenzo vs Vale Rossi after Qatar 2011 Rossi 7th 16.4s behind 1st (Stoner) 13s behind Lorenzo Scored 139 in the season in total 2017 Jorge Lorenzo 11th 20.5s behind 1st (Vinales) 18.6 behond Rossi Currently on 5 points Dear George. It's going to be a long old season.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitYou scared yet? — Looks like I am going to stack up some special kind of meat for the next winter. Some highlights from the article: 20% of all employees in British agriculture come from abroad. 63% of all staff employed by members of the British Meat Processors Association are not from the UK. 85% of vets in British abattoirs are not from the UK. "Some of the seasonal labour is choosing not to come to the UK because of the value of sterling,” Olins says. “If you can go to work in a Euro country like Spain, rather than Britain, it’s worth doing so.”There used to be 10 applicants for every picking job in the UK. Now there are three. “The candidates we’re getting are older, they have fewer skills, their English is worse.” Is that just down to Brexit? “The media in the home countries has been reporting attacks on immigrants to the UK.” One of the big food-sector bodies told me they received off-the-record calls from civil servants warning them to shut up, because they had been quoted in newspapers talking about the seriousness of the labour supply to the food chain. “We were told we would just enrage the hard-line Brexiteers,” a member of the body told me. Tim Lang, professor of food policy at London’s City University: "The civil service is dispirited and uncertain of what they’re doing because they haven’t been given any signals. There’s not a bleep about food policy coming from ministers. There has been a stunning silence from Andrea Leadsom, the Defra minister, on this matter of national importance. Basically, if on March 31, 2019, migrant labour is not sorted the food system is fucked. I hope those who voted Brexit and who still want to eat British are prepared to go to Lincolnshire in winter to pick vegetables." (Via +Marc Schnau.)
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green Technology+Per Siden When I said hard to find, this is what I'm talking about. That news report is almost content free. But it does link to this report. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320713003522 That's a meta study that points out how wide and uncertain the numbers are. And it's about on-shore US wind turbines where the article above is about off-shore UK turbines. At this point see also https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/20/scotland-birds-at-risk-windfarms-gannets-kittiwakes-puffins about objections to an off shore turbine array in Scotland from the UK RSPB. I tend to agree that turbines are much much less of a problem than windows, coal, cats or many other things. I have this sneaking suspicion that they're not a problem * at all *. But like I say more or less scientific proof of that from reputable, believable sources is very hard to come by. — UK switches on the world's largest wind turbines According to this a single revolution of the turbine can power a home for 29 hours. That's pretty amazing.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green Technology195m tower. 80m blades. 8MW rated power per turbine. I wonder how many birds per hour this will kill. /s Seriously, I think the "turbines kill bird life" has been vastly overstated. But it's damn hard to find credible studies and research. — UK switches on the world's largest wind turbines According to this a single revolution of the turbine can power a home for 29 hours. That's pretty amazing.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in WingnutteryIn your heart you know it's flat. No matter where on the globe you are. — I keep coming across evidence that some people just can't brain. I mean no harm towards that one guy or other people who agree with him, but... I mean, what do you do? They seem either incapable of, or unwilling to, understand the basics of how these things work. Criticism isn't valid unless it's based on a valid understanding. These people don't understand. ...and even among people who accept "spherism", how many of them are incapable of understanding other, less absolutely-not-in-question facts about reality? (Like, you know... evolution... or even more abstract but generally agreed concepts, like 'how democracy is supposed to work'.) via the awesome Meshelly on #Mastodon https://mastodon.cloud/users/Meshelly/updates/846297 .
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPIt came back again in time for the middle of MotoGP FP1. Maybe somebody forgot to turn it on. — http://motogp.com live timing broken?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitBecause there's nothing to say? :( A vote against the Tories is a vote against Brexit. Except it should be, if only the Labour party had a spine and could see past their "Labour Heartlands". — While it is clear that the whole election is about Brexit, it is interesting to note that both major parties practically ignore the issue in their party manifestos. (The LibDems are a different breed, to their credit.) Instead, fascinating promises are made, and the public discussion focusses on how this and that investment can be costed. The problem is that nobody has any idea about the state of public funding, post Brexit. Nobody dares to talk about the elephant in the room.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeFact! — 100% of all criminals were once children. Reduce children!
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesAnd the answer is no. So feedback sent. — Notifications of +1s. (Desktop web) Is there any way of turning off notifications when people +1 your comments or posts?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ HelpI thought so. I did look but couldn't find anything. Feedback sent — Notifications of +1s. (Desktop web) Is there any way of turning off notifications when people +1 your comments or posts? Please note: The notification I get when you +1 this post is exactly what I don't want. I could mute the post, but then I wouldn't get the notification if somebody commented on it, which I do want.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesPlease note: The notification I get when you +1 this post is exactly what I don't want. I could mute the post, but then I wouldn't get the notification if somebody commented on it. Which I do want. — Notifications of +1s. (Desktop web) Is there any way of turning off notifications when people +1 your comments or posts?
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeI reckon it's Bannon going full Malcolm Tucker. — I wouldn't make too much out this. Someone probably saw a Shoggoth, changing it's form, or something like that. (Via +Gerhard Torges.)
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawI do like the image of Bannon going full Malcolm Tucker. https://twitter.com/Carrasquillo/status/864262056849092608 WH comms staffers just put the TVs on super loud after we could hear yelling coming from room w/ Bannon, Spicer, Sanders [Dubke] I also have this sneaking suspicion that a WH troll just had a ploy get out of control. Trump was only supposed to read the made up story they hid on his desk and tweet about it. Not give the story to the Russians. — Today, we have some political news which is made slightly better by Unicode. Let me explain how. During his meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak earlier this week, Trump apparently revealed code-word intelligence to them.¹ In particular, he revealed intel with enough details for Russia to work out our sources and methods - the most sensitive possible level. Except it wasn't our sources and methods. It was someone else's. The Washington Post (who originally broke the story) is withholding sensitive details, for reasons obvious to everyone except Trump, but reading between the lines, it probably came via "Five Eyes" (our intel sharing agreement with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK²) or a similar program. Which is to say, we just blew someone else's intel sources and methods, which we had access to only under treaty. Which, I suspect, they will not be happy about. And retaliate for, e.g. by cutting off our access. Since we have a leak.³ Now, this probably isn't illegal; the President does have the right to declassify things, after all. (Although it may violate the treaty) But what does this have to do with Unicode, you say? Well, it turns out that Russian - specifically, the medieval Russian used in certain religious manuscripts - has a special variant of 'о' used only in the phrase "серафими многоочитїи," "many-eyed seraphim," in some 15th-century texts. It's called "multiocular O:" ꙮ Unicode added it back in 2008, just in case you needed to type an O with seven eyes in it. So I am glad to report that there's already a symbol for when your Five Eyes turn out to have some extra (Russian) eyes in them. We might call it "Путин многоꙮчитї." Unicode: Being prepared for every possible linguistic eventuality across a wide range of platforms. As it is written: 🇷🇺ꙮ + 🍊👺= 🇦🇺🇨🇦🇬🇧🇳🇿😤😤😤😤 ¹ This was broken by a story in the Washington Post earlier today, and independently confirmed by both Reuters and BuzzFeed. National Security Advisor McMaster and Secretary of State Tillerson both publicly appeared to give Suspiciously Specific Denials of things which were not alleged by these articles, while saying nothing about what was actually alleged. The article linked below, from Lawfare, gives an excellent summary of what happened, along with plenty of context and links. WP story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html BuzzFeed story, with the additional info that this apparently required an emergency briefing of the Senate Intelligence Committee: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimdalrympleii/trump-highly-classified-information-russians Reuters story, with more details about exactly what was leaked: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-idUSKCN18B2MX ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes ³ I was wondering why we kept getting those FVEY queries about "MOOSE and SQUIRREL." h/t to +Andreas Schou for pointing me at the story.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawAnother link. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/15/donald-trump-shared-classified-information-russia-white-house-report FWIW, I read this and then read how it was all about the exploding laptop plot and started to roll my eyes. Since I was previously convinced the laptop plot was completely made up, I have no idea wtf is going on any more. So grabbed another bag of popcorn. http://wondermark.com/220/ You laughed at the shoe thing, remember. — Today, we have some political news which is made slightly better by Unicode. Let me explain how. During his meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak earlier this week, Trump apparently revealed code-word intelligence to them.¹ In particular, he revealed intel with enough details for Russia to work out our sources and methods - the most sensitive possible level. Except it wasn't our sources and methods. It was someone else's. The Washington Post (who originally broke the story) is withholding sensitive details, for reasons obvious to everyone except Trump, but reading between the lines, it probably came via "Five Eyes" (our intel sharing agreement with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK²) or a similar program. Which is to say, we just blew someone else's intel sources and methods, which we had access to only under treaty. Which, I suspect, they will not be happy about. And retaliate for, e.g. by cutting off our access. Since we have a leak.³ Now, this probably isn't illegal; the President does have the right to declassify things, after all. (Although it may violate the treaty) But what does this have to do with Unicode, you say? Well, it turns out that Russian - specifically, the medieval Russian used in certain religious manuscripts - has a special variant of 'о' used only in the phrase "серафими многоочитїи," "many-eyed seraphim," in some 15th-century texts. It's called "multiocular O:" ꙮ Unicode added it back in 2008, just in case you needed to type an O with seven eyes in it. So I am glad to report that there's already a symbol for when your Five Eyes turn out to have some extra (Russian) eyes in them. We might call it "Путин многоꙮчитї." Unicode: Being prepared for every possible linguistic eventuality across a wide range of platforms. As it is written: 🇷🇺ꙮ + 🍊👺= 🇦🇺🇨🇦🇬🇧🇳🇿😤😤😤😤 ¹ This was broken by a story in the Washington Post earlier today, and independently confirmed by both Reuters and BuzzFeed. National Security Advisor McMaster and Secretary of State Tillerson both publicly appeared to give Suspiciously Specific Denials of things which were not alleged by these articles, while saying nothing about what was actually alleged. The article linked below, from Lawfare, gives an excellent summary of what happened, along with plenty of context and links. WP story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html BuzzFeed story, with the additional info that this apparently required an emergency briefing of the Senate Intelligence Committee: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimdalrympleii/trump-highly-classified-information-russians Reuters story, with more details about exactly what was leaked: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-idUSKCN18B2MX ² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes ³ I was wondering why we kept getting those FVEY queries about "MOOSE and SQUIRREL." h/t to +Andreas Schou for pointing me at the story.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Updates+Rev.Dr.Sharon A. Wozencraft Bigger than niche, smaller than twitter, seems likely. — This
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesWoosh. Irony failure. Orkut was a successful property that Google closed down in favour of G+. It was always a minor player and much smaller than MySpace when they were both around and MySpace was the big deal. But it was big enough to dominate a couple of markets. It's highly likely that Mastodon might fill the same role as a minor player in the same space as Twitter. There's room for both. So saying, "I don't see that social network ever catching up." Is pretty much irrelevant. Orkut didn't ever catch up to Myspace, but it didn't matter. And in the end Orkut was bought, trashed and then closed by one of the other big players. — This
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Updates+Steban Hernández Orkut? That'll never catch up with MySpace. — This
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Commented on post by Julian BondApart from the transfer costs, I'm seeing people raise the issue of devices with embedded windows that require medical certification. This is not just about general purpose workstations. And it's not just about the UK NHS. So yes, Linux might help. And yes, https://www.nhsbuntu.org/ is a worthy effort, but, And then there's today's Microsoft blog and commentary on it. "WannaCry is worldwide civilian collateral damage from American cyberwar" https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2017/05/didnt-expect-microsoft-nerve-say/ — Summary of the State of the Worm http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/13/wannacrypt_ransomware_worm/ Contains this tidbit:- We're told 16 NHS health trusts in the UK were taken out by the malware. Prime Minister Theresa May said the code "has crippled" Brit hospitals, and that Blighty's surveillance nerve center GCHQ is looking into the outbreak. The NHS is thought to have been particularly hard hit because of the antiquated nature of its IT infrastructure. A large part of the organization's systems are still using Windows XP, which is no longer supported by Microsoft, and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt cancelled a pricey support package in 2015 as a cost-saving measure. Cancelled in May 2015. £5.5m https://twitter.com/withorpe/status/863088159961210880 * facepalm * Please make Jeremy Hunt (and the Tories) pay for this particular piece of madness in the next election.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond+Ade Oshineye Yes indeed. "Windows for Submarines" is a real thing. And is based on Win-XP Current estimate is that the unnecessary deaths started around 2pm on Friday. And this is now a global thing, not just the NHS. So while on the surface it's comically farcical, it's also (literally) deadly serious. — Summary of the State of the Worm http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/13/wannacrypt_ransomware_worm/ Contains this tidbit:- We're told 16 NHS health trusts in the UK were taken out by the malware. Prime Minister Theresa May said the code "has crippled" Brit hospitals, and that Blighty's surveillance nerve center GCHQ is looking into the outbreak. The NHS is thought to have been particularly hard hit because of the antiquated nature of its IT infrastructure. A large part of the organization's systems are still using Windows XP, which is no longer supported by Microsoft, and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt cancelled a pricey support package in 2015 as a cost-saving measure. Cancelled in May 2015. £5.5m https://twitter.com/withorpe/status/863088159961210880 * facepalm * Please make Jeremy Hunt (and the Tories) pay for this particular piece of madness in the next election.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Updates+Ruben Mepschen What commercials? Adblock means I don't see any. — This
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Updateshttps://mastodon.cloud/@jbond — This
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesFacebook is fine. If you put the effort in to ruthlessly trim your friends list and block undesirables. The communities are just as good as those on G+ but get considerably more traction. I don't really understand why people dislike Facebook. Twitter though ... — This
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Commented on post by Julian Bond+David Crosswell Easy to say. Rather harder to actually do. Across the whole of NHS, Telefonica, Russian Federation, etc, etc, etc. If people had auto-updated their windows, and if they'd updated OS version, and if they'd paid for extendd support of obsolete versions we wouldn't be in this mess. But it gets worse. If the NSA hadn't hoarded the exploit and then had it stolen. And on and on. — Summary of the State of the Worm http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/13/wannacrypt_ransomware_worm/ Contains this tidbit:- We're told 16 NHS health trusts in the UK were taken out by the malware. Prime Minister Theresa May said the code "has crippled" Brit hospitals, and that Blighty's surveillance nerve center GCHQ is looking into the outbreak. The NHS is thought to have been particularly hard hit because of the antiquated nature of its IT infrastructure. A large part of the organization's systems are still using Windows XP, which is no longer supported by Microsoft, and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt cancelled a pricey support package in 2015 as a cost-saving measure. Cancelled in May 2015. £5.5m https://twitter.com/withorpe/status/863088159961210880 * facepalm * Please make Jeremy Hunt (and the Tories) pay for this particular piece of madness in the next election.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitNo mention of Conservatives on this bus. So all related expenses are local to Mrs May's constituency campaign. So I hope she doesn't fall foul of the Electoral Commission restrictions on spending. — One for the #irony : the present "Conservative Battle Bus" is the one that was used by the Remain campaign Britain Stronger in Europe. (Someone compared the license plates.) One wonders if they checked the brakes. In case you wonder how that happens: that was Cameron's election bus in 2015, then lent to Remain, now repurposed as May's election bus.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeWhich 70s? 3 day week or winter of discontent. Ziggy or Punk. Red Lion Square or Southall. Isle of Wight Festival or Deeply Vale. — I agree that the Labour manifesto looks a bit 1970s-ish. But then I can't decide if the Tory manifesto smells more of the 1930s or of the 1870s.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Change+Mike DeSimone I guess you never got a christmas tree on the rack with a couple of bungees. ;) All my bicycles have a fixed rack and a basket on the back. 6 bottles of win and a 4 pack of beer, plus a bag of groceries. A rack-basket roughly the size of a supermarket hand basket is incredibly useful. — A Siemens-backed micro electric car could help reduce urban air pollution and congestion, but it’ll have to win over buyers first. #EV
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeThe solution to a lot of <5 mile journeys is an electric bicycle. But. You get hot and sweaty, cold and wet. It's a little more dangerous in traffic than a car. And we still don't have good solutions against theft. So while they work for some people and should be encouraged, perhaps there's a case for this next step up. There is also an intermediate step in Electric PTWs, mopeds, scooters and such like. These have their own problems similar to bicycles but with added licensing and usage restrictions. — A Siemens-backed micro electric car could help reduce urban air pollution and congestion, but it’ll have to win over buyers first. #EV
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeTime and scale. We'll add another 1TtC to the atmosphere before we work out how to capture and sequester 1MtC. — Think of it as a 'carbon conundrum': scientists pro and con on the promised potential - and the possible pitfalls - of soaking up CO2 and permanently sequestering it to help stave off the most dire global warming impacts. #CarbonSequestration #NegativeEmissions #CCS
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeTime to re-launch the G-Wiz using 2017 battery technology. I'm really in favour of small quads, trikes and PTWs with a top speed of maybe 50mph for general use around cities, towns and country roads. It's a market that France in particular has understood for a long time. The big problem in the UK is mixing these with Buses, HGVs, white van man, giant SUVs. And that's before we get into the parking and charging problem for people with no off street space. — A Siemens-backed micro electric car could help reduce urban air pollution and congestion, but it’ll have to win over buyers first. #EV
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeTime, Space and Scale: We're not good at them. I suspect the real reason we've seen no evidence is because space is big. And yes, I know astronomers, cosmologists, ETI researchers, physicists are incredibly clever and the current state of the art is totes amazeballs. — Well, these Fermi paradox hypotheses are getting a bit out of hand.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Social Problems and Social ChangeScary but entertaining Tweetstorm https://twitter.com/drvox/status/862369304947437568 The question of what Trump really believes has no answer because he doesn't believe anything. He has no theory of mind. — Um, should we be worried about this? I mean, really worried? Because I'm starting to think maybe we should be...
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexithttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3685069/Glamour-model-Teresa-forced-deny-going-Britain-s-PM-receiving-dozens-tweets-congratulating-her.html — Stuff I don't want to watch.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesIt seems to be worse on posts with lots of comments, or maybe >5 comments. I've also tried playing with the smooth scroll settings in Chrome in case that's a cause, but that's not having any effect yet. — G+ Desktop web javascript problems. Open comments. Scrolling through the comments is really really slow. Start to add a comment or edit an existing comment and cursor movement is really, really slow In both cases, it's like there's a whole load of code happening on every key press. Ugh. This is all really painful and reducing my involvement. I'm using the latest Chrome on a fast Windows 10 PC. Is this just me or are other people seeing this as well? Yes. I've left feedback about it.
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Commented on post by Gerhard Schadl in Motorcycles - Modified+Raphaël Mentrel battery, water bottle, ECU, horn, indicators, number plate, rear lights. Nicely insane though. — Pierobon Ducati Panigale 1199. That's a real naked streetfighter ...
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Social Problems and Social ChangeA quick reminder. https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/ — Um, should we be worried about this? I mean, really worried? Because I'm starting to think maybe we should be...
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Commented on post by Rhys Taylor in Politics, Religion, Morality+Rhys Taylor Where is this overwhelming opposition ? He's been elected by the party, twice, with an overwhelming majority. What annoys me about Corbyn is not so much him, it's the inability of the party machinery to get control of the media. It doesn't matter if Corbyn is good or bad, if the media don't report anything they do, or when they do it's only about the in-fighting within the labour party or about how "unelectable" they are. There's an irony about the PLP expelling people for wanting to promote tactical voting. When 2/3 of the party apparently want the party to lose in order to expel the left and preserve the Blair vision of a a red Tory party. And don't get me started on "Labour Heartlands" and what they may or may not want. The big, BIG problem is the gap between what the new, young pro-Europe members want and what the old, left, anti-Europe voters want. — I repeat : this man is dangerous. Seriously frickin' dangerous. In the run-up to Tuesday's speech, Mr Corbyn insisted he would stay on as Labour leader even if the party loses at the general election. He told BuzzFeed: "I was elected leader of this party and I'll stay leader of this party."
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexitps. I understand lots of places have a problem trying to work out how to deal with temporary migrant workers, but TFA is about the UK and not Alabama. And "uncontrolled immigration from the EU" "Taking our jobs and fleecing our benefits system" are hot triggers right now in the UK. And that vile and unrealistic racism is arguably what Brexit and the current general election are all about. If you look at the most extreme areas that were most pro UKIP/BNP/EDL and most Pro-Brexit, they were often farming areas like Kent, Essex, Norfolk, Lincolnshire. But it's not the farmers and land owners who voted that way. It's the local people who don't want to work in farming because it's a shitty job. And who hate the incomers who are chasing those shitty jobs. Look at the poster example of somewhere like Boston. Actual farmers are a tiny proportion of the voting population as are the people who actually work on the farms. — So parts of the Tory party believe that its OK if food prices go up, big time. Because thats whats bound to happen if seasonal immigrants stay home.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeWell it is idealised and not to be taken too literally. Look at the other blocks. France+Spain+Portugal? Like that's going to work any better than UK+Eire. More seriously, English speaking UK+Eire as a trading region, within which are independent UK and Eire, within which are independent/devolved, NI, Scotland, Wales, N England, S England, London. Why not? That doesn't mean a "United Kingdom and Ireland" with all the difficulties that would entail. — Here, have some thought experiment.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+David S True. However, remember the monster raving loony party wanted to do this. All the islands off the west coast of Europe (including Iceland, Greenland and the Faeroes) should merge, be renamed the Rainbow Isles and declare independence from the rest of the world. — Here, have some thought experiment.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitNigel Lawson is a real piece of work. Note that he is a major player in GWPF (Global Warming Policy Foundation), a major climate denial group. https://www.desmogblog.com/nigel-lawson https://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-policy-foundation So, Right Wing, Racist, Climate denier, Brexit, Pro-business and "free" trade, professional politician and right wing journalist. Deeply embedded in the 55 Tufton Street network. A terrible Tory Chancellor who is now permanently in the House of Lords. Friend of Rupert Murdoch. Can you see a pattern here? — So parts of the Tory party believe that its OK if food prices go up, big time. Because thats whats bound to happen if seasonal immigrants stay home.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeI can't comment in the original so I'll have to comment here. Where I'll quickly repeat a previous position. The linked, more finely divided, map includes Turkey. If you include Turkey and Euro-Russia, then I think you should include N Africa and the Mediterranean Middle East. We have shared culture and trade going back to at least Roman, and Greek times and actually well before. Let Carthage Join Europe! — Here, have some thought experiment.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Good NewsThe macaroon is mightier than the pen. https://twitter.com/CruickshankPaul/status/861357122830970881 — Apparently this guy won yesterday, against a far-right canidate. +Benjamin Smith tells me that Tumblr is full of "third time's the charm" memes and self-congratulatory posts in French -- which we both agree are well-earned. I remember when France criticized the US over invading Iraq, circa 2003, and suddenly french fries became "freedom fries". We actually had to turn around and walk out of a Fuddrucker's when we saw they had gone along with that. It may be informative to see if there's a similar reaction to this (it's basically a direct snub to Trump)... or if the right-jingoists are starting to lose their enthusiasm for their Dear Leader.
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Commented on post by House Music in House MusicLoFi - Knackered (1080p, Moodhut, Lobster, Shall Not Fade). Closely followed by the Nu-Jazz Loungecore (Rhythm Section International). — What's your favorite House Music style?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPRace 4. Well done George! 2011 Le Mans, Rossi 3rd, 7s in front of Lorenzo 4th, 5th in championship on 47 2017 Jerez, Lorenzo 3rd, 24s in front of Rossi 10th, 9th in championship on 28 https://www.facebook.com/deargeorge99/photos/a.1396074200426574.1073741828.1396023613764966/1500963586604301/?type=3&theater And third place is pretty great. It is exactly like winning, but a bigger number and so it is maybe even better. Just like it was great and better learning the Yellow Puta rode backwards on his old Yamaha donkey to finish in stupid tenth place! Ha! Only old has-been losers finish in 10th place. Winners finish in third! — Jorge Lorenzo vs Vale Rossi after Qatar 2011 Rossi 7th 16.4s behind 1st (Stoner) 13s behind Lorenzo Scored 139 in the season in total 2017 Jorge Lorenzo 11th 20.5s behind 1st (Vinales) 18.6 behond Rossi Currently on 5 points Dear George. It's going to be a long old season.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitA Tory landslide majority would be a “disaster for the NHS”. There are half a dozen Tory politicians I really wish would get un-elected in the coming election. And he's near the top of the list. — 'A failure to secure a good exit deal would be a “disaster for the NHS” the health secretary said. “We’ve got 27 countries lined up against us,” Hunt told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show.' I don't understand. I thought the NHS would get an extra £350m/week after Brexit? Also: Tories blaming everyone else, including 27 other countries, for their fuck-ups.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIf the wages you're paying mean that locals can't afford them because of the loss of benefits. Or can only afford them with benefits by playing he system. And so the only people you can get to do the job at that price are immigrants.Then you're not running a business. You're running a government sponsored charity. — Some thoughts on immigrants, and that they seem to do the jobs that no one else wants to do. (Also, have a look at the thoughtful comments at the OP.)
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Commented on post by Brian O'Neill in Mixology 🍸And Bearded Hipster bartenders should have to wear beard snoods. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=beard+snood&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1moa3ld3TAhWKKsAKHfw7AvIQ_AUICygC&biw=1707&bih=840 — Should bartenders have to use tongs for condiments? http://shouldbearule.com/rule/Bartenders-should-use-tongs-for-garnishes
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThe BNP/EDL aren't dead, they became UKIP. Vote Nasty! Vote Tory! — Not far off the mark, I am afraid. Basically, UKIP is running the UK government.
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Commented on post by Anesu Mutsau in Climate ChangeNote. I'm not suggesting Hawking doesn't understand physics! But maybe Scale. And I think there's an implied "Except we can't" in his story. It's some Swiftian satire, not a real answer. And others have said, perhaps we should solve colonising the Gobi desert and Mariana trench before we try colonising Mars.
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Commented on post by Anesu Mutsau in Climate ChangePerhaps Stephen Hawking should learn a little Newtonian Physics. Especially as he held the same post as Isaac Newton for a while. We live at the bottom of a deep gravity well. And space is unbelievably hostile to Homo Sapiens meat sacks. We're not going anywhere. And I'm sad to say that the giant pyramid of civilisation required to propel a few people at it's tip into space probably won't be around for that much longer. It may well happen again though. In a few million years or so. seeAlso: https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/694wrh/stephen_hawking_warns_we_have_100_years_to_leave/
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitHave you noticed people have been going round Tescos removing the O from the HellO sign by the doors. https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/67mrcl/if_hell_was_british_what_would_it_look_like/ — David Davies, accidentally not wrong.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitPlease help us Corby-One. You're our only hope. — And now go and find the satire! "There were dark forces at work, she said gravely. The lights were going out all over England. She had tried to be reasonable with the enemy by telling them exactly on what terms Britain was prepared to leave the EU. But the untrustworthy Johnny Foreigner had just thrown it back at her. The continental press had deliberately misrepresented her plans for intergalactic domination. Stick-It-Up-Your-Juncker had dared to say he thought the negotiations might involve negotiation."
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt's the phony war, right? Our brave pensioners from the Costa del Sol will be back by Christmas. I'm still giggling hysterically at all this because it doesn't seem serious yet. Maybe around 1 June, the hysteria will turn to panic as reality becomes unavoidable. — And now go and find the satire! "There were dark forces at work, she said gravely. The lights were going out all over England. She had tried to be reasonable with the enemy by telling them exactly on what terms Britain was prepared to leave the EU. But the untrustworthy Johnny Foreigner had just thrown it back at her. The continental press had deliberately misrepresented her plans for intergalactic domination. Stick-It-Up-Your-Juncker had dared to say he thought the negotiations might involve negotiation."
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Commented on postThe downside is that the molecule is so small it wants to escape and has e tendency to leak away. It embrittles steel so needs specialist materials to contain it. It needs to be stored under pressure so efficiency is bad because so much energy has to go into compressing it. It's low energy per kilo compared with liquid hydrocarbons so you need a lot of it. And on and on. https://thinkprogress.org/elon-musk-is-right-hydrogen-is-an-incredibly-dumb-car-fuel-d0f37a4c9bee
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI think I'd go for "The Putin of No.10". The big problem with ex-home secretaries and ex-heads of security is they know where all the bodies are buried and whose got a skeleton in their closet. The problem is not that she's incompetent. It's that she's a bully who's always got her own way. Head Girl got promoted to Headmistress but still thinks she can push everyone around and be adored by the new intake. — 'The Erdoğan of Downing Street' Ouch.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitTake back control. Make Britain Groß again. — A view on London, from the other side of the channel. Also of interest: the Londong property market has practically imploded. If you buy a place, the agent now gives you a car for free. Or a free furniture package, if thats your thing. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/may/03/buy-a-home-get-a-car-free-offers-galore-as-london-estate-agents-struggle-to-sell
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Commented on post by glyn moodyTactical voting is not ideologically unsound. — "key to success was to persuade young progressive voters to register and take part in the ballot on 8 June" - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/04/trudeau-backer-endorses-gina-millers-tactical-voting-campaign #GE17
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Commented on post by CircleCount in CircleCount UpdatesWell. What a waste of time Topics turned out to be. Is the circle count crawler still running? Is it still 162 topics? — 162 Google+ Topics A few hours ago Google+ launched Topics and we have created some scripts to collect all topics we can find. Here is the result: http://www.circlecount.com/topics/ On this page you can find always all topics our crawler has found with a link to the topic page on Google+. It would be interesting to know how these topics have been selected by Google+, e.g there is a topic for "Cats" and one for "Cats and Dogs" but no topic for "Dogs"? ;) What's your favorite topic?
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Commented on post by Robert Diber in Google+ UpdatesWell. What a waste of time that turned out to be.
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Commented on postHydrogen is such a terrible way to store energy. And it really makes no sense as a vehicle fuel. The oil troll is a troll. Just ignore it.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+Hartmut Noack real new stuff is there any? Um, Seriously? OK. Work your way through these two. http://thequietus.com/articles/21429-albums-of-the-year-2016 http://whitenoisemusic.co.uk/best-tracks-2016/ If you need more try this. https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/5FrwApzczZx Then find something a bit world and off the wall. Like Islam Chipsy (Egyptian Electro-Chaabi) or something from Mali, or Durban, or South America. — 'One grim day (when youth is over) you find that new music gets on your nerves.'
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeWhat a load of age-ist bollocks! What if your musical tastes don't get frozen? And at the age of 60 you find yourself in a sweaty nightclub or a festival crowd dancing just like you always did but to Lofi house surrounded by 20-some-things? So what if 40 years ago you were doing the same thing but to dub reggae? The problem is not finding new music. It's trying not to leer too much and embarrass people by being "that guy". I think what really happens is that it's really common to get a bit obsessed by music between about 15 and 25. But after that most people develop lots of other interests and the music obsession falls away or just becomes less important. The rest of TFA feels like the usual rant about how music today is rubbish. Well actually 90% of music THEN was rubbish too. So if music excites you, go and find the good stuff. ps. guy in hat and shades looks cool and looks like he's having a good time. I think the expression is just because he's got a bit of festival falafel stuck in his teeth. — 'One grim day (when youth is over) you find that new music gets on your nerves.'
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Commented on post by CircleCount in CircleCount Updates+CircleCount Communities (of interest)? I love 'em! They seem to have an optimum size and granularity. "Music" or "Motorcycles" is too big. Anything with less than 5 active members will fade and die. Which since 90% lurk means 50 to 500 members seems optimum. I don't think we went far enough with user generated tags. http://del.icio.us and http://last.fm almost got there but both of them hit brick walls due to stupid commercialism. They're quite tricky to do both from data modelling and UI. But http://last.fm's music classification based on tags was really powerful. I'd love to see somebody have another proper go at making tags work. — 162 Google+ Topics A few hours ago Google+ launched Topics and we have created some scripts to collect all topics we can find. Here is the result: http://www.circlecount.com/topics/ On this page you can find always all topics our crawler has found with a link to the topic page on Google+. It would be interesting to know how these topics have been selected by Google+, e.g there is a topic for "Cats" and one for "Cats and Dogs" but no topic for "Dogs"? ;) What's your favorite topic?
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Commented on post by CircleCount in CircleCount Updates+Lars Fosdal The DejaNews usenet archive eventually ended up at Google. You might well ask what the hell happened to it. — 162 Google+ Topics A few hours ago Google+ launched Topics and we have created some scripts to collect all topics we can find. Here is the result: http://www.circlecount.com/topics/ On this page you can find always all topics our crawler has found with a link to the topic page on Google+. It would be interesting to know how these topics have been selected by Google+, e.g there is a topic for "Cats" and one for "Cats and Dogs" but no topic for "Dogs"? ;) What's your favorite topic?
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Commented on post by CircleCount in CircleCount UpdatesI see we're still circling around the trade offs between search, curation, tagging, metadata, flat vs hierarchical classifications. Topics is curated by Google. Apparently by hand. Using a frankly bizarre schema. There's no obvious way for content creators to influence the topic list or contents of each topic. Collections is author-curated and unique to an individual. The problem is if we both use similar tags, there's no way to combine our efforts. Hashtags and search work. As long as Search works and people re-use common hashtags. Both of which are a problem on G+ — 162 Google+ Topics A few hours ago Google+ launched Topics and we have created some scripts to collect all topics we can find. Here is the result: http://www.circlecount.com/topics/ On this page you can find always all topics our crawler has found with a link to the topic page on Google+. It would be interesting to know how these topics have been selected by Google+, e.g there is a topic for "Cats" and one for "Cats and Dogs" but no topic for "Dogs"? ;) What's your favorite topic?
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Commented on post by Adrian Fraser in Mixology 🍸Had real trouble holding it down to 10. And the classics are all a bit obvious! ;)
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Commented on post by Adrian Fraser in Mixology 🍸Hmmm!?! 10 cocktails that you should memorise, be able to make fast and accurately for other people, and drink fairly often. Rum - Mojito - Daiquiri Gin - Martini - Negroni Bourbon/Rye - Manhatten - Mint Julep Tequila - Margarita Vodka - Bloody Mary Wine - Bellini - Adonis Adjustments? Additions?
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Commented on post by Adrian Fraser in Mixology 🍸I think there are two approaches to Margaritas. The first is the low rent, pitcher and slush puppy. Great for getting a large party drunk quickly. The other is to treat it like a proper cocktail like the related Daiquiri and Gimlet. Don't shake too much with whole rocks, not crushed ice so there's not too much dilution. Serve in a martini glass. Maybe even float some raw tequila across the top. Use quality ingredients and work on subtly adjusting the 3 spirit, 2 citrus, 1 syrup/triplesec/cointreau proportions. Maybe with a minimally salted rim with Himalayan salt. In my experience, Margaritas and Tequila are ALWAYS a bad idea that you regret later. But that doesn't mean you should avoid them!
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeThere's an LC engined road bike in there somewhere. Have you ever heard of people building such a thing? TZ rolling chassis, YPVS engine, as a road bike. — Maxton Yamaha TZ350 (replica / parts rebuild)
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Commented on post by CircleCount in CircleCount UpdatesThe thing I still want in this area is global scale collections instead of individual scale. Where multiple people can contribute to a shared collection. Of course that would introduce a spam problem! — 162 Google+ Topics A few hours ago Google+ launched Topics and we have created some scripts to collect all topics we can find. Here is the result: http://www.circlecount.com/topics/ On this page you can find always all topics our crawler has found with a link to the topic page on Google+. It would be interesting to know how these topics have been selected by Google+, e.g there is a topic for "Cats" and one for "Cats and Dogs" but no topic for "Dogs"? ;) What's your favorite topic?
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Commented on post by CircleCount in CircleCount Updates+Carter Gibson You ALMOST got them all Is that a joke or more or less accurate. Because if that really is almost all of them, the topic choices are somewhat bizarre. But then given that I've been shown some of the more bizarre ones that have zero relevance to me, perhaps that is a fairly complete list. But then that suggests that this whole thing is hand curated. Which I find somewhat astonishing. That's not exactly "google-scale". — 162 Google+ Topics A few hours ago Google+ launched Topics and we have created some scripts to collect all topics we can find. Here is the result: http://www.circlecount.com/topics/ On this page you can find always all topics our crawler has found with a link to the topic page on Google+. It would be interesting to know how these topics have been selected by Google+, e.g there is a topic for "Cats" and one for "Cats and Dogs" but no topic for "Dogs"? ;) What's your favorite topic?
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate Change"Global warming is a crime against humanity" It's not fair. Global civilisation gave us all this stuff and now it's hurting us. Never mind. The whale fall will be gone soon. For a "Soon" measured in 100s of years. — It is never easy to spot a crime against humanity as it unfolds, but when we are worried we have roo speak up!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt seems to me she's visibly ageing in front of our eyes. I bet she thought it would be easy. But it turns out it's a thankless, brutal job that nobody in their right mind would want. And definitely not in their 60s. There's a world of difference between being Home Sec in your 50s to carrying it all and going on the campaign trail at 60. — "Describing her leadership as “stable” eight times, the Prime Minister said the Tories would help Scotland “flourish” as much as other parts of the UK." And all that in a place in the middle of the woods, at a rally that only her supporters were allowed to attend, with no pesky journalist asking questions. And the venue was booked for a "children's party". Poor Theresa, needing her safe space.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedIt was an era when I used to read all the Fast-Bikes and even paid money for a couple of VHS tapes. Rob Frost, Gary Mason, Sean Emmett, Shakey Byrne. This happened on one of their legendary trips to the South of France (allegedly). The guy with the camera had run down the road and stopped so that Gary Mason could pull a hoon wheelie away from the toll booth. It made for a great photo. Almost as good as the Perf Bikes, Ronnie and Gus (RIP) doing the Gold Wing wheelie. Magazines, eh? Those were the days. — The always underrated ZX-9R. ~ When new, up against the first bike of the new era Yamaha, the R1 and Suzuki's fantastic GSX-R1000 K1 and even Honda's CBR929RR, the Kawasaki was seen as a bit old fashioned and not up to scratch. However, with age, many are starting to understand just what a wonderful road bike the ZX-9R both was and remains. Comfort levels no rider of the Yamaha or Suzuki could ever imagine let alone expect. A stunning, linear engine and one of the best throttle to butterfly connections I have ever felt. The ZX-9R is a great bike and, due to these old perceptions, a great bargain.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedTitanium exhaust. Which makes it the second model? Gary Mason, I think, pulling away from a French autoroute toll booth. https://cdn.dukevideo.com/images/productimages/1/1592.jpg — The always underrated ZX-9R. ~ When new, up against the first bike of the new era Yamaha, the R1 and Suzuki's fantastic GSX-R1000 K1 and even Honda's CBR929RR, the Kawasaki was seen as a bit old fashioned and not up to scratch. However, with age, many are starting to understand just what a wonderful road bike the ZX-9R both was and remains. Comfort levels no rider of the Yamaha or Suzuki could ever imagine let alone expect. A stunning, linear engine and one of the best throttle to butterfly connections I have ever felt. The ZX-9R is a great bike and, due to these old perceptions, a great bargain.
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in Motorcycle RoadracingI'm going to my sofa! In previous years I've gone drinking the night before in the Egerton Arms and then sleep in the wood by Coach Rd. But its raining. And quite a ride from London. The Tarporley-Nantwich-Stone-Uttoxeter rd and then Donington to Stamford roads are fun though. Despite more and more camera vans on a bank holiday weekend. — Who's going tomorrow?
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Commented on post by CircleCount in CircleCount UpdatesIt's a shame topics have obfuscated URLs. REST principles would use http://plus.google.com/u/0/discover/The+Global+Economy not http://plus.google.com/u/0/discover/UqMclB — 162 Google+ Topics A few hours ago Google+ launched Topics and we have created some scripts to collect all topics we can find. Here is the result: http://www.circlecount.com/topics/ On this page you can find always all topics our crawler has found with a link to the topic page on Google+. It would be interesting to know how these topics have been selected by Google+, e.g there is a topic for "Cats" and one for "Cats and Dogs" but no topic for "Dogs"? ;) What's your favorite topic?
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Commented on post by Robert Diber in Google+ UpdatesIt's a shame topics have obfuscated URLs. REST principles would use http://plus.google.com/u/0/discover/The+Global+Economy not http://plus.google.com/u/0/discover/UqMclB
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Commented on post by Robert Diber in Google+ UpdatesWTF is this "Nightcore" thing that Google keeps trying to recommend to me? https://plus.google.com/u/0/discover/UqMclB
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingHas there been any word of what broke? — To finish first ....... first you have to finish I like JR65. I truth .... I really like Johnny Rea. I think (not only) is he an amazing racer, but he comes across as a really good bloke. However The fantastic last lap battle between the +MOTOCARD +Monster Energy +Kawasaki Motors rider & the very likable Davies riding for the +Aruba.it Racing - Ducati squad never happened. I was gutted to see Chaz's Paggy-Nelly-Thingy break down on the start of the final lap. Such a shame. No point me writing a load of rubbish when I can share proper writing. Race One WSB Report via +Jared Earle & +Jared Earle C/O +David Emmett's Moto Matters dot com : https://motomatters.com/results/2017/04/29/2017_assen_world_superbike_race_one.html Discussion regarding the penalty's & troubles again over at MM dot com via "Kent Brockman" (Simpsons). : https://motomatters.com/analysis/2017/04/29/2017_assen_worldsbk_saturday_notes.html _________________________________________________ #WSB #WSB2017 +WorldSBK +WorldSBK #Assen +TT Circuit Assen #RaceOne #Superbike +MOTOCARD +Monster Energy Girls +Monster Energy +Kawasaki Motors +Aruba.it Racing - Ducati +Yamaha Racing +Cresent Yamaha +Barni Racing +BMW +BMW Motorrad #MV #SMR +Aprilia Official #TenKate +Honda Pro Racing NO +Team Suzuki Racing - Shame on you. NO +Erik Buell Racing - Shame on nobody buying them.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedWhen I see these, the NC30, the NC23 and NC29, all I can think of is broken fairing tabs and hundreds of tiny screws, all of different sizes. — Honda NC35 rebuild... ... Yum!
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Commented on post by CircleCount in Google+ UpdatesThank you for the big list. I don't understand why Google didn't do this as it's such an obvious function. I'm also puzzled how they decide what 6 to show an individual user as the 6 I get have been pretty useless so far and don't seem to reflect my interests, posts, comments or community memberships. And there's no obvious way to say, "Give me another 6" — What do you think about this update and the new Google+ Feature Topics? Is it "just" a better UI for the search results or have you found already new profiles / collections to follow that you would have never found? The first sentence is also pretty interesting: "Millions of people use Google+ to connect around the things they’re interested in." We would love to get some updated official Google+ numbers again ;) Update: Check out here all topics: https://plus.google.com/+CircleCount/posts/RxMVJn34hJG
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Commented on post by Robert Diber in Google+ UpdatesDear Googles. I'm not interested in Black and White Photography. And what's more, there's nothing in my public or private posts, comments, emails, group memberships, chat history, places visited, search history, browser bookmarks, follows, followers, circles, contacts, blog, android phone usage, exercise regime, medical records, age, gender, home address, sexual orientation, ad clicks or anything else you track to suggest I might be. How do they decide what topics to encourage you to visit? I am not algorithmic. I'm a free man. So, Dear Googles, I'd leave feedback. But ... I'm not really in the business of helping you to try and improve your stuff any more.
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Commented on post by Robert Diber in Google+ UpdatesIt's quite a puzzle why Google didn't produce this page themselves. It's what I would have done. I hate the way there's no obvious Topics home page. And that they use obfuscated URLs.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt's not that they agree with LePen, but that LePen agrees with them. And also vile racism, obvs. — So, an overwhelming majority of Leave voters would prefer a fascist as the next French president. Call it ignorance if you want to. Or call it something else.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Analysis and News About GoogleDeeply frustrating that it's a slow roll out. So we see all the hype, but can't kick the tyres. — Topics Rolled Out Officially on Google+ Another way to aggregate content on Google+ is now official. It'll be interesting to see how this unfolds over time. Depending on where it goes, it could be pretty interesting. HT +Selina Kyle.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitFor all of us. But especially if you're from Scotland.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitI feel like there's a certain amount of noise going on that this election is not about Brexit because that's a forgone conclusion but about actual policies. As if this is just another GE. And this is coming most strongly from Labour because they still can't square the circle of their supporter's Remain and their Heartland constituency's Leave. IMHO. This is wrong. It's absolutely about Brexit, and precious little else. In the previous election Brexit was just one of several factors, but not this time. — "The Tories are galvanised behind the idea that the only possible Brexit is the mysterious one that May will present to the country as a done deal some time in the future, and for which she wants her mandate up front. So, perversely, the UK will vote twice in as many years on leaving the EU, and most people will still be none the wiser about what that really involves." Well, because its not about Brexit. Its about power.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Dan Weese There's a difference between wanting to suck up to Americans. And wanting to actually be Americans. But then seeing as how they use the same spin doctors, media people, funding, etc, etc, I take the point that they might as well be. Regardless of that, analogies to do with politeness because guns doesn't play well with Brits. What you just saw was hackles rising, ever so politely. If you're not careful, I might get a little upset. — 'We want to lead the world in preventing tourism.' You're doing a fine job, Theresa.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitWe have to keep beating this drum. This election is about Brexit. Every vote against the Tories is a vote against Brexit (and nastiness). — An argument that the new election is, for all practical purposes, a 2nd referendum. (Star Wars imagery entirely on purpose.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit+Dan Weese Here in the UK, it's not the USA. Even Jaywick is not Appalachia. Blair, Brown, Cameron, Clegg, May are not Wannabe Americans. So please, enough with the American analogies. It's worse than that. — 'We want to lead the world in preventing tourism.' You're doing a fine job, Theresa.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIMHO. - The Tories have no plan and are being pulled all over the place by arrogant self serving bastards. Some of them (Farage, Mail/Sun) not even in the party or government. - Labour want to be anti-Brexit, but are afraid of losing the "Labour Heartlands" even though they barely exist any more. Their support is solidly Anti-Brexit, but they depend on a few constituencies that are pro-Brexit. Just like their pre-Brexit vagueness, this plan is an attempt to be both in public while working towards dropping Art50. We are screwed, whatever happens. But a change of government, perhaps even a minority Tory one where half a dozen key players lose their job, could mean dropping Art50. But whether we're in or out, It'll take 10-20 years to have much influence in Europe again. — So Labour has a plan, sorta. Its all a bit vague, but it does sound more realistic than anything the Tories came up with over the last 10 months.
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPDear George. What are you doing? http://www.bikeme.tv/index.php/category/blogs/ — Marquez takes 5 of 5 in Texas races, 11 of 11 US races, Vinales crahes out, Pedrosa on podium (Marc, Vale, Danny), Rossi leads the championship 1 #46 Valentino ROSSI Yamaha ITA 56 points 2 #25 Maverick VIÑALES Yamaha ITA 50 points 3 #93 Marc MARQUEZ Honda SPA 38 points 4 #04 Andrea Dovizioso Ducati SPA 30 points 5 #35 Cal Crutchlow Honda GBR 29 points ~~~ 13 #99 Jorge LORENZO Ducati SPA 12 points
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Commented on post by Nicodin BogdanNo mention of Abba or Bjork? IMHO Europe should be everything between the Artic and Sahara and between the Atlantic and Urals. So that includes all the countries bordering the Mediterranean and probably Greenland as well. We've got a long history of common trade, people and community going back before the Romans. People get uncomfortable about including Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Carthage though. And then there's the Eurovision Song Contest. — A random American view on Europe. It's pretty funny :)
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeThere's "Europe" as it is now. And there's europe as it has been back to at least the Roman Empire and before. The whole area from the Atlantic to the Urals and from the Sahara to the Arctic and all round the Mediterranean share a lot of common history, trade and community. And then there's the Eurovision Song Contest! — Accurate map of Europe is accurate.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeNo mention of Bjork or Abba? More seriously, I wish these maps would include N Africa. If it's going to go all the way out to the Caspian, it should go south to the Sahara. Also, no mention of Israel? On which, everything on that map and N of the Sahara should be in, or potentially could, join the EU. — Accurate map of Europe is accurate.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in InspirationBeware the holy fool. But what's the yappy dog? — Here is a recording of Alan Watts, talking about the Joker/Fool archetype and its relationship to the Bodhisattva. It's a really wonderful talk. I share it here because it reminds me so very, very much of the book, Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse. That book is one of my all-time favorite ones, and so I found it a little disorienting to hear these ideas, uttered by Watts many years before the publishing of that book in 1986. Watts himself died in 1973, though I can't seem to find any background on when, exactly, this particular talk was given. Did Carse lift the ideas for Finite and Infinite Games from those shared by Watts in this talk? Or is this just another example of similar notions popping up in different minds? I'm not sure we'll ever know, or that it even matters. Both are excellent. HT to +Grizwald Grim, for flagging this for me. +Mark Traphagen and +Leland LeCuyer, you will find this interesting, I think, given the connection to Finite and Infinite Games.
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Commented on post by Luft Hans in Climate Change+Brian Free market should be the deciding moderator of supply and demand. ... *sry I'm just against Keynesian economics. That's an ideology, not an argument. Globally, the energy companies get huge subsidies in the form of tax breaks, cheap capital for R&D, subsidised clean up costs, access to land and property rights and so on. The kick start subsidies of wind and solar are tiny in comparison. — 260,000 people working in renewable energy in the US. Anyone know how many are working in big oil? I mean the oil part, not gas stations, etc, so just extraction and transport. Natural gas? Coal?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPRace 3. 2011 Estoril, Rossi 5th, 4th in championship on 31 2017 Austin, Lorenzo 9th, 13th in championship on 12 — Jorge Lorenzo vs Vale Rossi after Qatar 2011 Rossi 7th 16.4s behind 1st (Stoner) 13s behind Lorenzo Scored 139 in the season in total 2017 Jorge Lorenzo 11th 20.5s behind 1st (Vinales) 18.6 behond Rossi Currently on 5 points Dear George. It's going to be a long old season.
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPLorenzo 9th. 13th in championship. 12 points. — Marquez takes 5 of 5 in Texas races, 11 of 11 US races, Vinales crahes out, Pedrosa on podium (Marc, Vale, Danny), Rossi leads the championship 1 #46 Valentino ROSSI Yamaha ITA 56 points 2 #25 Maverick VIÑALES Yamaha ITA 50 points 3 #93 Marc MARQUEZ Honda SPA 38 points 4 #04 Andrea Dovizioso Ducati SPA 30 points 5 #35 Cal Crutchlow Honda GBR 29 points ~~~ 13 #99 Jorge LORENZO Ducati SPA 12 points
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedI remember seeing a line of them in my local Kawasaki dealer with their free steering damper and Akrapovic can. Their reputation meant that only the crazies would buy one so they had to add a sweetener. — Gen 1 baby, yeah! ~ the gen 1 ZX10Rs (and the slightly more polished gen 3s) remain my favourite sports bike. This is despite the fact that all new bikes would beat it round a track and allow you a lot of safety net (either electronic or mechanical) still nothing provides outright thrills quite like these. When I got my first gen 1 ZX10R I also stopped riding with other people; this bike wills you, wants you, needs you to ride like a prick. I had to do this in private! Long may mad Kawasakis live!
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate ChangeJohn Brunner - Stand on Zanzibar - The Sheep Look Up - Shockwave Rider
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Commented on post by John BaezI'm seeing a lot of apple and oranges comparisons in these discussions. - Twitter, Mastodon. = Microblogging - Wordpress, Blogger, Medium = Longform - All the hundreds of chat systems. Skype to Whatsapp - Reddit, phpBB, drupal, livejournal = community of interest Discussion forums And then there's - Facebook and G+ that try to do it all. Facebook has problems, notably with privacy and search. But it's UI and general usefulness are hugely better than G+. Posts, Comments, Circles, Groups, Events, direct messaging, group messaging, just work and produce engagement. — Bye-bye, Google+ — but what next? Google+ is sliding downhill. A couple years ago my posts would garner comments from lots of smart people, leading to long and deep discussions. These days only a few stalwarts remain — a skeleton crew. I've copied most of my posts here to my website and blog. I mainly post here out of inertia: for certain purposes, I haven't found anything better yet. As for the reasons, I agree with +Gideon Rosenblatt's analysis. Also read the many comments on his post! But the more important question is: what to do now? Instead of whining about our masters, we should be our own masters — and unleash our creative energies! A bottom-up approach, run by all of us, could be better than top-down corporate control. A diverse, flexible federation could be better than a single unified platform. Has anyone here tried Mastodon yet? Mastodon is a free, open-source social network. A decentralized alternative to commercial platforms, it avoids the risks of a single company monopolizing your communication. Pick a server that you trust — whichever you choose, you can interact with everyone else. Anyone can run their own Mastodon instance and participate in the social network seamlessly. You can check it out here: https://mastodon.social/about
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Analysis and News About Google"Standards". Remember when XMPP with voice and video extensions were going to sort out the expanding mess of proprietary chat systems? And how Google were on board with sponsoring the open source development of XMPP with reference implementations and federated systems. And how that was going to blow the recently started and rapidly developing Skype out of the water. 13 years later ... — Given that Google+ is now housed within the G Suite organizational structure, I think it's useful to to see where Hangouts' next iterations, two new apps, Hangouts Meet and Hangouts Chat, are evolving. They're also part of G Suite. HT +Yifat Cohen and +Holger Alexi
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modified+1 for the free Ohlins steering dampers — Gen 1 baby, yeah! ~ the gen 1 ZX10Rs (and the slightly more polished gen 3s) remain my favourite sports bike. This is despite the fact that all new bikes would beat it round a track and allow you a lot of safety net (either electronic or mechanical) still nothing provides outright thrills quite like these. When I got my first gen 1 ZX10R I also stopped riding with other people; this bike wills you, wants you, needs you to ride like a prick. I had to do this in private! Long may mad Kawasakis live!
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitHmmm. It's more complicated than that. Several abstentions by not leaving their seats. The SNP abstained en bloc. She needed 434 (2/3 of all seats) and got 522. So actually an SNP-Labour agreement could have easily prevented the election and forced a constitutional crisis. I can't help thinking Labour missed a trick here. — The Intercept gets the headline right. Indeed, this is the Captain of the Titanic, asking for vote of confidence just before the ship hits the iceberg. Near the end of the article, there is also an interesting analysis how this might terribly backfire. Remember, both major parties are split along the middle in this issue.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, Schmexit12 of the 13 MPs who voted against an early general election. Clockwise from top left: Michelle Thomson, Ronnie Campbell, Fiona Mactaggart, Paul Farrelly, Graham Stringer, Alasdair McDonnell, Ann Clwyd, Liz McInnes, Jim Fitzpatrick, Dennis Skinner, Clive Lewis, Natalie McGarry. The 13th was Northern Irish MP Lady Hermon http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/here-13-mps-who-voted-10255696 — The Intercept gets the headline right. Indeed, this is the Captain of the Titanic, asking for vote of confidence just before the ship hits the iceberg. Near the end of the article, there is also an interesting analysis how this might terribly backfire. Remember, both major parties are split along the middle in this issue.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitIt's on then. From the Grauniad, MPs vote to allow early election by majority of 509 MPs have voted for an early election by 522 votes to 13 - a majority of 509. That is well above the two-thirds majority needed under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. So the election is going ahead on 8 June. — The Intercept gets the headline right. Indeed, this is the Captain of the Titanic, asking for vote of confidence just before the ship hits the iceberg. Near the end of the article, there is also an interesting analysis how this might terribly backfire. Remember, both major parties are split along the middle in this issue.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+Rhys Taylor This. With Theresa May and the other current Tory leaders, what you see is what you get. There is no hidden clever agenda. There's just some deeply unpleasant people using the circumstances they find themselves in for personal power and profit. And pursuing it via a deeply unpleasant authoritarian approach taught to them by their background and upbringing. It's hard to tell if there's any self awareness, empathy or knowledge of the lives of the people they govern at all, at all. I think the Labour party is finished (I'm a member) because it cannot rationalise and integrate the relatively left wing Corbyn (Benn) wing with the relatively right wing Blair, New Labour wing. Corbyn came to power with a landslide victory because people were sick of the evils of New Labour as much as they're sick of the modern nasty Tory party. But Corbyn can't win anything without getting the whole Labour party on side. And his wing have been completely unable to deal with the 2017 media. So the two wings of the Labour party are tearing each other apart while media stand cheering if they even report it. We really badly need a dose of cooperative socialism as things get increasingly hard. But Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Farage, the Mail/Express/Guardian/BBC/etc and so on have pulled the Overton window so far to the right that it may be impossible. I blame all those immigrants for the price of courgettes in Waitrose. And even cheap lager has gone up in price. £4.60 for 4 Stella or KroniBs! What's that all about? :( — Mmmmhh..... so the £ is up a bit, and the FT believes that this is so because May can use the election to neutralize the right-wing crackpots in her party. I suppose there is some truth in that. With a slim minority, the extremist can always threaten to launch a rebellion such that the leading party loses the majority. (Yes, cutting of their nose etc etc. Extremists don't want to win. They want to burn down the house.) But with a better consolidated majority, May can just tell the fruitcakes to fuck off. https://www.ft.com/content/0a85a8c0-2427-11e7-a34a-538b4cb30025
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege+Joerg Fliege True, the thread starts as being about human colonisation but it discusses many of the same problems. Navigation, propulsion, radiation, scale, time, space, gravity wells, interstellar dust and matter. These are all hard problems just getting out of the solar system, let alone 4 light years to the immediate neighbourhood. But that's just realism. None of that need get in the way of some entertaining speculation. When I first looked at the diagram, one thing stood out. >1000g peak deceleration. That would be quite tough to engineer for. — Going to Alpha Centauri AB in 75 years and to Proxima in another 46 years. The usual problem with interstellar light sail missions: you can get out of this solar system, but how do you break speed in the one you want to stop in. Alpha Centauri with its three stars A, B, and Proxima helps, as we can break and deflect our trajectory at A and B before getting into orbit around Proxima. The basic schedule is as follows: 1) In our solar system, do a close solar pass, open your light sail and sail away from the sun with 5.7% speed of light, in direction Alpha Centauri. 2) 75 years later, do a deflection maneuvre and Alpha Centauri A to break speed (depicted). 3) Do a further deceleration maneuvre at Alpha Centauri B. 4) Sail on to Proxima and get into orbit.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Analysis and News About GoogleBuzz was better than this. I didn't read all the comments because reading a comments stream is so painful. There's so much javascript in the page that this comment is painful to write. On Chrome on a top of the line Dell. If G+ fails and is closed it's now no great loss, because there's nothing much happening here. The centre of attention has moved to Facebook, Twitter (ugh!), Reddit, Mastodon. What's really sad is that G+ is not the only Google property being broken by bad UI, bad function and bad management. Youtube, Maps, News, Googlegroups. Even Search. And then there's the evil. As +Edward Morbius frequently points out. — Losing My Patience with Google+ Over the last six months or so I have watched as the quality of engagement here on Google+ has steadily declined. I have watched my follower count fluctuate and flatline. I have watched as people I used to engage with quite a bit here have left or dramatically scaled back their investments of time here. And yes, I have seen my own enthusiasm for investing time here wane significantly. I ask myself why and the answers are never as simple as I would like. In the end though, I have come to the sad conclusion that the real thing that is killing Google+ is just plain bad management. Lack of Attention One gets the real sense that many of the people now charged with running Google+ don't really understand what it was that once made this service so good in its early days. Indeed, one gets the sense that few of the people managing the service today even really use Google+. There are a few noteworthy exceptions like +Yonatan Zunger and +Leo Deegan, of course. I once made a circle with some 50+ Googlers who were once active here, and when I click on that stream, well, it feels a lot like a ghost town. +Bradley Horowitz, the VP in charge of Streams, Photos and Sharing, (which is where Google+ sits within the Google org structure) hasn't posted here on Google+ in half a year. Oh, and remember +Luke Wroblewski, who used to manage Google+ and would send out all those updates on the redesign? Well, he hasn't posted a single thing here in over 7 weeks (even though @lukew is quite active on Twitter). You know why? I just happened to check his LinkedIn profile, and he's apparently no longer managing Google+. I don't recall seeing any announcement of this change - just a sudden silence from the man perhaps most responsible for the UI makeover of Google+. Rudderless and Un-resourced That decision to remake the Google+ UI followed a long string of decisions going back to the separation of Photos and Hangouts, each of which have seriously hurt the service. I know there were probably some good reasons to move to the new, mobile-dominant (as opposed to "mobile-friendly") UI, but the lack of enduser empathy from deprecating all the old functionality really was pretty staggering. Much of it hasn't come back, and much of what has is so stripped down (e.g. Events, community moderation) that it isn't really that usable. As users, we have been asked to be patient and to have faith in the new strategy. Because I have been such a huge fan of Google+ for so long, that is exactly what I have done. I've been patient. I've believed. Believed that some big, cool fix was coming down the pike that would not only fix all the problems caused by the UI decision, but actually start innovating again with some cool new functionality. Yes, we got Collections, and they actually are quite useful even if they do need a lot of work still. But that's really about it. It's been a couple years now and the silence is stultifying. And finally, it hit me: Maybe this is it. Maybe Google has significantly curtailed its investments in this network. Maybe the management squandered the scarce resources it did have on a redesign that users weren't really even asking for. And maybe, just maybe, what we see right now is pretty much what we're going to get. User Investments And this is where I start to get really mad. Like many others here, I have invested a lot of personal time and energy building a following here. Like many of you, I have poured heart and soul into filling this place not just with great content, but also with a sense of community. I could have made those investments in Twitter or Facebook or reddit, but like many of you, I made them here. And now I'm starting to wonder how smart of a decision that was. All of this is particularly raw right now because I'm starting to play around a bit with the new distributed social network called Mastodon (https://mastodon.technology/@gideonro). It's far from perfect, but one thing that is very different is that it is open source and federated, rather than centrally owned and controlled. There are lots of implications to this different model. For one, there is lots of competition and innovation in the works because Mastodon sits on top of GNU Social and rests within a "Fediverse" of related, and interoperable, social network platforms. They are working on solutions that make it easy to export your content from one platform to another - to prevent lock-in. Also, there is a lot of visibility on exactly what investments are being made in the platform by various contributors. More importantly though, there is a very conscious understanding that the value of these networks is only partially the result of the software developers behind these solutions. Just as much of it lies with the end users. In the end, this is the thing that I am most frustrated about right now with Google+. End users have made this place every bit as much as the coders and product planners behind Google+. This isn't to in any way diminish the importance of those contributions. But what I do find frustrating is the way that Google seems to regularly dismiss the importance, and the real economic and social value, of end user contributions. This was true with Google Reader, and sadly it appears to be true with Google+. I'm still rooting for Google+ to turn things around, of course. I have a huge soft spot for this place, given all the great learning I've done here with my fellow travelers. But one thing is clear: I'm losing my patience, and I don't think I'm alone.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitEng-er-land! Eng-er-land! Earwigo! Earwigo! Earwigo! Given 2016, I think we'd better prepare for the worst. While being careful of what we wish for. — Oho!
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Commented on post by Julian BondProbably should refrain from saying any more. It's all moving too fast. — Well that's interesting. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/18/theresa-may-uk-general-election-8-june The Tory Gov needs a 2/3 majority to swing this under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act. My first reaction is that Labour should refuse this and hold the Tory feet to the fire for longer. And the second reaction is that all the current opposition parties should unite on an Anti-Brexit platform. This election is about Brexit, so let's make it about Brexit.
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeNext problem. Hitting interstellar dust at 0.057c. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high-frontier-redux.html — Going to Alpha Centauri AB in 75 years and to Proxima in another 46 years. The usual problem with interstellar light sail missions: you can get out of this solar system, but how do you break speed in the one you want to stop in. Alpha Centauri with its three stars A, B, and Proxima helps, as we can break and deflect our trajectory at A and B before getting into orbit around Proxima. The basic schedule is as follows: 1) In our solar system, do a close solar pass, open your light sail and sail away from the sun with 5.7% speed of light, in direction Alpha Centauri. 2) 75 years later, do a deflection maneuvre and Alpha Centauri A to break speed (depicted). 3) Do a further deceleration maneuvre at Alpha Centauri B. 4) Sail on to Proxima and get into orbit.
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Brexit, SchmexitThere's too many men Too many people Making too many problems And too much blame to go round Can't you see This is a land of confusion. Land of confusion - slight return. Yup. No shortage of blame. — There we have it, the Brexit blame cheat sheet. We should have a Bingo version any time now.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeOi! Nigel! Get in the sea! And stop spreading GWPF lies. It would have been better and more relevant with a picture of Theresa May. — Peter Paul Catterall looks at the relationship between the far right and the environment.Green politics is associated with the left these days, but after all, nationalist worries over finite resources and “threats to tradition” have been echoed throughout the history of the green movement. So, is a far right environmentalism possible?
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Commented on post by CU Boulder - Environmental Engineering in Climate ChangeI'm not sure I really want to know what "Liquid Cheese Brine" is. — As if we needed another reason to be excited about the warm weather... Here in Boulder we are proud that we no longer use salt on our roads and have since switched to gravel. Other states are looking at using beet juice and liquid cheese brine as de-icers.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeOrder of magnitude problem. It makes considerably more sense to put the solar panels on the roof of the house the car is parked outside of. — Panasonic just unveiled an improved solar panel to power cars. The panel will be used for the first solar roof model of the Toyota Prius, the Prius Prime, which is slated for release this year. Not to be left behind, Elon Musk has announced that the Tesla Model 3 will also likely feature this solar roof option. #SolarCars
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Commented on post by Julian BondThe cheap tickets on the link above are now £85+0 instead of £75+6. Get them while they're hot. If you do buy some, please do let me know. https://tickets.farrfestival.co.uk/rep/jbond-farr-2017 — Farr Festival first wave of acts announced & looking good The headliners are ok. Todd Terje, Booka Shade (live), Floating Points, Mano Le Tough, Omar-S. But there's also Mr G, Leon Vynehall, Helena Hauff, Young Marco, Henry Wu, Chaos In The CBD, Jayda G, Moxie, Willow. 13/14/15 July, Baldock, UK. Rep tickets still available here at £75+6 https://tickets.farrfestival.co.uk/rep/jbond-farr-2017 http://www.farrfestival.co.uk/the-hub/introducing-our-first-wave-acts/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesG+ has become useless to me. The desktop web UI is SO painful to use, confusing and slow. And it's not the only Google product that I'm finding to be unutterably broken. — G+ Desktop javascript problems. It feels like google have updated their code on the desktop edition. Click on ... (more) to see the rest of an article and the display jumps to the start of the comments, so you then have to scroll back up to read the article. Cursor movement is really, really slow when entering comments. Like there's a whole load of code happening on every key press. Opening comments is really slow and leaves the comments scrolled to the bottom. Ugh. This is all painful and reducing my involvement.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Good News+Adam Black The woman in the photo appears to be wearing stickit notes printed with large pixelated nipples as protection. A fashion statement I expect to become common in the near future. Perhaps pixelated flesh printed duck tape will be available soon. Next to the stylised-grey-camo leggings. — ...and about damn time, too. (The right-wingers will all have the vapors over this, of course. In response, I cite a popular right-wing sentiment: get over it.)
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, Schmacademia'kin paedophiles. Screwing our children. — No comment necessary.
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Commented on post by Jürgen Christoffel+Torsten Kleinz And we're going to make the rest of the internet pay for it. Bit of a stretch but, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVwaOHCkjU4 — Iptables, US Policy and United It didn't occur to me until now, that American policy can be modelled with iptables: In iptables you may use ACCEPT, DROP, LOG, REJECT or RETURN as "targets"(i.e. actions) for the rules which govern packets. ACCEPT is rather unusual in the US of A of today, DROP was until now used by the military, but United refined it for inland use to BEAT-AND-DROP, LOG is used by the NSA, REJECT happens on entry to the "land of the free" and RETURN is applied to Mexicans and other people in the country... Thanks to +Torsten Kleinz for inspiration and sorry for doing my part in fulfilling his "prophecy" that today's the day of United jokes ;-0
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPRace 2. 2011 Rossi 5th (after punting Stoner off at turn 1) "Obviously your ambition outweighed your talent" - Casey Stoner. 2017 Lorenzo DNF at lap 1 turn 1 Currently on 5 points Funniest (and cruel-est) motogp thing currently. http://www.bikeme.tv/index.php/category/blogs/dear-george/ — Jorge Lorenzo vs Vale Rossi after Qatar 2011 Rossi 7th 16.4s behind 1st (Stoner) 13s behind Lorenzo Scored 139 in the season in total 2017 Jorge Lorenzo 11th 20.5s behind 1st (Vinales) 18.6 behond Rossi Currently on 5 points Dear George. It's going to be a long old season.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeMarco Melandri 2004 Fortuna - Gauloises - Yamaha - Tech 3 — Spiderman!
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Commented on post by Rod MesaYou left out Assange and Wikileaks. Was that deliberate or is the "Russians leaked DNC emails to Wikileaks" story discredited now? — From a FB friend: Trump is probably right. We've fallen for a hoax and should be looking for the real killers. I don’t know – it’s hard for me to see any U.S. ties to Russia… except for the Flynn thing and the Manafort thing and the Tillerson thing and the Sessions thing and the Kushner thing and the Carter Page thing and the Roger Stone thing and the Felix Sater thing and the Boris Ephsteyn thing and the Rosneft thing and the Gazprom thing and the Sergey Gorkov banker thing and the Azerbajain thing and the “I love Putin” thing and the Donald Trump, Jr. thing and the Sergey Kislyak thing and the Russian Affiliated Interests thing and the Russian Business Interests thing and the Emoluments Clause thing and the Alex Schnaider thing and the hack of the DNC thing and the Guccifer 2.0 thing and the Mike Pence “I don’t know anything” thing and the Russians mysteriously dying thing and Trump’s public request to Russia to hack Hillary’s email and the Trump house sale for $100 million at the bottom of the housing bust to the Russian fertilizer king thing and the Russian fertilizer king’s plane showing up in Concord, NC during Trump rally campaign thing and the Nunes sudden flight to the White House in the night thing and the Nunes personal investments in the Russian winery thing and the Cyprus bank thing and Trump not releasing his tax returns thing and the Republican Party’s rejection of an amendment to require Trump to show his taxes thing and the election hacking thing and the GOP platform change to the Ukraine thing and the Steele Dossier thing and the Leninist Bannon thing and the Sally Yates can’t testify thing and the intelligence community’s investigative reports thing and Trump’s reassurance that the Russian connection is all “fake news” thing and Spicer’s Russian Dressing “nothing’s wrong” thing so there’s probably nothing there since the swamp has been drained, these people would never lie probably why Nunes cancels the investigation meetings all of this must be normal just a bunch of separate dots with no connection.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeWho was it that raced (briefly) in a spiderman outift. Xaus? — Spiderman!
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Commented on post by Kathryn Thomsen in Climate ChangeIt's a game of Go, not Chess.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Right-Wing LiesLeaf blowers? Pah! Following the militarisation of everything; Flame Throwers!! — Conspiracy Theories We Wish Right-Wingers Would Believe * Gas-powered leaf blowers are only used by lazy elite liberals. * Daylight Saving Time is a government plot to control people by depriving them of sleep so they are more suggestible. * The Trump Administration has removed internet privacy protections so they can find out who has guns, and round them up. * Charter Schools are run by the Illuminati and the Trilateral Commission. * "Right to Work" laws are a thinly-disguised attempt to take away your negotiating power so you will work for less, and like it. (...oh wait, that one's true...) * Ridiculous CEO salaries are a hidden tax you pay through raised prices. (same) * Corporate profits come out of your paycheck. (also true) * Capitalism is a pyramid scheme. (wait, am I allowed to say that in public?) Okay, I seem to have run out of fake theories and ended up using real ones...
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeExtent is still useful but it's becoming increasingly deceptive. Thin ice rubble that is easily moved out of the arctic looks the same as thick multi-year ice as far as extent can measure. So we get periods especially in the spring when extent changes are not due to freezing and melting, but dispersion and compaction. — Arctic sea ice appears to have reached on March 7 a record low wintertime maximum extent, according to scientists at #NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center ( #NSIDC ) in Boulder, Colorado. And on the opposite side of the planet, on March 3 sea ice around Antarctica hit its lowest extent ever recorded by satellites at the end of summer in the Southern Hemisphere, a surprising turn of events after decades of moderate sea ice expansion.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingAre we watching a re-run of Bayliss vs Edwards? And which is which? I'm still waiting for Melandri to properly inhabit the Xaus role. We haven't seen any real hail mary passes from him yet. And you know he's going to. — 5 out of 6 ain't bad I really thought #JR65 was going to take a 100% win run at +Circuit de Aragon. So very close. No point me writing my dribble when you can read +Jared Earle​​'s reports on +David Emmett​​'s MotoMatters Dot Com. Race One Report : https://motomatters.com/results/2017/04/01/2017_motorland_aragon_world_superbike.html Race Two Report : https://motomatters.com/results/2017/04/02/2017_motorland_aragon_world_superbike.html _________________________________________________ +WorldSBK​​ #WSB #WSB2017 #Aragon +Kawasaki Motors​​ +MOTOCARD​​ +Monster Energy​​ +Aruba.it Racing - Ducati​​ +Ducati​​ +Yamaha Racing​​ +Cresent Yamaha +BMW​​ +BMW Motorrad​​ #MV +Aprilia Official​​ +Honda Pro Racing​​ +Red Bull​​ Sadly no +Erik Buell Racing​​ 
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Commented on post by Joshua Robbin Marks in Climate Change+Robert Jardine Then there's the Lukewarmists. CO2 is rising but there's no concensus on the climate sensitivity to that, how fast and bad its going to be or on mitigation measures.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Anne-Marie Clark Something not quite right about gender in Cows with Guns. "He"? — Badger engineering. Followed by hanging out underground for two weeks enjoying refrigerated noms. Via +Jennifer Freeman​
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Mushroom, Mushroom, SNAAAAKE — Badger engineering. Followed by hanging out underground for two weeks enjoying refrigerated noms. Via +Jennifer Freeman​
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawIt was just collateral damage. — This line gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. That feeling you get when something hits the mark way too well. (ETA: To highlight a point that +David Cameron Staples made in depth in a comment, the key word of both of these lines is "just." It's the use of the algorithm, or the orders, as an excuse to deny responsibility for one's own actions.)
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Commented on post by Derick Lila in Climate ChangeWhy even bother when there's supply manegement, demand management, curtailment management, grid distribution. Solar and Wind have this weird property that they may be intermittent and somewhat unpredictable but they're also fast to turn down. — Technologies for the German energy transformation sector (Energiewende) require tailor-made materials which are both affordable and efficient. One important tool in the search for such materials is high-resolution electron energy loss spectroscopy, HREELS for short.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesI've left feedback. (as always) — G+ Desktop javascript problems. It feels like google have updated their code on the desktop edition. Click on ... (more) to see the rest of an article and the display jumps to the start of the comments, so you then have to scroll back up to read the article. Cursor movement is really, really slow when entering comments. Like there's a whole load of code happening on every key press. Opening comments is really slow and leaves the comments scrolled to the bottom. Ugh. This is all painful and reducing my involvement.
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Commented on post by Julian BondWell now you've got what you want, you'd better make it work. kthxbai [edited] Amused by You probably once dreamed of a season on a Normandy campsite Is that the new "Go back to your mum's basement"? :) You Leavers had better get used to being hated and called names. Because that's not going to go away for a few years yet, if ever. And it is kind of tricky to get the last word on someone else's post that can just turn comments off or ban you. — I wonder if the people who voted for Brexit Leave realised they were voting for Climate Change Denial? The London march tomorrow is on despite what you might have heard. Hyde Park Corner 11am. Be there. https://www.desmog.uk/2017/03/23/mps-complained-about-bbc-s-brexit-coverage-linked-network-hardline-euro-climate-sceptics
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Commented on post by Julian BondI voted Remain in 1975 and Leave in 2016 I wonder what turned you into a vile racist petty nationalist leave idiot Brexiteer in the intervening time. — I wonder if the people who voted for Brexit Leave realised they were voting for Climate Change Denial? The London march tomorrow is on despite what you might have heard. Hyde Park Corner 11am. Be there. https://www.desmog.uk/2017/03/23/mps-complained-about-bbc-s-brexit-coverage-linked-network-hardline-euro-climate-sceptics
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeI'm quite in favour of small electric and E-Assist vehicles like this quad and velomobiles. They solve a lot of short range journeys. The big problem is what to do with them and where to put them. They're too big and unwieldy to be sharing cycle paths with bicycles. But too small and slow to safely share the roads with SUVs, trucks and white vans. — I just had to share this! It made me smile, but it is a great idea! An all-weather electric bicycle. For many it could change in for that extra car and give your family a smaller carbon footprint while you gain better fitness. How much better can it be? The POTUS should have one for himself and for Steve Brannon!
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawAnd then the monkeys started throwing shit at the walls and at each other to mark out their territories. "Social Darwinism" is an evil philosophy. — Well, that's painfully on point.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPPerhaps we should have Philip Island now and Qatar 2nd to last race in the autumn. With WSB the reverse of that. — Tell me again why we go to Qatar?
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modifiedbrakes are good ;) — His 'n' hers - matching bicycles... altogether now, "Awe".
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Commented on post by David Hughes in Mixology 🍸No offence, but a youtube vid isn't a recipe; It's a demo! It looks to me like. - One sugar cube - 6 drops bitters (Fee barrel aged) Crush and melt the sugar with a drop of water. - 50ml Hudson Rye Stirred, strained, rocks glass, one BIG ice cube. Orange peel twist, Luxardo cherry. My bartender friend says you never get the sugar to properly dissolve in the time available. So just cheat with a bar spoon or two of recently made sugar syrup instead. I think I'd stir with ice for a bit longer. Mad Men would add a splash of soda which is just wrong, but I think the raw spirit does need a bit more dilution. I have seen them made with small quantities of crushed ice, with ice and spirit added very slowly while stirring so you get below freezing and frozen condensation on the outside of the glass. But again that takes too long. It's a very simple cocktail that you should be able to make really FAST. — Here's our version of the perfect Old Fashioned (oak aged whiskey bitters are the key)! 🥃
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Commented on post by Vera Barreto in Climate ChangeThe hopium is strong in this one.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in BrainstormingRefugee camps or homeless shelters. Just give permission and declare open season within the boundaries. — What are the obstacles to nontraditional repurposing of large retail structures? There's a Walmart about 3 miles from our house that closed last year (right in the middle of a network of nice, wide sidewalks connecting to the American Tobacco Trail bike path, and across the street from a traditional shopping center with groceries, low-budget eating, etc.) -- it had been open for less than a decade, and they cut down a perfectly nice stand of forest next to a wetlands in order to build it. It's been up for sale for several months now, and I keep thinking there's got to be better use for it than being occupied by yet another retail store. Martin suggests arcologies, which seems like an excellent idea to me -- mixed usage (business/retail/residential), with an emphasis on resource independence (electrical and food production on site) and shared spaces. Assuming an idea and a plan, what stands in the way of implementing it? - Obviously there would need to be money to purchase the property, and more for whatever modifications the repurposing required. - Zoning might have to be changed. Anything else?
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Commented on post by Julian BondSlight communication problem. No blame. — I wonder if the people who voted for Brexit Leave realised they were voting for Climate Change Denial? The London march tomorrow is on despite what you might have heard. Hyde Park Corner 11am. Be there. https://www.desmog.uk/2017/03/23/mps-complained-about-bbc-s-brexit-coverage-linked-network-hardline-euro-climate-sceptics
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Commented on post by Julian Bond+Mike Gallagher I wonder. Did you read TFA? Have you made the connection between the people pushing Leave and the people pushing climate change denial? It should be obvious that climate change was not an issue that was raised directly as part of Brexit. And it should be obvious that my comments shouldn't be taken at face value given TFA. And yet, one meta layer removed, the same people are spreading the propaganda on both issues. So by voting for one and giving them what they want, you're also voting for the other by encouraging them. — I wonder if the people who voted for Brexit Leave realised they were voting for Climate Change Denial? The London march tomorrow is on despite what you might have heard. Hyde Park Corner 11am. Be there. https://www.desmog.uk/2017/03/23/mps-complained-about-bbc-s-brexit-coverage-linked-network-hardline-euro-climate-sceptics
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Commented on post by Shava NeradDid the whole "Russians hacked the DNC servers and gave the emails to wikileaks. Except Assange, Snowden, Greenwald, Murray deny this and say it was a DNC insider" story ever get resolved? — Incredible deniability at the White House We don't know Paul Manafort... Remember me freaking out last year when Trump's campaign hired Paul Manafort? Remember how it got me on the whole "OMG the Trump campaign is full of Russian associated flaks?" kick a year ago? Like before it was in style? http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/06/2016-donald-trump-paul-manafort-ferinand-marcos-philippines-1980s-213952 Well look at this story in Politico where it talks about his not so secret work for Oleg Deripaska. Not so secret, guys. Politico was writing about this a year ago. Can you use Google? I was writing about how this was freaking me out on G+ a year ago. Politico was blandly writing about this a year ago. Here's the article on Oleg's Cayman adventure they link to: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-campaign-chief-ducks-questions-about-214020365.html Where they do say that Trump apparently didn't know about this when they hired Manafort (which means that, when confronted, he denied knowing about it, which at best means he doesn't vet people which we've confirmed since.) Except, Manafort and Stone are long time business partners. So you know? I don't buy it. I do not know why anyone in the press is buying it either. W T F. http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/325334-white-house-distances-trump-from-manafort
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Commented on post by MESA Sostenible in Climate ChangeDoes it scale though? To feed 7.5b people. — Permaculture farming is significantly less disturbing for the environment. #ecofriendly #organicfood #farming http://buff.ly/2moXLGx
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Media and Social NetworksDid we ever discover exactly how the emails got from the DNC servers to Wikileaks? At the time, Craig Murray, Assange, Greenwald were all adamant the Russians weren't involved and it was a DNC insider. Has there ever been any hard evidence to confirm one way or the other? — Skewing and Isolation in Right-Wing Media This is a very detailed look at media organizations, mapped against readers' political affiliation (as determined by social media sharing). The core finding is that there is a very new network of media outlets on the far right that operates in a much more insulated and self-reinforcing way than similar networks on the left. Very worthwhile read. What we find in our data is a network of mutually-reinforcing hyper-partisan sites that revive what Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics,” combining decontextualized truths, repeated falsehoods, and leaps of logic to create a fundamentally misleading view of the world. “Fake news,” which implies made of whole cloth by politically disinterested parties out to make a buck of Facebook advertising dollars, rather than propaganda and disinformation, is not an adequate term. By repetition, variation, and circulation through many associated sites, the network of sites make their claims familiar to readers, and this fluency with the core narrative gives credence to the incredible. Use of disinformation by partisan media sources is neither new nor limited to the right wing, but the insulation of the partisan right-wing media from traditional journalistic media sources, and the vehemence of its attacks on journalism in common cause with a similarly outspoken president, is new and distinctive.
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Commented on post by Shava NeradNever mind. Alphabet will always be welcome in the UK. (snark) — Alphabet's in the soup in the EU Youtube video advertisers are pulling their accounts over hate speech Major -- and now, we're hearing dozens of minor -- Google advertising accounts in the EU, which doesn't have the US tradition of "free speech" but has other standards of holding reprehensible speech reprehensible, are pulling their ad dollars out of Google after an investigation found the ads on videos for David Duke, Islamic extremists, anti-semitic hate speech, and other tasty tidbits of burning hate speech. Apparently folks like the UK government, as a signatory of the UN Declaration of Human Rights don't want their ads running next to these freaks. Unlike folks in the US. Oh wait. At first Google said they'd change their policy so that take downs would be faster. Then, that was tested by the advertisers and there was no change. Then, the head of ads for the EU apologized, but he qualified his apology, noting that these folks were getting "pennies, not pounds" off these ads, as though this made it no worries. Well, the Daily Mail published what those pennies added up to, and it worries most people I expect... +Google? Don't be evil. Again... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4333590/Google-boss-claims-extremists-make-pennies-YouTube.html
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong LizardThat symbol may come in useful elsewhere. http://cdn.xl.thumbs.canstockphoto.com/canstock9292746.jpg — This seems to have upset the trolls, so clearly it needs more resharing.
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Commented on post by Julian BondIt's a Greek tragedy involving fate, hubris, nemesis and plenty of Hamartia. They're both now trapped in a science fiction dystopia of their own devising. — A note to School from the Head Girl, last week. I think it wouldn't be fair to the people of __ because they're being asked to make a crucial decision without all the necessary information - without knowing what the future partnership would be, or what the alternative of an independent __ would look like." Can you fill in the blanks? http://uk.businessinsider.com/may-to-block-second-scottish-independence-referendum-before-brexit-2017-3 Also http://newsthump.com/2017/03/14/divisive-referendum-will-cause-huge-economic-uncertainty-says-woman-enacting-divisive-referendum-causing-huge-economic-uncertainty/ ‘Divisive’ referendum ‘will cause huge economic uncertainty’ says woman enacting divisive referendum causing huge economic uncertainty
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Commented on post by Kizzume Fowler in Google+ UpdatesCTRL-click [edited to add]. Just realised, CTRL-Click doesn't work. And the right click menu is missing all the normal open in new tab, open in new window controls. That's so web broken. Damn Javascript. — On the Notifications page of G+, please add the ability to right click and open a notification in a new tab. Not having that ability is pretty ridiculous.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:After Brexit, we will be kicking immigrant words out of the British language, toot sweet. — A great map of the relationships between languages in Europe. It uses the amount of shared lexicon as a measure of mutual comprehensibility, and thus "closeness." Some of this closeness comes from linguistic relatedness - you won't be surprised that Macedonian and Bulgarian are virtually identical - while some comes from geographic proximity and shared history, as when Basque and Spanish have a significant shared lexicon despite being linguistically completely unrelated.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedIf you took all the expensive bits like wheels, brakes, suspension off a ZX6R and put it on a ER650, or off an R6 and put them on an FZ-7 what would it cost? And even though the idea of a 2018 Pantah appeals, would anyone actually buy them any more than they bought 600s at the end? — Here is what doesn't exist from manufacturers but should: Yamaha F7 sports bike (custom) We repeatedly read how none buys sports bikes anymore. Many reasons are suggested but mostly ignored is the expense: to buy, to insure, to run. OK, so I am biased but I genuinely believe the love of sports bikes remains. Stupid costs (£10k for a friggin' 600? Puh-lease!) have led people away in droves but a lightweight, sporty, road biased bike would still clean up. Perhaps this?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google Play MusicIn the interests of completeness, I tried importing a playlist into itunes and then using music manager to upload just that playlist. And it worked. But it truncated the playlist at 1000 songs. That test required an update of itunes which then demanded a reboot which I ignored. But that's Apple's madness not Google's! — Playlists. A couple more years have gone by and I still can't find any way of uploading playlists in .pls or .m3u format (created in winamp). Neither can I see any way to download a playlist from desktop web to a computer. Weirdly, I can download a playlist I've created to an Android. Grrr.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google Play MusicI've just tried going via Windows Media Player but it fails. 1) Save winamp playlist in my /library folder 2) Open WMP and tell it to scan music in /library wait for WMP to finish scanning all the tracks. 3) Confirm the playlist is in WMP and appears to contain all the same tracks and will play 4) Run Music Manager. Tell it to use Windows Media manager. Tell it to upload from a playlist. Choose the playlist. 5) Wait for the upload to complete. 6) Open Google Play Music in desktop Chrome browser. All the tracks are in the GPM library. However the playlist hasn't appeared in "My Playlists". 7) Check in Android GPM. The tracks are there, but not the playlist. This didn't work 2 years ago, and apparently it still doesn't. I'll just about accept WMP, but I WILL NOT USE iTunes. — Playlists. A couple more years have gone by and I still can't find any way of uploading playlists in .pls or .m3u format (created in winamp). Neither can I see any way to download a playlist from desktop web to a computer. Weirdly, I can download a playlist I've created to an Android. Grrr.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google Play MusicAFAIK, the 1000 track limit for playlists still exists. Which is a pain as I have several in winamp and on an iPod of ~2000 tracks. — Playlists. A couple more years have gone by and I still can't find any way of uploading playlists in .pls or .m3u format (created in winamp). Neither can I see any way to download a playlist from desktop web to a computer. Weirdly, I can download a playlist I've created to an Android. Grrr.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Goats FTW! — At first I thought this was just an amusing infographic, but it's actually the header to a fascinating essay, which in turn is an excerpt from a book, all of which contains quite a few more such graphics, and more importantly, a discussion of the cultural boundaries within Europe and how they got there. I have to say that Tsvetkov's map of "The World According to the Ancient Greeks" seems quite on point, up to and including its description of which domesticated animals they consider each of their neighbors to prefer fornicating with. h/t +Lucas Appelmann
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeHooray, carbon emissions are no longer growing. Oh, No. Carbon emissions are being maintained at their highest annual lever ever! If the figures are believable. And if we focus just on electricity production. It appears that rather than replacing high carbon sources, renewables are providing the power for the next stage of GDP growth. So what they're really doing is enabling the continuation of business as usual for a little longer. — Third straight year of flat CO2 emissions signals a continuing decoupling of emissions & economic activity #IEA #CO2 #EconomicGrowth
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeThe other positive feedbacks mean that's probably quite a severe underestimate. 600ppm probably means more like 4C rise over pre-industrial 300ppm. — A climate model from 1967 had it right all along. But, then as now, science facts make no difference to policymakers in Trump's conservative Republican GOP party Syukuro Manabe and Richard T. Wetherald's 1967 climate model major finding: According to our estimate, a doubling of the CO2 content in the atmosphere has the effect of raising the temperature of the atmosphere (whose relative humidity is fixed) by about 2 °C. original May 1967 Journal of Atmospheric Sciences source: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0469%281967%29024%3C0241%3ATEOTAW%3E2.0.CO%3B2
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:"Europe" should include N of the Sahara and quite a lot of the middle East[1]. The Roman Empire (from which all this derives) covered all that area and more. But even much more recently N Africa spread into Spain, France spread back, Turkey comes and goes into Europe. Israel is in Eurovision and so on. Another divide. N Europe believes in the rule of law. Citizens should not break the law but fight to get unjust laws changed. Otherwise there'd be anarchy. S Europe believes laws are what politicians do. Some laws (and the politicians who made them) are just stupid. So you don't necessarily have to pay any attention. As long as everyone mostly agrees which ones are stupid, the citizens and the police can simply ignore them. [1] We shouldn't be making the EU smaller and allow the UK to leave, we should keep expanding it till it's everything N of the Sahara and W of the Urals and the gulf. We're one people with a common history. An over-riding political domain that recognises that would be a huge calming and integrating influence. — At first I thought this was just an amusing infographic, but it's actually the header to a fascinating essay, which in turn is an excerpt from a book, all of which contains quite a few more such graphics, and more importantly, a discussion of the cultural boundaries within Europe and how they got there. I have to say that Tsvetkov's map of "The World According to the Ancient Greeks" seems quite on point, up to and including its description of which domesticated animals they consider each of their neighbors to prefer fornicating with. h/t +Lucas Appelmann
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Commented on post by Mike Potter in Google Play MusicA couple more years go by and still nothing. AFAIK. — Please, Google, provide support for uploading m3u or wpl playlists.  I have thousands of songs already organized into play lists and I'm not going to duplicate that time and effort.  m3u format has been around for decades.  No excuse to not support it. I've tried uploading my entire Windows Media Player library (which has playlists) from scratch.  Playlists not uploads.  I've tried synching a directory with m3u files.  No luck.  I've tried dragging/dropping m3u files into the Chrome music manager.  Nope. Your new 50,000 limit is great, but without a way to use my existing organization of those songs, your service is not worth the trouble.  I'd even pay for your service if you supported this.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google Play MusicA couple more years go by. Anyone? — Has anyone got a cunning plan for uploading playlists in .pls or .m3u format?
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Technology Meets Humanity+Mathew Donaldson Well played sir, well played. — Imagine the most moving song in the world. Machine learning is now listening to your brain waves to make music. Lots of room here for good, but also for emotional manipulation.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Change+Dwight Hayes "temporary warming" 100k years is not very temporary in the context of a 1m year old species and a 10k year civilisation. That's how long it will take for the earth to process and absorb the #terafart of 1TtC of easily accessible carbon we're currently blowing into the atmosphere. What we do this century will last for Millenia. rabbit hole cite: https://heteromeles.com/2015/11/03/hot-earth-dreams-sample/ — "Just as there is no escaping gravity... there is no escaping the warming." #Pruitt #USEPA #ClimateChangeDenial
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate Change"Think global warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetime" = 42% That's the problem one. — 2017 Gallup Poll --- Global Warming Climate Change Concern at Three-Decade High in the USA
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad+Dominic Amann What makes you think they're * read * sensors?!? ;) — Conway's uWave Microwaves spying on us with cameras? Well, at least we have someone privacy-minded in the White House, heh… But how did she get there? Stephen King says, effective horror is only a few degrees off normal, and what makes this most uncomfortable is how close it is to true without being precise. Last night I had a dream where I was talking to a friend and trying to come up with some way she could have gotten this scrambled from a tech briefing, and I said, in the dream, she was told by some dude in the IC about the Internet of Things, where all your devices have censors, and how much data that can leak -- and how in Wikileak's Vault 7 dump it indicated that the IOT censors, which she might have been told could be in your fridge or your microwave or your car or anywhere almost, had been used by the cia to spy on Americans. But she hasn't retained that the cameras used were in the televisions and computers, because she was getting too much technology briefing from the fire hose. I think the woman is good at writing press releases, but should never have been designated to this level of technical PR. She just doesn't have the agility and chops. You have to know what you don't know. And none of this clown car does. I don't even think they know when they are lying, except maybe Bannon and a few -- they have no inner proofreaders. And there's a little Valley Girl voice in Conway, I expect, that when she gets caught out in this stuff, tosses her hair and goes, tchuh! and makes it our fault. And you know, I bet that's what it was, I can totally see that, as a person retired from this very field. I may be retired, but obviously, I still dream my work, lol…
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Commented on post by Klemens S in Google+ Updates"We're focussing on the corporate market". This always used to be one of the last stages in the descent into the dead-pool. — This is the first time ever, they announce a roadmap for Google+, in this case +G Suite​​ related. Thanks +Danielle Buckley​​!
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law#WeLoveTheNHS . Please stop destroying it by trying to copy the US system. Underfunding it and running it down to the point where it becomes justification for private health companies to take it over and then bump up the cost. That's not a good look. Sorry, which country are we talking about here? — Trying to explain the American health care system to people from other countries is a bit difficult. Via +Valdis Klētnieks
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Media and Social NetworksIf I mark an article as spam, it hides it from me and the timeline algorithm should hide similar from me. I don't see any real problems with marking an article as fake and it having the same effect. — Google News and Fake News Fake news isn't just about Trump and Hillary. Sometimes it's about alien bases on the moon. This article showed up today under Google News headlines on my phone. That, in itself, is a problem. Just as bad is the fact that the Google News user interface has no way to train Google's algorithms that this is not only sobering I don't want to see, but that it is not legitimate news, on my opinion. In short, there is no "fake news" button to provide Google with human feedback. We are seeing an increasingly troubling erosion of consensus reality these days. Like Facebook, Google is on the front lines of this battle, and Google News plays a particularly important role. Its lack of user feedback options suggests to me that they are not taking this problem with enough seriousness.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeI find the attempt to make denier an impossible word to use by conflating it with holocaust denial deeply offensive. Apparently we're not allowed to call people deniers any more, we have to use the words skeptics or such like. The word "denier" is not a term of abuse, it's a statement of fact. Any time you see someone saying "I'm not a denier, but, " it should raise a red flag. Especially if they immediately follow that with a whole load of denier talking points and associate with people who quite clearly are deniers. This is what makes the lukewarmists (Ridley, GPWF, Lomborg, Tol) so dangerous. There's a veneer of reasonableness that hides the lies and promotion of denier ideas. If it talks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, eats like a duck and associates with ducks, it doesn't matter how often it says it's not a duck but a chicken, its still a duck. — The behaviors the Freuds wrote about so long ago are a near-perfect match for modern-day climate denial—some rejecting the evidence outright, some grudgingly admitting the problem while scrambling to avoid addressing it, some seeking to mis-assign blame. #ClimateChangeDenial
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyNow if only Toyota could make a PHEV Prius. — Do hybrids have a future? +POD Point raise some really important issues regarding hybrid vehicles and our ongoing battle against pollution. Now while the article talks specifically about London and the Congestion Charge, it does talk about disincentives and their affect on human behaviour. Speaking as someone who lives in a rural area, but which has lots of the same pollution fears as central London, wouldn't it make sense to introduce similar disincentives like the Congestion Charge into other areas? https://pod-point.com/electric-car-news/do-hybrids-have-future
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Media and Social NetworksRe Wikileaks, there's this inconvenient truth. You can argue about their methodology, failure to redact and clean their source material, decisions about what to post. But what they publish appears to be 100% true. Nobody's ever managed to prove any of it to be fake. Greenwald has said this repeatedly but it still seems to get lost in the noise of claims of partisanship. https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/5/glenn_greenwald_on_dearth_of_evidence — Skewing and Isolation in Right-Wing Media This is a very detailed look at media organizations, mapped against readers' political affiliation (as determined by social media sharing). The core finding is that there is a very new network of media outlets on the far right that operates in a much more insulated and self-reinforcing way than similar networks on the left. Very worthwhile read. What we find in our data is a network of mutually-reinforcing hyper-partisan sites that revive what Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style in American politics,” combining decontextualized truths, repeated falsehoods, and leaps of logic to create a fundamentally misleading view of the world. “Fake news,” which implies made of whole cloth by politically disinterested parties out to make a buck of Facebook advertising dollars, rather than propaganda and disinformation, is not an adequate term. By repetition, variation, and circulation through many associated sites, the network of sites make their claims familiar to readers, and this fluency with the core narrative gives credence to the incredible. Use of disinformation by partisan media sources is neither new nor limited to the right wing, but the insulation of the partisan right-wing media from traditional journalistic media sources, and the vehemence of its attacks on journalism in common cause with a similarly outspoken president, is new and distinctive.
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Commented on post by Michael Meyer in Motorcycles - ModifiedIs this related to Ian Drysdale? Or is he just an inspiration? — Wow a 345 HP V8 2.0 liter bike those Aussies... give Aussies and Americans beer and you never know what will happen next.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyWe've got these new technologies that have some weird properties. Quick to build and deploy, cheap to build, cheap to run, easy to turn down or off, decentralised and deployable anywhere from 20W to 10MW. Intermittent but predictable either with a daily cycle or with a few hours notice. Low-Carbon, in that they have a capital carbon cost but a very low carbon running cost. And where this intermittency can be mitigated somewhat at a continental scale. They're getting cheaper and easier to deploy at exponential rates. So to really take advantage of them, we need to deploy, supply, demand and curtailment management. We need new commercial approaches to constructing government mandated and controlled markets that take advantage of them. We need to make them work with a wide range of low carbon sources from tidal, hydro, nuclear, geothermal, etc each with their own characteristics. And we need continental scale grids that promote cross border trading and are smarter to smooth out the intermittency. And we have to do all that and soon. This decade, not in 30 years time. And globally, not just in N America. Do you think we can do that? ps. We can't wait for batteries and storage to get better pps. Gen4, fast breeders, thorium, SMR and all the other techno-cornucopian nuclear solutions are just pipe dream hand-waving that are still 30 years out. We can't wait that long to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. — Policymakers are already seeing this inconvenient truth as a reason to put the brakes on renewable energy. In parts of Europe and China, investment in renewables is slowing as subsidies are cut back. However, the solution is not less wind and solar. It is to rethink how the world prices clean energy in order to make better use of it.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPA little bird told me. To allow you to engage neutral on the seamless gearbox. Which is at the bottom of the gearbox. — Did we ever work out what the little flappy lever is for the rider's right thumb? https://twitter.com/pramacracing/status/836969276556836865
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyWhere do the other low carbon technologies like Nuclear figure in that? — Even Trump can't dismiss the success of renewables The article isn't all about Trump. It talks about Brexit, India and China too. However, this bit really does sum things up nicely. “The word ‘renewable’ doesn’t feature in Trump’s America First plan – but it is full of talk of exploiting the country’s natural resources, delivering low-cost energy and creating jobs. Well, wind and solar can do all that.” The truth of the matter is that renewable energy isn't just cleaner, it is cheaper in the long run and provides a lot of jobs. Compare that to a dwindling fossil fuel industry with finite resources and public opinion swinging heavily towards a cleaner future and the future doesn't really look that great for fossil fuels. It's a bit like the comparison between old combustion engine cars and fully electric cars. Once you have driven an electric car you realise that it is a better technology, you look at that old stinky combustion engine and think, "Why the hell are we still driving these?"
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeBecause it's a race and competition between nations to see who can save the earth first keep business as usual going as long as possible. — With millions of jobs up for grabs, China seizes clean tech leadership from U.S. #China #CleanTech
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPPretty sure thumb brakes are always on the left. This looks like some kind of paddle control for the electronics. — Did we ever work out what the little flappy lever is for the rider's right thumb? https://twitter.com/pramacracing/status/836969276556836865
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in BrainstormingOn questions, here's a good one: "How do other countries handle this?" Does the USA really need to invent this stuff from scratch and first principles? Again. There's a certain amount of self interest there. If the USA modelled it's health care on the NHS, the UK wouldn't spend so much time destroying the NHS by trying to make it like the US system. — I'd start with: * universal healthcare (includes all residents and visitors) * funded by a steeply progressive tax on income over, say, ~$50k What questions/details would need to be addressed? via +Cindy Brown https://plus.google.com/u/0/+CindyBrown/posts/8Giied8pKd6 .
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeWe're moving away from coal. Now we need to move away from wood pellet and gas. — The EU is throwing away money by subsidising the burning of wood for energy, according to an independent report. While burning some forms of wood waste can indeed reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in practice the growing use of wood energy in the EU is increasing rather than reducing emissions, the new report concludes. Overall, burning wood for energy is much worse in climate terms than burning gas or even coal, but loopholes in the way emissions are counted are concealing the damage being done. #WoodEnergy
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Commented on post by Alex de NDYAKIRA in Climate ChangeMake America Wet Again — #ActOnClimate – “Global warming is drying up the Colorado River… the most important waterway in the American Southwest — vital to 40 million people…” Join me, Alex de NDYAKIRA, in combat against climate change and its impacts. http://google.com/+AlexdeNDYAKIRA #joinAlexdeNDYAKIRA #combatclimatechange #globalwarming
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:I strongly recommend reading the link I posted earlier to at least get a feel for the real world nature of the problems of space exploration and colonisation. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high-frontier-redux.html There are two other threads in the comments here that need to be explored but perhaps not here. 1) The value of pure scientific research that doesn't have an immediate payback. And the value of spending money on it when other problems appear to have more merit. This is at the core of the issue of whether we should be spending money on NASA (or CERN) on finding habitable planets if we have very little hope of ever actually sending humans to them. When Human climate change or survival or eradicating poverty and disease hasn't been solved yet. 2) The nature of scientific progress. And whether because science made huge fundamental leaps in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries we should expect similarly huge fundamental leaps in the 21st. And not just that but fundamental leaps that do an end run round the constraints of Newtonian, Einsteinian and quantum physics. Are we now in a reductionist phase where the big questions are basically done and we're just filling in all the details? — Something amazing: we have not only the first detection of Earth-sized planets outside our Solar System, but a detection of seven planets around a single star only 40 light-years away - right next door by astronomical standards. These planets orbit a dim dwarf star named Trappist-1 (after the telescope which discovered it, the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope in Chile), and by happy chance, are angled in a good way for us to study them. Even better, at least one of them is in the star's "Goldilocks Zone" - at the right sort of temperature to support things like liquid water and an atmosphere. The paper itself won't be out until Wednesday, but you can get preliminary data about the system here: http://www.trappist.one/#system . (This includes coordinates, but you'll need a strong telescope to see it; this dim star in Aquarius has an apparent magnitude of 18.80, about as bright in the sky as the dwarf planet Eris) The system is unusual in that three of the planets may support life: Trappist-1d, e, and f. Even more interestingly, the three are similar enough that someone from one planet could potentially survive on the others. All three have roughly terrestrial gravity -- maybe 0.7g's on d and e, and 0.6g's on f. They are of similar sizes, having surface areas 60, 80, and 110% of Earth's, respectively. Trappist-1d is the most Earthlike: the average temperature is 288K (15C, 59F), the same as on Earth. If you looked up in the sky there with human eyes, you would see a salmon-colored star, about five and a half times the apparent diameter of our own Sun, but somewhat dimmer; at noon, it would be about 15% brighter than it is on Earth. Of course, eyes which evolved on Trappist-1d wouldn't be tuned to the yellow light of our own Sun; they would be much more likely to see light much further into the infrared and less into the blues, and the light would look a "neutral white" to local eyes, just like our own Sun does to us. If anything has evolved to photosynthesize in the Trappist-1 system, its analogue of chlorophyll would be principally absorbing in the far infra-red, and the local plants would look dark and reddish to our eyes; the oranges and yellows that make up so much of our own vision would be as exotic to Trappists as the ultraviolet which bees see is to us. But daily life there would be somewhat more different, because in such tight orbits (close in around a small star, with a "year" of four days on Trappist-1d), the planets would be tidally locked to the Sun, with one side always facing it, much like the Moon always faces one side to the Earth. This means that this Earthlike temperature would be the daily temperature nearly every day on the sunny side, at the equator, and it would get steadily colder as you went out to the dark side -- but how much colder depends tremendously on how thick an atmosphere the planet has. It could be anything from hundreds of degrees below zero, the temperature of exposed space, if the planet has no atmosphere, all the way up to inhabitable but chilly temperatures if the atmosphere is thick. (Further investigation will tell us more about this, since as the planet passes in front of its star, we can see which colors of light are absorbed and how much by its atmosphere) Weather patterns on tidally locked planets are unusual; if you want a sense of it, you can consider this paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.2668.pdf) about what tidal locking would do to it. This may well cause the climate to be so unstable that the planet could never evolve life; we'll have to do more science to figure that out. The two further-out planets are a bit less hospitable; Trappist-1e averages 251K (21C, -8F), roughly the weather of winter in Fairbanks, and 1f averages a chilly 219K (-54C, -65F), the sort of weather you associate with central Antarctica. This means that 1dians, if they developed short-range space travel, would be able to travel to these places, but absent some really good reason, they would be more likely to be the home of isolated outposts than major settlements. (Given the small size of this system - planets closely packed around a tiny star -- this is far easier to reach than Mars is for us; at closest approach, 1d and 1e are less than three times as far apart as the Earth is from the Moon. During this peak, 1e would be huge in 1d's sky, about 20% bigger than the full Moon is in our own. But you would never see this from the light side; at closest approach, 1e is "behind" 1d, with the full 1e visible only at the center of the dark side. The inhabitants of the light side of 1d would see it only through half-phase, before it sank below the horizon.) There are far more calculations like this we could do (especially since we apparently have information about their relative orbital periods, which would let us chart the skies there in somewhat more detail) but I have actual work to do...
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate ChangeHave you got a link to the Hansen paper? I'm not about to wade through all those videos looking for it. It's this one? http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/3761/2016/acp-16-3761-2016.html And please note, again, The TFA abstract is talking about 7m rise if the Greenland ice sheet melted, regardless of how long it took. It's not so much a prediction of sea level rise by a fixed date such as 2100. — Some new models from Los Alamos that go further than the RCPs in quantifying climate change. A new computer model of accumulated carbon emissions predicts the likelihood of crossing several dangerous climate change thresholds. These include global temperature rise sufficient to lose the Greenland Ice Sheet and generate seven meters of long-term sea level rise, or tropical region warming to a level that is deadly to humans and other mammals. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-likelihood-dangerous-climate-thresholds.html#jCp
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate Change+David M Schaedler The question is how much sea level would rise if all the ice on Greenland melted. Note it says nothing about when that might happen. Do you have a cite for predictions that are half or less? — Some new models from Los Alamos that go further than the RCPs in quantifying climate change. A new computer model of accumulated carbon emissions predicts the likelihood of crossing several dangerous climate change thresholds. These include global temperature rise sufficient to lose the Greenland Ice Sheet and generate seven meters of long-term sea level rise, or tropical region warming to a level that is deadly to humans and other mammals. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-likelihood-dangerous-climate-thresholds.html#jCp
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Seems like we're both attacking straw-men. I have absolutely no problem with spending money on scientific research. And I do not accept that mankind being unable to visit other planets is justification for not attempting to understand their existence. — Something amazing: we have not only the first detection of Earth-sized planets outside our Solar System, but a detection of seven planets around a single star only 40 light-years away - right next door by astronomical standards. These planets orbit a dim dwarf star named Trappist-1 (after the telescope which discovered it, the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope in Chile), and by happy chance, are angled in a good way for us to study them. Even better, at least one of them is in the star's "Goldilocks Zone" - at the right sort of temperature to support things like liquid water and an atmosphere. The paper itself won't be out until Wednesday, but you can get preliminary data about the system here: http://www.trappist.one/#system . (This includes coordinates, but you'll need a strong telescope to see it; this dim star in Aquarius has an apparent magnitude of 18.80, about as bright in the sky as the dwarf planet Eris) The system is unusual in that three of the planets may support life: Trappist-1d, e, and f. Even more interestingly, the three are similar enough that someone from one planet could potentially survive on the others. All three have roughly terrestrial gravity -- maybe 0.7g's on d and e, and 0.6g's on f. They are of similar sizes, having surface areas 60, 80, and 110% of Earth's, respectively. Trappist-1d is the most Earthlike: the average temperature is 288K (15C, 59F), the same as on Earth. If you looked up in the sky there with human eyes, you would see a salmon-colored star, about five and a half times the apparent diameter of our own Sun, but somewhat dimmer; at noon, it would be about 15% brighter than it is on Earth. Of course, eyes which evolved on Trappist-1d wouldn't be tuned to the yellow light of our own Sun; they would be much more likely to see light much further into the infrared and less into the blues, and the light would look a "neutral white" to local eyes, just like our own Sun does to us. If anything has evolved to photosynthesize in the Trappist-1 system, its analogue of chlorophyll would be principally absorbing in the far infra-red, and the local plants would look dark and reddish to our eyes; the oranges and yellows that make up so much of our own vision would be as exotic to Trappists as the ultraviolet which bees see is to us. But daily life there would be somewhat more different, because in such tight orbits (close in around a small star, with a "year" of four days on Trappist-1d), the planets would be tidally locked to the Sun, with one side always facing it, much like the Moon always faces one side to the Earth. This means that this Earthlike temperature would be the daily temperature nearly every day on the sunny side, at the equator, and it would get steadily colder as you went out to the dark side -- but how much colder depends tremendously on how thick an atmosphere the planet has. It could be anything from hundreds of degrees below zero, the temperature of exposed space, if the planet has no atmosphere, all the way up to inhabitable but chilly temperatures if the atmosphere is thick. (Further investigation will tell us more about this, since as the planet passes in front of its star, we can see which colors of light are absorbed and how much by its atmosphere) Weather patterns on tidally locked planets are unusual; if you want a sense of it, you can consider this paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.2668.pdf) about what tidal locking would do to it. This may well cause the climate to be so unstable that the planet could never evolve life; we'll have to do more science to figure that out. The two further-out planets are a bit less hospitable; Trappist-1e averages 251K (21C, -8F), roughly the weather of winter in Fairbanks, and 1f averages a chilly 219K (-54C, -65F), the sort of weather you associate with central Antarctica. This means that 1dians, if they developed short-range space travel, would be able to travel to these places, but absent some really good reason, they would be more likely to be the home of isolated outposts than major settlements. (Given the small size of this system - planets closely packed around a tiny star -- this is far easier to reach than Mars is for us; at closest approach, 1d and 1e are less than three times as far apart as the Earth is from the Moon. During this peak, 1e would be huge in 1d's sky, about 20% bigger than the full Moon is in our own. But you would never see this from the light side; at closest approach, 1e is "behind" 1d, with the full 1e visible only at the center of the dark side. The inhabitants of the light side of 1d would see it only through half-phase, before it sank below the horizon.) There are far more calculations like this we could do (especially since we apparently have information about their relative orbital periods, which would let us chart the skies there in somewhat more detail) but I have actual work to do...
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Chris Stehlik Again. I didn't say anything about spending money on science and research. I'm extremely in favour of that. What I'm reacting to is the SciFi idea that "it's only half a lifetime away so maybe we could go there.", "And just because we don't know how to do that now, doesn't mean it's not possible, we just don't know how to do it yet". From about the 1850s, and especially since 1905, we've had a good enough understanding of physics and the universe to know that getting meatsacks to a planet 39 light years away is flat out impossible. The last 100 years of physics and cosmology has ground away at the edges of the unknown and just confirmed that. So pull that back. Getting meatsacks around just this solar system is unbelievably hard. Space is unbelievably hostile. And the gravity wells and distances are big. It is possible that the pyramid of civilisation maintains business as usual with access to enough energy for long enough to launch a handful of people to other bodies in the solar system (again). There may even be reasons to do that. I personally think the window of opportunity is closing fast, but that's my problem. +Raymond Cool flying and electricity were engineering problems at the time we were trying to work them out. The physics had long been understood. Physics didn't predict they'd be impossible, we were just working out how to implement the physics we already understood. Time, Space and Scale: You're not good at them. — Something amazing: we have not only the first detection of Earth-sized planets outside our Solar System, but a detection of seven planets around a single star only 40 light-years away - right next door by astronomical standards. These planets orbit a dim dwarf star named Trappist-1 (after the telescope which discovered it, the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope in Chile), and by happy chance, are angled in a good way for us to study them. Even better, at least one of them is in the star's "Goldilocks Zone" - at the right sort of temperature to support things like liquid water and an atmosphere. The paper itself won't be out until Wednesday, but you can get preliminary data about the system here: http://www.trappist.one/#system . (This includes coordinates, but you'll need a strong telescope to see it; this dim star in Aquarius has an apparent magnitude of 18.80, about as bright in the sky as the dwarf planet Eris) The system is unusual in that three of the planets may support life: Trappist-1d, e, and f. Even more interestingly, the three are similar enough that someone from one planet could potentially survive on the others. All three have roughly terrestrial gravity -- maybe 0.7g's on d and e, and 0.6g's on f. They are of similar sizes, having surface areas 60, 80, and 110% of Earth's, respectively. Trappist-1d is the most Earthlike: the average temperature is 288K (15C, 59F), the same as on Earth. If you looked up in the sky there with human eyes, you would see a salmon-colored star, about five and a half times the apparent diameter of our own Sun, but somewhat dimmer; at noon, it would be about 15% brighter than it is on Earth. Of course, eyes which evolved on Trappist-1d wouldn't be tuned to the yellow light of our own Sun; they would be much more likely to see light much further into the infrared and less into the blues, and the light would look a "neutral white" to local eyes, just like our own Sun does to us. If anything has evolved to photosynthesize in the Trappist-1 system, its analogue of chlorophyll would be principally absorbing in the far infra-red, and the local plants would look dark and reddish to our eyes; the oranges and yellows that make up so much of our own vision would be as exotic to Trappists as the ultraviolet which bees see is to us. But daily life there would be somewhat more different, because in such tight orbits (close in around a small star, with a "year" of four days on Trappist-1d), the planets would be tidally locked to the Sun, with one side always facing it, much like the Moon always faces one side to the Earth. This means that this Earthlike temperature would be the daily temperature nearly every day on the sunny side, at the equator, and it would get steadily colder as you went out to the dark side -- but how much colder depends tremendously on how thick an atmosphere the planet has. It could be anything from hundreds of degrees below zero, the temperature of exposed space, if the planet has no atmosphere, all the way up to inhabitable but chilly temperatures if the atmosphere is thick. (Further investigation will tell us more about this, since as the planet passes in front of its star, we can see which colors of light are absorbed and how much by its atmosphere) Weather patterns on tidally locked planets are unusual; if you want a sense of it, you can consider this paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.2668.pdf) about what tidal locking would do to it. This may well cause the climate to be so unstable that the planet could never evolve life; we'll have to do more science to figure that out. The two further-out planets are a bit less hospitable; Trappist-1e averages 251K (21C, -8F), roughly the weather of winter in Fairbanks, and 1f averages a chilly 219K (-54C, -65F), the sort of weather you associate with central Antarctica. This means that 1dians, if they developed short-range space travel, would be able to travel to these places, but absent some really good reason, they would be more likely to be the home of isolated outposts than major settlements. (Given the small size of this system - planets closely packed around a tiny star -- this is far easier to reach than Mars is for us; at closest approach, 1d and 1e are less than three times as far apart as the Earth is from the Moon. During this peak, 1e would be huge in 1d's sky, about 20% bigger than the full Moon is in our own. But you would never see this from the light side; at closest approach, 1e is "behind" 1d, with the full 1e visible only at the center of the dark side. The inhabitants of the light side of 1d would see it only through half-phase, before it sank below the horizon.) There are far more calculations like this we could do (especially since we apparently have information about their relative orbital periods, which would let us chart the skies there in somewhat more detail) but I have actual work to do...
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Chris Stehlik Why can't we have both? — Something amazing: we have not only the first detection of Earth-sized planets outside our Solar System, but a detection of seven planets around a single star only 40 light-years away - right next door by astronomical standards. These planets orbit a dim dwarf star named Trappist-1 (after the telescope which discovered it, the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope in Chile), and by happy chance, are angled in a good way for us to study them. Even better, at least one of them is in the star's "Goldilocks Zone" - at the right sort of temperature to support things like liquid water and an atmosphere. The paper itself won't be out until Wednesday, but you can get preliminary data about the system here: http://www.trappist.one/#system . (This includes coordinates, but you'll need a strong telescope to see it; this dim star in Aquarius has an apparent magnitude of 18.80, about as bright in the sky as the dwarf planet Eris) The system is unusual in that three of the planets may support life: Trappist-1d, e, and f. Even more interestingly, the three are similar enough that someone from one planet could potentially survive on the others. All three have roughly terrestrial gravity -- maybe 0.7g's on d and e, and 0.6g's on f. They are of similar sizes, having surface areas 60, 80, and 110% of Earth's, respectively. Trappist-1d is the most Earthlike: the average temperature is 288K (15C, 59F), the same as on Earth. If you looked up in the sky there with human eyes, you would see a salmon-colored star, about five and a half times the apparent diameter of our own Sun, but somewhat dimmer; at noon, it would be about 15% brighter than it is on Earth. Of course, eyes which evolved on Trappist-1d wouldn't be tuned to the yellow light of our own Sun; they would be much more likely to see light much further into the infrared and less into the blues, and the light would look a "neutral white" to local eyes, just like our own Sun does to us. If anything has evolved to photosynthesize in the Trappist-1 system, its analogue of chlorophyll would be principally absorbing in the far infra-red, and the local plants would look dark and reddish to our eyes; the oranges and yellows that make up so much of our own vision would be as exotic to Trappists as the ultraviolet which bees see is to us. But daily life there would be somewhat more different, because in such tight orbits (close in around a small star, with a "year" of four days on Trappist-1d), the planets would be tidally locked to the Sun, with one side always facing it, much like the Moon always faces one side to the Earth. This means that this Earthlike temperature would be the daily temperature nearly every day on the sunny side, at the equator, and it would get steadily colder as you went out to the dark side -- but how much colder depends tremendously on how thick an atmosphere the planet has. It could be anything from hundreds of degrees below zero, the temperature of exposed space, if the planet has no atmosphere, all the way up to inhabitable but chilly temperatures if the atmosphere is thick. (Further investigation will tell us more about this, since as the planet passes in front of its star, we can see which colors of light are absorbed and how much by its atmosphere) Weather patterns on tidally locked planets are unusual; if you want a sense of it, you can consider this paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.2668.pdf) about what tidal locking would do to it. This may well cause the climate to be so unstable that the planet could never evolve life; we'll have to do more science to figure that out. The two further-out planets are a bit less hospitable; Trappist-1e averages 251K (21C, -8F), roughly the weather of winter in Fairbanks, and 1f averages a chilly 219K (-54C, -65F), the sort of weather you associate with central Antarctica. This means that 1dians, if they developed short-range space travel, would be able to travel to these places, but absent some really good reason, they would be more likely to be the home of isolated outposts than major settlements. (Given the small size of this system - planets closely packed around a tiny star -- this is far easier to reach than Mars is for us; at closest approach, 1d and 1e are less than three times as far apart as the Earth is from the Moon. During this peak, 1e would be huge in 1d's sky, about 20% bigger than the full Moon is in our own. But you would never see this from the light side; at closest approach, 1e is "behind" 1d, with the full 1e visible only at the center of the dark side. The inhabitants of the light side of 1d would see it only through half-phase, before it sank below the horizon.) There are far more calculations like this we could do (especially since we apparently have information about their relative orbital periods, which would let us chart the skies there in somewhat more detail) but I have actual work to do...
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate ChangeHere's the paper. http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/115007/meta — Some new models from Los Alamos that go further than the RCPs in quantifying climate change. A new computer model of accumulated carbon emissions predicts the likelihood of crossing several dangerous climate change thresholds. These include global temperature rise sufficient to lose the Greenland Ice Sheet and generate seven meters of long-term sea level rise, or tropical region warming to a level that is deadly to humans and other mammals. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-likelihood-dangerous-climate-thresholds.html#jCp
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Chris Stehlik It's not that it can't be done by current technology. More that it can't be done by current physics. Then there's the small set of problems that space is extremely hostile to biological life and we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well. Meatbags aren't going to go there any time soon. Where soon is probably >10,000 years. You might also consider whether there's enough of the fossil-fuel whale-fall left to power the bootstrap of mankind off planet, even as far as the moon. None of that is an argument against spending resources on NASA or science in general. — Something amazing: we have not only the first detection of Earth-sized planets outside our Solar System, but a detection of seven planets around a single star only 40 light-years away - right next door by astronomical standards. These planets orbit a dim dwarf star named Trappist-1 (after the telescope which discovered it, the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope in Chile), and by happy chance, are angled in a good way for us to study them. Even better, at least one of them is in the star's "Goldilocks Zone" - at the right sort of temperature to support things like liquid water and an atmosphere. The paper itself won't be out until Wednesday, but you can get preliminary data about the system here: http://www.trappist.one/#system . (This includes coordinates, but you'll need a strong telescope to see it; this dim star in Aquarius has an apparent magnitude of 18.80, about as bright in the sky as the dwarf planet Eris) The system is unusual in that three of the planets may support life: Trappist-1d, e, and f. Even more interestingly, the three are similar enough that someone from one planet could potentially survive on the others. All three have roughly terrestrial gravity -- maybe 0.7g's on d and e, and 0.6g's on f. They are of similar sizes, having surface areas 60, 80, and 110% of Earth's, respectively. Trappist-1d is the most Earthlike: the average temperature is 288K (15C, 59F), the same as on Earth. If you looked up in the sky there with human eyes, you would see a salmon-colored star, about five and a half times the apparent diameter of our own Sun, but somewhat dimmer; at noon, it would be about 15% brighter than it is on Earth. Of course, eyes which evolved on Trappist-1d wouldn't be tuned to the yellow light of our own Sun; they would be much more likely to see light much further into the infrared and less into the blues, and the light would look a "neutral white" to local eyes, just like our own Sun does to us. If anything has evolved to photosynthesize in the Trappist-1 system, its analogue of chlorophyll would be principally absorbing in the far infra-red, and the local plants would look dark and reddish to our eyes; the oranges and yellows that make up so much of our own vision would be as exotic to Trappists as the ultraviolet which bees see is to us. But daily life there would be somewhat more different, because in such tight orbits (close in around a small star, with a "year" of four days on Trappist-1d), the planets would be tidally locked to the Sun, with one side always facing it, much like the Moon always faces one side to the Earth. This means that this Earthlike temperature would be the daily temperature nearly every day on the sunny side, at the equator, and it would get steadily colder as you went out to the dark side -- but how much colder depends tremendously on how thick an atmosphere the planet has. It could be anything from hundreds of degrees below zero, the temperature of exposed space, if the planet has no atmosphere, all the way up to inhabitable but chilly temperatures if the atmosphere is thick. (Further investigation will tell us more about this, since as the planet passes in front of its star, we can see which colors of light are absorbed and how much by its atmosphere) Weather patterns on tidally locked planets are unusual; if you want a sense of it, you can consider this paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.2668.pdf) about what tidal locking would do to it. This may well cause the climate to be so unstable that the planet could never evolve life; we'll have to do more science to figure that out. The two further-out planets are a bit less hospitable; Trappist-1e averages 251K (21C, -8F), roughly the weather of winter in Fairbanks, and 1f averages a chilly 219K (-54C, -65F), the sort of weather you associate with central Antarctica. This means that 1dians, if they developed short-range space travel, would be able to travel to these places, but absent some really good reason, they would be more likely to be the home of isolated outposts than major settlements. (Given the small size of this system - planets closely packed around a tiny star -- this is far easier to reach than Mars is for us; at closest approach, 1d and 1e are less than three times as far apart as the Earth is from the Moon. During this peak, 1e would be huge in 1d's sky, about 20% bigger than the full Moon is in our own. But you would never see this from the light side; at closest approach, 1e is "behind" 1d, with the full 1e visible only at the center of the dark side. The inhabitants of the light side of 1d would see it only through half-phase, before it sank below the horizon.) There are far more calculations like this we could do (especially since we apparently have information about their relative orbital periods, which would let us chart the skies there in somewhat more detail) but I have actual work to do...
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Time, Space and Scale: You're not good at them. So here's the plan. We create swarms of micro spacecraft each containing a tardigrade, some mushroom spores, some DNA and a light sail. Then we build a big laser on the moon and use that to give them an interstellar boost in the general direction of Trappist-1. It will only take a few hundred thousand years for them to get there. And then 1/2 a billion years or so for intelligent life to evolve and start talking back. SeeAlso: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high-frontier-redux.html — Something amazing: we have not only the first detection of Earth-sized planets outside our Solar System, but a detection of seven planets around a single star only 40 light-years away - right next door by astronomical standards. These planets orbit a dim dwarf star named Trappist-1 (after the telescope which discovered it, the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope in Chile), and by happy chance, are angled in a good way for us to study them. Even better, at least one of them is in the star's "Goldilocks Zone" - at the right sort of temperature to support things like liquid water and an atmosphere. The paper itself won't be out until Wednesday, but you can get preliminary data about the system here: http://www.trappist.one/#system . (This includes coordinates, but you'll need a strong telescope to see it; this dim star in Aquarius has an apparent magnitude of 18.80, about as bright in the sky as the dwarf planet Eris) The system is unusual in that three of the planets may support life: Trappist-1d, e, and f. Even more interestingly, the three are similar enough that someone from one planet could potentially survive on the others. All three have roughly terrestrial gravity -- maybe 0.7g's on d and e, and 0.6g's on f. They are of similar sizes, having surface areas 60, 80, and 110% of Earth's, respectively. Trappist-1d is the most Earthlike: the average temperature is 288K (15C, 59F), the same as on Earth. If you looked up in the sky there with human eyes, you would see a salmon-colored star, about five and a half times the apparent diameter of our own Sun, but somewhat dimmer; at noon, it would be about 15% brighter than it is on Earth. Of course, eyes which evolved on Trappist-1d wouldn't be tuned to the yellow light of our own Sun; they would be much more likely to see light much further into the infrared and less into the blues, and the light would look a "neutral white" to local eyes, just like our own Sun does to us. If anything has evolved to photosynthesize in the Trappist-1 system, its analogue of chlorophyll would be principally absorbing in the far infra-red, and the local plants would look dark and reddish to our eyes; the oranges and yellows that make up so much of our own vision would be as exotic to Trappists as the ultraviolet which bees see is to us. But daily life there would be somewhat more different, because in such tight orbits (close in around a small star, with a "year" of four days on Trappist-1d), the planets would be tidally locked to the Sun, with one side always facing it, much like the Moon always faces one side to the Earth. This means that this Earthlike temperature would be the daily temperature nearly every day on the sunny side, at the equator, and it would get steadily colder as you went out to the dark side -- but how much colder depends tremendously on how thick an atmosphere the planet has. It could be anything from hundreds of degrees below zero, the temperature of exposed space, if the planet has no atmosphere, all the way up to inhabitable but chilly temperatures if the atmosphere is thick. (Further investigation will tell us more about this, since as the planet passes in front of its star, we can see which colors of light are absorbed and how much by its atmosphere) Weather patterns on tidally locked planets are unusual; if you want a sense of it, you can consider this paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.2668.pdf) about what tidal locking would do to it. This may well cause the climate to be so unstable that the planet could never evolve life; we'll have to do more science to figure that out. The two further-out planets are a bit less hospitable; Trappist-1e averages 251K (21C, -8F), roughly the weather of winter in Fairbanks, and 1f averages a chilly 219K (-54C, -65F), the sort of weather you associate with central Antarctica. This means that 1dians, if they developed short-range space travel, would be able to travel to these places, but absent some really good reason, they would be more likely to be the home of isolated outposts than major settlements. (Given the small size of this system - planets closely packed around a tiny star -- this is far easier to reach than Mars is for us; at closest approach, 1d and 1e are less than three times as far apart as the Earth is from the Moon. During this peak, 1e would be huge in 1d's sky, about 20% bigger than the full Moon is in our own. But you would never see this from the light side; at closest approach, 1e is "behind" 1d, with the full 1e visible only at the center of the dark side. The inhabitants of the light side of 1d would see it only through half-phase, before it sank below the horizon.) There are far more calculations like this we could do (especially since we apparently have information about their relative orbital periods, which would let us chart the skies there in somewhat more detail) but I have actual work to do...
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Raymond Cool I place no limits on us that are not our own imaginative ones. Except, you know, physics and stuff. — Something amazing: we have not only the first detection of Earth-sized planets outside our Solar System, but a detection of seven planets around a single star only 40 light-years away - right next door by astronomical standards. These planets orbit a dim dwarf star named Trappist-1 (after the telescope which discovered it, the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope in Chile), and by happy chance, are angled in a good way for us to study them. Even better, at least one of them is in the star's "Goldilocks Zone" - at the right sort of temperature to support things like liquid water and an atmosphere. The paper itself won't be out until Wednesday, but you can get preliminary data about the system here: http://www.trappist.one/#system . (This includes coordinates, but you'll need a strong telescope to see it; this dim star in Aquarius has an apparent magnitude of 18.80, about as bright in the sky as the dwarf planet Eris) The system is unusual in that three of the planets may support life: Trappist-1d, e, and f. Even more interestingly, the three are similar enough that someone from one planet could potentially survive on the others. All three have roughly terrestrial gravity -- maybe 0.7g's on d and e, and 0.6g's on f. They are of similar sizes, having surface areas 60, 80, and 110% of Earth's, respectively. Trappist-1d is the most Earthlike: the average temperature is 288K (15C, 59F), the same as on Earth. If you looked up in the sky there with human eyes, you would see a salmon-colored star, about five and a half times the apparent diameter of our own Sun, but somewhat dimmer; at noon, it would be about 15% brighter than it is on Earth. Of course, eyes which evolved on Trappist-1d wouldn't be tuned to the yellow light of our own Sun; they would be much more likely to see light much further into the infrared and less into the blues, and the light would look a "neutral white" to local eyes, just like our own Sun does to us. If anything has evolved to photosynthesize in the Trappist-1 system, its analogue of chlorophyll would be principally absorbing in the far infra-red, and the local plants would look dark and reddish to our eyes; the oranges and yellows that make up so much of our own vision would be as exotic to Trappists as the ultraviolet which bees see is to us. But daily life there would be somewhat more different, because in such tight orbits (close in around a small star, with a "year" of four days on Trappist-1d), the planets would be tidally locked to the Sun, with one side always facing it, much like the Moon always faces one side to the Earth. This means that this Earthlike temperature would be the daily temperature nearly every day on the sunny side, at the equator, and it would get steadily colder as you went out to the dark side -- but how much colder depends tremendously on how thick an atmosphere the planet has. It could be anything from hundreds of degrees below zero, the temperature of exposed space, if the planet has no atmosphere, all the way up to inhabitable but chilly temperatures if the atmosphere is thick. (Further investigation will tell us more about this, since as the planet passes in front of its star, we can see which colors of light are absorbed and how much by its atmosphere) Weather patterns on tidally locked planets are unusual; if you want a sense of it, you can consider this paper (https://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.2668.pdf) about what tidal locking would do to it. This may well cause the climate to be so unstable that the planet could never evolve life; we'll have to do more science to figure that out. The two further-out planets are a bit less hospitable; Trappist-1e averages 251K (21C, -8F), roughly the weather of winter in Fairbanks, and 1f averages a chilly 219K (-54C, -65F), the sort of weather you associate with central Antarctica. This means that 1dians, if they developed short-range space travel, would be able to travel to these places, but absent some really good reason, they would be more likely to be the home of isolated outposts than major settlements. (Given the small size of this system - planets closely packed around a tiny star -- this is far easier to reach than Mars is for us; at closest approach, 1d and 1e are less than three times as far apart as the Earth is from the Moon. During this peak, 1e would be huge in 1d's sky, about 20% bigger than the full Moon is in our own. But you would never see this from the light side; at closest approach, 1e is "behind" 1d, with the full 1e visible only at the center of the dark side. The inhabitants of the light side of 1d would see it only through half-phase, before it sank below the horizon.) There are far more calculations like this we could do (especially since we apparently have information about their relative orbital periods, which would let us chart the skies there in somewhat more detail) but I have actual work to do...
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Not just a study in psychoceramics, but curiously sub-pontian as well. — And I can't quite believe this, but there's yet another positive story to share today. This is about a paper that came out recently on particle physics. Like an awful lot of papers in particle physics, it proposes an extension to the Standard Model (our best current understanding of the field, which has done remarkably well in predicting an awful lot of things) which can explain a lot of currently open questions about the universe. However, this paper has some nice features which most papers of this sort don't. There's a sort-of tradition in particle physics (which I'm embarrassed to admit I've participated in) of publishing "pissing on trees" papers: you come up with some theory, show that it's not inconsistent with what we've observed so far about the universe (and it turns out there are an awful lot of things you can do which aren't inconsistent, even once you take the full scientific rigor of professional physicists into account), and publish it as "maybe." This is called "pissing on trees" because if it turns out later that this theory was right, then you've published one of the original papers on it, and a great deal of credit will follow; that is, you're staking out your claim ahead of time, but not really producing anything that valuable, because most of these "maybes" are pretty far-out. This "SMASH" paper (short for "Standard Model + Axion + Seesaw + Higgs," a short description of the three kinds of extension to the SM it provides) does considerably better, though. With a fairly minimal extension to existing physics (proposing three new families of particle, each of which is considered not-outrageous) they manage to explain a bunch of difficult open problems in physics at once. And rather nicely, the SMASH hypothesis is straightforwardly testable – to the extent that several planned experiments already in the works should be able to say a definitive "yes" or "no" to it within the next decade. I won't try to give a full explanation of the things it explains, since this gets really technical really fast. The short list is inflation (what force caused the universe to expand really rapidly in its early history, so that its current size is "really big" rather than "about the size of a grapefruit"), reheating (how inflation stops and that energy of expansion somehow gets converted into matter instead of a big, empty universe), dark matter (what is this mysterious substance which appears to form a quarter of the mass of the universe, yet be transparent to light?), baryogenesis (in particular, why is there so much more matter than antimatter in the universe? It's handy for the "not going boom all the time" business, but it's far from obvious why it should be true), and stability (why at daily-life energy scales, certain high-energy properties of physics don't cause Higgs bosons to suddenly become infinitely heavy and attractive or similar weird things which many theories fall victim to). There are plenty of theories which explain these individually, but SMASH is nice in giving systematic answers to all of them – which makes me far more interested in it than in most papers of this sort. Of course, it'll take a lot of experiment to see if this goes anywhere, but for once, we actually have an existing experimental roadmap which will answer that. :)
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Social Problems and Social Change+Gideon Rosenblatt I don't think I disagreed with anything. Just linking to another rabbit hole in the same general area. The entire sand bank is riddled with rabbit warrens. — Understanding a Third Pillar to Trump In other words, we can append a third category to the two classically understood division of Trump supporters: 1) Generally older people who naively believe Trump will “make America great again”, that is to say, return it to its 1950s ideal evoked by both Trump and Clinton. 2) The 1 percent, who know this promise is empty, but also know it will be beneficial to short term business interests. 3) Younger members of the 99 percent, like Anon, who also know this promise is empty, but who support Trump as a defiant expression of despair. This is a long, but very worthwhile read. I feel like I just got a glimpse into the history of 4chan, Anonymous, and GamerGate and some insight into Trump's allure among young, white males. The first half is retrospective, a history that is fascinating. Reading this part, I felt like a light bulb suddenly went off, explaining certain types of interactions I've had with people on reddit, YouTube as well as here on Google+. If, like me, you don't know the 4chan world, this article really is a must-read. The second half of this piece is more psychological analysis, and I'm just not sure how accurate it is. I'm not saying it's inaccurate -- just that I don't know enough to judge. If true, however, it does suggest that there might be some paths for dealing with this group that are more productive than we've got right now. #4chan #anonymous
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Social Problems and Social ChangeCustomers Who Bought Into This Item Also Bought Into This https://pepethefrogfaith.wordpress.com/ — Understanding a Third Pillar to Trump In other words, we can append a third category to the two classically understood division of Trump supporters: 1) Generally older people who naively believe Trump will “make America great again”, that is to say, return it to its 1950s ideal evoked by both Trump and Clinton. 2) The 1 percent, who know this promise is empty, but also know it will be beneficial to short term business interests. 3) Younger members of the 99 percent, like Anon, who also know this promise is empty, but who support Trump as a defiant expression of despair. This is a long, but very worthwhile read. I feel like I just got a glimpse into the history of 4chan, Anonymous, and GamerGate and some insight into Trump's allure among young, white males. The first half is retrospective, a history that is fascinating. Reading this part, I felt like a light bulb suddenly went off, explaining certain types of interactions I've had with people on reddit, YouTube as well as here on Google+. If, like me, you don't know the 4chan world, this article really is a must-read. The second half of this piece is more psychological analysis, and I'm just not sure how accurate it is. I'm not saying it's inaccurate -- just that I don't know enough to judge. If true, however, it does suggest that there might be some paths for dealing with this group that are more productive than we've got right now. #4chan #anonymous
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Reading TFA, it wasn't really clear to me what kind of experiments and experimental evidence would test the theory. Ramping up CERN and the Large Hadron Collider? Or better Cosmic Microwave Background detectors and mappers? Or something else entirely. Maybe it's just a different set of stats analysis of the huge quantities of data we already have from particle and cosmic physics. — And I can't quite believe this, but there's yet another positive story to share today. This is about a paper that came out recently on particle physics. Like an awful lot of papers in particle physics, it proposes an extension to the Standard Model (our best current understanding of the field, which has done remarkably well in predicting an awful lot of things) which can explain a lot of currently open questions about the universe. However, this paper has some nice features which most papers of this sort don't. There's a sort-of tradition in particle physics (which I'm embarrassed to admit I've participated in) of publishing "pissing on trees" papers: you come up with some theory, show that it's not inconsistent with what we've observed so far about the universe (and it turns out there are an awful lot of things you can do which aren't inconsistent, even once you take the full scientific rigor of professional physicists into account), and publish it as "maybe." This is called "pissing on trees" because if it turns out later that this theory was right, then you've published one of the original papers on it, and a great deal of credit will follow; that is, you're staking out your claim ahead of time, but not really producing anything that valuable, because most of these "maybes" are pretty far-out. This "SMASH" paper (short for "Standard Model + Axion + Seesaw + Higgs," a short description of the three kinds of extension to the SM it provides) does considerably better, though. With a fairly minimal extension to existing physics (proposing three new families of particle, each of which is considered not-outrageous) they manage to explain a bunch of difficult open problems in physics at once. And rather nicely, the SMASH hypothesis is straightforwardly testable – to the extent that several planned experiments already in the works should be able to say a definitive "yes" or "no" to it within the next decade. I won't try to give a full explanation of the things it explains, since this gets really technical really fast. The short list is inflation (what force caused the universe to expand really rapidly in its early history, so that its current size is "really big" rather than "about the size of a grapefruit"), reheating (how inflation stops and that energy of expansion somehow gets converted into matter instead of a big, empty universe), dark matter (what is this mysterious substance which appears to form a quarter of the mass of the universe, yet be transparent to light?), baryogenesis (in particular, why is there so much more matter than antimatter in the universe? It's handy for the "not going boom all the time" business, but it's far from obvious why it should be true), and stability (why at daily-life energy scales, certain high-energy properties of physics don't cause Higgs bosons to suddenly become infinitely heavy and attractive or similar weird things which many theories fall victim to). There are plenty of theories which explain these individually, but SMASH is nice in giving systematic answers to all of them – which makes me far more interested in it than in most papers of this sort. Of course, it'll take a lot of experiment to see if this goes anywhere, but for once, we actually have an existing experimental roadmap which will answer that. :)
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong Lizard+Cameron Brickey "Now"? HST - Nixon's obituary. "A nation of used car salesmen" William Burroughs - A Thanksgiving Prayer. "until the bare lies shine through" Still mostly lovely people, though. — Well... actually, there are lots of other, better reasons to hate Trump, starting with his use of lying and cheating as a way of life. There were reasons to be upset at Obama, too, but the people who hated him never seemed to mention them, and always made up stupid or imaginary reasons instead. I guess they were alt-reasons.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingIt's going to be the best year ever! Lots of narratives to follow in MotoGP, Moto2, Moto3, WSB, BSB. It's just a shame that 600ss has fallen off the map. Only 8 wins to go to equal Ago. — The Maverick Kid really is a #TopGun ......... Only ridden the +yamahamotogp M1 a handful of times & is currently the fastest +MotoGP around the +Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit in the #AusTest preseason test. The young Spanish rider will be up the sharp end in 2017. Full Report via +David Emmett's MotoMatters Dot Com : https://www.motomatters.com/results/2017/02/16/2017_phillip_island_motogp_test_thursday.html Rock on 2017. It's looking like another great championship already.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeOne Manhattan. How many football fields is that? —
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Commented on post by Shava NeradMore likely a necronomicon. Since Cthulhu has it's tentacles deep in his pig's heart. — I hear PlanB Entertainment's doing a Dick Cheney biopic. Bet it's not a neoconromcom. I just really wanted to say neoconromcom... twice.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Technology Meets HumanityPresumably this is the source for Google's NTP Servers. https://developers.google.com/time/ — Google develops the equivalent of "Greenwich Mean Time" for a global, virtual world In 1784, a carriage service first published a schedule of its rides in Britain. Back then, there wasn't really a standardized notion of time across the towns and cities on its routes. At any given time, it might be 12:00 in London, but 12:20 in Liverpool or 11:50 in Canterbury. The carriages were slow enough, and coordination didn't matter enough to require better synchronization of times across places. That changed with the arrival of railroads. In 1847, British train operators put their heads together and developed Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as a standard with which to synchronize time. In 1880, the government adopted the standard for all timetables in Britain. (Summarized from Yuval Noah Harari's book, Sapiens.) Might it be that with Spanner, Google is the forefront of a new notion of standardized time, tuned for the emerging needs of a global, virtual economy? HT +Wayne Radinsky. #time
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Right-Wing LiesBonus song, less relevant, and just because ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWCxAElOSxM — I will never pledge allegiance to a flag. ...but the point stands that "under God" is an endorsement of religion and needs to be taken back out.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Right-Wing Lieshttps://youtu.be/oqbnAFi_cwE?t=32 https://youtu.be/oqbnAFi_cwE?t=39 — I will never pledge allegiance to a flag. ...but the point stands that "under God" is an endorsement of religion and needs to be taken back out.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Social Problems and Social ChangeTalking of which this just turned up in the firehose. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/14/fictional-characters-make-existential-crossings-into-real-life-study-finds So it's not "which SciFi novel are you living in". It's which novel has inserted itself into your thoughts. — The US intelligence community no longer trusts Trump Administration with sensitive intelligence for fear of Russian ears within the White House. It's broader than that though. According to this piece, the US Intelligence Community (IC) is feeling like the new administration is jeopardizing overall US interests. This is disturbing.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawBonus link. Bannon, Evola. https://medium.com/@GillBranstetter/the-alt-right-is-a-doomsday-cult-b40edd66062a#.a935harp1 — We've already had one news story today about a senior Trump aide (Michael Alton) who's been writing the intellectual arguments for racism, Carl Schmitt-style, and a second about another senior Trump aide (Stephen Miller) whose history of writing about racism (that is, in favor of) goes back all the way to the beginning of high school. So let's round out the hat trick with Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to the President and former National Security editor for Breitbart, who was recently out explaining to the press why Trump's statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day didn't mention Jews. In this Inauguration Night photo, you can see a medal on his chest, one he often wears. It's the Vitéz Rend, a hereditary order bestowed on his grandfather by Miklós Horthy. That's Horthy, who was then Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary, a (willing) ally of Hitler's who presided over the extermination of 75% of Hungary's Jewish population. Vitéz Rend remains on the State Department list of organizations which were under the control of the Nazi Party. Now, does this mean that Gorka's grandfather was a Nazi? Not necessarily; he might have received the order before Horthy's formal alliance with Hitler in 1939. But there's no reason that anyone wearing the order in 2017 would be unaware of precisely what it stands for, and the choice to proudly wear it in public could only be taken as a rather pointed message. As Hungarian scholar Eva Balogh puts it: "Many supporters of the Horthy regime were enamored by the Nazis and Hitler and the ‘knights’ were especially so. Put it that way, after 1948 one wouldn’t have bragged about his father being a ‘vitéz.'" Isn't our new regime fun?
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Social Problems and Social Change+Darius Gabriel Black If you meet Shiva on the road, kill him. Especially if he's talking about creative destruction with no plan for what comes after. Not all fires produce a Phoenix. Goddess knows, I'm as fond of Discordia and RAW as the next man, but advocating chaos on its own as a solution is dangerous. Perhaps I should change the aphorism above, /shiva/eris/s — The US intelligence community no longer trusts Trump Administration with sensitive intelligence for fear of Russian ears within the White House. It's broader than that though. According to this piece, the US Intelligence Community (IC) is feeling like the new administration is jeopardizing overall US interests. This is disturbing.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Social Problems and Social ChangeWould you buy a used car from this man? — The US intelligence community no longer trusts Trump Administration with sensitive intelligence for fear of Russian ears within the White House. It's broader than that though. According to this piece, the US Intelligence Community (IC) is feeling like the new administration is jeopardizing overall US interests. This is disturbing.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyYeah obviously solar panels can't possibly work in the UK. Which is why we keep installing them. — Solar panel researchers investigate powering trains by bypassing grid What a gobsmackingly obvious and brilliant idea! There are thousands of miles of track, which could be home to thousands of miles of solar cells, all doing their bit to decarbonise the rail networks. It will also have the knock on effect of reducing energy bills which could well translate into reduced costs for rail travellers too. I really hope everything goes well for the project! https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/10/solar-panel-research-power-trains-imperial-college-london-1010
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Commented on post by Shava Neradhttps://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/830201570881130496 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/830200338837884933 "Of course, he would say that" said two unidentified officials from the US intelligence community yesterday. The CIA, FBI and NSA can neither confirm nor deny that the unidentified officials worked for them and spokespeople for those agencies were unavailable for comment. /s — Thought you felt crappy about Trump before? oh man, I'm feeling so much better right now Look, Vlad is sending an engagement gift...tribute? What exactly do you call this? Other than...horrible... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/russia-considers-giving-edward-snowden-gift-trump-article-1.2969586
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Commented on post by Shava NeradIf it hadn't been for those pesky gophers ... — Abe smacks Trump ten ways from Sunday Trump probably won't know and who's gonna explain it to him? Check out the bit where Abe talks about how his golf scores are not as good as Trump's because his policy is to never take shortcuts in his goals. This is a smack on the executive orders. He is making a fool of Trump right in front of him and knows that no one will think a thing of it.
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeYes, of course. DC tends to get used to link wide area AC grids run as separate units. In China's case, the new wind is generally in the NW, while the consumption is in the East. The point though is not the specific technology but the lack of continent wide grid capacity. Their problem right now is a temporary mismatch between wind power build out and grid build out. Combined with a temporary commercial problem favouring coal. — Make America great again But with old technology. China seems to win the future
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeWhen do we get the next news report that China has doubled investment in it's grid and installed more HVDC line than the rest of the world combined? — Make America great again But with old technology. China seems to win the future
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Commented on post by Julian BondI was really lucky to get VIP tickets to Glastonbury for a while. Went about 6 times. Since then I like the small festivals better. Done Standon (middle class Herts), Alchemy (old school hippies in Lincs), Supernormal (Radical Arts & crafts) and Farr (club music in a wood) for a couple of years. — The sounds of my life so far in 5 year moments. 1961 Chubby Checker - Let's Twist Again. I was a mean twister at 5. And won a prize for it. 1966 Hendrix - Hey Joe. Beatles - Revolver. The moment music changed and would never be the same again. Watching Top of the Pops with your mum and wondering what just happened. 1971 Hawkwind - In Search of Space. I had no idea what this was about but I remember the joss sticks and candles. Genesis - Nursery Cryme. Saw them live. At School. On the album launch tour. 1976 Frank Zappa - Zoot Allures. He stopped being silly for a moment, shut up and just played his guitar. Live at Hammersmith Odeon 1981 BowWowWow - See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! Music was so decadent that year. But this and Adam and the Ants was a breath of fresh air. And then: Soft Cell - Tainted Love 1986 Big Audio Dynamite - No. 10, Upping St. Samples of old Clint Eastwood movies 1991 Massive Attack - Blue Lines. Soundtrack to the whole decade, pretty much. 1996 Underworld - Second Toughest in the Infants. Goa Trance was also happening but I kind of missed that. Mars! Needs! Women! 2001 Atmosphere - Lucy Ford. Blunted rap as a soundtrack to ExtremeSports skateboard videos. 2006 Burial - Burial. Pinch - Qawwali. The year that Dubstep surfaced into the mainstream. 2011 Holy Other - Touch. * So * much club/bass music. WitchHouse and TriangleCore was a diverting backwater. And then there was getting emotional to James Blake - Wilhelms Scream 2016 Aries - You Make Me Wanna. The exact moment when LoFi house jumped the shark. I 'kin love this shit. Is this a golden age or what? https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzlD4uDsKBX7gyC0opk4GXZJQz5HYTHh5
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Commented on post by Terry DykeSo what has 'President Bannon and his pathetic puppet' done now? — Referring to Trump as "fascist" seems to be the strongest term available to revile him, and yet it falls pitifully short. It ascribes an evil to him that is way too organized. After all, fascism being an "ism," a philosophy, it would at least mean there's something consistent and systematic, however inhumane, governing his actions. That's certainly not the case. This fool, this man-baby, this astonishing bag of incontinent id has exactly zero guiding principles beyond pure whim. Instead, we have to go further back in history to find something closer to the mark. Simply put, Trump is a tyrant. He's Caligula, but without the style. --
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyIf only we could work out how to build Nuclear power cheaply, with zero failures. Because we need to do all of the low carbon things. Wind, Solar, Hydro, Geo, Tidal, Waste, Nuclear, Continent-wide smart grids, Supply-demand-curtailment management. Because TOO MUCH electricity changes the game. Which also means a change in the commercial and regulatory environments. And we need to hope there's enough cheap fossil fuel left to get us to the point where we don't need it any more. — Reasons to be cheerful I think we can feel optimistic about 2017 and beyond. Renewable sources of energy are gaining momentum and becoming cheaper all the time. That is despite falling subsidies and political decisions to favour other sources of energy. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/19/reasons-to-be-cheerful-full-switch-low-carbon-energy-in-sight
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Commented on post by Julian Bondwe circle around, we circle around. Great to hear from you. Needless to say, I remember being in Old Dryden / Berrystede as a not very official house prefect with Andrew Ashford. But I don't remember the kids we were supposed to be looking after. Musically that was a (brief) time of ELP, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Billy Cobham. I'm hugely impressed you remember my dad was MD of Sarson's Vinegar! We must have overlapped enough, because I remember Greenslade but not Camel. I'd have liked to have seen them as I got into that whole Canterbury Art scene around then and saw Hatfield and the North twice at tiny gigs. Currently listening to way too much LoFi deep house. Last weekend I was clubbing with my daughter at Shall Not Fade's 1st Birthday party. KGW, DJ Boring, Contours, LK, Mall Grab, TRP. Banging night. Hope you're also still behaving disgracefully! — The sounds of my life so far in 5 year moments. 1961 Chubby Checker - Let's Twist Again. I was a mean twister at 5. And won a prize for it. 1966 Hendrix - Hey Joe. Beatles - Revolver. The moment music changed and would never be the same again. Watching Top of the Pops with your mum and wondering what just happened. 1971 Hawkwind - In Search of Space. I had no idea what this was about but I remember the joss sticks and candles. Genesis - Nursery Cryme. Saw them live. At School. On the album launch tour. 1976 Frank Zappa - Zoot Allures. He stopped being silly for a moment, shut up and just played his guitar. Live at Hammersmith Odeon 1981 BowWowWow - See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah, City All Over! Go Ape Crazy! Music was so decadent that year. But this and Adam and the Ants was a breath of fresh air. And then: Soft Cell - Tainted Love 1986 Big Audio Dynamite - No. 10, Upping St. Samples of old Clint Eastwood movies 1991 Massive Attack - Blue Lines. Soundtrack to the whole decade, pretty much. 1996 Underworld - Second Toughest in the Infants. Goa Trance was also happening but I kind of missed that. Mars! Needs! Women! 2001 Atmosphere - Lucy Ford. Blunted rap as a soundtrack to ExtremeSports skateboard videos. 2006 Burial - Burial. Pinch - Qawwali. The year that Dubstep surfaced into the mainstream. 2011 Holy Other - Touch. * So * much club/bass music. WitchHouse and TriangleCore was a diverting backwater. And then there was getting emotional to James Blake - Wilhelms Scream 2016 Aries - You Make Me Wanna. The exact moment when LoFi house jumped the shark. I 'kin love this shit. Is this a golden age or what? https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzlD4uDsKBX7gyC0opk4GXZJQz5HYTHh5
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Commented on post by Terry Dyke- "So-called" POTUS - The Trumpus - The 45 — Referring to Trump as "fascist" seems to be the strongest term available to revile him, and yet it falls pitifully short. It ascribes an evil to him that is way too organized. After all, fascism being an "ism," a philosophy, it would at least mean there's something consistent and systematic, however inhumane, governing his actions. That's certainly not the case. This fool, this man-baby, this astonishing bag of incontinent id has exactly zero guiding principles beyond pure whim. Instead, we have to go further back in history to find something closer to the mark. Simply put, Trump is a tyrant. He's Caligula, but without the style. --
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Commented on post by Gerard GrouveIf a headline includes the word "could", the answer is "probably not".
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Commented on post by Terry DykeSome new ones that have appeared recently. - Trumplethinskin - Lord Dampnut (an anagram!) - King in Orange, also The Orange King - Ranting Orange Shitgibbon (ROS) — Referring to Trump as "fascist" seems to be the strongest term available to revile him, and yet it falls pitifully short. It ascribes an evil to him that is way too organized. After all, fascism being an "ism," a philosophy, it would at least mean there's something consistent and systematic, however inhumane, governing his actions. That's certainly not the case. This fool, this man-baby, this astonishing bag of incontinent id has exactly zero guiding principles beyond pure whim. Instead, we have to go further back in history to find something closer to the mark. Simply put, Trump is a tyrant. He's Caligula, but without the style. --
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Commented on post by Terry DykeDonigula. Or we can just call him "Little Boot". — Referring to Trump as "fascist" seems to be the strongest term available to revile him, and yet it falls pitifully short. It ascribes an evil to him that is way too organized. After all, fascism being an "ism," a philosophy, it would at least mean there's something consistent and systematic, however inhumane, governing his actions. That's certainly not the case. This fool, this man-baby, this astonishing bag of incontinent id has exactly zero guiding principles beyond pure whim. Instead, we have to go further back in history to find something closer to the mark. Simply put, Trump is a tyrant. He's Caligula, but without the style. --
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Commented on post by Julian BondCheep tickets going fast — Farr Festival first wave of acts announced & looking good The headliners are ok. Todd Terje, Booka Shade (live), Floating Points, Mano Le Tough, Omar-S. But there's also Mr G, Leon Vynehall, Helena Hauff, Young Marco, Henry Wu, Chaos In The CBD, Jayda G, Moxie, Willow. 13/14/15 July, Baldock, UK. Rep tickets still available here at £75+6 https://tickets.farrfestival.co.uk/rep/jbond-farr-2017 http://www.farrfestival.co.uk/the-hub/introducing-our-first-wave-acts/
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong Lizard+Woozle Hypertwin Yup. Point. — Next up on the fascist agenda... via +Steve S https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SteveSIsBack/posts/PEG6dvrcXtZ .
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong LizardYou may also like, https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/ — Week 1 of our National Wrecking Crew at work.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong Lizard+Steve S I know it doesn't literally, but that's the way it's implied too often. BTW. I can recommend this. https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/ Get your coverage of the ongoing car crash in daily hits instead of drip fed through the day. — Next up on the fascist agenda... via +Steve S https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SteveSIsBack/posts/PEG6dvrcXtZ .
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong LizardI understand creating a church in the US is really easy. So this new "Religious Liberty" can be hacked. Or just co-opt one of the already existing ones like Pastafarianism or Subgenius. Fight for the Right to Slack! Living in secular Europe, as a cultural Anglican who never believed any of it, I find a lot of this stuff very hard to understand. And I do wish there was an alternative to "atheist" with a small a. For people who are completely uninterested in religion rather than actively against it. — Next up on the fascist agenda... via +Steve S https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SteveSIsBack/posts/PEG6dvrcXtZ .
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Commented on post by Dawn Shepard in Climate ChangeMyanmar, Bangladesh, E India, Sri Lanka depend on fishing this region for protein and work. If that collapses completely, that could turn into a horrific refugee crisis. And that's just one of Bangladesh's problems. The scale of this is hard to comprehend.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong LizardPerhaps it should be called the "Right to Bigotry" rather than "Religious Liberty" — Next up on the fascist agenda... via +Steve S https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SteveSIsBack/posts/PEG6dvrcXtZ .
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Commented on post by Shava NeradOver in the UK, we've got a flag carrying, "Black Dog" section of the anarchist youth. https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — Antifa and BCAYs hey we need to get Steve Jackson in on all this Anyone remember Steve Jackson's card game Illuminati? I want to do a Trump administration edition, heh. In 1999 I was at the WTO protests (well, actually, I was trapped with the Belgian observer and a bunch of folks at the Washington Athletic Club when shit got real, long story) and the same sort of nihilist anarchist types out of Eugene were there. We called them BCAYs back then, "Black Clad Anarchist Youth," and most of them were fans of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zerzan and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski. They came around to any protest or March around the Pacific NW with the express intention to fuck things up but WTO99 was like a coming out party. The charter and culture has changed a bit, but it's the same deal. It's not really new. The BCAYs, like Bannon, believe if you scrap modern society, utopia rises from the ashes. Is there a Zerzan underbelly to the American antifa? I dunno. Could be. But there's no good strategy against a flash mob. So, would they ally with a stalinist? Nah… But would they help catalyze unrest tapping that hoop? … Not saying the antifa are bcays or vice versa, but there's no reason the same folks wouldn't flash the same actions. It's just interesting.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingDonington lost the MotoGP. Palmer doesn't like losing money and cancelled WSB at Brands because of it. So what price the WSB at Donington? Meanwhile Circuit of Wales is mired in corruption and funding difficulties. — Wow! Jonathan Palmer's MSV buy Donington. http://www.donington-park.co.uk/news/msv-acquires-donington-park/ I hope they can get enough finance together to fix some of the current problems. It shouldn't be huge but it's all about sight lines and access.
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeWell I take a radical extremist view of the EU. I want the UK to stay in. And I want it to expand rather than contract. Until it contains everything N of the Sahara and East of the Urals and including all the countries that surround the Mediterranean. We've got 5k years of shared history at least and we're fundamentally one people. Back on topic. Refugee camps are seen as temporary but they're not. The Ikea shelter should be seen as a half way house. That then becomes building material for the next generation in the evolution of the shanty town. Of course there's not much empty land left in Europe. Which rather raises the question of where migrants from the Middle East can and could go. And why more don't head up the Balkans towards Ukraine. — With global warming we can expect more refugees and issues to solve. Swedish Ikea is delivering one solution which has won the design of the year! 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate ChangeThe story has legs. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/02/donald-trump-plans-to-abolish-environmental-protection-agency — Is this real? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/environmental-protection-agency-bill-drafted-abolish-matt-gaetz-congress-a7556596.html
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeSomething I wrote a while ago on this. Migrant refugee camps seen as a city-building, architecture problem. Every so often Bruce Sterling finds this stuff and this is one of those things that spins off ideas. In several places around the world, but especially in the Middle East and Europe we've got an ongoing migration problem as war or water or climate change or food shortages force people to move to say alive. Traditionally we treat this as a temporary crisis and set up temporary camps with tight controls. But these camps aren't really temporary with it being common for people to be stuck in them for 15 years or more. The people inside them start doing city building and building a camp society regardless of how we attempt to control it. So the big idea is to place the camps in places that need repopulation and encourage the refugees to use free enterprise to build a new city there. Examples might be the empty southern central Italy, and especially the empty new towns and building projects in Spain. But this also applies to places in Central Germany as well. The question is how much infrastructure, law and order and control we have to provide to kick start the process. The infrastructure is not just food/water/housing. Modern migrants have cellphones so electricity/cellphone coverage/internet is important as well. Perhaps the Migrant City should be a temporary autonomous zone or free port. Does that mean an "Escape from New York" compound with high walls? There's the possibility of experiments in new forms of social organisation here. Then there's the jobs problem. The ideal locations for re-population are often empty because there's no work. That's certainly true of Italy/Spain but less so for Eastern Europe. If this is a permanent rather than temporary city then the occupants need to fairly quickly move to generating wealth not just consuming it. What happens to guaranteed basic income or benefits for the migrants? How quickly do they get citizenship of the regional, national and super-national sructures where it's located? It's good to see architects being interested in this as part of a long tradition from Wren to Corbusier. Both on the macro and micro scale from city layout planning to IKEA flat pack housing. The camps may start as rigid lines of tents but the residents quickly start modifying it. Which then leads to Favela Chic and the kind of (semi)functional chaos of Sao Paolo or the townships of S Africa. Should this be encouraged or discouraged? ather than try and control it, perhaps it would be better to have an orientation point that hands out the essentials but then to let the city self organise. Finally there's the problem of land ownership. The whole of the western world is now owned. To make this work a space has to be cleared, presumably by government, for the Migrant City to be placed in. Does that mean compensating the current owners of the land in some way? Or do they get to charge rent? How does this vary round the world? From S to N America. Europe compared with Africa. China compared with Siberia. And all that starts with a simple idea. Refugee Camps aren't temporary and they shouldn't be. http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/23/refugee-camps-cities-of-tomorrow-killian-kleinschmidt-interview-humanitarian-aid-expert/ Via one of Bruce Sterling's tumblrs http://wolfliving.tumblr.com/post/134010524861/old-people-in-big-refugee-camps-afraid-of-the-sky btw. That photo really reminds me of the really big festivals like Glastonbury or Burning Man. Camps should include entertainment, art and music. And no, Glastonbury and Burning Man are not preparation for finding yourself as a refugee! — With global warming we can expect more refugees and issues to solve. Swedish Ikea is delivering one solution which has won the design of the year! 
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+Andres Soolo To answer my question about the 6 https://www.change.org/p/u-s-attorney-channing-d-phillips-drop-felony-charges-against-journalists-who-covered-inauguration-day-protests 4 relatively official journalists released. 3 independents still charged. https://www.change.org/p/u-s-attorney-channing-d-phillips-drop-felony-charges-against-journalists-who-covered-inauguration-day-protests?utm_source=action_alert_sign&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=706196&alert_id=NDYBrlYOPe_qmR/xbJTtD6xBVbrXL0vJuU6HCU2hUjejpAhQhOEuEU/kmEeLHM125s%2BMEvL1M1b — Some updates on the political situation. Everything is very preliminary right now, because it's (apparently deliberately) unclear. Several Federal judges have issued stays against the "Muslim ban" order. However, there are confirmed reports from multiple sources that Customs & Border Patrol (CBP, part of the DHS) is willfully disregarding those stays, denying access to counsel, moving the people they're holding to undisclosed locations so that nobody can get habeas corpus, and deporting people. This is very certainly not a local commander's decision; it goes up to the Sec'y of HS at least, and directly to Trump at most. But – and here's the kicker – it's incredibly unclear what the scope of this refusal is. There's no clear news coming out, and we're getting more useful reports from the Twitter feeds of top attorneys in the field (both from groups like the ACLU, who have done heroic work tonight, and from attorneys at top firms, who have been joining this pro bono) than we are from anywhere else. If this is a refusal of unambiguous Federal court orders, then this is serious, serious beyond the scale of anything we've seen in our lifetimes: it's DHS saying that if Trump tells them to do one thing and the courts another, they will do what Trump says and best of luck to the courts trying to enforce that. Which is to say, they're establishing a precedent that DHS actions are not subject to any sort of court review, or to anything other than the personal fiat of Trump – including their right to detain people, deport them, or hold them incommunicado. Alternatively, this might be something else, a decision by CBP counsel that certain court orders don't apply to certain cases; this is serious too, since they're trying to create "facts on the ground" faster than the courts can react, but it doesn't mean a wholesale rejection of the system of law. I simply don't have enough information yet, and hope to update as we know more. Separately, there was another story today: Trump reorganized the National Security Counsel. The two most prominent changes are this: Steve Bannon now has a seat on it, and the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were both demoted: they only attend meetings of the Principals Committee which "[pertain] to their responsibilities and expertise." (The other full members of the PC, incidentally, are the secretaries of State (Tillerson), Treasury (Szubin), Defense (Mattis), and Homeland Security (Kelly), the AG (Sessions), the President's Chief of Staff (Priebus), the National Security Advisor (Flynn), and the Homeland Security Advisor (Bossert). You can read the full order here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/presidential-memorandum-organization-national-security-council-and) The demotion of the DNI and CJCS is surprising and I don't yet know what it means. There currently is no DNI – Coats' nomination is yet to be confirmed. It's hard to imagine what meetings wouldn't pertain to their "responsibilities and expertise," especially given that secretaries with much more specific responsibilities (like Treasury) weren't demoted. Bannon's promotion, however, is more significant: Trump is known for not attending many meetings, and delegating those, and Bannon is likely to be his principal representative in the NSC. My gut read is that this is something which will prove very important in the long run. Trump's rift with the existing military and intelligence establishments is well-known, and he's made numerous statements, directly and through surrogates, about his interest in constructing alternative establishments reporting directly to him. Bannon would be a logical person to manage that subchain, as his "Chief Strategist" role doesn't come with a large org to manage already, or with Congressionally mandated restrictions. That would be the skeleton of a new internal security system, with the DHS and FBI (both very loyal to Trump) in the loop, together with a new private "security force" rolling up to Keith Schiller that takes over a lot of Secret Service roles, and a hypothetical new intelligence force, with Bannon being either de facto or de jure in charge of all the new organizations, and little to no legal supervision over them. It's not clear, again, that this is where it's going, but it's definitely the configuration I would keep my eyes open for. It would promote Bannon from a Goebbels to a Himmler, which I suspect he would be just fine with. So: Many signs out there, but nothing clear yet. These could range from incredibly serious to passing things, depending on how the next week or so plays out. Update (00:51 PST): The DHS has put out an official statement, and I'll be damned if I can figure out what it means. It starts out by saying that they will continue to enforce all of Trump's orders, and that the orders remain in place, but it does offer a nod (later on) to complying with judicial orders. Text here: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/01/29/department-homeland-security-response-recent-litigation Update (02:06 PST): The Washington Post's story pulls together a range of official statements, which make it clear that this is deliberate and central policy, ordered personally by Trump. The exact meaning of the DHS statement remains unclear, but most people are reading it as an intent to continue to do whatever they want; it may involve a suggestion that if they don't want to grant a waiver to someone with a green card, they may do it by simply revoking the green card on the spot. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/refugees-detained-at-us-airports-challenge-trumps-executive-order/2017/01/28/e69501a2-e562-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_airports-1046am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.560b5a336b45 Update (07:55 PST): Sources confirming that DHS lawyers had flagged the banning of legal permanent residents as illegal ahead of time, but were specifically overruled by Bannon. Note the implications both for the deliberacy of the act and for the extent of Bannon's power. Also, Priebus confirmed on "Meet the Press" that the omission of Jews from the Holocaust Remembrance Day statement was deliberate and is not regretted. http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/steve-bannon-personally-overruled-dhs-decision-not-to-include-green-card-holders-in-travel-ban-cnn/ Update (12:59 PST): Priebus announced that the order will no longer be applied to those with green cards. The rest of the order stands (including those with visas other than permanent residency), and it remains unclear who has been deported so far, who is still being held, or what exactly CBP will be doing next. Increasing evidence signals that deployment of this policy really was complete chaos, even internally, with the head of CBP not even being pre-briefed. https://nyti.ms/2jFy45B
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeAs well as being made from Star Dust, you are also made from fossil fuels. - nitrogen from fertiliser now accounts for more than half the protein in the human diet. - All nitrogen fertiliser comes from the Haber-Bosch process - Which uses fossil fuel as a feedstock and energy source — Nitrogen Pollution – Climate Change’s Forgotten Element https://theconversation.com/nitrogen-pollution-the-forgotten-element-of-climate-change-69348
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Commented on post by Gail TverbergI'm beginning to think that renewables won't make a huge difference to the world. Their rapid drop in price and rapid deployment is decoupling GDP growth from fossil fuel growth to some extent. But all that appears to mean is that fossil fuel consumption is now stable at it's highest ever rate. And the low carbon electricity sources are being used in some kind of Jevons paradox to power the additional GDP growth. So, yes, renewables are not an alternative. Currently they're an addition. And an addition that has reduced non-renewable growth to zero. Which in turn means that we need a new RCP climate and economic forecasting model just slightly back from 8.5 that reflects a "Business as usual" world where we maintain our current fossil fuel consumption for as long as possible. Because for all the fine talk of Paris and the INDCs we're not actually hitting any of the targets. — It would be nice if wind and solar really could be an acceptable alternative. Unfortunately, they fall far short of meeting our needs. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2017/01/30/the-wind-and-solar-will-save-us-delusion/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chromecast AudioNope. Oundle School near Peterborough, And then Cambridge University. (Trinity Hall). — Did Google fix the problem of Cast-Audio being unable to play Youtube music videos yet?
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate ChangeNah. He looks like that baddie from the first Indian Jones film.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawSeen elsewhere. "Demonstrations only work against people who can feel shame". Which partially explains Tony Blair. Demos against Trump (like Occupy) are largely about making the demonstrators feel good. BTW. What happened to those journalists who let themselves get kettled and locked up? — Some updates on the political situation. Everything is very preliminary right now, because it's (apparently deliberately) unclear. Several Federal judges have issued stays against the "Muslim ban" order. However, there are confirmed reports from multiple sources that Customs & Border Patrol (CBP, part of the DHS) is willfully disregarding those stays, denying access to counsel, moving the people they're holding to undisclosed locations so that nobody can get habeas corpus, and deporting people. This is very certainly not a local commander's decision; it goes up to the Sec'y of HS at least, and directly to Trump at most. But – and here's the kicker – it's incredibly unclear what the scope of this refusal is. There's no clear news coming out, and we're getting more useful reports from the Twitter feeds of top attorneys in the field (both from groups like the ACLU, who have done heroic work tonight, and from attorneys at top firms, who have been joining this pro bono) than we are from anywhere else. If this is a refusal of unambiguous Federal court orders, then this is serious, serious beyond the scale of anything we've seen in our lifetimes: it's DHS saying that if Trump tells them to do one thing and the courts another, they will do what Trump says and best of luck to the courts trying to enforce that. Which is to say, they're establishing a precedent that DHS actions are not subject to any sort of court review, or to anything other than the personal fiat of Trump – including their right to detain people, deport them, or hold them incommunicado. Alternatively, this might be something else, a decision by CBP counsel that certain court orders don't apply to certain cases; this is serious too, since they're trying to create "facts on the ground" faster than the courts can react, but it doesn't mean a wholesale rejection of the system of law. I simply don't have enough information yet, and hope to update as we know more. Separately, there was another story today: Trump reorganized the National Security Counsel. The two most prominent changes are this: Steve Bannon now has a seat on it, and the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were both demoted: they only attend meetings of the Principals Committee which "[pertain] to their responsibilities and expertise." (The other full members of the PC, incidentally, are the secretaries of State (Tillerson), Treasury (Szubin), Defense (Mattis), and Homeland Security (Kelly), the AG (Sessions), the President's Chief of Staff (Priebus), the National Security Advisor (Flynn), and the Homeland Security Advisor (Bossert). You can read the full order here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/presidential-memorandum-organization-national-security-council-and) The demotion of the DNI and CJCS is surprising and I don't yet know what it means. There currently is no DNI – Coats' nomination is yet to be confirmed. It's hard to imagine what meetings wouldn't pertain to their "responsibilities and expertise," especially given that secretaries with much more specific responsibilities (like Treasury) weren't demoted. Bannon's promotion, however, is more significant: Trump is known for not attending many meetings, and delegating those, and Bannon is likely to be his principal representative in the NSC. My gut read is that this is something which will prove very important in the long run. Trump's rift with the existing military and intelligence establishments is well-known, and he's made numerous statements, directly and through surrogates, about his interest in constructing alternative establishments reporting directly to him. Bannon would be a logical person to manage that subchain, as his "Chief Strategist" role doesn't come with a large org to manage already, or with Congressionally mandated restrictions. That would be the skeleton of a new internal security system, with the DHS and FBI (both very loyal to Trump) in the loop, together with a new private "security force" rolling up to Keith Schiller that takes over a lot of Secret Service roles, and a hypothetical new intelligence force, with Bannon being either de facto or de jure in charge of all the new organizations, and little to no legal supervision over them. It's not clear, again, that this is where it's going, but it's definitely the configuration I would keep my eyes open for. It would promote Bannon from a Goebbels to a Himmler, which I suspect he would be just fine with. So: Many signs out there, but nothing clear yet. These could range from incredibly serious to passing things, depending on how the next week or so plays out. Update (00:51 PST): The DHS has put out an official statement, and I'll be damned if I can figure out what it means. It starts out by saying that they will continue to enforce all of Trump's orders, and that the orders remain in place, but it does offer a nod (later on) to complying with judicial orders. Text here: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/01/29/department-homeland-security-response-recent-litigation Update (02:06 PST): The Washington Post's story pulls together a range of official statements, which make it clear that this is deliberate and central policy, ordered personally by Trump. The exact meaning of the DHS statement remains unclear, but most people are reading it as an intent to continue to do whatever they want; it may involve a suggestion that if they don't want to grant a waiver to someone with a green card, they may do it by simply revoking the green card on the spot. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/refugees-detained-at-us-airports-challenge-trumps-executive-order/2017/01/28/e69501a2-e562-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_airports-1046am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.560b5a336b45 Update (07:55 PST): Sources confirming that DHS lawyers had flagged the banning of legal permanent residents as illegal ahead of time, but were specifically overruled by Bannon. Note the implications both for the deliberacy of the act and for the extent of Bannon's power. Also, Priebus confirmed on "Meet the Press" that the omission of Jews from the Holocaust Remembrance Day statement was deliberate and is not regretted. http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/steve-bannon-personally-overruled-dhs-decision-not-to-include-green-card-holders-in-travel-ban-cnn/ Update (12:59 PST): Priebus announced that the order will no longer be applied to those with green cards. The rest of the order stands (including those with visas other than permanent residency), and it remains unclear who has been deported so far, who is still being held, or what exactly CBP will be doing next. Increasing evidence signals that deployment of this policy really was complete chaos, even internally, with the head of CBP not even being pre-briefed. https://nyti.ms/2jFy45B
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+Rudolf Polzer Things to do with a sniper rifle. - Irradiate a shipping container of CIA off-the-books cash diverted from Iraq. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spook_Country - Take out one of the US National Grids. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/01/theme-fiction-and-empire-games.html#comment-2018577 And which SciFi future are we living in? Phil K Dick's High Castle, one of William Gibson's alternative presents or CASE NIGHTMARE ORANGE? http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/reagan-trump-and-manufacturing/?_r=0 http://thelaundryfiles.wikia.com/wiki/CASE_NIGHTMARE_GREEN Or maybe it's just RAW again. It was the year when they finally tried to Immanentize The Eschaton, and things were coming to a head. — Some updates on the political situation. Everything is very preliminary right now, because it's (apparently deliberately) unclear. Several Federal judges have issued stays against the "Muslim ban" order. However, there are confirmed reports from multiple sources that Customs & Border Patrol (CBP, part of the DHS) is willfully disregarding those stays, denying access to counsel, moving the people they're holding to undisclosed locations so that nobody can get habeas corpus, and deporting people. This is very certainly not a local commander's decision; it goes up to the Sec'y of HS at least, and directly to Trump at most. But – and here's the kicker – it's incredibly unclear what the scope of this refusal is. There's no clear news coming out, and we're getting more useful reports from the Twitter feeds of top attorneys in the field (both from groups like the ACLU, who have done heroic work tonight, and from attorneys at top firms, who have been joining this pro bono) than we are from anywhere else. If this is a refusal of unambiguous Federal court orders, then this is serious, serious beyond the scale of anything we've seen in our lifetimes: it's DHS saying that if Trump tells them to do one thing and the courts another, they will do what Trump says and best of luck to the courts trying to enforce that. Which is to say, they're establishing a precedent that DHS actions are not subject to any sort of court review, or to anything other than the personal fiat of Trump – including their right to detain people, deport them, or hold them incommunicado. Alternatively, this might be something else, a decision by CBP counsel that certain court orders don't apply to certain cases; this is serious too, since they're trying to create "facts on the ground" faster than the courts can react, but it doesn't mean a wholesale rejection of the system of law. I simply don't have enough information yet, and hope to update as we know more. Separately, there was another story today: Trump reorganized the National Security Counsel. The two most prominent changes are this: Steve Bannon now has a seat on it, and the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were both demoted: they only attend meetings of the Principals Committee which "[pertain] to their responsibilities and expertise." (The other full members of the PC, incidentally, are the secretaries of State (Tillerson), Treasury (Szubin), Defense (Mattis), and Homeland Security (Kelly), the AG (Sessions), the President's Chief of Staff (Priebus), the National Security Advisor (Flynn), and the Homeland Security Advisor (Bossert). You can read the full order here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/presidential-memorandum-organization-national-security-council-and) The demotion of the DNI and CJCS is surprising and I don't yet know what it means. There currently is no DNI – Coats' nomination is yet to be confirmed. It's hard to imagine what meetings wouldn't pertain to their "responsibilities and expertise," especially given that secretaries with much more specific responsibilities (like Treasury) weren't demoted. Bannon's promotion, however, is more significant: Trump is known for not attending many meetings, and delegating those, and Bannon is likely to be his principal representative in the NSC. My gut read is that this is something which will prove very important in the long run. Trump's rift with the existing military and intelligence establishments is well-known, and he's made numerous statements, directly and through surrogates, about his interest in constructing alternative establishments reporting directly to him. Bannon would be a logical person to manage that subchain, as his "Chief Strategist" role doesn't come with a large org to manage already, or with Congressionally mandated restrictions. That would be the skeleton of a new internal security system, with the DHS and FBI (both very loyal to Trump) in the loop, together with a new private "security force" rolling up to Keith Schiller that takes over a lot of Secret Service roles, and a hypothetical new intelligence force, with Bannon being either de facto or de jure in charge of all the new organizations, and little to no legal supervision over them. It's not clear, again, that this is where it's going, but it's definitely the configuration I would keep my eyes open for. It would promote Bannon from a Goebbels to a Himmler, which I suspect he would be just fine with. So: Many signs out there, but nothing clear yet. These could range from incredibly serious to passing things, depending on how the next week or so plays out. Update (00:51 PST): The DHS has put out an official statement, and I'll be damned if I can figure out what it means. It starts out by saying that they will continue to enforce all of Trump's orders, and that the orders remain in place, but it does offer a nod (later on) to complying with judicial orders. Text here: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/01/29/department-homeland-security-response-recent-litigation Update (02:06 PST): The Washington Post's story pulls together a range of official statements, which make it clear that this is deliberate and central policy, ordered personally by Trump. The exact meaning of the DHS statement remains unclear, but most people are reading it as an intent to continue to do whatever they want; it may involve a suggestion that if they don't want to grant a waiver to someone with a green card, they may do it by simply revoking the green card on the spot. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/refugees-detained-at-us-airports-challenge-trumps-executive-order/2017/01/28/e69501a2-e562-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_airports-1046am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.560b5a336b45 Update (07:55 PST): Sources confirming that DHS lawyers had flagged the banning of legal permanent residents as illegal ahead of time, but were specifically overruled by Bannon. Note the implications both for the deliberacy of the act and for the extent of Bannon's power. Also, Priebus confirmed on "Meet the Press" that the omission of Jews from the Holocaust Remembrance Day statement was deliberate and is not regretted. http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/steve-bannon-personally-overruled-dhs-decision-not-to-include-green-card-holders-in-travel-ban-cnn/ Update (12:59 PST): Priebus announced that the order will no longer be applied to those with green cards. The rest of the order stands (including those with visas other than permanent residency), and it remains unclear who has been deported so far, who is still being held, or what exactly CBP will be doing next. Increasing evidence signals that deployment of this policy really was complete chaos, even internally, with the head of CBP not even being pre-briefed. https://nyti.ms/2jFy45B
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Lawhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdNsltQXTVU — Some updates on the political situation. Everything is very preliminary right now, because it's (apparently deliberately) unclear. Several Federal judges have issued stays against the "Muslim ban" order. However, there are confirmed reports from multiple sources that Customs & Border Patrol (CBP, part of the DHS) is willfully disregarding those stays, denying access to counsel, moving the people they're holding to undisclosed locations so that nobody can get habeas corpus, and deporting people. This is very certainly not a local commander's decision; it goes up to the Sec'y of HS at least, and directly to Trump at most. But – and here's the kicker – it's incredibly unclear what the scope of this refusal is. There's no clear news coming out, and we're getting more useful reports from the Twitter feeds of top attorneys in the field (both from groups like the ACLU, who have done heroic work tonight, and from attorneys at top firms, who have been joining this pro bono) than we are from anywhere else. If this is a refusal of unambiguous Federal court orders, then this is serious, serious beyond the scale of anything we've seen in our lifetimes: it's DHS saying that if Trump tells them to do one thing and the courts another, they will do what Trump says and best of luck to the courts trying to enforce that. Which is to say, they're establishing a precedent that DHS actions are not subject to any sort of court review, or to anything other than the personal fiat of Trump – including their right to detain people, deport them, or hold them incommunicado. Alternatively, this might be something else, a decision by CBP counsel that certain court orders don't apply to certain cases; this is serious too, since they're trying to create "facts on the ground" faster than the courts can react, but it doesn't mean a wholesale rejection of the system of law. I simply don't have enough information yet, and hope to update as we know more. Separately, there was another story today: Trump reorganized the National Security Counsel. The two most prominent changes are this: Steve Bannon now has a seat on it, and the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were both demoted: they only attend meetings of the Principals Committee which "[pertain] to their responsibilities and expertise." (The other full members of the PC, incidentally, are the secretaries of State (Tillerson), Treasury (Szubin), Defense (Mattis), and Homeland Security (Kelly), the AG (Sessions), the President's Chief of Staff (Priebus), the National Security Advisor (Flynn), and the Homeland Security Advisor (Bossert). You can read the full order here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/presidential-memorandum-organization-national-security-council-and) The demotion of the DNI and CJCS is surprising and I don't yet know what it means. There currently is no DNI – Coats' nomination is yet to be confirmed. It's hard to imagine what meetings wouldn't pertain to their "responsibilities and expertise," especially given that secretaries with much more specific responsibilities (like Treasury) weren't demoted. Bannon's promotion, however, is more significant: Trump is known for not attending many meetings, and delegating those, and Bannon is likely to be his principal representative in the NSC. My gut read is that this is something which will prove very important in the long run. Trump's rift with the existing military and intelligence establishments is well-known, and he's made numerous statements, directly and through surrogates, about his interest in constructing alternative establishments reporting directly to him. Bannon would be a logical person to manage that subchain, as his "Chief Strategist" role doesn't come with a large org to manage already, or with Congressionally mandated restrictions. That would be the skeleton of a new internal security system, with the DHS and FBI (both very loyal to Trump) in the loop, together with a new private "security force" rolling up to Keith Schiller that takes over a lot of Secret Service roles, and a hypothetical new intelligence force, with Bannon being either de facto or de jure in charge of all the new organizations, and little to no legal supervision over them. It's not clear, again, that this is where it's going, but it's definitely the configuration I would keep my eyes open for. It would promote Bannon from a Goebbels to a Himmler, which I suspect he would be just fine with. So: Many signs out there, but nothing clear yet. These could range from incredibly serious to passing things, depending on how the next week or so plays out. Update (00:51 PST): The DHS has put out an official statement, and I'll be damned if I can figure out what it means. It starts out by saying that they will continue to enforce all of Trump's orders, and that the orders remain in place, but it does offer a nod (later on) to complying with judicial orders. Text here: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/01/29/department-homeland-security-response-recent-litigation Update (02:06 PST): The Washington Post's story pulls together a range of official statements, which make it clear that this is deliberate and central policy, ordered personally by Trump. The exact meaning of the DHS statement remains unclear, but most people are reading it as an intent to continue to do whatever they want; it may involve a suggestion that if they don't want to grant a waiver to someone with a green card, they may do it by simply revoking the green card on the spot. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/refugees-detained-at-us-airports-challenge-trumps-executive-order/2017/01/28/e69501a2-e562-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_airports-1046am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.560b5a336b45 Update (07:55 PST): Sources confirming that DHS lawyers had flagged the banning of legal permanent residents as illegal ahead of time, but were specifically overruled by Bannon. Note the implications both for the deliberacy of the act and for the extent of Bannon's power. Also, Priebus confirmed on "Meet the Press" that the omission of Jews from the Holocaust Remembrance Day statement was deliberate and is not regretted. http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/steve-bannon-personally-overruled-dhs-decision-not-to-include-green-card-holders-in-travel-ban-cnn/ Update (12:59 PST): Priebus announced that the order will no longer be applied to those with green cards. The rest of the order stands (including those with visas other than permanent residency), and it remains unclear who has been deported so far, who is still being held, or what exactly CBP will be doing next. Increasing evidence signals that deployment of this policy really was complete chaos, even internally, with the head of CBP not even being pre-briefed. https://nyti.ms/2jFy45B
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawNote the Muslim gulf states that are NOT included in the ban. That'll be the rich, oil-rich and Sunni ones, then. This is at least in part a war against Shiite Muslims on their behalf. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/01/trumps-crazy-immigration-freeze/ — Some updates on the political situation. Everything is very preliminary right now, because it's (apparently deliberately) unclear. Several Federal judges have issued stays against the "Muslim ban" order. However, there are confirmed reports from multiple sources that Customs & Border Patrol (CBP, part of the DHS) is willfully disregarding those stays, denying access to counsel, moving the people they're holding to undisclosed locations so that nobody can get habeas corpus, and deporting people. This is very certainly not a local commander's decision; it goes up to the Sec'y of HS at least, and directly to Trump at most. But – and here's the kicker – it's incredibly unclear what the scope of this refusal is. There's no clear news coming out, and we're getting more useful reports from the Twitter feeds of top attorneys in the field (both from groups like the ACLU, who have done heroic work tonight, and from attorneys at top firms, who have been joining this pro bono) than we are from anywhere else. If this is a refusal of unambiguous Federal court orders, then this is serious, serious beyond the scale of anything we've seen in our lifetimes: it's DHS saying that if Trump tells them to do one thing and the courts another, they will do what Trump says and best of luck to the courts trying to enforce that. Which is to say, they're establishing a precedent that DHS actions are not subject to any sort of court review, or to anything other than the personal fiat of Trump – including their right to detain people, deport them, or hold them incommunicado. Alternatively, this might be something else, a decision by CBP counsel that certain court orders don't apply to certain cases; this is serious too, since they're trying to create "facts on the ground" faster than the courts can react, but it doesn't mean a wholesale rejection of the system of law. I simply don't have enough information yet, and hope to update as we know more. Separately, there was another story today: Trump reorganized the National Security Counsel. The two most prominent changes are this: Steve Bannon now has a seat on it, and the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were both demoted: they only attend meetings of the Principals Committee which "[pertain] to their responsibilities and expertise." (The other full members of the PC, incidentally, are the secretaries of State (Tillerson), Treasury (Szubin), Defense (Mattis), and Homeland Security (Kelly), the AG (Sessions), the President's Chief of Staff (Priebus), the National Security Advisor (Flynn), and the Homeland Security Advisor (Bossert). You can read the full order here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/presidential-memorandum-organization-national-security-council-and) The demotion of the DNI and CJCS is surprising and I don't yet know what it means. There currently is no DNI – Coats' nomination is yet to be confirmed. It's hard to imagine what meetings wouldn't pertain to their "responsibilities and expertise," especially given that secretaries with much more specific responsibilities (like Treasury) weren't demoted. Bannon's promotion, however, is more significant: Trump is known for not attending many meetings, and delegating those, and Bannon is likely to be his principal representative in the NSC. My gut read is that this is something which will prove very important in the long run. Trump's rift with the existing military and intelligence establishments is well-known, and he's made numerous statements, directly and through surrogates, about his interest in constructing alternative establishments reporting directly to him. Bannon would be a logical person to manage that subchain, as his "Chief Strategist" role doesn't come with a large org to manage already, or with Congressionally mandated restrictions. That would be the skeleton of a new internal security system, with the DHS and FBI (both very loyal to Trump) in the loop, together with a new private "security force" rolling up to Keith Schiller that takes over a lot of Secret Service roles, and a hypothetical new intelligence force, with Bannon being either de facto or de jure in charge of all the new organizations, and little to no legal supervision over them. It's not clear, again, that this is where it's going, but it's definitely the configuration I would keep my eyes open for. It would promote Bannon from a Goebbels to a Himmler, which I suspect he would be just fine with. So: Many signs out there, but nothing clear yet. These could range from incredibly serious to passing things, depending on how the next week or so plays out. Update (00:51 PST): The DHS has put out an official statement, and I'll be damned if I can figure out what it means. It starts out by saying that they will continue to enforce all of Trump's orders, and that the orders remain in place, but it does offer a nod (later on) to complying with judicial orders. Text here: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/01/29/department-homeland-security-response-recent-litigation Update (02:06 PST): The Washington Post's story pulls together a range of official statements, which make it clear that this is deliberate and central policy, ordered personally by Trump. The exact meaning of the DHS statement remains unclear, but most people are reading it as an intent to continue to do whatever they want; it may involve a suggestion that if they don't want to grant a waiver to someone with a green card, they may do it by simply revoking the green card on the spot. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/refugees-detained-at-us-airports-challenge-trumps-executive-order/2017/01/28/e69501a2-e562-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_airports-1046am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.560b5a336b45 Update (07:55 PST): Sources confirming that DHS lawyers had flagged the banning of legal permanent residents as illegal ahead of time, but were specifically overruled by Bannon. Note the implications both for the deliberacy of the act and for the extent of Bannon's power. Also, Priebus confirmed on "Meet the Press" that the omission of Jews from the Holocaust Remembrance Day statement was deliberate and is not regretted. http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/steve-bannon-personally-overruled-dhs-decision-not-to-include-green-card-holders-in-travel-ban-cnn/ Update (12:59 PST): Priebus announced that the order will no longer be applied to those with green cards. The rest of the order stands (including those with visas other than permanent residency), and it remains unclear who has been deported so far, who is still being held, or what exactly CBP will be doing next. Increasing evidence signals that deployment of this policy really was complete chaos, even internally, with the head of CBP not even being pre-briefed. https://nyti.ms/2jFy45B
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawSome more info about the current situation here. https://theintercept.com/2017/01/29/trumps-muslim-ban-triggers-chaos-heartbreak-and-resistance/ — Some updates on the political situation. Everything is very preliminary right now, because it's (apparently deliberately) unclear. Several Federal judges have issued stays against the "Muslim ban" order. However, there are confirmed reports from multiple sources that Customs & Border Patrol (CBP, part of the DHS) is willfully disregarding those stays, denying access to counsel, moving the people they're holding to undisclosed locations so that nobody can get habeas corpus, and deporting people. This is very certainly not a local commander's decision; it goes up to the Sec'y of HS at least, and directly to Trump at most. But – and here's the kicker – it's incredibly unclear what the scope of this refusal is. There's no clear news coming out, and we're getting more useful reports from the Twitter feeds of top attorneys in the field (both from groups like the ACLU, who have done heroic work tonight, and from attorneys at top firms, who have been joining this pro bono) than we are from anywhere else. If this is a refusal of unambiguous Federal court orders, then this is serious, serious beyond the scale of anything we've seen in our lifetimes: it's DHS saying that if Trump tells them to do one thing and the courts another, they will do what Trump says and best of luck to the courts trying to enforce that. Which is to say, they're establishing a precedent that DHS actions are not subject to any sort of court review, or to anything other than the personal fiat of Trump – including their right to detain people, deport them, or hold them incommunicado. Alternatively, this might be something else, a decision by CBP counsel that certain court orders don't apply to certain cases; this is serious too, since they're trying to create "facts on the ground" faster than the courts can react, but it doesn't mean a wholesale rejection of the system of law. I simply don't have enough information yet, and hope to update as we know more. Separately, there was another story today: Trump reorganized the National Security Counsel. The two most prominent changes are this: Steve Bannon now has a seat on it, and the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were both demoted: they only attend meetings of the Principals Committee which "[pertain] to their responsibilities and expertise." (The other full members of the PC, incidentally, are the secretaries of State (Tillerson), Treasury (Szubin), Defense (Mattis), and Homeland Security (Kelly), the AG (Sessions), the President's Chief of Staff (Priebus), the National Security Advisor (Flynn), and the Homeland Security Advisor (Bossert). You can read the full order here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/28/presidential-memorandum-organization-national-security-council-and) The demotion of the DNI and CJCS is surprising and I don't yet know what it means. There currently is no DNI – Coats' nomination is yet to be confirmed. It's hard to imagine what meetings wouldn't pertain to their "responsibilities and expertise," especially given that secretaries with much more specific responsibilities (like Treasury) weren't demoted. Bannon's promotion, however, is more significant: Trump is known for not attending many meetings, and delegating those, and Bannon is likely to be his principal representative in the NSC. My gut read is that this is something which will prove very important in the long run. Trump's rift with the existing military and intelligence establishments is well-known, and he's made numerous statements, directly and through surrogates, about his interest in constructing alternative establishments reporting directly to him. Bannon would be a logical person to manage that subchain, as his "Chief Strategist" role doesn't come with a large org to manage already, or with Congressionally mandated restrictions. That would be the skeleton of a new internal security system, with the DHS and FBI (both very loyal to Trump) in the loop, together with a new private "security force" rolling up to Keith Schiller that takes over a lot of Secret Service roles, and a hypothetical new intelligence force, with Bannon being either de facto or de jure in charge of all the new organizations, and little to no legal supervision over them. It's not clear, again, that this is where it's going, but it's definitely the configuration I would keep my eyes open for. It would promote Bannon from a Goebbels to a Himmler, which I suspect he would be just fine with. So: Many signs out there, but nothing clear yet. These could range from incredibly serious to passing things, depending on how the next week or so plays out. Update (00:51 PST): The DHS has put out an official statement, and I'll be damned if I can figure out what it means. It starts out by saying that they will continue to enforce all of Trump's orders, and that the orders remain in place, but it does offer a nod (later on) to complying with judicial orders. Text here: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2017/01/29/department-homeland-security-response-recent-litigation Update (02:06 PST): The Washington Post's story pulls together a range of official statements, which make it clear that this is deliberate and central policy, ordered personally by Trump. The exact meaning of the DHS statement remains unclear, but most people are reading it as an intent to continue to do whatever they want; it may involve a suggestion that if they don't want to grant a waiver to someone with a green card, they may do it by simply revoking the green card on the spot. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/refugees-detained-at-us-airports-challenge-trumps-executive-order/2017/01/28/e69501a2-e562-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_airports-1046am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.560b5a336b45 Update (07:55 PST): Sources confirming that DHS lawyers had flagged the banning of legal permanent residents as illegal ahead of time, but were specifically overruled by Bannon. Note the implications both for the deliberacy of the act and for the extent of Bannon's power. Also, Priebus confirmed on "Meet the Press" that the omission of Jews from the Holocaust Remembrance Day statement was deliberate and is not regretted. http://www.rawstory.com/2017/01/steve-bannon-personally-overruled-dhs-decision-not-to-include-green-card-holders-in-travel-ban-cnn/ Update (12:59 PST): Priebus announced that the order will no longer be applied to those with green cards. The rest of the order stands (including those with visas other than permanent residency), and it remains unclear who has been deported so far, who is still being held, or what exactly CBP will be doing next. Increasing evidence signals that deployment of this policy really was complete chaos, even internally, with the head of CBP not even being pre-briefed. https://nyti.ms/2jFy45B
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeDon't go to sleep, sheep. Stay woke. Baaaah, say the sheep. — Global warming’s companion crisis: How our fast growing “nitrogen footprint” from agricultural and industrial activities is growing to crisis levels https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/global-warming-s-companion-crisis
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Commented on post by Peter StrempelWindows 10 - desktop - chrome. - hate the red and green so changed it to Facebook blue - Fonts too big so made them a bit smaller - Comment display is horrible - Multicolumn is more cramped than ever so reluctantly changed to single column - Weirdly single column home posts display is centered where communities posts are left aligned - List of communities I belong to is more useless than it used to be. I can no longer see them all on one page. And they're in alphabetical order and not recently visited or recently updated. - Search is as useless as ever - It feels like the API is at end of life. No fixes. No new function. No engagement from developer relations. - It's weirdly hard to find the posting date of posts and comments and it keeps disappearing. - Complete lack of alt-text on clickable links. Often lack of signposting if an element is clickable. One good thing. Location on posts in desktop web. End result is that everything takes 10 times as long as on facebook. Leading to less reading, engagement, posting, commenting, messaging. I used to like Buzz. I now hate G+ — What makes Google 'Nazi Theme' so bad? To all who hate the 'new design', please comment on whether you use gadget or desktop/laptop to access, and what makes it so horrible to use. The image presented is a leaked early design sketch by the homeless Neo Nazi Chihuahuas Alphabet employed to come up with the design. It may explain a few things ...
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Updates+Jason Burke The colour of the header is now facebook dull, and so less distracting. But that's all I've really changed. But consider this. FB is 10-100 times faster and more efficient for reading, writing and commenting. I just plain consume and interact more on FB. And each update to G+ slows me down further. — So farewell then "Classic" desktop web. I hate the new interface for all kinds of reasons but I've made it at least useable and slightly less offensive. - Settings, Stream: Single column, Autoplay images off, animate comments off, Trending posts never. - Install Stylish in Chrome. Create a short style overrides * { font-size: small; } textarea { font-size: small !important; } div[class*='XS1fT'] { background: #469; } The last bit changes the header from red, green etc to a Facebook-ish blue. It mostly works but the header text is a little hard to read in profile and settings due to Google's choice of text colour.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesIt's tricky to first find solutions and then make them stick. The pages are a horrible mess of deeply nested divs, randomly generated class names and obscure javascript. — So farewell then "Classic" desktop web. I hate the new interface for all kinds of reasons but I've made it at least useable and slightly less offensive. - Settings, Stream: Single column, Autoplay images off, animate comments off, Trending posts never. - Install Stylish in Chrome. Create a short style overrides * { font-size: small; } textarea { font-size: small !important; } div[class*='XS1fT'] { background: #469; } The last bit changes the header from red, green etc to a Facebook-ish blue. It mostly works but the header text is a little hard to read in profile and settings due to Google's choice of text colour.
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad+Mirosław Baran Mrs May is currently over the Atlantic heading to the USA and an audience with The Great Trumpus. Could you hold onto her for a bit as she's clearly as mad as a bucket of frogs. — Trump says "sanctuary cities" will lose all federal funding cooperate with Immigration or else As of yesterday, Trump is saying he will reserve all federal funding from Boston, Somerville, etc. if we don't cooperate with ICE. Unlike much of the country, we do not employ very much undocumented labor up here, no large scale agribusiness and so on. And we put much more tax money into the federal coffers than we take back. So think about that. It's confiscatory. All our federal taxes go to DC, and none come back, because we won't aid ICE. Do you know what happened the last time a dictator pulled taxation without representation on Boston? Only a small number of persons were interested in actual revolution in the beginning of the tax stamp. This and other rash acts could be a whole spiral for our new mad King George. http://www.history.com/topics/british-history/george-iii
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Commented on post by Julian Bondhttp://internationaltimes.it/nellie-the-elephant/ Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk And said goodbye to the circus Off she went with a trumpety-trump Trump, trump, trump — To my American friends. If the Madness of King Donald III gets too much and you feel you're being taxed without representation, you're very welcome to rejoin the colonies as we leave Europe.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillance+mathew And then, http://www.factmag.com/2017/01/26/insane-clown-posse-juggalo-march-on-washington/ Yes. Juggalo March! Insane Clown Potus vs Insane Clown Posse Fight! — It's the Hats Hundreds of thousands of women -- many wearing pink knit hats -- marched through downtown Washington, and also thronged the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston to rebuke Trump on his first full day in the White House. Attentive followers of mine may have noted a few posts of a suggestion that a useful and effective way to signal opposition to the Facist Puppet would be brightly-coloured, highly-visible, telegenic headgear. The image shown here, and the text of the accompanying Reuter's article, second 'graph quoted above, shows the power of such symbology. There's no question that this crowd isn't united, and that they're working together. The fact that the caps are knit -- a handicraft that protesters can make themselves -- is all the better. I'd suggested a slightly different token -- a yellow baseball cap, playing off a different theme -- but the symbolism and effectiveness of the apparel chosen here clearly work. It's a better choice, certainly in this context, and one I applaud. I'm highlighting it as an example of effective symbolism. Do more of this. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-women-idUSKBN1550DW
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Commented on post by Shava NeradYou're welcome to rejoin the colonies as we leave Europe. ;) https://plus.google.com/legacy_photo_redirect — Trump says "sanctuary cities" will lose all federal funding cooperate with Immigration or else As of yesterday, Trump is saying he will reserve all federal funding from Boston, Somerville, etc. if we don't cooperate with ICE. Unlike much of the country, we do not employ very much undocumented labor up here, no large scale agribusiness and so on. And we put much more tax money into the federal coffers than we take back. So think about that. It's confiscatory. All our federal taxes go to DC, and none come back, because we won't aid ICE. Do you know what happened the last time a dictator pulled taxation without representation on Boston? Only a small number of persons were interested in actual revolution in the beginning of the tax stamp. This and other rash acts could be a whole spiral for our new mad King George. http://www.history.com/topics/british-history/george-iii
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionBonus videos. For What it's worth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIoKr9VDg3A Ohio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68g76j9VBvM — This is just cruel and inhumane punishment Once you're glitterbombed, there's no getting rid of that stuff. https://mobile.twitter.com/TimfromDa70s/status/823308304847802370
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionYou can't polish a turd but you can roll it in glitter. The days of putting flowers in the muzzle of National Guards guns are probably over. But I'm all for more surreal forms of protest. eg EDL - Antifascist "English Disco League", "Don't Hate. Gyrate!" in full 70s joke disco costume. So yes. Don't punch them, throw glitter and silly string at them. — This is just cruel and inhumane punishment Once you're glitterbombed, there's no getting rid of that stuff. https://mobile.twitter.com/TimfromDa70s/status/823308304847802370
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeAllegedly. Note: Nothing Wikileaks has published has ever, ever, been found to be fake. — WikiLeaks offers to save climate data from Trump The site offers itself as a venue for publishing climate research, as scientists and others fear censorship by the Trump administration. https://www.cnet.com/news/wikileaks-environmental-protection-agency-climate-change-data-donald-trump-adminstration-website/
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong LizardAnd now it's a movement. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/25/national-park-service-trump-twitter-campaign-spreads — Update: This may have been overstated; see https://www.yahoo.com/news/usda-disavows-gag-order-emailed-scientific-research-unit-195730939.html -- but I wouldn't at all put it past him for this to be at least as bad as it sounds. Looking out for more information. #ThisIsNotNormal
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Updates+Christian Steve http://voidstar.com/images/scrnsht.png — So farewell then "Classic" desktop web. I hate the new interface for all kinds of reasons but I've made it at least useable and slightly less offensive. - Settings, Stream: Single column, Autoplay images off, animate comments off, Trending posts never. - Install Stylish in Chrome. Create a short style overrides * { font-size: small; } textarea { font-size: small !important; } div[class*='XS1fT'] { background: #469; } The last bit changes the header from red, green etc to a Facebook-ish blue. It mostly works but the header text is a little hard to read in profile and settings due to Google's choice of text colour.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong LizardThis is how it works. An ambiguous statement. Leads to press speculation and hype. Leads to cries of "Shock! Horror!". Leads to self censorship by those directly affected. And leads to endless arguments about the rights and wrongs often about the press hyperbole as much as about what's actually happening. And all done from partisan positions[1]. Then there's a retraction from one agency, but that doesn't change what may or may not have happened at other agencies like the EPA. So what is the real story here? Apart from a general feeling of chaos and headless chickens. And I count the professional media in that. Well done Trumpus. You've thrown another spanner in the works. Oh, And the USA is just weird. Is this any way for a superpower to behave? Most western countries do have some partisan control of their government run and funded agencies, but there is usually more continuity and independence. The civil service generally continues regardless of an election and change in government. [1]Already seeing comment that Obama did the same thing back in 2009. Except that was a moratorium on new * regulations * without being approved by the new head of the agency. Not a blanket ban on publications, public outreach, communications with the wholesale deletion of website sections that are ideologically unsound. "Obama did the same thing" is the new "It was all Dubya's fault". — Update: This may have been overstated; see https://www.yahoo.com/news/usda-disavows-gag-order-emailed-scientific-research-unit-195730939.html -- but I wouldn't at all put it past him for this to be at least as bad as it sounds. Looking out for more information. #ThisIsNotNormal
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceUm. Forget I said that! — Free Software Foundation's High-Priority Projects The High Priority Projects initiative, first launched in 2005, draws attention to a relatively small number of projects of great strategic importance to the goal of freedom for all computer users. The list serves to foster work on projects that are important for increasing the adoption and use of free software applications and free software operating systems. * Free phone operating system * Decentralization, federation, and personal Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS) clouds. * Free drivers, firmware, and hardware designs * Real-time voice and video chat. And more. https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThose are good, but I'm a bit disappointed there's not more about personal security and privacy. — Free Software Foundation's High-Priority Projects The High Priority Projects initiative, first launched in 2005, draws attention to a relatively small number of projects of great strategic importance to the goal of freedom for all computer users. The list serves to foster work on projects that are important for increasing the adoption and use of free software applications and free software operating systems. * Free phone operating system * Decentralization, federation, and personal Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS) clouds. * Free drivers, firmware, and hardware designs * Real-time voice and video chat. And more. https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaThe TPP gets all the press but not the others in the suite of corporate protection, "free" trade treaties. In particular, the TTIP with Europe seems to be dead in the water but hasn't been scuttled by the US side just yet. AFAIK. Then there's the US treaty by proxy like the CETA (Canada-EU). Any news on NAFTA? ISTM that's not the same at all and ought to be more like the European common market groups. But its the USA facilitating it's exploitation of weaker neighbours, so who knows. — Pyrrhus of Epirus It is possible for both Google, and the Fascist Puppet Donald John Trump, to be evil. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/us/politics/tpp-trump-trade-nafta.html
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawHollywood taught me that men hitting each other with fists is how problems are sorted out. Even on Mars or in space. — On Twitter, a debate has emerged in the past few days about punching Nazis. But much to my relief, it hasn't been much of a debate; pretty much everyone agrees that punching Nazis is only effective if you swing from the hip, not the arm, and follow through. As I was writing essays on the limits of tolerance just a few weeks ago, it makes me glad not to have to give that explanation every ten minutes. (It's at https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1af7007d6376, if you want to see it) But several people have more detailed questions about Nazi-punching, and for them, I can heartily recommend this FAQ I encountered: http://thoughtsonthedead.com/on-the-propriety-of-punching-nazis-an-faq/ I'd say it answers pretty much any question you might potentially have about the propriety of punching Nazis. If you want to hear about some other interesting Nazi-punching–related stories, I recommend this little tidbit from the life of Joseph Greenstein, aka "The Mighty Atom," famed circus strongman: https://louisproyect.org/2015/03/16/the-mighty-atom/ Or just go over to Twitter and search for "Nazis." The subject has been trending for the past day or so, and there are quite a lot of excellent things to be said on the subject.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceIt's important that we create a new nickname for The Trumpus every day. So here's another one. I give you:- "Insane Clown Potus" and his followers, the Trumppalos. after, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/matt-taibbis-new-book-insane-clown-president-w461390 — It's the Hats Hundreds of thousands of women -- many wearing pink knit hats -- marched through downtown Washington, and also thronged the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston to rebuke Trump on his first full day in the White House. Attentive followers of mine may have noted a few posts of a suggestion that a useful and effective way to signal opposition to the Facist Puppet would be brightly-coloured, highly-visible, telegenic headgear. The image shown here, and the text of the accompanying Reuter's article, second 'graph quoted above, shows the power of such symbology. There's no question that this crowd isn't united, and that they're working together. The fact that the caps are knit -- a handicraft that protesters can make themselves -- is all the better. I'd suggested a slightly different token -- a yellow baseball cap, playing off a different theme -- but the symbolism and effectiveness of the apparel chosen here clearly work. It's a better choice, certainly in this context, and one I applaud. I'm highlighting it as an example of effective symbolism. Do more of this. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-women-idUSKBN1550DW
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillance"Little Boot" — It's the Hats Hundreds of thousands of women -- many wearing pink knit hats -- marched through downtown Washington, and also thronged the streets of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston to rebuke Trump on his first full day in the White House. Attentive followers of mine may have noted a few posts of a suggestion that a useful and effective way to signal opposition to the Facist Puppet would be brightly-coloured, highly-visible, telegenic headgear. The image shown here, and the text of the accompanying Reuter's article, second 'graph quoted above, shows the power of such symbology. There's no question that this crowd isn't united, and that they're working together. The fact that the caps are knit -- a handicraft that protesters can make themselves -- is all the better. I'd suggested a slightly different token -- a yellow baseball cap, playing off a different theme -- but the symbolism and effectiveness of the apparel chosen here clearly work. It's a better choice, certainly in this context, and one I applaud. I'm highlighting it as an example of effective symbolism. Do more of this. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-women-idUSKBN1550DW
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeDoes anyone do any research? This is normal. Weird, but normal. http://www.snopes.com/white-house-web-site-trump-changes/ — This is what happens when you try to click on the White House Climate Page -------------> The requested page "/energy/" could not be found. https://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/climate-change
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeAnd yet Wheat, Corn and Soy hit record USA output in 2016. So business as usual is all good then. http://www.farmandranchguide.com/news/crop/jan-usda-report-confirms-record-production/article_78589162-dc26-11e6-953b-f35322948b83.html — Staple crops grown in the US could see their yields drop substantially by the end of the century as daily temperatures regularly soar past 30C, a new study finds. #CropYields  
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeI'm not a denier but, — Outright climate denial is passé. But those who champion the interests of fossil fuels have developed new talking points Here’s how they look: 1 – The climate is changing; 2 – Humans are responsible for some of that warming; 3 – As to what degree humans are responsible, what the impacts of warming will be and what to do about it, that science is still up for debate These talking points have been used, almost word for word by every one of Donald Trump’s nominees who could influence US climate policy. From Rex Tillerson to Ryan Zinke and Scott Pruitt. #ClimateChangeDenial  
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesMe too. But they won't keep it around. — Apparently that about wraps it up for G+ Classic. Only days left and constant nag reminders on every screen refresh. Sigh
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionSpooky. I just came across this only minutes before arriving here. http://seansrussiablog.org/2013/05/11/us-prison-industrial-complex-versus-the-stalinist-gulag/ TLDR: Twice as many people in the USA Correctional Facility system now as in the Gulags then. — "The GULAG had no shortage of temporarily embarrassed millionaires." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13420498
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsPerhaps it's a language thing. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=business+ethics%2Ccorporate+ethics&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cbusiness%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccorporate%20ethics%3B%2Cc0 Note the peak around the 1930 depression. — Professional Ethics: an Ngram exploration A recent post had suggested that the tradition of ethics within the information technology field was less developed than in earlier disciplines, particularly medicine, law, and engineering. That's somewhat testable through Google's Ngram viewer, and the idea that there is some centuries-old tradition isn't particularly well borne out. In several cases, it was only in the 1970s that discussion of such issues, at least as captured in a massive scanned-in corpus of literature, really establishes itself. The image shown is dominated by the plot for medical ethics, you can explore in depth with the (long) link below. There are exceptions to the recent development, particularly in the case of professional ethics, which saw many mentions in the early 20th century. The good news, if there is any, is that CompSci doesn't have that much catching up to do. But it most definitely should. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=medical+ethics%2C+legal+ethics%2C+engineering+ethics%2C+scientific+ethics%2C+journalistic+ethics%2C+professional+ethics&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmedical%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Clegal%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cengineering%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cscientific%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cjournalistic%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cprofessional%20ethics%3B%2Cc0
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsI'm not sure where I first saw it but I've long been fascinated by a view of the western world as the interplay between Political, Corporate and Personal Ethics. It's a bit unfortunate that Ethics is seen as a synonym of Morals in popular speech. It tends to derail conversations about it. I think of Ethics as having less of a moral dimension and more of a sense of it being a system of acceptable behaviours. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=corporate+ethics%2Cpolitical+ethics%2Cpersonal+ethics&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccorporate%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cpolitical%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cpersonal%20ethics%3B%2Cc0 — Professional Ethics: an Ngram exploration A recent post had suggested that the tradition of ethics within the information technology field was less developed than in earlier disciplines, particularly medicine, law, and engineering. That's somewhat testable through Google's Ngram viewer, and the idea that there is some centuries-old tradition isn't particularly well borne out. In several cases, it was only in the 1970s that discussion of such issues, at least as captured in a massive scanned-in corpus of literature, really establishes itself. The image shown is dominated by the plot for medical ethics, you can explore in depth with the (long) link below. There are exceptions to the recent development, particularly in the case of professional ethics, which saw many mentions in the early 20th century. The good news, if there is any, is that CompSci doesn't have that much catching up to do. But it most definitely should. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=medical+ethics%2C+legal+ethics%2C+engineering+ethics%2C+scientific+ethics%2C+journalistic+ethics%2C+professional+ethics&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cmedical%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Clegal%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cengineering%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cscientific%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cjournalistic%20ethics%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cprofessional%20ethics%3B%2Cc0
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Commented on post by Pierre Markuse in Climate Change / EarthGo North, young man. — NASA, NOAA Data Show 2016 Warmest Year on Record Globally Earth's 2016 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern recordkeeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Globally-averaged temperatures in 2016 were 1.78 degrees Fahrenheit (0.99 degrees Celsius) warmer than the mid-20th century mean. This makes 2016 the third year in a row to set a new record for global average surface temperatures. “2016 is remarkably the third record year in a row in this series,” said GISS Director Gavin Schmidt. “We don't expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear.” More information here: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20170118/ NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/ Video: NASA's Analysis of 2016 Global Temperature https://youtu.be/s3RWTTtPg8E Check out NASA's Global Climate Change Vital Signs of the Planet website with lots of information on global climate change: http://climate.nasa.gov/ This NASA Earth Observatory article on global warming is answering some of the most asked questions: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/ Image credit: The planet's long-term warming trend is seen in this chart of every year's annual temperature cycle from 1880 to the present, compared to the average temperature from 1880 to 2015. Record warm years are listed in the column on the right. NASA / Earth Observatory (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/) / Joshua Stevens (https://twitter.com/jscarto) Thank you for your interest in this Climate Change/Earth collection. Maybe add me on Google+ (+Pierre Markuse) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/Pierre_Markuse) or have a look at the Astronomy/Astrophysics collection here: https://goo.gl/x0zPAJ or the Space/Space Technology collection here: https://goo.gl/5KP0wx #science #earth #climate #climatechange #globalwarming #globaltemperature #nasa #noaa #temperatureanomaly #giss
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsDonigula apparently wants to keep (and keep using) his personal account after inauguration. http://thenextweb.com/us/2017/01/16/trumps-epic-tweets-wont-dry-up-after-his-inauguration/ I think we need to nuke Twitter from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. — I'd been leaning toward Twitter letting the Orange One continue tweeting simply to dig a hole to bury himself in Given the apparent interest of the president-elect of the United State, the Facist and Puppet Donald John Trump of making that hole large enough for another 313 million Americans, a billion Chinese, and a considerate count of others, I reverse my views. Twitter, Jack Dorsey, in the interest of US, China, and World security, please pull the plug now. Working another angle, seeing Trump unpresidented wouldn't be all bad either. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-china-drone-seizure-232775?cmpid=sf
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate ChangeDenier Profile: https://www.desmogblog.com/william-happer
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeAt least in the northern hemisphere there's some land to migrate to. When Australia gets too hot, there's nowhere to go. — I think it is a psychological defence mechanism, but everybody seek confirmation for their prejudice. I sometimes wonder what it takes to break the circle!
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeNote also that the Davos risk report is consistently late to the party. It's usually a description of the near past not a prediction of the future. — The World Economic Forum ( #WEF ) surveyed 750 experts on what the most likely and impactful risks facing humanity are in 2017. In a report released Thursday, they ranked extreme weather as the most likely risk and the second-most impactful, trailing only the use of weapons of mass destruction. #ClimateChange is responsible for driving an increase in the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events, notably heat waves. #GlobalRisks  
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceTFA is only 2.5 years old. Why should it have aged at all? — Everything is Broken -- Quinn Norton (2014) This essay is aging far better than it should have. Computers don’t serve the needs of both privacy and coordination not because it’s somehow mathematically impossible. There are plenty of schemes that could federate or safely encrypt our data, plenty of ways we could regain privacy and make our computers work better by default. It isn’t happening now because we haven’t demanded that it should, not because no one is clever enough to make that happen. https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1
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Commented on post by Lauren Weinstein+Edward Morbius word — I massively regret voting for this project originally -- we were sold a dishonest bill of goods from the word go. It should be cancelled immediately and the crooks still involved brought up on criminal charges.
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Commented on post by Lauren WeinsteinIs there a moment in an empire's history when massive infrastructure projects are possible but then later that fades? It's like there's a perfect storm of political will, capital, engineering ability, legal controls and long term vision that sometimes comes together. But later it just stops being possible because one or more of those fall out of the equation. So we get transcontinental railways, freeway networks, moonshots. Right now the Chinese have the pieces in place to build things like a new high speed train to Lhasa. The USA may have lost that ability. The big question is whether an empire has ever regained the power to do projects on this scale. — I massively regret voting for this project originally -- we were sold a dishonest bill of goods from the word go. It should be cancelled immediately and the crooks still involved brought up on criminal charges.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeThe tiny print means I keep mis-reading Fiscal Crises as Fecal Crises and thinking it's some reference to 3rd world sanitation. Which feels strangely appropriate. As the fliegende kinderscheisse of the financial system hits the fan of the breakdown of globalisation. — The World Economic Forum ( #WEF ) surveyed 750 experts on what the most likely and impactful risks facing humanity are in 2017. In a report released Thursday, they ranked extreme weather as the most likely risk and the second-most impactful, trailing only the use of weapons of mass destruction. #ClimateChange is responsible for driving an increase in the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events, notably heat waves. #GlobalRisks  
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Capsule ReviewsToday's UK Independent Cartoon "The Shower Of Gold". https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_large/public/thumbnails/image/2017/01/13/18/cartoon-13-01-2017.jpg — Capsule Review, Today's News: Today's breaking news provides a stunning rebuke to those of us who thought that there would no chance that Trump would be a Goldwater Republican.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceGood work. A small point though about the discussion on Windows and Operating systems. The industry has tried quite hard to build in layers and blocks. So it's true that no one person knows how it all works. But that shouldn't matter provided there's a community surrounding each block that knows how the block works. And enough separation between blocks. A couple of other things about updates and installs. I wonder how many of us who bought their own computers to avoid the corporate control freaks then turn all the controls off and run everything as administrator to avoid being nagged all the time. Then there's the transition to smart phones where updates and upgrades are controlled and dribbled out to you by the network gatekeepers. And you can't get control even if you wanted. And now the IoT where the firmware was written by lowest bidder in double quick time and it never will get updated. Never. Yup. It's all broken. And I love it. — Everything is Broken -- Quinn Norton (2014) This essay is aging far better than it should have. Computers don’t serve the needs of both privacy and coordination not because it’s somehow mathematically impossible. There are plenty of schemes that could federate or safely encrypt our data, plenty of ways we could regain privacy and make our computers work better by default. It isn’t happening now because we haven’t demanded that it should, not because no one is clever enough to make that happen. https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1
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Commented on post by Jorg Lovoll in Climate ChangeBut, But, "Global Greening" and "CO2 Fertilisation", and "There's no concensus on how fast or how bad climate change might be", "Short term it might be good". So that's all right then. Profile: https://www.desmogblog.com/william-happer — I think it is a psychological defence mechanism, but everybody seek confirmation for their prejudice. I sometimes wonder what it takes to break the circle!
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsLooks like this may be the Newsweek article referred to. http://europe.newsweek.com/trump-putin-russia-interfered-presidential-election-541302?rm=eu news about news about news — Once again, America comes through as the guarantor of Estonia's freedom from Russian domination. Oh. Wait. The other way around. I guess it's the other way around.
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeThe Lukewarmists (Lomborg, Ridley, Tol) have been doing this for a while. Which is what makes them so dangerous. "I'm not a denier. Climate change is happening. But there's no consensus on how fast or how bad. It's not going to be as bad as the alarmist industry says. And in the short term it might even be good. Things like Ocean Acidification or coral bleaching are a lie. Global population will peak soon. Science, GMOs, Nuclear, Education, Global Greening, genetic rescue, etc, means we can continue with business as usual indefinitely and lift the world out of energy and food poverty." And so it goes. Just more self justification for the system that will kill us. The only question is when. Damn Techno-utopians with their endless hope. — Scientific American ---- Is Climate Ambiguity the New Denial Under Trump? The new way to challenge climate change acknowledges the science, or some of it, rather than rejecting it whole cloth. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-climate-ambiguity-the-new-denial/
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Capsule ReviewsI've just been pointed at the full movie Caligula on YT. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcZq-FUCgwM "Caligula" was a nickname meaning roughly "Little (Soldier's) Boot" due to Gaius having small feet. So in the spirit of trying to come up with a new nickname for The Don each day, I have to wonder: Does he have small feet as well as small hands? Donigula goes one step beyond Trumpolini[1] but for an added layer of indirection, just "Little Boot". Pissing on the bed that the President slept in is a territorial dog thing. That's some f*cked up meta-propaganda ("meta-ganda") at this level. So it's come to this? https://xkcd.com/1022/ These two images might come in handy as well. "Popcorn Pepe". http://imgur.com/iQVh2V2 [1]There's a lot of weird stuff about Mussolini and boots. "not fit to lick Hitler's boots", boots too tight, often didn't even bother removing them during his furious bouts of sexual activity, dies with his boots on but later one is ripped off his body and the other split along the seam, buried with one boot on and one by his side. http://meninboots.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/benito-mussolini.html "Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather" — Capsule Review, Today's News: Today's breaking news provides a stunning rebuke to those of us who thought that there would no chance that Trump would be a Goldwater Republican.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Capsule ReviewsOf course not. But the story has enough legs to be picked up by other news outlets and we will have moved on by the time it becomes obvious it was just another 4chan attempt at meme creation, hijacking and general media manipulation. For the lulz. I mean the conventional narrative is getting so bizarre at this point, I would be surprised if 4chan/pol/ didn't claim responsibility. I can't help but keep thinking about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Realist#.22The_Parts_That_Were_Left_Out_of_the_Kennedy_Book.22 — Capsule Review, Today's News: Today's breaking news provides a stunning rebuke to those of us who thought that there would no chance that Trump would be a Goldwater Republican.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Capsule Reviewsdeep state in movies: CIA assassin garrotes the president deep state IRL: old memo about presidential piss party winds up on buzzfeed https://theintercept.com/2017/01/11/the-deep-state-goes-to-war-with-president-elect-using-unverified-claims-as-dems-cheer/?comments=1#comment-335069 Wait, wut?!?! You mean The Frog did it? http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-11/archived-posts-prove-4chan-trolled-cia-trump-golden-shower-story-entire-russian-hack At this point, blaming it all on the 4chan cult of KEK! makes as much sense as any other story. "No of course not, but let's watch him try and deny it." [edited to add] Watergate building on fire. No, really. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/firefighters-battle-blaze-on-13th-floor-of-watergate-complex/2017/01/11/25dc53f6-d82f-11e6-9a36-1d296534b31e_story.html?utm_term=.1810234f2cf1 — Capsule Review, Today's News: Today's breaking news provides a stunning rebuke to those of us who thought that there would no chance that Trump would be a Goldwater Republican.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Capsule Reviewshttps://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/01/hitler-diaries-mark-ii-hope-changed-mattress/ This comment had me giggling. You can rely on the Brits, etc. Q. What’s the difference between a chickpea and a lentil? A. Donald Trump wouldn’t pay $500 to watch a lentil on his bed. Boom-tish! — Capsule Review, Today's News: Today's breaking news provides a stunning rebuke to those of us who thought that there would no chance that Trump would be a Goldwater Republican.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Capsule ReviewsDiscussion about fake TrumpGold here. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/12/youre-only-supposed-to-blow-th.html#comment-2017558 June 2017: Melania Trump books an 8 hour slot on QVC pushing sales of Trump-branded gold bricks. (Early purchasers complain that their gold bricks are actually a thin layer of gold plate over a lump of (much cheaper) tungsten: the Trump Organization sues them for libel.) If you don't have access to real assay technology, try hitting it with an geologist's hammer. If your gold vendor will let you. — Capsule Review, Today's News: Today's breaking news provides a stunning rebuke to those of us who thought that there would no chance that Trump would be a Goldwater Republican.
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad+Kee Hinckley KEK! — Come on, +BuzzFeed fact check your docs Someone pointed this out to me, via buzzfeed: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html That's fake, almost certainly. I imagine someone wants it to be the document referred to in +The Guardian article I reblogged earlier tonight. https://glomardisclosure.com/2016/07/25/timeline-of-the-dnc-and-akp-hacks-wikileaks-releases/ The date on that document cloud thing says it's 7/22/16 -- it says the Russians are getting tweaky about the stuff around the WL releases of the DNC emails getting out of control. They weren't released until just about that time. It's nearly impossible that a consultant would have feedback that the Russians would think that the spin around the WL DNC releases was out of control five days after the first 10,000 email batch had been released. Plus, it's got a mix of English and American usages, and not spell checked. This is a fake.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Capsule ReviewsTrump gold is actually gold plated tungsten. — Capsule Review, Today's News: Today's breaking news provides a stunning rebuke to those of us who thought that there would no chance that Trump would be a Goldwater Republican.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyWhy would the panels be horizontal? They'd be at the side of the track, surely you'd angle them towards the sun. — Solar panel researchers investigate powering trains by bypassing grid What a gobsmackingly obvious and brilliant idea! There are thousands of miles of track, which could be home to thousands of miles of solar cells, all doing their bit to decarbonise the rail networks. It will also have the knock on effect of reducing energy bills which could well translate into reduced costs for rail travellers too. I really hope everything goes well for the project! https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jan/10/solar-panel-research-power-trains-imperial-college-london-1010
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceJust following the links led me to this. An updated list of advertisers who have blackballed Breitbart. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1i9o8CR_kjJ6mBd44k6CRZEhlXuZqq-XCCOoj-e8RJ7Q/edit#gid=0 — Breitbart advertisers https://mobile.twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=breitbart%20ads&src=typd
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Commented on post by A. Randomjack in Climate Change+David Lawhorn 1) This design doesn't concentrate a beam across space. It's a trough design. Birds flying over will be fine. 2) It's in the Sahara desert. There aren't any birds. 3) If you're referring to Ivanpah, the bird death problem has been vastly exaggerated. http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/bugs-not-birds
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Commented on post by A. Randomjack in Climate Change+David Lawhorn This design doesn't kill birds. Ivanpah doesn't kill birds in the numbers claimed either. But that's another story.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceAnother way of saying the same thing. Ehrlich was writing in 1970 just at the cusp when population growth changed from exponential (+2%/yr) to linear (+80m/yr). We've maintained that +80m/yr (12-14 years per +1b) ever since. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#table-historical Now maybe it will transition again to falling absolute growth within business as usual and/or full-on collapse. But it hasn't happened yet. — Fact-checking False Renewable Energy Claims Energy Trend Insider here takes down both Popular Mechanics and Snopes for entirely fouling up this story. This is a classic case of false narrative completely overwhelming any minor factual accuracy within a story. The headline, and cover photo, suggest that the entire City of Las Vegas, Nevada, including the fabled, high-energy Strip, are powered by renewable energy. This is not only false, but beyond false, and not even wrong. First: "The Strip" IS NOT PART OF THE CITY OF LAS VEGAS. Sorry for screaming, but it's important. So the story lies by its choice of images. (And we know: "A picture is worth a thousand words." Second: It's not "the city", but "city government", which has switched to renewables. That's roughly 140 facilities on renewable energy. As I've said regarding many other stories of renewable energy: I am a very strong supporter of renewables. I think they are the only alternative we have for energy going forward. Full stop. But, and this is a "but" in the sense of "this journey you are about to embark on, and for which you have no other alternative", there's a key concern with renewables. Modern advanced high-technology, high-energy society has benefitted for approximately 200 years from a vast, cheap (though criminally and suicidally under-priced and under-valued) store of energy, which will in fairly short order be denied us. Renewables exist. But they're much less abundant and convenient, far higher in cost, and much more difficult to maintain in a reliable manner, than coal, oil, and natural gas. If you're expecting this energy transition to be easy, you are out of your fucking skull. A pitch: if you're interested in the harsh realities of energy transitions, I strongly recommend Vaclav Smil's book on the topic, named curiously enough, Energy Transitions. http://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-transitions-history-requirements-prospects/oclc/655896754&referer=brief_results He's written much else on and surrounding the topic as well. h/t +Brent Eubanks http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/2017/01/07/fact-checking-snopes-on-las-vegas-and-renewable-energy/
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Commented on post by Martin Downes in MotoGPNarrow engine, 150rwhp, good sound. What's not to like? Is it too big a step from Moto3, though?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in EnergyOne other factor that could be used to deal with peak power and intermittent renewables. And that's dispatchable curtailment. I * think * wind and solar PV have an interesting property that their output can be turned off or down almost instantly. Providing we have TOO MUCH electricity supply and a well developed grid that can also be used to balance supply and demand. One place this seems to be used is China where due to a temporary mismatch between build out, location , policy and demand, they've got way more wind power on the edges of the grid than the grid can cope with. The grid build out is lagging . And this year, their internal markets also currently favour coal sources. So new wind farms are being curtailed to 30% of their potential output. This also points out problems with the commercials and regulatory environment as well as grid needs. I don't think contracts are being written now to best cope with intermittent renewables around the world because they're still built around a coal-gas-nuclear-hydro mix. And we're lagging with intelligent grid build out. — I believe Renewables will be our future. They may not be the future you were hoping for though I was asked on an earlier thread what my thoughts on the falling costs of renewable energy are. I really do think that it's great news, and the progress has been remarkable. I'm not convinced that the story, or the methodology, or even the concept of costing things out economically, is as rosy as the authors of such pieces want us to think, or even particularly valid. The full response is a very long story, and one I'm still working through the bits and pieces of in my mind (though I've made huge progress on that over the past four years). This is the short version. 1. Economics (and finance) fail to accurately reflect and represent true cost and value. "Price" is an exceptionally poor proxy for either. For more on where I'm at on this, and it's admittedly ugly: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/48rd02/cost_value_price_money_and_emergy_developing/ 2. Estimates of the true full costs of renewables are problematic for various reasons. The good news is, yes, they've been falling. I'm not convinced they've fallen quite so much as we'd like to believe they have. I strongly recommend the work of +Gail Tverberg at her blog, Our Finite World, and of Charles A. S. Hall, who's just published a new book addressing this question, one he's been tackling for decades. https://ourfiniteworld.com https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Return-Investment-Principle-Sustainability/dp/3319478206/ 3. One reason renewables are more competitive with fossil fuels is that fossil fuel costs are rising. So there's that. (This is a really critical point to keep in mind when seeing any number of comparisons. One I've seen a few times is that, say, there is more shipping tonnage floating on the oceans than there are tons of fish swimming in them. Yes, shipping has increased -- and about 30% of it is oil (a value down from the 50% of the 1970s) -- but the quantity of fish has declined by about 80%. You've got to keep an eye on both sides of the inequality or comparison.) 4. Fossil fuels give you energy when you want it. They're not power but fuel, which is to say, something that releases energy on demand. Renewables, mostly, aren't. I've seen and read any number of studies which insist that this isn't a problem, and/or that we'll adapt. But I'm not convinced. Keep in mind that some nonrenewable energy sources are better at on-demanding than others. Natural gas turbines -- essentially large jet engines that sit flat on the ground -- can spin up to generating speeds in a minute or five. Diesel generators similarly. Coal-fired plants take hours to ramp up or down to a given output level -- they don't regulate well. Nuclear power is even less flexible. Which means that if you're running a coal plant to meet expected peak demand, you've got a fair amount of slack capacity that's just sitting there. This may be something you can sell to opportunistic uses (say, someone who can bank heat, or run a process only when the power is cheap). Or not, and you're simply burning coal and cranking heat and CO2 into the atmosphere for no revenue sales. Hydroelectric is even faster-responding than natural gas, and can respond to demand fluctuations in seconds. It's like a car with a very fast throttle response. But the gas tank is small, and few hydro dams outside the Pacific Northwest can run at anything close to peak capacity for more than a small fraction of the time. If you want to address any of this through renewables, you've got a limited set of options: a) Shift from dispatchable supply to dispatchable demand. That is, currently, when supply and demand don't match, utilities provide more supply. They dispatch it. If supply isn't flexible, then what you need is dispatchable demand. Uses which can be switched on to take advantage of surplus genration, and turned off, quickly, when that goes away. b) Storage. Storage is sort of the ultimate dispatchable demand -- it soaks up excess capacity when it exists and gives it back to you when you need it. The problems are that storage is expensive, big, messy, lossy, and limited in capacity. Our best option is still pumped hydro -- pumping water uphill when there's excess power, and running it downhill when there's excess demand. The good news is that that's clean and very efficient (about an 85% round-trip return, vs. as low as 15-20% for some other options). The bad news is that you need really big reservoirs for this, and we simply don't have them, or even places where we could put them. There are other options but none of them are much better: compressed air energy storage (CAES), flywheels, and batteries are the big options. There's an idea of using heavily-laden electric trains much as pumped hydro, which I think is nuts though some articles suggest it pencils out. Another option is to generate fuels, usually through electrolysis of water (giving hydrogen) and combining with carbon (preferably from the atmosphere or ocean) to create a synthetic fuel from electricity. The good news is that it has a very, very long shelf life: we're using 300 million year old oil now. The bad news is you lose 50% of the input creating the fuel, and another 60-70% generating electricity (by burning it either in turbines or diesel motors, or to generate steam and run turbines), due to the physics of heat engines, something called Carnot's Law. Despite all that, the option has some attractions -- you can literally save for a rainy day, and store a lot of capability in a small volume. Chemical fuels are very energy dense. Once you've generated the fuel, the rest of the pieces all exist now, and are very, very well developed and understood. And most options are carbon-neutral. It's not burning things that creates global warming, it's burning things that have been buried for hundreds of millions of years that's the problem. The option also provides fuel for things that are hard to run off of batteries or grid power, like trucks, and ships, and airplanes, and tractors. c) Some other fuel source for rainy days. Using natural gas (while we've got it) or biofuel, or other clean(ish) and/or renewable sources of energy for thermal electricity production might work. Problem is that even that's a big demand. And we really don't have much by way of those extra fuel sources. When I first started looking at sustainability and energy issues, my thought was that biofuel would be the way to fly. Turns out that even barely using biofuels now for primary energy needs, humans consume about 40% of global plant production. The opportunity, and costs, of either using more or trying to increase plant productivity, don't look promising. 5. Electricity, which is what this story was about, represents only about 30% of human energy use. Another third is transport (hard to substitute for), and there are various commercial and industrial direct uses (much of it for heating). Some of that can be shifted to electricity, but, if we want to operate as we have been, there's still a substantial chunk that cannot be. There's also about 2/3 of the world's population who essentially use no energy relative to the United States and Western Europe. Assuming they're going to rise to some fraction of a modern standard of life, that's a whole lot more energy we've got to come up with. My very honest thinking on that is that our future will, in the next 50, 100, 200 years, possibly much sooner, involve far fewer people, and at a far lower standard of living, than the West, or even "emerging economy" nations enjoy now. And the process of arriving there won't be pretty. (And yes, this is the short version. I think I need to write a book.)
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceSo where does the electricity actually come from to power Las Vegas? There seems to be some dispute: The Hoover dam. Natural Gas plants. The Nevada grid. — Fact-checking False Renewable Energy Claims Energy Trend Insider here takes down both Popular Mechanics and Snopes for entirely fouling up this story. This is a classic case of false narrative completely overwhelming any minor factual accuracy within a story. The headline, and cover photo, suggest that the entire City of Las Vegas, Nevada, including the fabled, high-energy Strip, are powered by renewable energy. This is not only false, but beyond false, and not even wrong. First: "The Strip" IS NOT PART OF THE CITY OF LAS VEGAS. Sorry for screaming, but it's important. So the story lies by its choice of images. (And we know: "A picture is worth a thousand words." Second: It's not "the city", but "city government", which has switched to renewables. That's roughly 140 facilities on renewable energy. As I've said regarding many other stories of renewable energy: I am a very strong supporter of renewables. I think they are the only alternative we have for energy going forward. Full stop. But, and this is a "but" in the sense of "this journey you are about to embark on, and for which you have no other alternative", there's a key concern with renewables. Modern advanced high-technology, high-energy society has benefitted for approximately 200 years from a vast, cheap (though criminally and suicidally under-priced and under-valued) store of energy, which will in fairly short order be denied us. Renewables exist. But they're much less abundant and convenient, far higher in cost, and much more difficult to maintain in a reliable manner, than coal, oil, and natural gas. If you're expecting this energy transition to be easy, you are out of your fucking skull. A pitch: if you're interested in the harsh realities of energy transitions, I strongly recommend Vaclav Smil's book on the topic, named curiously enough, Energy Transitions. http://www.worldcat.org/title/energy-transitions-history-requirements-prospects/oclc/655896754&referer=brief_results He's written much else on and surrounding the topic as well. h/t +Brent Eubanks http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/2017/01/07/fact-checking-snopes-on-las-vegas-and-renewable-energy/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionAnd one of the best fastest ways to approach the truth is sometimes to be deliberately wrong. In no time at all, somebody will be along to put you right. — "I study social media. Which means that to a first approximation, I watch people argue." -- Clay Shirky Image: http://xkcd.com/386/
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyThis berg is likely to be about 1/4 Wales, One Rhode Island, 100 Manhattans, 2000 sq miles, 5000 sq Km, or 1,235,500 football(soccer) pitches. It's thought to be about 500m deep which is about 10 Nelson's columns. Probably a bit too big to tow to Saudi Arabia then as fresh water. Although you could perhaps land on it and declare independence. It's 1000 miles or so before ownership could become a dispute with Argentina or the UK via the Malvinas/Falklands islands. 52% of penguins on the ice sheet voted to leave Antarctica with it, citing problems with immigrant migrating seagulls flying in and shitting all over everything. Although 48% of penguins polled said they wanted to remain part of Antarctica. — Yeah, uh, we're talking about sudden, rising sea levels - about 4 inches. Boom. Ugh.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Changehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/06/giant-iceberg-poised-to-break-off-from-antarctic-shelf-larsen-c — A 70-mile long crack in the Larsen C ice shelf grew another shocking 11 miles in December alone. That leaves just 12 miles before an iceberg the size of Delaware snaps off into the Southern Ocean. #Antarctic   #IceShelf  
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Commented on post by A. Randomjack in Climate Change+Mike Crews Not my idea. It came from here. http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/the-sowers-way-path-for-future.html Tverberg has had some good things to say, but I'm not convinced.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong LizardWikileaks (and by implication Assange) seem to have something of a 4chan or Rorschach attitude these days. No compromise. Publish regardless of consequences. Making something public is always preferable to keeping it private. Or are we now suggesting that Assange and Wikileaks were directly involved in the hack/leak/whistleblowing as well as in the publishing? — I believe this is Shava's response to attacks on the credibility of the claim that Russia hacked the election. (Figuring this out is about the extent of my intel analysis capabilities. Do I get a cookie?) Almost in passing, it addresses the "why won't they let us see the evidence" and "why should we trust intelligence agencies" arguments. I don't know what IC stands for in this context.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong Lizard+Edward Morbius The side effect, as pointed out before, is that the US could use this whole saga to enact laws and executive orders that give them direct justification to demand his extradition to the USA. In which case he's NEVER leaving that embassy. So in that sense, yes, he's being burned by all this. There's no need any more to use the Sweden debacle, just go after him direct. The popcorn entertainment is watching everyone jumping through the hoops. One side is saying you can't prove the Russians were involved. The other side is saying you can't prove the Russians weren't involved. Well, yeah. So now what? — I believe this is Shava's response to attacks on the credibility of the claim that Russia hacked the election. (Figuring this out is about the extent of my intel analysis capabilities. Do I get a cookie?) Almost in passing, it addresses the "why won't they let us see the evidence" and "why should we trust intelligence agencies" arguments. I don't know what IC stands for in this context.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong Lizard+Woozle Hypertwin That's a web of trust thing isn't it? What he doesn't say is exactly how it got to him. I do take the point that it's possible that somebody claiming to be a DNC insider passed it to somebody who passed it to somebody who sent it in a pgp encrypted email that was collected from a mailbox and that there are several places in that chain where it might have been infiltrated or made to appear the chain was legit. But he and the people round him have been doing this for a while. Suggesting that he's being naive doesn't really help. There's loads of potential permutations here. Assange could be naive, deluded, lying, wrong, deceived. Or he could just be telling the truth as it appears to him from his room in the Ecuadorian Embassy. And it is backed up, but not proven, by Craig Murray claiming to personally know the insider(s) who Assange thinks is the source. I'm really just pointing out that the person publishing the data is claiming in public that it came direct from a DNC insider and not from the Russians. — I believe this is Shava's response to attacks on the credibility of the claim that Russia hacked the election. (Figuring this out is about the extent of my intel analysis capabilities. Do I get a cookie?) Almost in passing, it addresses the "why won't they let us see the evidence" and "why should we trust intelligence agencies" arguments. I don't know what IC stands for in this context.
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Commented on post by Rick Li in Climate ChangeI thought the American Way was to just walk away. Go North Young Man! One of the signs of collapse may be when we simply give up on trying to rebuild. New Orleans was a foretaste of that.
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Commented on post by A. Randomjack in Climate Change+Mike Crews Is there enough easily accessible fossil carbon left to build a technological society that no longer needs it?
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong LizardIs this story going to fade into the background as the news cycle spins onwards? Or will it rise again? Here's a couple of extra datapoints copied from elsewhere. And round and round we go. This time it's Assange being interviewed by Sean Hannity on Fox. And claiming the Russians and Russian hacking had nothing, zero, zilch to do with the two releases of DNC material that were published on Wikileaks. That doesn't mean the Russians weren't hacking the DNC's systems. It also doesn't mean he's necessarily telling the truth. Only that that version of the story has now been repeated in public by him instead of via 3rd parties. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/04/wikileaks-assange-14-year-old-kid-could-have-hacked-podesta-emails.html Do you remember that Daily Mail story that Craig Murray told them he personally delivered the package? They made it up according to a comment from Craig Murray buried in his blog. He didn't talk to the Daily Mail, and he didn't deliver the package. --- https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/the-u-s-government-thinks-thousands-of-russian-hackers-are-reading-my-blog-they-arent/ The JAR report comes with a CSV of IP addresses marked as indicators of interest. The implication being that these are source addresses used by the hackers and to be watched for. Nearly half of them are (just) TOR exit nodes. Err. say what? https://www.us-cert.gov/security-publications/GRIZZLY-STEPPE-Russian-Malicious-Cyber-Activity https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR-16-20296A.csv /popcorn. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/04/republicans-break-donald-trump-tweet-julian-assange-dnc-hacks — I believe this is Shava's response to attacks on the credibility of the claim that Russia hacked the election. (Figuring this out is about the extent of my intel analysis capabilities. Do I get a cookie?) Almost in passing, it addresses the "why won't they let us see the evidence" and "why should we trust intelligence agencies" arguments. I don't know what IC stands for in this context.
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad in 2016 electionAnother data point. https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/the-u-s-government-thinks-thousands-of-russian-hackers-are-reading-my-blog-they-arent/ The JAR report comes with a CSV of IP addresses marked as of interest. The implication being that these are source addresses used by the hackers and to be watched for. Nearly half of them are TOR exit nodes. Err. say what? https://www.us-cert.gov/security-publications/GRIZZLY-STEPPE-Russian-Malicious-Cyber-Activity https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR-16-20296A.csv — The FBI/DHS Report is out So are 35 Russians About the same time this report was released, we gave 35 intel and diplo RU personnel 72h to clear out from the DC and SF embassy facilities. http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking#
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad in 2016 electionAnd round and round we go. This time it's Assange being interviewed by Sean Hannity on Fox. And claiming the Russians and Russian hacking had nothing, zero, zilch to do with the two releases of DNC material that were published on Wikileaks. That doesn't mean the Russians weren't hacking the DNC's systems. It also doesn't mean he's necessarily telling the truth. Only that that version of the story has now been repeated in public by him instead of via 3rd parties. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/04/wikileaks-assange-14-year-old-kid-could-have-hacked-podesta-emails.html — The FBI/DHS Report is out So are 35 Russians About the same time this report was released, we gave 35 intel and diplo RU personnel 72h to clear out from the DC and SF embassy facilities. http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking#
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaLink to original discussion? — On Google and the Fake News / Emerging Fascist Threat From a public discussion elsewhere. ______________________________ So I'm a bit surprised by the numbers you're giving here, because if you're saying that there are ten stories in a day which matter, then we clearly are talking about some different sense of "matter." I'm also a bit surprised at an apparent inability to convey a point effectively. First: I'm numbers-based, where I have access to numbers. I'm limited to open sources. I'm assuming Google has much greater access to both data and potential consulting resources, and am very strongly suggesting that you pursue these avenues. This also is not my field -- I've had an interest for some time, but any deep knowledge I have on media and its history is at this stage months old, if that. Second: I haven't said that ten stories is the only scope of significance. It is a useful order-of-magnitude bound on what and where public perception lies. "Pizzagate" has been a top-of-fold story a number of times. It did emerge very quickly, and can be contrasted to other stories (Benghazi, emails, Vince Foster) with vastly longer tails. I've been posting trends data on G+ from several sources. I don't have a source that gives me top-ten headlines per day, but if you know of one (or some value 10 - 100) that would be useful to introduce. Again ("stories" == "news clusters") * Roughly ten stories is "this shit's on fire, yo", and deserves looking at. Not all of it is suspect, most isn't. Some though is. * Roughly 100 stories is "this is in current play" -- it's appearing somewhere in the news stack, and if you sample opinion you'll probably find some double-digit percentage of the population aware of it. * Roughly 1,000 stories is "this is somewhere in the editorial stack". People within the media are going to be aware of the story, though outside the directly-involved public almost certainly not. * Roughly 10,000 stories is probably about as deep as you need to have machine-level analysis going. My values are rough. Order-of-magnitude. Ten might be 5, might be 50. But it's somewhere in that range. Do the math for the rest. And I could well be wrong. You're Google. Find numbers. Call up media pros (Dan Gillmor, Poynter, Alex S. Jones (not Alex E. Jones). Pew. MacArthur. Benton.org. The problem with Pizzagate, specifically, was how fast it emerged. It was, effectively, the Ebola of fake news. I'd really like to see someone's listing of major fake news stories of the year -- sort of Project Censored, but in reverse. Some suggestion for impact metrics as well. If you're suggesting that whatever we do here should start with a deep analysis of "emerging stories" as themes which are being discussed across the Internet, with an emphasis on analyzing their (virtual) space and time localization, to identify things which are gaining momentum, then I think this is a very interesting problem, but not directly the one we're talking about. Fundamentally, yes, though you can almost certainly shortcut that search space by looking to see WHAT KNOWN BULLSHIT MERCHANTS ARE SPEWING If Infowars / Alex E. Jones is hosting it, it's very probably bad. If it's showing up consistently across a cluster of wingnut sites, and nowhere else, likewise. If you start identifying consistent upstreams through backtracing those news clusters (say: 4chan, /b/, /r/RedPill, whatevs), then add those to the watchlist. THIS IS FUNDAMENTALLY A PROBLEM OF MASS MEDIA, WHICH IS TO SAY, SCALE Bullshit that nobody's talking about ... doesn't matter. I'd also keep an eye on stories which keep getting launched and crashing -- that's someone trying to crack the memosphere / noosphere unsuccessfully (I know -- I do this myself on specific items of concern, sometimes I'm successful, and I hope my efforts are well-guided). I'd give the 2003 Iraq War as an example of an idea which had been brewing since the mid-1990s, at least (see Frank Rich's The Greatest Story Ever Sold). There are others. Persistence with such stories may lead to success. I see strong parallels to both epidemiology and spam. You've got highly similar dynamics: resevoir/breeder pools, injection points, vectors, and ultimately mass outbreaks. What we don't have, within the online media space (or, quite sadly, offline) is any effective defense or immune response. And again, this is going to be a huge problem soon in Europe. INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESPOND TO INCENTIVES, AND THE INCENTIVES NOW ARE ALL WRONG Fake news pays. It pays directly, in terms of advertising. It pays indirectly, in terms of propagandistic manipulation. It's been a phenomenally good investment for V. Putin & co, as well as who knows else. GOOGLE HAVE BEEN DIRECTLY FACILITATING AND FUNDING THE RISE OF A NEW WAVE OF FASCISM I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean it literally. You've had help, but you've done a hell of a lot of this on your own. You're also pursuing multiple other avenues which could end exceedingly badly. As is much of the rest of the tech world. I see it as a mass net negative human contribution presently. Could someone help me understand what the concrete problem is that we're trying to address? This thing that you're doing? Stop doing it.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThis just appeared and looks worth investigating. It's a Twitter based system for exploring fake news space. http://hoaxy.iuni.iu.edu/ — Fake News: Outcomes and Remedies? I'm exploring the problem and question of "fake news" -- propaganda, hoaxes, disinformation, manipulation, etc. -- and am realising I've given relatively little thought to the question of remedies, outcomes, or systems for countering it. I'm soliciting thoughts here, with a few guidelines / suggestions. You can step outside or ignore these lines, but I'd appreciate consideration of them, and if possible mention of why you're excluding or extending particular items. 0. What's your overall objective? 1. A threat-model assessment. What are the harms of fake news that you're trying to address? 2. Definition. What is fake news? 3. Detection. How would you propose identifying it? 4. Actors. What entities should be addressing this? E.g., MSM, national press, regional/local press, broadcast media, online media. 5. Unintended consequences. How could attempting to address the problem go wrong? 6. Scale. What's your view of the scope of the challenge? How would you defend that assessment? 7. Actions. When fake news is detected, what should be done about it? 8. Appeal. Assuming an imperfect process, how would errors be addressed. 9. Legal, commercial, financial, and other interactions. What other elements might be brought to bear? How? 10. Aspects of technical implementation. What needs to be built by way of standards, mechanism, infrastructure, organisations, etc.?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsOoops. Also CTO. And the VP of Product https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/20/twitters-cto-adam-messinger-is-leaving-the-company/ — I'd been leaning toward Twitter letting the Orange One continue tweeting simply to dig a hole to bury himself in Given the apparent interest of the president-elect of the United State, the Facist and Puppet Donald John Trump of making that hole large enough for another 313 million Americans, a billion Chinese, and a considerate count of others, I reverse my views. Twitter, Jack Dorsey, in the interest of US, China, and World security, please pull the plug now. Working another angle, seeing Trump unpresidented wouldn't be all bad either. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-china-drone-seizure-232775?cmpid=sf
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillance"dirty rat". I thought Mickey Mouse was a ... a ... what's it called. "mouse". That's it. — What could have been: Theft from the Public Domain in the Year 2017 From literature, the following books, published in 1960, would now be public domain: Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird John Updike, Rabbit, Run Joy Adamson, Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Politics of Upheaval: The Age of Roosevelt Dr. Seuss, Green Eggs and Ham and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish Scott O’Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique More from film and science. Oh, and don't forget, it's not just 1960: [T]hese examples from 1960 are only the tip of the iceberg. If the pre-1978 laws were still in effect, we could have seen 85% of the works published in 1988 enter the public domain on January 1, 2017. Imagine what that would mean to our archives, our libraries, our schools and our culture. Such works could be digitized, preserved, and made available for education, for research, for future creators. Instead, they will remain under copyright for decades to come, perhaps even into the next century. To clarify, that means that 85% of all works published in the 28 years from 1960 through 1988 would now be public domain. That's theft. By some dirty rat. https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2017/pre-1976
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsThe rats keep leaving the ship. And they can't seem to find a buyer. Or work out how to make enough money. So anyone want to make a prediction of when Twitter goes the way of Friendster, Myspace, Geocities, et al and topples gently into the deadpool? https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/01/twitters-controversial-head-of-china-is-the-latest-exec-to-leave-the-company/ — I'd been leaning toward Twitter letting the Orange One continue tweeting simply to dig a hole to bury himself in Given the apparent interest of the president-elect of the United State, the Facist and Puppet Donald John Trump of making that hole large enough for another 313 million Americans, a billion Chinese, and a considerate count of others, I reverse my views. Twitter, Jack Dorsey, in the interest of US, China, and World security, please pull the plug now. Working another angle, seeing Trump unpresidented wouldn't be all bad either. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-china-drone-seizure-232775?cmpid=sf
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong LizardAnd then this. https://theintercept.com/2016/12/31/russia-hysteria-infects-washpost-again-false-story-about-hacking-u-s-electric-grid/ Pay attention to the refs at the end. (taps nose) — I believe this is Shava's response to attacks on the credibility of the claim that Russia hacked the election. (Figuring this out is about the extent of my intel analysis capabilities. Do I get a cookie?) Almost in passing, it addresses the "why won't they let us see the evidence" and "why should we trust intelligence agencies" arguments. I don't know what IC stands for in this context.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeThat was last week, right? — It's happening again: The temperature at the North Pole is projected to spike to around the melting point, zero degree Celsius or 32 degrees Fahrenheit, on Wednesday into Thursday, despite the complete lack of sunshine that far north in December.  Such temperatures would be about 50 degrees above average for this time of year, exceeding the color scale on some weather maps. (Typically, air temperatures at the pole don’t start periodically rising above freezing until at least May.). #Arctic
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad in 2016 electionMany thanks for taking the time to write all that. It helps. In previous lives I've been around people who did pen-tests for money. I even won a "capture the flag" competition in a week long training session. So I'm not unfamiliar with how this stuff works. And then I go to Craig Murray's site looking for the specific entries were he says the wikileaks data from the DNC came from known insiders and didn't get there via the Russians (as far as wikileaks could tell) and I find this. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/exit-obama-cloud-disillusion-delusion-deceit/ Now it's quite possible and perhaps even likely that Assange, Wikileaks and Murray are being played by the Russians and they're being given stuff by Russians appearing to be DNC insiders. It's also quite possible and very likely that while that's going on, hacking groups connected with Russian intelligence are busy infiltrating anything they can from the CIA, FBI to the Republicans to Hillary's private server to the TSA to the DHS. So my guess is "all of the above". And that is somewhat separate from the narrative that we're being sold. As numerous people have pointed out including Murray above, the released document is a good general purpose briefing document about computer security that claims that hacks are being done by known groups against networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. Government, political, and private sector entities The only bit that connects the dots is that one line at the end of the summary. _ likely leading to the exfiltration of information from multiple senior party members. The U.S. Government assesses that information was leaked to the press and publicly disclosed._ So my query about "WTF is going on", is not aimed at the specifics of if a particular group was hacking a particular server. It's about the actions that are being taken using release of that knowledge as justification. And when I call the document a joke. It's because 75% of it is boiler plate and it's the least they could publicly release in the time available. It's just enough to provide some justification for the much bigger statements people have been bandying around but in the end it doesn't really say much at all. — The FBI/DHS Report is out So are 35 Russians About the same time this report was released, we gave 35 intel and diplo RU personnel 72h to clear out from the DC and SF embassy facilities. http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking#
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & Diversionobligatory: https://xkcd.com/1779/ 2017 is prime. And there's going to be a cool eclipse. — Ridiculous plot, horrible dialog, alienates the vast majority of the audience, and they kill off all the best characters. It's totally unbelievable.
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad in 2016 election+John Jainschigg That document is a joke. It says almost nothing and certainly nothing that constitutes proof of Russian involvement. But. I have no idea what that means. Meanwhile, there's all this noise being thrown around. Like the Daily Mail claiming Craig Murray said he personally couriered documents from a DNC insider to Wikileaks, only for Murray to immediately deny it or even having talked to the Mail. Like The Guardian misreporting a 3rd party interview with Assange and then having to retract it and edit the article. And of course the constant banging of the drum by the global media of the story "The Russians did it". Seriously. WTF is happening? I think we should be told. ;) — The FBI/DHS Report is out So are 35 Russians About the same time this report was released, we gave 35 intel and diplo RU personnel 72h to clear out from the DC and SF embassy facilities. http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking#
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad in 2016 electionLinks? Or are you talking about the JAR here? https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR_16-20296A_GRIZZLY%20STEPPE-2016-1229.pdf And so on. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/814592182007042048 — The FBI/DHS Report is out So are 35 Russians About the same time this report was released, we gave 35 intel and diplo RU personnel 72h to clear out from the DC and SF embassy facilities. http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking#
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad in 2016 electionOne side effect is that Assange and Wikileaks just got made. He's never leaving that embassy. But doesn't that pale into insignificance with blaming one of the two other great nuclear powers for something with actions that have no evidence that can be shown to us. And in the process deliberately creating a diplomatic incident involving expelling diplomatic staff. And using it to justify additional limitations on free speech that are so wide that abusing them for social control should be a piece of piss. 2016, the US election, fake news and all the rest took another turn. WTF just happened? — The FBI/DHS Report is out So are 35 Russians About the same time this report was released, we gave 35 intel and diplo RU personnel 72h to clear out from the DC and SF embassy facilities. http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking#
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionIn 20 years we'll look back on it fondly as the best film in the franchise. Even if the special effects were a bit primitive. — Ridiculous plot, horrible dialog, alienates the vast majority of the audience, and they kill off all the best characters. It's totally unbelievable.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate Change"Can we save the world?" is one of those snappy TED talk titles to get attention. But perhaps what we really mean is:- Can we model the future and come up with socially acceptable scenarios that allow a long term, sustainable, technological based civilisation to emerge. And then execute on those plans and make it happen? So what's the smallest global population that can support a chip foundry? Paris and the annual COP talks are focussed on climate. The Club of Rome was more widely based. Anyone else seriously thinking like this on a global scale? — Can we save the world? http://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/can-we-save-world/ Well can we? And yes, I approve of having a major global conference on exactly that question. Found via http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2016/12/can-we-save-the-world.html “Can we save the world?” should be an important enough question to justify submitting it to our best thinking and a thorough review of everything we know that has bearing upon it. Perhaps it is one that we have shied away from, for fear that a negative answer would breed despair and passivity and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet it is hard to see that compiling everything we know in an accessible manner could be a bad thing, and realistically assessing the mechanisms that hamstring us when we want to save the world may help us find ways to get around them. I suggest we organize a seminar series with experts that have worked on mechanisms that hamper our efforts, and people with experiences with existing efforts, to ask the question: “Can We Save the World?”
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Commented on post by Danielle Nierenberg in Climate ChangeIncreased efficiency (reduced waste) only gets you so far. And one person's waste can be the feedstock for another person's production. That's not to say it's not worthwhile. Just that small gains in efficiency tend not to scale and make much of a dent in actual supply/demand. So why does so much USA food waste end up in landfill? When it could be turned into biogas, fertiliser/compost and meat. — If all of our country’s wasted food was grown in one place, it would cover roughly 80 million acres, over 75 percent of the state of California, and consume all the water used in California, Texas, and Ohio combined. The mega-farm would harvest enough food to fill a 40-ton tractor every 20 seconds. Via +Food Tank: The Food Think Tank
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Wrong LizardTime to break out the "Skateboarders Against the Nazis" stickers. We did this back in the 80s but they've come back again. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=skateboarders+against+the+nazis&espv=2&biw=1707&bih=840&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj0xZTMrJbRAhUJiRoKHejoCxwQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=anti+nazi+league Also worth making up some stencils for "Grafitti Against Racism". — This just proves they're cowards at heart. Would they have the guts to do this in a place where there are enough of The Enemy* to actually stand up to them? Doubt it. (P.S. Guys -- the Nazis were evil. You're on the wrong side of the Force.) * which would include the majority of the population which, ya know, doesn't think Jewish people are evil or secretly in control of all the things, and does despise racism and Nazism in general
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionSavory seems to have re-discovered mixed arable farming with crop rotation. That's a future that is like the past with a diet of bread and pea soup with occasional meat and some dairy. I have my doubts if it can scale sufficiently for 7.5b let alone 10b. Most of the world's population lives on wheat/rice/potatoes for bulk with pulses for protein with the same occasional meat and dairy. These are bulk crops that need bulk area and large scale farming techniques (whether industralised or not). I can understand cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes grown hydroponically under glass since I live in the prime area of the UK for that kind of production. But I can't imagine the same done for wheat and rice. I think there should be an architectural prize for the first skyscraper with built in urban farming in the form of stepped rice paddies above the 5th floor. Urban, vertical farms with hydroponics strike me as a classic techno-utopian solution. Like most of those, it should be ready for global scale deployment in 30 years or so. (talking of which, when's Golden Rice actually going to be deployed? 30 years?) — Instructions unclear: Showering with beef https://plus.google.com/+CindyBrown/posts/CNNpp2vt4XB?sfc=true
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Unconditional IncomeI wonder if a requirement is a bank account. Which pretty much requires a permanent address. — Haven't read the article yet, but the source is trustworthy.
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Commented on post by A. Randomjack in Climate ChangeYes. Apart from RCP 8.5 which is only slightly more pessimistic than where we actually are. But even that is not really "business as usual". I think we'll hit the resource and pollution constraints before 2100 where RCP 8.5 just assumes continued growth in everything which is itself SciFi. All the others assume a time machine to go back and start de-carbonising in the past, and global scale technology in the future that hasn't been invented yet. — Are the IPCC RCP long term scenarios based on science-fiction?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in EventsGo home 2016. You're drunk and you're supposed to be helping with the decorations. RIP, Rick Parfitt. Rocking all over the world. — Vesna Vulovic: Survived fall from 30,000 feet 2016, however, proves too steep a challenge. Vulovic was working on a Yugoslav Airlines flight on 26 Jan 1972 when a suspected bomb brought the Douglas DC-9 down in mountains in Czechoslovakia. All 27 other passengers and crew died. Vulovic was trapped by a food cart in the plane's tail section, which plummeted to earth in freezing temperatures. Her fall was cushioned by a snowy tree-covered slope. 2016 offered no such comforts. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38427411
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesAnd a happy Solstice to you too!. — It is coming.
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad in wargamesYou may be confusing the relatively sane, left wing, Mirror with the completely barking, rabidly right wing, Mail. — Not only does this sound like compelling narrative and forensics, but ffs, it's sanity from the UK Mirror. Now we know the end times are coming. The Mirror's editors are trying to spread sensible, calming thoughts…
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesDeep fry it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. This would never have happened if Turkeys had been allowed into the EU. There's a comma missing, right? — It is coming.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThis made me think of https://sfbook.com/new-model-army.htm New Model Army by Adam Roberts. Imagining anarchic, self organising, computer assisted, guerilla warfare at the height of the Wiki phase of the internet. It was a slightly unusual take on MilSF and worth a read if you like that sort of thing. — Ukranian love story: Boy finds former Soviet howitzer. Boy uses Android targeting app for former Soviet howizter. Boy loses former Soviet howitzer due to trojan geolocating phone-home feature of app. The original application enabled artillery forces to more rapidly process targeting data for the Soviet-era D-30 Howitzer employed by Ukrainian artillery forces reducing targeting time from minutes to under 15 seconds. According to Sherstuk’s interviews with the press, over 9000 artillery personnel have been using the application in Ukrainian military. Successful deployment of the FANCY BEAR malware within this application may have facilitated reconnaissance against Ukrainian troops. The ability of this malware to retrieve communications and gross locational data from an infected device makes it an attractive way to identify the general location of Ukrainian artillery forces and engage them. Open source reporting indicates that Ukrainian artillery forces have lost over 50% of their weapons in the 2 years of conflict and over 80% of D-30 howitzers, the highest percentage of loss of any other artillery pieces in Ukraine’s arsenal. Several points suggestion themselves: 1. What is your threat model. Are you sure you've correctly identified all risks? 2. Does your C&C or C3 platform provide sufficient security and hardening against foreign attacks? 3. Google, can I convince you now that controlling off-device communications and location data is an existential user threat? +Security Memetics and +Yonatan Zunger might enjoy this. +Sundar Pichai might care to assess the Android ToU and general Google press policy documents for contingencies. https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/danger-close-fancy-bear-tracking-ukrainian-field-artillery-units/
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesThe maintenance systems of any sufficiently advanced technology are indistinguishable from religion. — If you've ever met a ship's chief engineer, or any other engineer who's maintained a life-critical system for however long, you will recognize what engineers' religion looks like. It involves a deep understanding of the things that keep everyone alive, and a horror at anyone who would violate those – from adding an incorrectly-designed component which could damage other systems, to compromising things like the system's monitoring or emergency controls (I feel a shudder just typing those words). There are also certain superstitions which are nearly universal among engineers: Never speak of success, except in the past tense; never trust anything that looks like it's working correctly. It turns out that this sort of thing isn't limited to any one kind of engineering. The people who maintain the systems of democracy, apparently, sometimes have the same kind of attitude.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeOf course countries do actually have to deliver on their NDCs. And it still won't be enough. — The US is working harder to reduce its emissions than China, according to research published in Nature Climate Change, while India is making more effort than both. The controversial findings are based on the climate pledges that countries submitted to the UN as part of the Paris climate deal, known as “nationally determined contributions” ( #NDCs ). There has so far been no formal way to assess these claims. Scientists have now developed a method to determine how equitable each pledge really is. #GHGReductions   #Equity  
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Commented on post by Shava NeradYes, Stonehenge was fun. Even if the Sun didn't come out to play until an hour after sunrise. — Look for the rowan tree. Lovely. Best item out of Russia this month. ;) Happy 😄 solstice. Best photos of the day: Japanese Santa window cleaners, grazing camels in Russia https://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2016/dec/21/best-photos-of-the-day-japanese-santa-window-cleaners-grazing-camels-in-russia?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Google%2B
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+Michael Verona I had one of those. And I have the Steadman cartoon as a poster on a wall. They weren't even that fast, even in 1992, but fast enough. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_lVCC9aDALT4/TIAGhN7-l_I/AAAAAAAAMB4/xcTsmCYlAi0/s1600/sausagecreature.jpg — This is a very thought-provoking article about the history of the social circumstances that brought about Trumpism – and how Hunter S. Thompson understood and explained them with profound clarity 50 years ago. The book that captured this wasn't Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail; it was Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, the book which first made his name and reputation. Thompson was, I think, one of the greatest journalists of our era: a man with a profound ability to cut through bullshit and get to the heart of the matter. What he found at the center of American culture ultimately broke his heart, and that cost him his life; but today, I think we need him more than ever. h/t +Peter Schmidt and +Aoife Caragh.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawI chiefly remember Hells Angels for the epilogue. It's got the finest page and a half description of what it is to ride a motorcycle fast that I've ever seen. “The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.” In 2016, I keep asking What Would Hunter Do? WWHD? And I think perhaps his finest hour was his obituary in Rolling Stone for Richard Nixon. Somebody that he was inextricably entangled with for most of his life. Everybody quotes his "nation of used car salesman" piece but you should read this. Especially now. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/ My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together. Nixon laughed when I told him this. "Don't worry," he said, "I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you." You might want to ponder the last para as well. He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream. — This is a very thought-provoking article about the history of the social circumstances that brought about Trumpism – and how Hunter S. Thompson understood and explained them with profound clarity 50 years ago. The book that captured this wasn't Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail; it was Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, the book which first made his name and reputation. Thompson was, I think, one of the greatest journalists of our era: a man with a profound ability to cut through bullshit and get to the heart of the matter. What he found at the center of American culture ultimately broke his heart, and that cost him his life; but today, I think we need him more than ever. h/t +Peter Schmidt and +Aoife Caragh.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Institutions+Edward Morbius An imaginary number. Because the defections making a difference was only ever going to happen in the imagination. And on a deeper level because the entire system is the product of man's imagination. (yeah, very unhelpfully zen). And to be cute. ;) Turns out the real answer was 529. — Predictions: How many patriots? Numbers only, no words.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaI ran into this once. My crime was (probably) posting about alcoholic beverages with a link to a manufacturer of alcohol beverages without marking the audience for ALL my content as 21 years and older. Something which incidentally means it's no longer public and so inaccessible to the Google API. — Google: What's up with this? http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2016/12/google-is-threatening-to-throw-me-off-its-g-service-but-wont-tell-me-why/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Institutions√-1 — Predictions: How many patriots? Numbers only, no words.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsFun to speculate. But I'm struggling to imagine what kind of hissy fit would get thrown if Twitter really did block/ban The Tramp's account. One of many interesting things to watch in the coming months will be how he uses his own account alongside the official POTUS account. — I'd been leaning toward Twitter letting the Orange One continue tweeting simply to dig a hole to bury himself in Given the apparent interest of the president-elect of the United State, the Facist and Puppet Donald John Trump of making that hole large enough for another 313 million Americans, a billion Chinese, and a considerate count of others, I reverse my views. Twitter, Jack Dorsey, in the interest of US, China, and World security, please pull the plug now. Working another angle, seeing Trump unpresidented wouldn't be all bad either. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-china-drone-seizure-232775?cmpid=sf
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Commented on post by Sisco Vanilla in Mixology 🍸I think of Punt e Mes as being half way between Carpano Antica and Campari. It definitely works on it's own and with just soda/tonic (about half in half). But I'm puzzled by using it in a Negroni. Doesn't that come out too bitter? And if you use it in a Manhatten, do you leave out the angostura? — I was looking through the December 19, 1985 issue of the New York Times and came across a number of old booze ads. One that stood out to me was the ad for Carpano Punt e Mes. I look into what Carpano Punt e Mes is. Check it out. #BoozeAds #CarpanoPunteMes #PunteMes #Amaro #ItalianVermouth #VermouthRosso #Digestif #Aperitif #Cocktail #Cocktails #Coctel #Cocteles #Cocteleria #SiscoVanilla
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyThe other thought I'd had was that they were like the Zoroastrian towers of silence: A place to leave the dead. But your answer is perfect. — My photos of the Other Tibet. This area is culturally Tibetan in west Sichuan, China. But instead of a high dry plateau, it's a rugged, lower terrain of fertile valleys. These pictures are from the valleys around the town of Danba. The folk here like to say, "We are Tibetan but not like the Tibetans of Tibet." They speak Tibetan, but eat Chinese. Their homes are Tibetan but their crops are Chinese. They are in between, and their own tribe, so to speak. I was the only tourist. https://goo.gl/photos/RmtgfcDpSsDKGrUa6
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyWhat are the brick coloured towers? Is that for storing and drying grain or something? — My photos of the Other Tibet. This area is culturally Tibetan in west Sichuan, China. But instead of a high dry plateau, it's a rugged, lower terrain of fertile valleys. These pictures are from the valleys around the town of Danba. The folk here like to say, "We are Tibetan but not like the Tibetans of Tibet." They speak Tibetan, but eat Chinese. Their homes are Tibetan but their crops are Chinese. They are in between, and their own tribe, so to speak. I was the only tourist. https://goo.gl/photos/RmtgfcDpSsDKGrUa6
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionThere's an angry mob out there who claims the sky was pink this morning. And yesterday evening as well. And they want to kill the messenger. And Fox wants to buy Sky. — If Wikileaks told me the sky was blue, I'd tend to believe them. But I'd be exceedingly curious about who wanted me to know, and why.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesThis year's Christmas special. "The Snowman goes to Syria" The End. — In the fight of Pole versus Pole, the penguins' kamikaze attacks prove lethally effective, transforming the Santas' protected corridor into a killing field trapped in the middle of a pincer. Once that ended, the penguins made good use of their small size to cram into the fray tightly, able to face each Santa in the narrow confines of the pass with two penguins, and to bring new penguins to the front line as fast as they dropped. Of course, in a battle like this, the only real winners are the skua.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsIt wasn't clear to me, which is why I asked. It's still not clear to me. They can't sell Twitter. They can't make it make money. So they should simply close Twitter. All of it. But they won't be able to do that because, reasons. If they really did close Twitter, we'd all be hanging on every post The Lady and The Tramp made on tumblr/Instagram/Pinterest/Facebook/Wordpress/Reddit. — I'd been leaning toward Twitter letting the Orange One continue tweeting simply to dig a hole to bury himself in Given the apparent interest of the president-elect of the United State, the Facist and Puppet Donald John Trump of making that hole large enough for another 313 million Americans, a billion Chinese, and a considerate count of others, I reverse my views. Twitter, Jack Dorsey, in the interest of US, China, and World security, please pull the plug now. Working another angle, seeing Trump unpresidented wouldn't be all bad either. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-china-drone-seizure-232775?cmpid=sf
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsUm. Should Dorsey pull the plug by closing down Twitter, or by closing and blocking DJ Trump's account? How about blocking all US .gov accounts? I also wish Twitter would just die but a scorched earth policy would have consequences. — I'd been leaning toward Twitter letting the Orange One continue tweeting simply to dig a hole to bury himself in Given the apparent interest of the president-elect of the United State, the Facist and Puppet Donald John Trump of making that hole large enough for another 313 million Americans, a billion Chinese, and a considerate count of others, I reverse my views. Twitter, Jack Dorsey, in the interest of US, China, and World security, please pull the plug now. Working another angle, seeing Trump unpresidented wouldn't be all bad either. http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-china-drone-seizure-232775?cmpid=sf
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingMotors TV. http://dtxbarcelona.com/un-espectaculo-de-interes-mundial-mas-de-60-paises-lo-veran-por-tv/ — Does anyone have a cunning plan for watching the Superprestigio live in the UK? Looks like http://fanschoice.tv isn't available due to some geoblocking stupidity. How about http://motogp.com? http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/racing/watch-2016-superprestigio-barcelona/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillance+Edward Morbius All 6 of them were wrong. It was in fact a Donkey! <grin> — Poynter Institute: International Fact-Checking Network Code of Principles This is a set of guidelines for third-party fact checking organisations, including Snopes, who are used to verify and validate news information. Facebook are making use of this to combat fake news Propaganda and disinformation on their site. http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceIt's the Daily Mail, so it must be lies! However. Did the rabbit hole just get deeper? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British-ambassador-WikiLeaks-operative-claims-Russia-did-NOT-provide-Clinton-emails-handed-D-C-park-intermediary-disgusted-Democratic-insiders.html The report claims Craig Murray told the Mail that Pro-Sanders DNC insiders passed emails to an intermediary who gave them to Craig Murray in a wood in Washington DC who gave them to Wikileaks. Probably by hand in a memory card to Assange in the London embassy. "'Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that,' Murray insists" Is it possible that all the players think they're telling the truth and all the major narratives are actually true? The emails did find their way from DNC to Wikileaks directly with no Russian involvement. But the Russians did also hack the DNC servers. The CIA and FBI did know about the hack but were incompetent about dealing with it. Putin did know about the hack. It was aimed at disrupting the election and helping DJ Trump. Which would mean that the US and world media, Obama, and all the rest are mostly right, it's just that the core event happened in a much simpler way. And again. How are you supposed to unravel the lies, propaganda, fake news, facts and truth? — Poynter Institute: International Fact-Checking Network Code of Principles This is a set of guidelines for third-party fact checking organisations, including Snopes, who are used to verify and validate news information. Facebook are making use of this to combat fake news Propaganda and disinformation on their site. http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle Roadracingyup. And I can watch this kind of thing with no problems. SO maybe it's ok. http://www.fanschoice.tv/component/contushdvideoshare/player/ama-pro/2015-charlotte-half-mile-%E2%80%93-pre-race-show-%E2%80%93-ama-pro-flat-track1816 — Does anyone have a cunning plan for watching the Superprestigio live in the UK? Looks like http://fanschoice.tv isn't available due to some geoblocking stupidity. How about http://motogp.com? http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/racing/watch-2016-superprestigio-barcelona/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillance+mathew Neither of those reports make any claim that a Russian that was in touch with Trump helped wikileaks obtain the data. Or not that I can see anyway. In the context of a fact checking approach we have quite a problem that +Noah Friedman  points at. We've got a publication (wikileaks) making private information from the DNC public and stating via a 3rd party that it was obtained from Washington insiders and not from Russia. They can't confirm this without exposing their sources. On the other side we've got the world's media repeating what they are told by the subject of the information. And that subject (the DNC and current administration) claim that the information was obtained by the Russians. And they're presenting an extensive story to explain and justify this belief. But always it's hedged around with statements like "we believe that", "it's consistent with". If you're asking for proof, it's hard to see what proof would satisfy either side of the other side's position. Let's say Obama, the administration, the FBI and the CIA (and others) do their investigation. How are they going to be any more definite than they are now? And without the public exposure of a whistleblower like Snowden or Manning to back it up and say "I was the source" why should we believe Assange and Murray? At the moment, I don't see a way out of this. How are we supposed to fact check a story like this? As long as it remains bluster and finger pointing it maybe doesn't matter except that it's being played out in the context of USA vs Russia, Trump, Syria, etc etc etc. There's a side effect here. Greenwald, Biddle, Assange, Murray (and by implication, The Intercept) are losing reputation capital in the process. Who does that benefit? — Poynter Institute: International Fact-Checking Network Code of Principles This is a set of guidelines for third-party fact checking organisations, including Snopes, who are used to verify and validate news information. Facebook are making use of this to combat fake news Propaganda and disinformation on their site. http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingWell we can hope. It does say this though. Superprestigio Dirt Track [Available in US only] — Does anyone have a cunning plan for watching the Superprestigio live in the UK? Looks like http://fanschoice.tv isn't available due to some geoblocking stupidity. How about http://motogp.com? http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/racing/watch-2016-superprestigio-barcelona/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThere's mention in the comments of smartphones. Which got me wondering about a hardened and secured android. There's enough processor power and comms capability. But could you ever trust the software/hardware? — Photographers, videographers, journalists, request hardware encryption support in cameras Poitras and 150 other documentary filmmakers have signed an open letter from the non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation to camera-makers Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sony, Fuji, Kodak and Ricoh. The foundation, which has both Poitras and Snowden on its board of directors, is asking those companies to add the encryption features missing from virtually every standalone camera on the market, so that no thief, cop, or border agent can access their footage simply by grabbing the device out of their hands. Discussion elsewhere (HN) addresses the points of rubber-hose cryptanalysis, and the advisibility of having realtime or near-real-time offload capabilities such that the footage does not exclusively exist on the camera or documentarian themselves. This also reminds me of an Arthur C. Clarke scenario in which he felt that the ability to instantaneously stream footage of any event anywhere would instantly put an end to political violence. These hopes now seem naive. https://www.wired.com/2016/12/200-filmmakers-ask-nikon-canon-sell-encrypted-cameras/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsAs far as the internal US politics are concerned it almost doesn't matter if the Russians were involved or not. The Trumpoline can still use the story as justification to gut the CIA and FBI and install his own people. — Keith Olbermann: Is there a Russian coup underway in America? We are no longer a sovereign nation, we are no longer a democracy, we are no longer a free people. We are the victims of a bloodless coup -- so far -- engineered by Russia with the traitorous indifference of the Republican Party. The words, given and meant literally, not figuratively: war, coup, treason, traitor. A man who will live in imfamy. To President Obama: release the unvarnished truth to the American people, and people of the world, now. There is not time for careful deliberation. Watch, listen, forward. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IAFxPXGDH4E
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Institutionswhat happens if Donald Trump casts doubt on that atomic shield? Hold our beer, Europe. The UK's got this. I knew there'd be a reason for spending all that money on Trident eventually. /s — Europeans Debate Nuclear Self-Defense after Trump Win With his disparaging statements during the campaign about NATO being "obsolete," Trump has already created doubts about the Americans' loyalty to the alliance. Consequently, Europe has begun preparing for a future in which it is likely to have to pick up a much greater share of the costs for its security. But what happens if the president-elect has an even more fundamental shift in mind for American security policy? What if he questions the nuclear shield that provided security to Europe during the Cold War? Elections have consequences. Words, and truth, and trust, have meaning. Where they're found unreliable, your friends may depart you. I'm going to take this discussion one step further, raising to points not touched on within the article, but which a hard-pressed, and hardball Europe might consider. At present, the United States benefits not only from trade, security, and close corporate relations with much the rest of the world, but, and most particularly as a long-time massive net importer of goods and raw materials from the rest of the world, from the very special and privileged status of its currency. The U.S. dollar has two specific statuses not conferred on any other currency in the world: 1. It is the global reserve currency. This is the unit of account central banks around the world, as well as the IMF and World Bank, use to mediate their own exchanges. 2. It is the basis of the global trade in petroleum, a fact which benefits both oil-exporting nations (by preventing their own currencies from appreciating against other nations') and for the US, by effectivley reducing the depreciation of the dollars spent importing oil to the US (about 20% of all global petroleum is consumed within the US, and about half of that is imported). A Europe which no longer feels it can trust or rely upon the US militarily may find that it is to its interest to also divorce itself from vestigal ties to the dollar. The impacts of that on global balance of power, the US economy, financial markets, and pretty much anything else, would be catastrophic. http://m.spiegel.de/international/world/a-1125186.html
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad in fnordsAs a non-USA, English speaker, I've long thought that Google's algorithms ar a form of cultural imperialism. Because I never get shown results from non-English language sources. Which in practice means a very high proportion of results are from the USA even on http://google.co.uk. — the alt-right does seo better post truth, it's about algorithms Elections aren't about truth, they're run by algorithm. What you see on facebook from friends and family? Same deal. And what shows up in Google search? People spend careers gaming that system. SEO, search engine optimization. Someone associated with the neonazi site Stormfront must be very good at it. Because when you ask Google search about the reality of the Holocaust, the most authority is given to their site. No one died. The Jews are all lying. Read the rest of our site while you are here. Don't. Be. Evil. Google is not ‘just’ a platform. It frames, shapes and distorts how we see the world https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/11/google-frames-shapes-and-distorts-how-we-see-world?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Google%2B
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThat old canard "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product" is getting an airing. It needs an extension:- If you're not paying for the product, you're not the customer. So nobody cares if you're right. — Charlie Stross on why advertising-supported media MUST die Charlie's pointed out the fundamental problem of advertising-supported media: you get what you incentivise for. The problem's not new, but certain dynamics, I like to think of them as data physics, change with electronic and online media. My proposed solution: a universal broadband tax. This is what others, notably Phil Hunt (Pirate Party UK) and Richard M. Stallman (Free Software Foundation) have suggested. Why? Because: 1. Data access wants to be free. Information providers want to be paid. 2. Information and markets play very, very, very poorly. For a great many reasons. Among them: 3. Celine's 2nd Law: accurate information is only possible in a non-punishing environment. (From Robert Anston Wilson). 4. The generalisation of C2L: Accurate information is only possible when accuracy is the only aspect of the information that's the basis for selection. Stross's piece lays out the arguments for how alternate incentivisation inevitably leads to perversion of media. 5. Gresham's Law: This isn't a specialised observation of money, but a generalised and universal observation of information accessibility: Rapidly-determined value assessments trump slowly-determined value assessments.. That is, whatever property of something that is easy to determine will override the hard-to-determine qualities -- either positive or negative. 6. The assessment of information value is itself an expensive operation and one which scales poorly. This is why we use reputation (or "branding") as an indicator of quality -- these subsume a large set of assessment information into an easily recognised signal. Another alternative to content syndication might be a universal basic income, though both are essentially tax-and-redistribution schemes. The former has the advantage of specifically rewarding content based on quality. Content syndication can also be seen as a form of superbundling, the opposite response to micropayments antibundling. Effectively, you're aggregating sets of published materials in such a way as to reduce the costs of reputation assessment. The author, editor, publication, and publisher, all carry a reputation assessment which can rise or fall with the experience of content. That assessment itself also informs as to whether the information under it is likely to be high or low quality. I've been digging into the history of publishing and media, how we got here, and what the history of business models and social impacts has been. The history is fascinating. My general premise is that every change in communications, starting with language and speech, have given rise to massive changes in social and political structures. In particular I'd recommend: Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979). A long-form history of publishing and its role on society. http://www.worldcat.org/title/printing-press-as-an-agent-of-change-communications-and-cultural-transformations-in-early-modern-europe/oclc/3608722&referer=brief_results Hamilton Holt, Commercialism and Journalism (1909). A history of the preceding 50 years of publishing and the rise of advertising, and its influences, as the Industrial Age gave rise to mass production and consumerism. Freely available at the Internet Archive, 115pp, a short, quick, and informative read. https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft Edward Bernays, particularly Propaganda and Public Relations. Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Hanna Arendt, generally. Marshall McLuhan, generally. Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death and Technopoly. John R. Gillis, The Development of European Society, 1770-1870 (1977), particularly chapter 10. More on content syndication: https://redd.it/1uotb3 More on information and markets: https://redd.it/2vm2da More on micropayments: https://redd.it/4r683b h/t +paul beard http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/12/eleven-tweets.html
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceWhere does "Ghost-Banning" come into this? I'm seeing stories from people with reason to be paranoid getting paranoid that Facebook, Twitter are hiding and downgrading their posts and links to their posts. So they appear to be posted but never actually get seen by anyone and never generate any clicks. If it's real, there's a thin line there between blocking the fuckwits and actual censorship of ideologically unsound thought. — Fake News: Assertion: They have it backwards. Its not about blocking misinformation. That just puts you in the role of the Inquisition. It's about seeking the truth. Response: Both matter. Blocking fuckwits (or misinformation) is a very useful heuristic to promoting truths. (Google "Block fuckwits" for my earlier discussion(s))
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsWell the story certainly seems to have legs. Though I'm having trouble working out who it benefits. After a while it just seems like an attempt to ratchet up the chaos. Much lies, So fake news, Very Wow! CIA consistent with the FBI. Say, wut? Sorry I'm not really adding anything here, except to say that I don't know what to believe any more. — Time's POTY should have been Vladimir Putin Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian nails it: [E]ven though Trump was clearly the biggest news story of 2016, he still should not have won. For there is another figure who looms larger over this annus horribilis, albeit from the shadows. He ends this year with a wolfish grin, content that almost all his dreams have come true. That man is Vladimir Putin. He surveys the global landscape and sees almost every sign pointing his way. From Aleppo to the White House, from post-truth to Brexit, this is the year the world was reshaped in his image. He may not have been the guiding hand behind every shift, though he certainly gave several of them a nudge, but together they made him 2016’s biggest winner. I've said as much. https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/WE5MNaESqhk?sfc=true https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/09/person-of-the-year-trump-putin-dreams-brexit-us-election-aleppo-post-truth
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsI really don't know but it smells of internal Washington dirty tricks. Especially given all the weirdness of the 2016 campaign. What's distressing and scary is that there are people in the USA who think it's ok to point fingers at one of the other of the three major nuclear powers over what is an internal political battle. There are dissenting voices calling them on their bullshit but they're getting drowned out. I'm not in any position to call the truth, but I do feel the need to point out some alternative narratives that are not too paranoid, crazy and delusional. Especially since the entire story depends on anonymous, senior officials who say they don't have specific proof, are unable to find anyone responsible, don't actually arrest anyone, or can say much of substance at all actually. I welcome an Obama led campaign to investigate the processes in the time that he has left. But I'm not holding my breath that it will discover anything useful. seeAlso this article that is strangely missing from the main Guardian newsfeed. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/10/cia-concludes-russia-interfered-to-help-trump-win-election-report And of course, Glenn Greenwald's report https://theintercept.com/2016/12/10/anonymous-leaks-to-the-washpost-about-the-cias-russia-beliefs-are-no-substitute-for-evidence/ — Time's POTY should have been Vladimir Putin Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian nails it: [E]ven though Trump was clearly the biggest news story of 2016, he still should not have won. For there is another figure who looms larger over this annus horribilis, albeit from the shadows. He ends this year with a wolfish grin, content that almost all his dreams have come true. That man is Vladimir Putin. He surveys the global landscape and sees almost every sign pointing his way. From Aleppo to the White House, from post-truth to Brexit, this is the year the world was reshaped in his image. He may not have been the guiding hand behind every shift, though he certainly gave several of them a nudge, but together they made him 2016’s biggest winner. I've said as much. https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/WE5MNaESqhk?sfc=true https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/09/person-of-the-year-trump-putin-dreams-brexit-us-election-aleppo-post-truth
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Commented on post by A. Randomjack in Climate ChangeThere's an extension to Betteridge's law of headlines. If a headline uses may or could in a statement, the answer is "probably not". But since the SciAm article is behind a paywall, we'll never know. — Lets hope this one works, it looks like a very good idea
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsAnd be careful when reading TFA. The headline and sentiment may be right, and there are some truths in it. But the article is also almost entirely propaganda. Few credible sources doubt that Russia was behind the hacking of internal Democratic party emails And on and on it goes. It no longer matters if that's true or not. The lie has become a story in itself. — Time's POTY should have been Vladimir Putin Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian nails it: [E]ven though Trump was clearly the biggest news story of 2016, he still should not have won. For there is another figure who looms larger over this annus horribilis, albeit from the shadows. He ends this year with a wolfish grin, content that almost all his dreams have come true. That man is Vladimir Putin. He surveys the global landscape and sees almost every sign pointing his way. From Aleppo to the White House, from post-truth to Brexit, this is the year the world was reshaped in his image. He may not have been the guiding hand behind every shift, though he certainly gave several of them a nudge, but together they made him 2016’s biggest winner. I've said as much. https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/WE5MNaESqhk?sfc=true https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/09/person-of-the-year-trump-putin-dreams-brexit-us-election-aleppo-post-truth
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsI want to see Eddie Marsan play Putin in the HBO biopic. We've had a few bits of video on the news of the kind of state address that Russia does so well. This little dapper man in his neat suit walks out through the biggest gold covered doors you ever did see into an enormous gold plated Tsar's stateroom. Lined up at the opposite end are 12 or so people each in their ethnic dress that I assume are something like regional governors. While about 8 guards in imperial dress uniform perform ceremonial duty. Putin talks for 3 minutes and then walks out again. There's strong cognitive dissonance of a supremely powerful ruler who looks like a senior British civil servant ("Yes, Minister!") set in the most extreme display of European imperial wealth from the 19th century. We Brits, are pretty good at that stuff, but Russia routinely takes it to another level. — Time's POTY should have been Vladimir Putin Jonathan Freedland at The Guardian nails it: [E]ven though Trump was clearly the biggest news story of 2016, he still should not have won. For there is another figure who looms larger over this annus horribilis, albeit from the shadows. He ends this year with a wolfish grin, content that almost all his dreams have come true. That man is Vladimir Putin. He surveys the global landscape and sees almost every sign pointing his way. From Aleppo to the White House, from post-truth to Brexit, this is the year the world was reshaped in his image. He may not have been the guiding hand behind every shift, though he certainly gave several of them a nudge, but together they made him 2016’s biggest winner. I've said as much. https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/WE5MNaESqhk?sfc=true https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/09/person-of-the-year-trump-putin-dreams-brexit-us-election-aleppo-post-truth
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsAnd, thatsthejoke.jpg — Well, there's that
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeThis gets used by the Lukewarmers such as Lomborg, Tol and Ridley as proof that GHG and climate change isn't all bad. Their comments then get repeated by lukewarm environmentalists like Stewart Brand and the Ecomodernists. Beware! Here be lies. the mystery of why the uptick in CO2 concentrations has leveled off since 2002, even as emissions have increased. Except it hasn't levelled off. It's at it's highest ever increase rate. https://robertscribbler.com/2016/12/08/for-2016-atmospheric-co2-concentrations-are-rising-at-the-fastest-rate-ever-seen/ — This sounds like good news: The planet is getting greener while global warming slows. But it comes with worrying caveats. For starters, the effect may not last as increased temperatures dampen plant growth and rainfall patterns change. Also, much of the greening has occurred in cold regions previously blanketed in snow. And while snow and ice reflect solar energy away from the planet, vegetation absorbs it, increasing land surface temperatures. Finally, the effect is simply too small to keep up with emissions. “Unfortunately,” says Keenan, the increased carbon uptake by plants “is nowhere near enough to stop climate change.” http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/winter-2016-reality-bites/greening-planet-fertilizer-effect-co2-slows-warming
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionMmmmm, π! — Zen Diagram
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Commented on post by Shava Nerad in 2016 electionIt has occurred to me that Trump is a Situationist in the style of Malcolm Maclaren. And that it only takes a few words to turn Anarchy in the UK into a Trump anthem. "Don't know what I want but I know how to get it" has a certain resonance. So if he's the Svengali, does that make the Alt-Right, Trump's Sex Pistols? His willing evangelists who are just discovering what he's done with them. — Joi Ito compares Trump to the Sex Pistols. I had to defend the Punks. ;) “Joi, when I got involved as the founding executive director of the Tor Project, my wellspring of…” @shava23 https://medium.com/@shava23/joi-when-i-got-involved-as-the-found-in-executive-director-of-the-tor-project-my-wellspring-of-8e0c20266128
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionCeci n'est pas une π — Zen Diagram
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Commented on post by Pierre Markuse in Climate Change / EarthWeirdly both Arctic and Antarctic avg nov extent are at record lows just now. Arctic + Antarctic is 7 standard deviations below normal. There's no obvious direct linkage between the two but still weird. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/12/arctic-and-antarctic-at-record-low-levels/ — Growing Pains: Arctic Sea Ice at Record Lows Every northern fall and winter, cooling ocean and air temperatures cause the floating cap of Arctic sea ice to grow from its annual minimum extent toward a maximum between February and April. So far in 2016, though, the Arctic Ocean and neighboring seas have been slow to freeze, setting both daily and monthly record lows. “The October freeze-up was very slow and that continued through much of November,” said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Read the full article here: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=89223 Also read this Earth Observatory article on sea ice: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/SeaIce/ More information: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/09/2016-ties-with-2007-for-second-lowest-arctic-sea-ice-minimum/ Check out NASA's Global Climate Change Vital Signs of the Planet website with lots of information on global climate change: http://climate.nasa.gov/ Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center https://goo.gl/h5WTTD Thank you for your interest in this Climate Change/Earth collection. Maybe add me on Google+ (+Pierre Markuse) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/Pierre_Markuse) or have a look at the Astronomy/Astrophysics collection here: https://goo.gl/x0zPAJ or the Space/Space Technology collection here: https://goo.gl/5KP0wx #science #earth #arctic #seaice #arcticseaice #globalwarming #climatechange #climate #nasa #nsidc
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Commented on post by John HummelAside: It only takes changes to about 5 words to turn Anarchy in the UK USA into a Trump anthem. — Trump turning US into Postmodernist nightmare … if you work for Trump and actually have to defend his more outlandish statements, what do you do? One way to handle it is to say that his lies are actually true. But another way is to undermine the very idea of truth, to claim that reality is unknowable, there's no such thing as fact, and when Donald Trump says something, it transmutes into a kind of truth as it passes out his mouth, whether the material universe might tell you otherwise or not. Last week, at a post-election forum at Harvard that got attention mostly for the nasty squabbles between Trump and Clinton aides, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said this: “This is the problem with the media. You guys took everything that Donald Trump said so literally. The American people didn't. They understood it. They understood that sometimes, when you have a conversation with people, whether it's around the dinner table or at a bar, you're going to say things, and sometimes you don't have all the facts to back it up.” … The eagerness of his supporters to believe whatever ridiculous thing he tells them helps assure Trump that he can get away with anything. And what's truly depressing is that he probably can. Not that he won't be criticized for his endless lies, because he will. But as his aides and allies continue to insist that there's no such thing as truth and nothing wrong with lying when Trump does it, more and more Republicans will adopt those views, until they become utterly mainstream. So it is that conservatives are on their way to becoming the ultimate postmodernists, convinced that there's no such thing as objective truth and each one of us exists in our own subjective reality. Donald Trump hasn't even become president yet, and he's already refashioning them in his image. In a way this could be quite liberating for progressives if we play it right: According to conservative “logic” we can now do anything we want; and if someone doesn’t like it, then we can just deny that we did it, and it will never have happened.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeArctic http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/1999/12/monthly_ice_11_NH.png Arctic stall http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,230.msg95881.html#msg95881 Arctic+Antarctic is 7 (7!) standard deviations below normal. — last 2 days the refreeze basically stalled out yet again...
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Commented on post by Peter C in Climate ChangeMid Nov was weird. Nov was exceptional. Arctic ice state is still lowest ever by a big margin. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/12/arctic-and-antarctic-at-record-low-levels/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingI don't understand what the problem was. The old format of Sunday race day worked fine, STK1000, SBK1, WSS, SBK2, STK600 with one or two national or quirky races mixed in. — Are the WSB organisers on drugs? Is this some kind of cocaine decision? They take the BSB idea of making the race 2 grid depend on race 1 results (best lap time) but misunderstand what was done and create a ridiculous, unsafe, joke of a plan instead. This is a world championship not a club race. This kind of approach is just embarrassing. http://www.worldsbk.com/en/news/2016/FIM%20Superbike%20Commission%20to%20bring%20updates%20to%20The%20Superbike%20World%20Championship%20for%202017
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Commented on post by John HummelNot so much a post-modernist as a situationist. "sous les pavés la plage". Malcolm Maclaren would have been proud. "Don't know what I want, but I know how to get it" — Trump turning US into Postmodernist nightmare … if you work for Trump and actually have to defend his more outlandish statements, what do you do? One way to handle it is to say that his lies are actually true. But another way is to undermine the very idea of truth, to claim that reality is unknowable, there's no such thing as fact, and when Donald Trump says something, it transmutes into a kind of truth as it passes out his mouth, whether the material universe might tell you otherwise or not. Last week, at a post-election forum at Harvard that got attention mostly for the nasty squabbles between Trump and Clinton aides, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said this: “This is the problem with the media. You guys took everything that Donald Trump said so literally. The American people didn't. They understood it. They understood that sometimes, when you have a conversation with people, whether it's around the dinner table or at a bar, you're going to say things, and sometimes you don't have all the facts to back it up.” … The eagerness of his supporters to believe whatever ridiculous thing he tells them helps assure Trump that he can get away with anything. And what's truly depressing is that he probably can. Not that he won't be criticized for his endless lies, because he will. But as his aides and allies continue to insist that there's no such thing as truth and nothing wrong with lying when Trump does it, more and more Republicans will adopt those views, until they become utterly mainstream. So it is that conservatives are on their way to becoming the ultimate postmodernists, convinced that there's no such thing as objective truth and each one of us exists in our own subjective reality. Donald Trump hasn't even become president yet, and he's already refashioning them in his image. In a way this could be quite liberating for progressives if we play it right: According to conservative “logic” we can now do anything we want; and if someone doesn’t like it, then we can just deny that we did it, and it will never have happened.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeI wonder what the current right would have made of Henry Ford, back in the day. But then John D Rockefeller and Standard oil stood to make a huge amount of money out of Ford's success in growing the market for oil. So where's the right wing capitalist that stands to get rich from providing cheap, low-carbon electricity? — Electric-car evangelist is the target of concerted negative online campaign linked to influential rightwing network #CleanTech  
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedRight now, electric has different sweet spots. So there's lot of potential in recreational off road vehicles, urban commuter, utility and delivery scooters. But probably not yet in sports bikes even though most sports bikes get used for no more than one tank of petrol at a time and 45 minutes. The big problem I have now is not range but price. Things like the Zero range or the KTM Freeride-E are not cheap for what you get. — BMW S1000 ERR ~ electric superbike ~ I'm still not sure what to make of electric motorcycles, other than currently they don't really work; either dog slow or no range and always too heavy. But, they are likely to have a longer future than mass fossil fuel transport, at a guess and I have yet to actually ride one - they may be an hoot. Or not. I can definitely see the appeal of zipping alone in 'silence' but I suspect in practice it feels worse for the lack of mechanical noise, not better.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Change+A. Randomjack It feels to me like the problem is now split. On one side the ~1b in the WEIRD countries with their high consumption per capita. On the other side the 6.5b in the non-WEIRD countries who's per-capita consumption is rising rapidly. — Human Population Growth and Consumption drive Climate Change: World Population | Year 1 billion | 1804 2 billion | 1927 3 billion | 1960 4 billion | 1974 5 billion | 1987 6 billion | 1999 7 billion | 2011 #Population   #Consumption  
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:I do like the idea of really, really, REALLY BIG things floating around the sky. Travelling really quite slowly. What could possibly go wrong? Also where does all the hydrogen/helium come from? — A few weeks ago, I posted (http://goo.gl/mE052w) about one of the stranger legacies of the Cold War – a never-launched (for obvious reasons) American plan involving an Atomic Zeppelin fleet, which would patrol over the world's oceans 24/7, carrying Minuteman ICBM's on board. Now, this plan was raised as part of a fairly transparent ploy by various groups at the Department of Defense to claim that they had "thought through all options" and could therefore justify the M-X Missile program. So I have no idea what the excuse is behind this thing, a description of a plan for nuclear-powered Zeppelins to be fielded by the Soviet Union. I'm suspecting that this appeared in Tekhnika Molodezhi for much the same reason that bizarre designs show up in Popular Mechanics: that is, as an "imagine this neat future!" gimmick rather than serious engineering. But I'm oddly pleased to discover that both sides of the Cold War had people that looked at nuclear reactions, looked at Zeppelins, and immediately thought these are two great tastes that taste great together. This really strange bit of lore brought to you by @PulpLibrarian over on Twitter. Edited: And thanks to +Denny Gursky for finding a link to the complete article (in Russian): http://zhurnalko.net/=nauka-i-tehnika/tehnika-molodezhi/1971-08--num35
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeI've spent a lot of time trying to understand these figures this year. A key understanding was that population growth changed from exponential (hockey stick, bottom of the S curve, constant percentage growth) to linear (constant absolute growth numbers, middle flat part of the S curve) around 1965-70. And it's been constant linear growth of +80m pa, 12-14 years per +1b ever since. That's 5 decades of +80m pa. The optimists will try and tell you that fertility rates and growth are falling by focusing on the falling percentage growth figure and average fertility rates. But it's more accurate to look at the growth curve as an S where we started with increasing growth, are now in the middle linear growth and may transition to falling growth at the top of the S curve at some stage in the future. That view is still a naive model with insufficient elements. The next stage is to take an approach like the Club Of Rome people and examine the effects of resource constraints and pollution. It may be that these or black swan climate events cause overshoot, crash and burn. But if we can maintain business as usual, there's no obvious reason for any peak in population this century. My best guess at what's happening and where the current linear growth is coming from is this. Subsistence farmers still have children above replacement rate but more of them are surviving. The excess are moving to the rapidly growing urban areas. The new urban population have a lower fertility rate so the excess isn't a feedback loop that itself grows. So rural poor act as a constant feed of new bodies into the system while their own population doesn't grow. Bottom line. +80m pa. 12-14 years per +1b. For 5 decades. With no peak this century. 10b in 2056. 12b in 2100. — Human Population Growth and Consumption drive Climate Change: World Population | Year 1 billion | 1804 2 billion | 1927 3 billion | 1960 4 billion | 1974 5 billion | 1987 6 billion | 1999 7 billion | 2011 #Population   #Consumption  
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycles - ModifiedYup. It's not so much the actual performance as the aesthetique. And the way the frame has almost completely disappeared and been consumed by the engine-drivetrain. There are details. Like no brake lines, nowhere to put a number plate, footpegs too low. — Not a huge fan of 45deg V-twins but this is a hell of a thing. http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/bikes/vanguard-roadster/
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Code DependencyPerhaps you couldn't configure it because it had already been pwned by a botnet within 90s of being turned on. http://wolfliving.tumblr.com/post/153982699806/truth-bomb — +Amcrest Pro/HD 1080p WiFi camera  - a brief review We got this from Home Depot, but it seems to be available from a number of other big-box retailers including OfficeDepot. I ran into a show-stopper almost right away in that it refused to connect to the wifi network. What's worse is that although we have no less than four SSIDs it could have connected to, it would only show me one -- which seemed to be chosen at random -- so I couldn't easily cycle through all the possible SSIDs to see if any of them could connect. One time it even showed "Select a Wifi" in the SSID blank, as if I could somehow pick from a list. I tapped and slid every way I could think of, but it acts like static text regardless of what it is saying. I was able to try three different hubs (two at our house and one elsewhere) with no luck. I also tried it with a wired connection. That requires you to enter the existing user/password credentials -- although it looks like it's asking you to set them, and I'm not sure how you set them when going this route -- and then it gives you a choice of networks (though only two of our three SSIDs were listed). At that point, I was able to get it to connect to one -- supposedly -- but after disconnecting the ethernet cable (as requested by the instructions), I still couldn't access the camera. If the camera could have operated solely over the ethernet connection, I might have been tempted to keep it -- but as it is, I absolutely cannot configure it successfully, so I can't use it. We'll have to return it. Also, while Android interfaces in general kind of suck, this one is no worse than average, and maybe a little better -- but I couldn't explore all the functionality due to not actually having a working camera. (Attached screenshot: gotta love them mixed messages.) see also: https://plus.google.com/u/0/108451403881436199360/posts/P4cmcUwgw3s
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceFound via a Bruce Sterling tumblr. http://wolfliving.tumblr.com/post/153982699806/truth-bomb We're building self driving cars and planning mars missions, but we can't work out how to stop people's vacuum cleaners becoming part of botnets. — The Dangerously Smart Home h/t bruces @ Ello #iot
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeYamma Gamma is also an RD350LC engine in an RG250 Gamma chassis. I owned a TDR for a while. Another bike I should never have got rid of. The problem was though that I was an idiot who didn't understand the care and maintenance of two strokes so it would only run properly for a 1000 miles or so between pistons. The best mod I did was to swap the rev counter and temp gauge so you could actually see the rev counter rather than it being buried in the front of the tank. The other trick was to use TZR250 wheels as the spoked wheels had a habit of breaking spokes. There are a few out there with RD350LC engines and even one or two 500c Banshee versions. That probably works pretty well and is a bit less insane than a RG500 or RD500. Even a lightly tuned standard bike was hilarious in it's day. It had perfect balance which positively encouraged hooning about doing stoppies, wheelies, backing it into corners on the brakes and so on. But without silly speeds since it would only do 110mph or so. Reminds me. I must have a go on a recent KTM Duke next year. — We see far fewer of these nowadays but they are an hoot!
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeJust narrowly about oil spills rather than the wider environmental issues. Is the problem here the oil, the containers or the number of derailments? — While the initial oil-by-rail regulations released in 2015 refused to address the issue of vapor pressure and volatility, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration ( #PHMSA ) announced earlier this month that it was “considering revising the Hazardous Materials Regulations ( #HMR ) to establish vapor pressure limits for unrefined petroleum-based products.” #OilByRail   #BakkenOil  
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Commented on post by Dawn Shepard in Climate ChangeThe USA wasn't actually doing anything anyway, so how can Trump make it worse? — Most people are wildly underestimating what Trump’s win will mean for the environment
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in blue hazeIt's got the side air intakes, so this is not the very last that Rossi (and Criville) rode. So I think this might have been the last one that Doohan rode. Can we put a date on it? — Stripped bare. Ultimate 500 ?
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Commented on post by Joshua Robbin Marks in Climate ChangeMeanwhile France's nuclear industry is falling apart. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/29/french-nuclear-power-worst-situation-ever-former-edf-director So how are they going to keep the lights on? — Someone needs to tell Trump that the world is moving away from coal and toward renewables to meet climate targets. The US will be a pariah state unless Trump changes his views on clean energy and climate change. France, the UK, Finland, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Austria have all announced plans for phasing out coal-fired plants.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawFighting Trump on Climate Change is a waste of time http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2016/11/finally-someone-else-gets-real-about-climate-change.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-watson/why-fighting-donald-trump_b_12951212.html Does climate policy matter? Because current policy hasn't actually changed anything. So how is Trump going to make it any worse? http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issues/climate-policy/does-climate-policy-matter The INDCs proposed in Paris, are insufficient to hit 2C rise this century, let alone 1.5C http://climateactiontracker.org/news/222/emissions-gap-how-close-are-indcs-to-2-and-1.5c-pathways.html Carbon emissions are still at their highest ever rate. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/14/fossil-fuel-co2-emissions-nearly-stable-for-third-year-in-row So - What we're proposing won't work - We haven't actually started implementing what we've proposed - We're still on course to burn all the easily accessible carbon close to the most extreme IPCC rcp 8.5 scenario - Emissions are stable at the highest level they've ever been - CO2 rise is as fast as it's ever been And we're worried that a Trump environment policy might make things worse? Pffft! — The news about Nazis in DC may have hidden some of the most important stories brewing about the new administration. This one may prove to have some of the most serious consequences. Trump wants to eliminate NASA's Earth Science division, one of the foremost institutions in the world studying the state of our planet. This team has key responsibilities in lofting the satellites which give us a view of what's happening around us – as well as being one of the world's best groups of climate modeling. Eliminating the division would both disband one of the best such teams in the world, and eliminate nearly $2B of funding from the subject, costing hundreds (or more) of jobs across the field, and likely most affecting the careers of young researchers – with huge consequences for the field's future, just as it is becoming ever-more critical. (Remember that the Arab Spring was triggered by droughts in Asia and the Middle East, and the current massive surge in temperatures in the Arctic – it's currently 36°F above normal! – are going to have tremendous consequences. There's a reason the DoD considers this a top strategic priority.) More chillingly still, the justification for this is that he calls their work "politicized science" – which is to say, "science which is politically inconvenient for him." We've seen a similar game in which Congress has banned any medical or epidemiological research on guns, because of the NRA's (probably justified) fear that the results of even the most trivial research would harm their political goals.* (Pro tip: if you know that anyone seriously looking at a question will come up with answers that hurt your goals, this may mean your goals are shady.) There's actually a name for this sort of thing: Lysenkoism, named after Soviet agriculture director Trofim Lysenko. Lysenko considered genetics to be politically unfavorable to Communism, because if traits are inherent, then they can't be improved by the government, and that would make all sorts of parts of the Five-Year Plan obviously infeasible. With Stalin's enthusiastic support, all funding for research which disagreed with this was cut. (And this being Stalin, researchers who disagreed were shipped to Siberia) It was replaced by a rather bizarre official theory in which, for example, rye could be turned into wheat, and exposing wheat seeds to high humidity and low temperature would "teach" them and their descendants to grow in the winter. The thing about science is that it's about asking questions and noting what's happening in the world around you. You don't get to make theories up and just say that the world is so; all you can do is describe what's actually observed, and try to figure out if you can predict what will happen next. That is, science is descriptive, it's not normative. And that means that science is about things that keep happening, whether you believe in them or not. Unlike saying "I don't believe in fairies!," you can say "this wheat will grow in Siberia!" as often as you like, and the wheat still isn't going to grow there. That's the problem with Lysenkoism: it's based on pretending that nature works some way, and threatening anyone who dares to disagree with you, but nature doesn't really care. It will keep doing what it was doing before, and all that happens is that you've decided to be officially blind to it. You do this with how crops work, and you end up with unexpected famines. You do this with how climate works, and you end up with unexpected droughts, floods, spreads of new diseases, and all sorts of fun and exciting things, because it turns out that the weather is still pretty important in our lives and you do not fuck with the laws of physics. I say this with confidence: I was a physicist myself, am currently an engineer, and so if anyone is qualified to make a snappy answer to "Ye cannae change the laws of physics, Jim!" it's probably me. But sorry: if your politics would be harmed by people being aware of reality, then all that means is that (a) your politics are apparently based on lying to people, and (b) at some point or another you are going to get a rude introduction to reality, which will not be good for either your politics or your constituents-slash-victims. * Before anyone uses this as an excuse to go on a rant: I'm not anti-gun at all, and rather enjoy shooting. But there's a huge space between the Second Amendment and the sort of lunacy that the NRA has gotten infatuated with, where any restriction on a person's right to own a GBU-31 JDAM is tantamount to treason. And things like legally barring doctors from asking people if they have a gun in the house – even though, for example, that's a serious risk factor of death if anyone in the house is suffering from serious depression or similar illnesses – is just sacrificing human lives on the altar of their own political expediency. Seriously, fuck those guys.
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Commented on post by Dawn Shepard in Climate ChangeImportant. But OT in this community. — Internet Wayback Machine Doesn't Feel Safe In America Under Trump - Whatever your personal political persuasion, watch tonight's Rachel Maddow Show (11/29/2016) @MSNBC re: Internet censorship under the insane radicals Trump is assembling to dismantle free-speech & effectively turn it into a Fox News type total bullshit springboard. Bad America! Very, very bad. - website: http://archive.org - twitter: @İnternetarchive
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedThere's something weird about the forks. The new gixxer has gold anodised forks with extra tubes on the back and adjusters. — New Suzuki GSX-R1000 L7 with an Yoshimura R11 carbon and titanium end section exhaust (not truly an half system.) The benefit of the outrageously enormous OEM exhaust on the new GSXR is that it means the absence of a bulky collector box and catalytic converter in line, as most sports bikes have come with since the late noughties. This makes removing them, as many prefer to do to improve responsiveness and sound, a far easier proposition. This suggests Suzuki have listened to owners and builders when they complained bitterly of the system on their L8 and later (maybe L7 too?) This exhaust had to either be completely removed and replaced with an aftermarket full system or the cat had to be cut out of the system - a rather permanent solution - in the UK at least presenting owners with problems come MOT time. OK and to end here is a quick question: What's missing?
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedMissing? Focus on the camera. — New Suzuki GSX-R1000 L7 with an Yoshimura R11 carbon and titanium end section exhaust (not truly an half system.) The benefit of the outrageously enormous OEM exhaust on the new GSXR is that it means the absence of a bulky collector box and catalytic converter in line, as most sports bikes have come with since the late noughties. This makes removing them, as many prefer to do to improve responsiveness and sound, a far easier proposition. This suggests Suzuki have listened to owners and builders when they complained bitterly of the system on their L8 and later (maybe L7 too?) This exhaust had to either be completely removed and replaced with an aftermarket full system or the cat had to be cut out of the system - a rather permanent solution - in the UK at least presenting owners with problems come MOT time. OK and to end here is a quick question: What's missing?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceMore words of advice for American Journalists. https://climatecrocks.com/2016/11/28/advice-for-journalists-in-the-new-usa/ one thing you don’t have, is experience of what to do when things start to get genuinely bad. — Journalists: "Stop banalizing the truth" I believe in being truthful, not neutral. And I believe we must stop banalizing the truth. And we have to be prepared to fight especially hard for the truth in a world where the Oxford English Dictionary just announced its word of 2016: "post-truth." We have to accept that we've had our lunch handed to us by the very same social media that we've so slavishly been devoted to. The winning candidate did a savvy end run around us and used it to go straight to the people. Combined with the most incredible development ever -- the tsunami of fake news sites -- aka lies -- that somehow people could not, would not, recognize, fact check, or disregard. Christiane Amanpour, Chief International Correspondent, CNN The video of Amanpour's award acceptance speech is worth watching as well. http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/23/opinions/christiane-amanpour-journalism-in-trump-era/index.html
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillance+Edward Morbius I think the intent is probably good, but the problem is the bubble she's working in. So what's the view from the trenches about "It's the Russians what did it"? That's a big claim to be making. a real world in which journalism and democracy are in mortal peril, including by foreign powers like Russia paying to churn out and place false news, and hacking into democratic systems I'm seeing enough dissenting voices and alternate explanations about these stories to think it's not at all cut and dried. Then there's the language. "democracy in mortal peril", "sacred duty in the sanctity of the voting booth", "brand America". Give me a break. — Journalists: "Stop banalizing the truth" I believe in being truthful, not neutral. And I believe we must stop banalizing the truth. And we have to be prepared to fight especially hard for the truth in a world where the Oxford English Dictionary just announced its word of 2016: "post-truth." We have to accept that we've had our lunch handed to us by the very same social media that we've so slavishly been devoted to. The winning candidate did a savvy end run around us and used it to go straight to the people. Combined with the most incredible development ever -- the tsunami of fake news sites -- aka lies -- that somehow people could not, would not, recognize, fact check, or disregard. Christiane Amanpour, Chief International Correspondent, CNN The video of Amanpour's award acceptance speech is worth watching as well. http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/23/opinions/christiane-amanpour-journalism-in-trump-era/index.html
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceHow many layers has this thing got? It's a good well written speech that says exactly what we expect from an intelligent writer to an audience who are in on the joke. And then right in the middle you realise you're being fed stories that are uncertain. That may or may not be true. But are presented as a given. We're being told that journalists are not doing their job and not fact checking and told this is important because of stories that she's repeating because they're part of the prevailing narrative for the group she represents and the audience expects. Not because they're provably true, fact checked and verified. That's before we get into the general tone of the piece which is shot through with American exceptionalism, with it's hand wringing about American values. Fake news about fake news about fake news. Have a medal. You need wings just to stay above it. I'm not expanding by criticising individual sentences and I'm not going to. If she thinks journalists should go out and do their job, then go out there and do the job. To me she looks like part of the problem. — Journalists: "Stop banalizing the truth" I believe in being truthful, not neutral. And I believe we must stop banalizing the truth. And we have to be prepared to fight especially hard for the truth in a world where the Oxford English Dictionary just announced its word of 2016: "post-truth." We have to accept that we've had our lunch handed to us by the very same social media that we've so slavishly been devoted to. The winning candidate did a savvy end run around us and used it to go straight to the people. Combined with the most incredible development ever -- the tsunami of fake news sites -- aka lies -- that somehow people could not, would not, recognize, fact check, or disregard. Christiane Amanpour, Chief International Correspondent, CNN The video of Amanpour's award acceptance speech is worth watching as well. http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/23/opinions/christiane-amanpour-journalism-in-trump-era/index.html
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThe irony is strong in this one. — Journalists: "Stop banalizing the truth" I believe in being truthful, not neutral. And I believe we must stop banalizing the truth. And we have to be prepared to fight especially hard for the truth in a world where the Oxford English Dictionary just announced its word of 2016: "post-truth." We have to accept that we've had our lunch handed to us by the very same social media that we've so slavishly been devoted to. The winning candidate did a savvy end run around us and used it to go straight to the people. Combined with the most incredible development ever -- the tsunami of fake news sites -- aka lies -- that somehow people could not, would not, recognize, fact check, or disregard. Christiane Amanpour, Chief International Correspondent, CNN The video of Amanpour's award acceptance speech is worth watching as well. http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/23/opinions/christiane-amanpour-journalism-in-trump-era/index.html
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesCeci n'est pas un ordinateur https://artsweb.uwaterloo.ca/~marcel/gibb/meinhard.gif — "I'm sorry, M. Magritte. The computer does not agree with your assessment." (Footnote: I once hatched up a plan with my roommate to make boxer shorts which said on the front, "ceci n'est pas une pipe." Alas, we never got around to it. I'm not sure if the joke would be better on men's or women's underwear, honestly.)
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Commented on post by russell tuppen in Motorcycle RoadracingIt's true. So why isn't WSB more exciting? And also. I'm old enough to remember Steve Hislop, some old BSB Ducati twin and the Donington outright lap record.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingGuintoli to Bennets Suzuki in BSB. Rumours that Brookes will be back too. http://www.britishsuperbike.com/news/guintoli-returns-to-mce-bsb-to-spearhead-bennetts-suzuki-title-assault/ — Giugliano to Tyco BMW in BSB. Any news on Guintoli? http://superbike-news.co.uk/wordpress/Motorcycle-News/giugliano-set-mce-bsb-debut-tyco-bmw-alongside-iddon/
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedWow. Byrne, Haslam, Guintoli, Giugliano, Brookes. And that's before you get to Ellison, Iddon, Linfoot, Mossey, O'hallaran and all the rest. — Hawk Racing switch to Suzuki. ~ After being one of the strongest independent Kawasaki teams for many years, Stuart Hicken's Hawk Racing switched to BMW. Despite running with 3 time champion Ryuchi Kiyonari in BSB and Michael Dunlop on real roads, the firm have not been entirely happy with BMW machinery. Luckily for them, they now switch to Suzuki, to be their lead team for track and the roads. Whether this will see Dunlop return with them onboard a Suzuki is unclear but they have signed former MotoGP rider and WSBK champion, Sylvain Guintoli as their lead rider. Last time Guinters was in BSB, he was brutally taken out early in the season by a reckless Josh Brookes (who is also likely to return with Halsall Racing after a pretty dismal year in WSBK.) With Leon Haslam (Kawasaki) and Shane Byrne (Ducati) remaining with their respective teams, Hawk running the new Suzuki and The Prodigy's Keith Flint's team stepping up to BSB with Yamaha it looks set to be an extraordinary season. I cannot wait.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeAn amusing take with lots of links. http://gothamist.com/2016/11/23/trump_climate_change_coffin.php Trump May End NASA Climate Change Studies So Rich Folks Can Flee Earth For Outer Space
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawAn amusing take with lots of links. http://gothamist.com/2016/11/23/trump_climate_change_coffin.php Trump May End NASA Climate Change Studies So Rich Folks Can Flee Earth For Outer Space — The news about Nazis in DC may have hidden some of the most important stories brewing about the new administration. This one may prove to have some of the most serious consequences. Trump wants to eliminate NASA's Earth Science division, one of the foremost institutions in the world studying the state of our planet. This team has key responsibilities in lofting the satellites which give us a view of what's happening around us – as well as being one of the world's best groups of climate modeling. Eliminating the division would both disband one of the best such teams in the world, and eliminate nearly $2B of funding from the subject, costing hundreds (or more) of jobs across the field, and likely most affecting the careers of young researchers – with huge consequences for the field's future, just as it is becoming ever-more critical. (Remember that the Arab Spring was triggered by droughts in Asia and the Middle East, and the current massive surge in temperatures in the Arctic – it's currently 36°F above normal! – are going to have tremendous consequences. There's a reason the DoD considers this a top strategic priority.) More chillingly still, the justification for this is that he calls their work "politicized science" – which is to say, "science which is politically inconvenient for him." We've seen a similar game in which Congress has banned any medical or epidemiological research on guns, because of the NRA's (probably justified) fear that the results of even the most trivial research would harm their political goals.* (Pro tip: if you know that anyone seriously looking at a question will come up with answers that hurt your goals, this may mean your goals are shady.) There's actually a name for this sort of thing: Lysenkoism, named after Soviet agriculture director Trofim Lysenko. Lysenko considered genetics to be politically unfavorable to Communism, because if traits are inherent, then they can't be improved by the government, and that would make all sorts of parts of the Five-Year Plan obviously infeasible. With Stalin's enthusiastic support, all funding for research which disagreed with this was cut. (And this being Stalin, researchers who disagreed were shipped to Siberia) It was replaced by a rather bizarre official theory in which, for example, rye could be turned into wheat, and exposing wheat seeds to high humidity and low temperature would "teach" them and their descendants to grow in the winter. The thing about science is that it's about asking questions and noting what's happening in the world around you. You don't get to make theories up and just say that the world is so; all you can do is describe what's actually observed, and try to figure out if you can predict what will happen next. That is, science is descriptive, it's not normative. And that means that science is about things that keep happening, whether you believe in them or not. Unlike saying "I don't believe in fairies!," you can say "this wheat will grow in Siberia!" as often as you like, and the wheat still isn't going to grow there. That's the problem with Lysenkoism: it's based on pretending that nature works some way, and threatening anyone who dares to disagree with you, but nature doesn't really care. It will keep doing what it was doing before, and all that happens is that you've decided to be officially blind to it. You do this with how crops work, and you end up with unexpected famines. You do this with how climate works, and you end up with unexpected droughts, floods, spreads of new diseases, and all sorts of fun and exciting things, because it turns out that the weather is still pretty important in our lives and you do not fuck with the laws of physics. I say this with confidence: I was a physicist myself, am currently an engineer, and so if anyone is qualified to make a snappy answer to "Ye cannae change the laws of physics, Jim!" it's probably me. But sorry: if your politics would be harmed by people being aware of reality, then all that means is that (a) your politics are apparently based on lying to people, and (b) at some point or another you are going to get a rude introduction to reality, which will not be good for either your politics or your constituents-slash-victims. * Before anyone uses this as an excuse to go on a rant: I'm not anti-gun at all, and rather enjoy shooting. But there's a huge space between the Second Amendment and the sort of lunacy that the NRA has gotten infatuated with, where any restriction on a person's right to own a GBU-31 JDAM is tantamount to treason. And things like legally barring doctors from asking people if they have a gun in the house – even though, for example, that's a serious risk factor of death if anyone in the house is suffering from serious depression or similar illnesses – is just sacrificing human lives on the altar of their own political expediency. Seriously, fuck those guys.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeThe same goes for anyone who promotes the views of any of the other "lukewarmists", like, say, Matt Ridley. — Running opinions that haven’t been fact-checked amounts to normalizing the #FakeNews they decry. #WashingtonPost #BjornLomborg 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycles - ModifiedAlso https://www.facebook.com/spiritmotorcycleslimited and http://www.spirit-mc.uk/ I'm not against steel tube frames, but I hate bent tubes. The swingarm pivot area doesn't feel right. Oh, and there's a streetfighter mockup as well on the facebook page above. — http://superbike-news.co.uk/wordpress/Motorcycle-News/new-british-motorcycle-manufacturer-spirit-motorcycles-unveil-gp-inspired-innovative-first-models/ The Bike Shed facebook page has a load of photo porn. https://www.facebook.com/BikeShedMotorcycleClub/posts/1340210942669154 Hmmm. 750cc Triple, 180hp (claimed). Feels like it's based on a Triumph hybrid. Something like a race tuned 675 with 800 bits. Tony Scott is involved.
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Commented on post by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Climate Change+Mike DeSimone Indeed. Time, Space and Scale, we're not good at them. — In fairy tales, magical spells turn things to stone. In the desert of southeastern Washington state, it's a chemical reaction that converts carbon dioxide to rock. PNNL researchers injected CO2 into basalt lava flows a half mile underground … and in just two years, that carbon dioxide transformed to carbonate minerals. Learn more at https://goo.gl/wc7r3u.
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Commented on post by Armando LiossYour headline is missing something and jars. Here's some that are slightly less jarring. The Importance of the Oxford Comma Importance of Oxford Commas Oxford Commas are important The Oxford Comma Oxford Comma
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Awesome SauceGo home 2016. You're drunk.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillance+Phillip Landmeier The more people who use tor, the less it stands out. http://thepiratebay.org/ is blocked by Virgin Media in the UK at the request of the gov. Google's Data Saver was a good enough VPN to bypass the block. But now it's stopped working and doesn't resolve piratebay, so I've started using tor again to access it. But only to access the search index not for the torrents. — Tor Project unveils hardened "Tor Phone" -- Challenges Google to fix the Android "security garbage fire" In order to solve the Android security mess, Google is taking steps that hurt user freedom, and make Android vulnerable to compelled backdoors, Perry argued. The fragmentation of the Android ecosystem into multiple OEMs, who distribute their own versions of the operating system, has resulted in rampant insecurity. Without financial incentives to push security updates to users' phones, OEMs by and large abandon users to their fate. The system runs on Copperhead, a hardened Android build, and requires Pixel or Nexus devices ("consumer" grade Android is locked-down by vendors, preventing device owners from assuring their own safety and security). It implements OrWall, a Tor firewall. h/t +John Davidson http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/11/tor-phone-prototype-google-hostility-android-open-source/
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeUse fossil fuels in lime kilns to turn lime into cement by driving off the CO2 as the basis for concrete which then re-absorbs the CO2. Non-fossil fuel, sustainable, carbon neutral concrete would be a big thing. But it's hard. — tl;dr  research suggests that if you can reduce the carbon footprint of producing cement, that it has benefit as a carbon sink
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsAre you aware of this? https://pepethefrogfaith.wordpress.com/ "The truth about Pepe the frog and the cult of Kek" You don't want to take it too seriously because "that way madness lies". But when you've spent your whole life with Discordianism, Illuminatus, Crowley, The church of Subgenius and a bunch of other stuff running around the back of your head, it's hard not to start giggling hysterically and muttering "Hail Eris" under your breath. And then this happens. https://www.channel4.com/news/milo-yiannopolous-questioned-on-donald-trump-and-stephen-bannon This is the moment Milo Yiannopoulos is challenged on Breitbart’s headlines and so-called “post-fact era." The news outlet’s former chairman Steve Bannon has been appointed as Donald Trump’s chief strategist – and there’s speculation that Yiannopoulos himself could find his own way into the White House. You don't understand. You're taking it out of context. We never meant any of those things we said. We were just doing it for the lulz. It was never the Russians. It was 4chan. — The Mind of the Voter? "I didn't summon you to play fucking yahtzee"
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Institutions"Hopping Mad" you mean like a frog? The old ones have their price you know. And having no free will, they have no conscience either. I'm trying to parse out that the female form of Kek was snake headed and Kekulé was given the structure of Benzene in a dream about Ourobouros as it relates to the rise of Trump but I'm failing. Like The Lizard King said There's a killer on the road His brain is squirmin' like a toad If you give this man a ride Sweet family will die and Ride the snake, ride the snake To the lake, the ancient lake, baby The snake is long, seven miles Ride the snake, he's old, and his skin is cold The west is the best, the west is the best Nico's version was the best https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVaaj6ZlECw — The Mind of the Voter? "I didn't summon you to play fucking yahtzee"
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Commented on post by Julian BondHere's the thing though. If it's free, you're the product. And part of what makes you the product is not the ads but the tracking that comes with the ads. The Adblocker and adblock techniques are not just to hide all the visual noise but also to put a roadblock in the way of the tracking. So hey Wired, how about you try not being evil and not participating in the whole consumer as product ecosystem. — Here’s The Thing With Ad Blocker detection code. I get it: Ads aren’t what I'm here for. But ads help the site keep the lights on. So, I've added your site to my ad blocker’s whitelist. So why are you still showing me the adblocker warning message and preventing me from reading your content? Could it be because I've got doubleclick in my /etc/hosts file pointing at localhost because I don't particularly want doubleclick and google tracking everything I do, everywhere on the web. Can't your adblocker detection code tell the difference? Oh well. That's another site I'll try and remember not to click through to. So what do the common adblocker detection libraries actually look for?
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Commented on post by Dawn Shepard in Climate Change+Mike Weatherby If you're familiar with Ehrlich, you' re presumably familiar with Limits to Growth. I find that more intellectually satisfying because it's a more complete attempt to model what is clearly an extremely complex set of system dynamics. Note that while most of their models involve grim meathook futures, none of them show extinction in the 2100 time frame. It's the headline that winds me up, not the article. As an aside about population growth. Ehrlich gets a lot of bad press for being "Neo-Malthusian" because exponential growth expressed in annual percentage is slowing. It's interesting that he was writing at the most extreme part of the population hockey stick curve. However, if we look at the population curve as an S shape, 1970 was about when it transitioned from an exponential upslope to a linear growth. We've maintained that linear growth of +80m pa, 12-14 years per extra +1b for about 5 decades now. The exponential growth in percentage terms drops but the absolute linear growth is constant. The UN predicts the next transition to falling absolute growth some time in the next 30 years, but with no peak this century. All assuming business as usual manages to continue as well. The Limits to Growth models show something similar but with a more extreme peak and downturn after the peak due to resource and pollution constraints. I can recommend http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ as a good summary of the UN demographics and http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.co.uk/ as a starting point for Limits to Growth — Anti-science lobby recklessly filling key cabinets with hateful psychopaths - virtually guarantee Dr. Fenner's prediction of the time humanity has left to exist, will come to pass. And if humanity disappears from the universe, it will leave behind evidence of its sordid, reckless, apathetic behavior that rendered a once pristine, beautiful living world uninhabitable.
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Commented on post by Dawn Shepard in Climate ChangeNote: TFA is from 2010. Does the hyperbole in the headline help? Has it helped in the 6 years since the article? There was a time when being absurdly pessimistic to shock people was a reasonable strategy. But is that still true? Personally I'm tired of the kind of article that goes "Holy Moley! We're all going to die!". Extinct: No members of the species Homo Sapiens Sapiens still alive. 100 years: 2110 Barring some truly Black Swan event like the Yellowstone caldera letting go do we seriously think that's possible? Even the most extreme climate change modelling suggests there will still be viable ecologies on the earth that could support >1m people. Time, Space and Scale. We're not good at them. Easter Island is a metaphor, not a model. And so on. — Anti-science lobby recklessly filling key cabinets with hateful psychopaths - virtually guarantee Dr. Fenner's prediction of the time humanity has left to exist, will come to pass. And if humanity disappears from the universe, it will leave behind evidence of its sordid, reckless, apathetic behavior that rendered a once pristine, beautiful living world uninhabitable.
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Commented on post by Dawn Shepard in Climate ChangeCondescending, much? I found Hot Earth Dreams instructive on this topic. I guess all I'm really saying is that to get from 7.46b to a non-viable population of <200 individuals and actual extinction feels like it's likely to take more than 100 years. That's not denying a grim meathook future. Only arguing about the timescale. Mom's basement, indeed. I'm in my 60s FFS. Now get off my lawn. — Anti-science lobby recklessly filling key cabinets with hateful psychopaths - virtually guarantee Dr. Fenner's prediction of the time humanity has left to exist, will come to pass. And if humanity disappears from the universe, it will leave behind evidence of its sordid, reckless, apathetic behavior that rendered a once pristine, beautiful living world uninhabitable.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedI think that photo is incorrectly marked on Pinterest / Google image search. Here's a real bevel. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XrjhXCmKJa0/TRDVxup5b_I/AAAAAAAAAVs/npyuua31DGU/s1600/PA-Vern-101.jpg They were both designed by Fabio Taglioni and share a lot of common details. ps. There's something weird about the photo above. The kickstart boss hasn't been machined, it's a late model square case but it's got a right hand gear change. Suggesting it's a racing one off. Perhaps for Mike Hailwood? — Ducato bevel drive motor. - it is some time since such care was taken over the aesthetic of an engine, despite what some may try make you believe.
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Commented on post by Mike Rotch in Climate ChangeTime, Space and Scale. A few hundred tons vs 30Gt.
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Commented on post by Dawn Shepard in Climate ChangeNope. Not extinct. That'll take a few thousand years. But much smaller numbers huddled in N temperate regions, maybe. This is all just modelling though. So how good are his models? — Anti-science lobby recklessly filling key cabinets with hateful psychopaths - virtually guarantee Dr. Fenner's prediction of the time humanity has left to exist, will come to pass. And if humanity disappears from the universe, it will leave behind evidence of its sordid, reckless, apathetic behavior that rendered a once pristine, beautiful living world uninhabitable.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedBevel? That's a Pantah. — Ducato bevel drive motor. - it is some time since such care was taken over the aesthetic of an engine, despite what some may try make you believe.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeNah. The only picture of Lionheart is the Japanese woman holding a disc valve crankcase. 3rd down. I think the reverse cylinder bike was built by Roger. His dad (?). Ian describes Lionheart as the classic prototype. It starts with racing a TZ250 against big GSXRs with the usual problems of being held up on the corners and then destroyed on the straights. So the solution is MORE POWER. So take two Yamaha singles and build a common crankcase. Which then means a new gearbox to handle the power, so new crankcases and a modified ducati gear set. But then the chassi can't handle the power, so build a new chassis. And then the wheels/tyres can't handle the power so modify everything again. Then just as you get the bike running more or less right, the organisers cancel the series and switch to production racing. — Simon Kobe, Japan
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeI've remembered it now. Ian Cramp. http://www.iancramp.co.uk/Design%20&%20Development.html Project Lionheart was a V twin 500 disc valve engine for a Japanese national championship. — Simon Kobe, Japan
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Commented on post by Joshua Robbin Marks in Climate Change+Anders Lorenzen Yes, 2 months late. Which is probably a side effect of the #BREXIT  chaos. — While the US just elected the only world leader who denies climate science and wants to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, the UK has become the 111th country to ratify the landmark pact to avert dangerous global warming. The US will likely lose its climate leadership role under President Donald Trump, so other nations like the UK will have to step up. Read my Inhabitat story for more.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeMakes you wonder again about a 500 twin. ISTR some journalist writing for Fast Bikes about a 500 V-Twin project that never quite got finished. I wonder what became of it. — Simon Kobe, Japan
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Commented on post by Dawn Shepard in Climate ChangeNot every story (even the environmental ones) is about the USA.
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Commented on post by Dawn Shepard in Climate ChangeTime, Space, Scale, Cost,
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaNope. Not evil at all. Just real politique. https://theintercept.com/2016/11/15/google-gets-a-seat-on-the-trump-transition-team/ — Google support the TPP. The TPP is evil. Google are Evil. Encouraging news: more signs of death. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/business/economy/donald-trump-trade-tpp-trans-pacific-partnership.html
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeThen they should promote and advertise their own good environmental and social policies and turn them into brand and marketing development. They do have good environmental policies, right? Things like, no Palm oil, living wage, good labour conditions and relations, limiting shipping, renewable energy useage, recycling friendly products, recycling through out the production chain, etc, etc. I haven't researched the facts, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Mars, Kellogg and Levi do none of these things. — Mars, Kellogg and Levi are among 360 investors and multinationals telling Donald Trump low carbon policies will benefit US growth and jobs. #Trump   #USCarbonPolicies  
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Just for Fun+Rakesh Warier One thing about Donald Trump is that he's no agenda. Nothing he says is set in stone Be careful with normalising Trampoline[1]. He still said those things. And he's beginning to take actions that suggest he did mean at least some of them. [1]Try and come up with a new name at least once a day. — Obama: "Joe, why are you still holding my hand?" Biden: "I wanna freak Mike Pence out" Obama: "But why?" Biden: "Just roll with it"
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaAnd now the Germans are saying that post-Trump, TTIP is also dead in the water. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/15/germany-trump-ttip-trade-deal — ArsTechnica: TPP is dead MPAA-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal dead in wake of Trump win Following the victory of Republican Donald Trump, the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican of Kentucky, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, have said they would not bring up the TPP vote given that President Barack Obama is leaving office in January. Another obituary. Though the cost was high. h/t +glyn moody Google support the TPP. The TPP is Evil. Google are Evil. http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/11/mpaa-backed-trans-pacific-partnership-accord-dead-in-wake-of-trump-win/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Institutions"won". Always with the sporting and military metaphors. If China works out how to replace fossil fuels with renewables for itself, and then sells it cheaply to the rest of the word, we all win. A quote from "Meetings with remarkable men". "What's God doing now?" "He's making ladders" "What are the ladders for?" "They're for the nations of the world to go up and down on" — 你好。你能教我说中文吗? * There’s no denying who the king of technology in the 20th century was: America. But the 21st century poses new challenges that must be met by the rise of the green technology and green energy sectors across the globe. And whatever country is producing the best green tech solutions is in the pole position to spring to the top of the 21st century technological heap. America’s election of Donald Trump virtually guarantees that country will be China. * Hello. can you teach me to speak Chinese? https://www.techinasia.com/donald-trump-china-wins-green-tech
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Institutions+David Grigg Never mind Russia, where's 4chan when we need them? — What is it about the goose and the gander again?
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeHooray! Annual CO2 emissions are still only at their highest level ever and haven't grown any more. — Global greenhouse gas emissions have stayed flat for the third year in a row in 2016, according to the annual report of the Global Carbon Project. C02 emissions from fossil fuels and industry were set to rise a tiny 0.2% in 2016 from 2015 levels to 36.4bn tonnes, the third consecutive year with negligible change and down from three percent growth rates in the 2000s, say the researchers #GHGEmissions  
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Commented on post by Briar Haven in Climate ChangeThis gets spun as a disaster by some business interests but it should be a triumph. Mainly we need to find useful things to do with the excess. And we need to change the change the commercial contracts and approach to handle it better. "Too much electricity" should be a good thing.
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Commented on post by Roy Gripper in MotoGPThe Moto3 race was awesome. Moto2 had moments. And the MotoGp race needed to be 3 laps longer and/or Marquez needed to start his charge 3 laps earlier. Lots of heroes today, but especially Iannone who looked in serious pain in the interviews. Only 2 days to wait till Lorenzo finds out he's made the biggest mistake of his life. ;) — Let's do this...
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Commented on post by Roy Gripper in MotoGPSad that an oil leak stopped the parade lap. — Marc and Sammy bike swap...
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Social Problems and Social ChangeBeware the difference between Social Democrats and Democratic Socialism. It bothers me that Sanders blurred the difference by trying to make the terms interchangeable. — Blowing Up the DNC The only solace I take from Tuesday night is the growing public awareness of just how broken the Democratic party has become. It's time for all new leadership and thinking. The Democratic party once represented the working class. But over the last three decades the party has been taken over by Washington-based fundraisers, bundlers, analysts, and pollsters who have focused instead on raising campaign money from corporate and Wall Street executives and getting votes from upper middle-class households in “swing” suburbs.
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPWhat an amazing QP2 — What a nice Valencia weekend for a MotoGP! Welcome KTM ! ! ! ! ! Welcome back +Dani Pedrosa Last race with wings.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaHooray! Now for all the others. — Obama Administration Suspends Pacific Trade Deal Vote Effort The TPP is dead. WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has suspended its efforts to win congressional approval for his Asian free-trade deal before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, saying on Friday that TPP's fate was up to Trump and Republican lawmakers. Google, ya gonna withdraw your support now? Was that really worth it? Google support the TPP. The TPP is Dead. Google are ??? Yeah, Google are Evil. http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2016/11/11/us/politics/11reuters-trade-tpp.html
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta+Edward Morbius We'll be able to tell by her shoes. — Google support the TPP. The TPP is Evil. Google are Evil. President-elect Trump opposes the TPP. Maybe I should be careful what I wish for.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaIt was quite entertaining watching the UK state TV station's talking heads in the financial centres of London. Trying to explain how it was a bad thing that Trump was opposed to global trade deals from NAFTA to TPP to TTIP. And how TTIP was pretty much dead in the water despite the CETA-Walloons debacle last week. I noticed that the Masters of the Universe(tm) on the trading floors no longer wear ties. What is the world coming to when the holders of the economic keys can't even be bothered to dress properly? I know how much you love long comments threads but there's an obligatory Charles Stross post about how reality is worse than the dystopian near-future book he wrote 2 years ago, due to be released on inauguration day. As ever, there's a wide range of intelligent comments that are a bit left field compared with the usual internet bluster. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/11/the-day-after.html "Trump presidency is #BREXIT+++ " In both cases, I think we have absolutely no idea how this plays out because the key players have absolutely no plan. It'll be fun trying to second guess the likely outcomes but look how well that went with last week's predictions. Never mind the internet commentators (ourselves included), there's an entire industry of professional commenters and pollsters who's job is telling us what today's actions mean and what tomorrow will bring. They've just got a D- on their end of term report but that won't stop them. — Google support the TPP. The TPP is Evil. Google are Evil. President-elect Trump opposes the TPP. Maybe I should be careful what I wish for.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycles - ModifiedI know, dammit. And there was I trying to steal all their pictures. ;) — Fans of tastefully modified and special edition motorcycles might like this blog. http://planetjapanblog.blogspot.co.uk/ Lots to drool over. And quality photos.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawWhich characters are leaving the series (and how) because the actor didn't want to get typecast? S17E01 "It was all a dream" — While I know they like to end seasons on a cliffhanger, I'm really hoping that (a) the writers haven't decided that this is a great time to make a "darker, edgier" next season, because they've really done that enough, and (b) it doesn't simply get abruptly cancelled. h/t +Xenophrenia
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedNot so much "trailing link" as Centre Hub. It's the same family as Difazio/Tait/Nessie and closely related to Bimota/Vyrus. There's a lower swing arm, kingpin pivot inside the hub, an upright carrying the brake/s, An a frame above the wheel and drag link steering. It looks like there's some offset in the hub. I haven't found any detail of the steering bearings in there. The lower swing arm doesn't look strong enough, but I guess it is! Trailing link usually refers to Earles/Offenstadt. Like a C90, there's a rigid fork with a pivoted fork at the bottom with the wheel behind the pivot (trailing) or in front (leading). — The same guys that built the RS475 +Raphaël Mentrel posted earlier also made this intriguing Kawasaki endurance racer with trailing link front end and single sided swinging arm. Great stuff, both.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Lawhttp://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/10/a-complaint.html I want to complain to the studio execs who commissioned the current season of "21st century"; your show is broken. I say this as a viewer coming in with low expectations. Its predecessor "20th century" plumbed the depths of inconsistency with the frankly silly story arc for world war II. It compounded it by leaving tons of loose plot threads dangling until the very last minute, then tidied them all up in a blinding hurry in that bizarre 1989-92 episode just in time for the big Y2K denouement (which then fizzled). But the new series reboot is simply ridiculous! It takes internal inconsistency to a new low, never before seen in the business: the "21st century" show is just plain implausible. etc. — While I know they like to end seasons on a cliffhanger, I'm really hoping that (a) the writers haven't decided that this is a great time to make a "darker, edgier" next season, because they've really done that enough, and (b) it doesn't simply get abruptly cancelled. h/t +Xenophrenia
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Robotics and Automation"the importance of simplifying and standardizing our interfaces to robots" Which would inevitably lead to more things like Stuxnet. Not saying that's a reason to avoid that path, but that it's a side effect. — Getting Robotic Interfaces Right Lots of good information in this report on the state of robotics by +RobotEnomics. One of the big themes is the importance of simplifying and standardizing our interfaces to robots.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedOwning a GSXR is having to bodge some stomp grip onto the black plastic bits below the tank, because that's where your legs actually touch the bike. — Suzuki GSX-R750 L2 Lightly modified customer street bike. Boy the Racefit exhaust sounds great on this bike. If I had to have just one bike for all purposes for life, this would be it.
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Commented on post by Julian BondI think what's happened is that the 4850 has been superseded by the 5850. And it looks like Rosebikes have them in stock. So does Amazon UK but at a premium. I find it easier to have the key on my key ring. Hence I wanted the NKR version where you can remove it with the lock open. — I've got one of these frame locks, am happy with it and now I want to buy another one (UK). But I'm drawing a blank from all the usual sources, like Amazon, eBay, Evans, etc. I'm even having trouble sourcing one from Germany/France. It must be the LH NKR variant that is screw mounted and allows the key to be removed. I'd prefer black but would accept black-silver. https://www.amazon.co.uk/ABUS-Bicycle-Lock-4850-Black/dp/B001BADNJ8 https://www.abus.com/uk/Mobile-Security/Bike-Safety-and-Security/Locks/Frame-Locks/Amparo-4850-Black
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)If you've got something to say, say it. — Rear hub motor choice. Decisions. Decisons. Which would make a better base for a stealth 48v-15A rear drive motor on a bike with mechanical 160mm disks and Shimano Acera 9sp rear mech? The Cute/QBK 10 CST using the existing 9 speed cassette, or the Bafang/8Fun SWXH with a DND 9sp freewheel. The Cute has a LHS cable exit which might be a bit neater. And the CST using the existing cassette might fit and work better with the existing drop outs and mech. Conversely the Bafang might be more robust and cope better with being overdriven. There may be some differences in disk clearance, spoke dishing required, drop out width and so on. The base bike is a Genesis Tour De Fer road touring bike, 700-35c tyres. Anyone got any direct experience of the comparison? My current ride is an Alien Aurora with a 36v350w BPM and a 36v15AHr LiNMC rack battery. I'm trying to put a bike together with about the same performance but lighter and neater with a better basic bicycle. The Aurora is a rigid MTB style, 26" wheels but low quality. I'm in the UK. GBK-100CST 36V 250W e-bike cassette freewheel kit http://www.greenbikekit.com/electric-bike-kit/rear/100cst-cassette-freewheel-e-bike-kit-36v-250w.html Bafang SWXH 36V 250W Rear driving conversion kit http://www.greenbikekit.com/electric-bike-kit/rear/bafang-swxh-250w-36v-rear-driving-e-bike-conversion-kit.html 9SP DNP 11T FREEWHEEL http://em3ev.com/store/index.php?route=product/product&path=41_56&product_id=113 So far I'm falling on the side of the GBK 100CST
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedI love the tank-seat-fairing on the first one. But maybe it's only possible with the new frame as well. The second one looks a little "bitty". The shapes don't flow together so well. It's 2016. Why do we have to have spokes and dual shocks. Can I have the old school style as a kit but with all modern components. — Paton S1 Strada ~ based on the Kawasaki ER-6 / Ninja 650 but tuned, lighter and with some fancy parts. Pretty, a gorgeous colour but rather expensive at £20K in the UK.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in blue hazeQuite similar to Mic Grant's but with subtle differences. http://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/2016/march/mcn-plus---one-careful-owner-mick-grants-kr750-mcn-sport/ — http://blog.motorcycle.com/2016/10/31/motorcycle-news/gary-nixons-1976-kawasaki-kr750/ Was a big fan of Gary Nixon back in the day.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingI can't find the details now but I think one of only 3 riders to do three successive meetings of double wins. — All Chaz ...... +Kawasaki Motors need to be VERY scared of Chaz Davis on the +Aruba.it Racing - Ducati 1199 next year. His current run of form is nothing short of outstanding. Race One Report - https://motomatters.com/results/2016/10/29/2016_qatar_world_superbike_race_one.html Race Two Report - https://motomatters.com/results/2016/10/30/2016_qatar_world_superbike_race_two.html Both these reports via +Jared Earle +Jared Earle C/O +David Emmett's MotoMatters dot com. As always, excellent writing Jared.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeWay back in the day, Cycle magazine published the port timings, shapes and expansion chamber shapes for the production version of Sheene's racers. It was just about feasible to build your own replica. You did have to throw away most of the original bike. The frame, suspension and brakes were pretty horrible.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:We bred our pet animals to behave like children. We're now training the urban feral animals to behave like teenagers. — I started out trying to write about a new study that traces the genetics of the Norwegian brown rat, that omnipresent world traveler. But that quickly turned into a meditation on those creatures we too often disdain – the ones who have made a home for themselves in a human world.
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Commented on post by Steve Massie in MotoGPHard to imagine a 10th winner. But then nobody thought Miller could win one this year. Perhaps a weird flag to flag could get an Espagaro/Smith or Redding on the top step in Valencia. With all three championships and even 2nd, 3rd tied up it's going to make Valencia into something like a giant track day. Go Bautista! — Desmo Dovi does it......the 9th winner.....well deserved
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:This was a fun one. If some disaster like a really bad flu wiped out the human race, what animal would develop intelligence to fill the niche? Bin Animals are a likely source. Especially the tree rats. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/09/evolver.html — I started out trying to write about a new study that traces the genetics of the Norwegian brown rat, that omnipresent world traveler. But that quickly turned into a meditation on those creatures we too often disdain – the ones who have made a home for themselves in a human world.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedOne careful owner, FSH, never ridden in the wet. — Ducati Panigale ~ "brand new" ..... sort of.
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyI'm a hardy perennial that likes a well drained soil and shade. Drab colouring but blossoms in the autumn. — I know many Perennials -- people who have no cultural age -- and I hope to be one. You? http://kottke.org/16/10/meet-the-perennials
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Commented on post by Julian BondIt's mid summer. So part of the problem is being woken up when your tent starts to boil in the sunshine only an hour after you go to bed. — Farr is a boutique electronic dance festival on July 13-14-15. Near Baldock on the A1, 30 miles north of London. Think 3 nights of clubbing rather than a "festival" festival with some well known House and Techno names. I've got access again to a limited number of tickets at the "Super Early Bird" price of £75+£6 instead of the regular £90. Available at the link below. https://tickets.farrfestival.co.uk/rep/jbond-farr-2017 http://www.farrfestival.co.uk/
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle Roadracing1st Brit to win 2 races in one year in the top class year since Barry Sheene. 1st Brit to win at Philip Island. — Cal makes it #2 in 2016 +LCR Honda MotoGP Team rider Cal Crutchlow takes his second win of the year & his first dry race win. Congratulations to him & the entire team. So well deserved. Full Race Report via Mike Lewis C/O +David Emmett's MotoMatters Dot Com : https://motomatters.com/results/2016/10/22/2016_phillip_island_motogp_race_turn.html
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeThe VFR and NSR were just getting interesting when Honda dropped them. And like most Hondas it takes a lot of work to get only small improvements. One of the big things I remember from having a series of CBR400s in the garage was the sheer number of tiny screws holding the plastics together. Each screwed into plastic tabs that broke off. — Honda NC30 vs NSR250 straight line race. I have heard, more than once, riders claim that the 250cc 2Ts are about equal to the 400cc 4Ts. If one insists on making such a comparison, I would suggest it is nearer the 600cc 4Ts than anything else. (The replacing of 250cc GPs with Moto2 tends to support this too.) Anyway, who cares. Enjoy a silly race....
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeNeeds an industrial estate roundabout in the middle of two 1/8 mile drag races just down the road from the Ace Cafe. These bikes are more about destroying a right hand knee slider in an evening and getting the left knee down as well on the roundabout exit. A 1/4 mile with no bends? Nope. — Honda NC30 vs NSR250 straight line race. I have heard, more than once, riders claim that the 250cc 2Ts are about equal to the 400cc 4Ts. If one insists on making such a comparison, I would suggest it is nearer the 600cc 4Ts than anything else. (The replacing of 250cc GPs with Moto2 tends to support this too.) Anyway, who cares. Enjoy a silly race....
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Commented on post by Roy Gripper in MotoGP1st time a Brit has won 2 races in a top class season since Barry Sheene. Go Cal! — Cal done...
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Privacy, Security, and TechAnd what puzzles me is how we (as amateur observers) are supposed to tell the difference between the two narratives. — This is approximately my assessment, and it isn't unique to Russia. China, when breaking into US corporations, tends to look for the political officers who "actually" run the firm, using the Chinese model as a framework for seeing American organizations and assuming that the same implicit framework underlies both. Russia assumes that the attitudes of the population can be controlled from the top-down, and that democracy and media institutions are actually centrally managed by often-fractious state elites. This is true in the Russosphere, and is why its hold over its imperial dominions has often been brittle. It is less true in the United States, which is why this is unlikely to work.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Privacy, Security, and TechI'm curious. The detail was leaked via Wikileaks by Assange. Assange appears to suggest (via friends) that it was passed to wikileaks by a whistleblower, that Russia was not involved, and that there was no hack. Now granted he's not exactly a disinterested observer since it was him that published the data but it does pass the occam's razor test. So if the allegation is that he's lying for effect then some substantial proof is needed. Where is it? "Russosphere lick-spittle" That's a good one, bravo. That'll be the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan who blew the whistle on UK-USA extraordinary rendition and torture in that country and then paid the price with a complete destruction of his career. — This is approximately my assessment, and it isn't unique to Russia. China, when breaking into US corporations, tends to look for the political officers who "actually" run the firm, using the Chinese model as a framework for seeing American organizations and assuming that the same implicit framework underlies both. Russia assumes that the attitudes of the population can be controlled from the top-down, and that democracy and media institutions are actually centrally managed by often-fractious state elites. This is true in the Russosphere, and is why its hold over its imperial dominions has often been brittle. It is less true in the United States, which is why this is unlikely to work.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Good NewsSay wut? This is an interesting critique of scientific papers that are perfectly reasonable in themselves but are picked up and broadcast by numerous pop-sci blogs with plenty of breathless hyperbole. http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-mother-of-all-promises-and-how.html Yet, if you look at the original article, you will find nothing that suggests that this catalyst can have applications in the real world. There are no data in the paper about how long it can last in operating conditions, nor there are calculations that would tell us how efficient would be the whole process, considering that one has to saturate the electrolyte with CO2. The authors themselves state that "The overpotential (which might be lowered with the proper electrolyte, and by separating the hydrogen production to another catalyst) probably precludes economic viability for this catalyst." So, we have something that works in the lab, fine, but the graveyard of failed inventions is littered with tombstones with the inscription "in the lab, it worked." — I think I may have posted about this discovery before, but this article seems to have a bit more information. "The reaction uses common materials like copper and carbon, and it converts the CO2 into ethanol, which is already widely used as a fuel." Also, it works at room temperature. via +Admiral Lady Paula https://plus.google.com/u/0/+PaulaRizzuto/posts/C4gV6gjvQ8G .
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Privacy, Security, and Tech+Pádraig Ó Raghaill +1 for quoting Craig Murray. Somebody with personal experience of Ukraine and points east, dealing with Russia and knowing Assange. — This is approximately my assessment, and it isn't unique to Russia. China, when breaking into US corporations, tends to look for the political officers who "actually" run the firm, using the Chinese model as a framework for seeing American organizations and assuming that the same implicit framework underlies both. Russia assumes that the attitudes of the population can be controlled from the top-down, and that democracy and media institutions are actually centrally managed by often-fractious state elites. This is true in the Russosphere, and is why its hold over its imperial dominions has often been brittle. It is less true in the United States, which is why this is unlikely to work.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Privacy, Security, and TechThis article should really be titled "What does America think Russia is trying to achieve". SeeAlso: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/10/really-really-upset-foreign-office-security-services/ The Russians weren't involved. I can tell you with 100% certainty that it is not any Russian state actor or proxy that gave the Democratic National Committee and Podesta material to WikiLeaks. The claim is nonsense. Journalists are also publishing that these were obtained by “hacking” with no evidence that this was the method used to obtain them. — This is approximately my assessment, and it isn't unique to Russia. China, when breaking into US corporations, tends to look for the political officers who "actually" run the firm, using the Chinese model as a framework for seeing American organizations and assuming that the same implicit framework underlies both. Russia assumes that the attitudes of the population can be controlled from the top-down, and that democracy and media institutions are actually centrally managed by often-fractious state elites. This is true in the Russosphere, and is why its hold over its imperial dominions has often been brittle. It is less true in the United States, which is why this is unlikely to work.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Good News+Woozle Hypertwin Doesn't it always? It's a lab experiment now. That's a long way from being able to convert GWHr of electricity and MtCO2. Corn to Ethanol is a very energy costly process with a lot of nasty byproducts. If nothing else it uses a lot of nitrogen based fertiliser to employ land for a crop that is never eaten. It's possible that this one might be more attractive. But there's no mention of the energy cost of dissolving the CO2 in water, and then distilling the ethanol out. — I think I may have posted about this discovery before, but this article seems to have a bit more information. "The reaction uses common materials like copper and carbon, and it converts the CO2 into ethanol, which is already widely used as a fuel." Also, it works at room temperature. via +Admiral Lady Paula https://plus.google.com/u/0/+PaulaRizzuto/posts/C4gV6gjvQ8G .
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeThat's an amazing build. — Further to a discussion some of us were having earlier, here is the aforementioned Tony Foale's RD350 LC FFE (Funny Front End) I was going to write a post but this covers pretty much everything! +Raphaël Mentrel +Julian Bond 
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedGood picture of the Duolever here. https://www.tlplanet.com/forum/main-forums/tls-tlr-main-forum/64145-hossack-fior-duolever-front-suspension And Foale's FFE summary here. http://www.tonyfoale.com/Articles/Steer/STEER.htm — Engineering masterpiece.....
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedHossack and Fior were working on their designs at very much the same time in the early 80s. It's always puzzled me quite how they both managed to get patent approval (in different jurisdictions) for what is superficially very much the same design. At the moment I can't lay my hands on the Hossack Patent on the net so can't add much. Tony Foale's book is a mine of information about this stuff and other alternate FFEs. — Engineering masterpiece.....
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeAlways the same question with technology like this. Could it scale? Fundamentally it's turning electric energy back into synfuel and so depends on large quantities of cheap electricity. And If we've got that, then there's less need for the synfuel in the first place. However the article does raise the point that commercial processes like this that can be moderated quickly can be used for demand/supply smoothing in the electricity grid. — Scientists have accidentally discovered a relatively efficient way to reverse the combustion process, turning carbon dioxide back into ethanol, a useful fuel. that can be used in the current vehicle fleet without modifications. They believe the process could also be used in industrial processes, for example to store excess electricity generated by wind and solar power. If we can reuse combustion byproducts such as carbon dioxide then we can prevent them from going into the atmosphere. #CO2 #Ethanol
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modified+Raphaël Mentrel How is the BMW Duolever more like the Fior design than the Hossack? It's got the two spherical bearings on the ends of the A frames, just like the Hossack patent. And they specifically waited until the Hossack patent had expired. (Unlike the Saxon that they just stole and then tried to sue Saxon for copying them). — Engineering masterpiece.....
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedThere was a brief moment when the Panigale and frameless MotoGP bike might have used something like this and there were rumours. Perhaps BMW using the Hossack design on some of their bikes put them off. We'd use radial brakes now but there's not a lot to argue with here. The A frames are perhaps a bit short which makes getting the geometry right a bit harder. And the two primary pivot bearings take a lot of load so it's hard to remove any steering stiction. But that's about it. One of the Fior designs put a suspended steering head in the fork. That puts rolling element bearings in the whole of the steering path to reduce stiction but at the expense of some unsprung weight. As it is, the unsprung weight of the Britten upright is probably a bit less than the sliders on a pair of telescopic forks. — Engineering masterpiece.....
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedOooh errr. http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/bikes/ducati-1299-superleggera-carbon-fiber-frame-teaser/ Carbon airbox/frame, carbon swingarm, carbon wheels, hot engine. Is this a 955 for 2017? — 2017 ZX-10RR CNC'd head, reinforced crank cases, higher lift cams, lightest Marchesini Genisi Aluminium wheels, Race ECU and secondary IMU, including: KQS (up AND down quickshifter), launch control, intelligent electronic brake control and KCMF cornering management control. Tappeks are coated in DLC. New double H Brembo pads (along with stock Brembo Nickel alloy calipers) and updated forks. Perhaps more important that ALL of that nonsense is the engraved engine covers with 'RR' script! And you get a matching key. (~ One extra point, as a matter of comparison: Honda's C-ABS weighs a concerning 10kg. In comparison, Kawasaki's weighs under 2kg. Oh, and you cannot switch the Honda's off.)
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Good NewsAlways the same question with technology like this. Could it scale? Fundamentally it's turning electric energy back into synfuel so depends on large quantities of cheap electricity. And If we've got that, then there's less need for the synfuel in the first place. However the article does raise the point that commercial processes like this that can be moderated quickly can be used for demand/supply smoothing. — I think I may have posted about this discovery before, but this article seems to have a bit more information. "The reaction uses common materials like copper and carbon, and it converts the CO2 into ethanol, which is already widely used as a fuel." Also, it works at room temperature. via +Admiral Lady Paula https://plus.google.com/u/0/+PaulaRizzuto/posts/C4gV6gjvQ8G .
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedThere's Moto3, Moto2. And then there's the road bike based equivalents for WSB and the national championships. We kind of need an entry level but Moto3 bikes are too expensive for that. And there are a whole bunch of 250-350 single sports bikes appearing for the far east markets. They could be used as the basis for a much cheaper entry class for teenagers. But then the question is what to do with Supersports 600s. If they really are dying out, then we need a mid class based on stock bikes to replace them. Even though 600s make great road bikes, people don't seem to want to buy them any more. Whereas apparently 650-750 twins can be packaged into sports, adventure, standards. So maybe, the sports versions can be used as the basis for the WSS replacement. As you say, we don't get the commonality of components of 250-1, 500-2, 1000-4 but in these days of CAD everything, maybe that doesn't matter. What does matter is road bike sales funding the products we can then re-use in racing. So why are Moto3 replicas so expensive? Come to that, why is 250cc Moto-x so expensive!? — “We will have a new KTM mid-class of bikes within around three years. We are looking at the way this will happen, but we are working on 600 to 800cc V-twins.” Stefan Pierer, KTM That was two years ago. There is an ever growing popularity of Supertwin racing (a production twin cylinder, 4 stroke in production only parts - but from any bike in the manufacturer's range) and the IOM TT introducing their Lightweight class (650cc 4T twin cylinder, standard frame.) Honda announced it would be no longer producing a 600cc supersport, arguing the class is dead. This affects production racing and prototypes/MotoGP~Moto2, as they provide the spec engine for all competitors. So will the Supertwin replace the supersport? And if so, at what capacity? For KTM, with the Duke 690 already out there, I think a 750 would be a likely capacity. It would bridge the cap perfectly between the 690 and the RC8 Superbike. Oh, and a KTM RC750R would be great. The problem is that would not fit the Lightweight or Supertwin capacity as is. Kawasaki having just released a new Ninja 650 would likely be rather pissed if the rules suddenly allowed an extra 100cc and as it stands Kawasaki make up the large majority of such bikes, Suzuki's SV650 providing a smaller number and the occasional sleeved Ducati or Jawa sometimes appears. Can the Lightweight, Supertwin and any replacement for Moto2 be combined to a single set of parameters? Hopefully. KTM really could be the ones to do it. Aprilia have said they too are working on new mid capacity twins. Their SVX lines 450cc and 550cc twins were brilliant engines but needed careful setting up and maintenance to work properly, gaining them an unfair reputation for unreliability. All Aprilia have announced is they are working on a "around 700cc" V twin. That is the extent of the Aprilia sourced information so the following is only really guesswork but there is a rumour in Aprilia circles that they are already testing two models of RSV750. A 'L' version and a 'R'. Now Aprilia already have a 750cc twin in their Shiver model. It makes 95bhp and would work well in supertwin racing but for the problem of capacity. Under current rules it is too big. Sleeving motors is the work of the devil but could be done, although whether it could then be tuned to compete with the 90 - 100bhp Kawasaki and Suzukis in unclear. More intriguing is the possibility of an around 60 - 65 degree twin - an RSV4 cut in half effectively. If they created a new 700cc engine on that basis, there is no reason it could not easily make 110 - 120bhp. Very close to current stock supersport bikes figures (although it would be unlikely they could be tuned to WSS levels.) So, with what are we left? Well wishful thinking maybe and perhaps a hope or two. We should fairly soon hear what will replace the Moto2 engine and like dominoes that could indicate what direction the wider similar classes might adopt. I am hoping it is a capacity and level that can make the bikes fast enough for road use without destroying the supertwin class that has been a welcome and much needed addition to racing.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedCommon kit electronics seems to work in BSB. It's brought the skill back and seems to work to level the playing field. — 2017 ZX-10RR CNC'd head, reinforced crank cases, higher lift cams, lightest Marchesini Genisi Aluminium wheels, Race ECU and secondary IMU, including: KQS (up AND down quickshifter), launch control, intelligent electronic brake control and KCMF cornering management control. Tappeks are coated in DLC. New double H Brembo pads (along with stock Brembo Nickel alloy calipers) and updated forks. Perhaps more important that ALL of that nonsense is the engraved engine covers with 'RR' script! And you get a matching key. (~ One extra point, as a matter of comparison: Honda's C-ABS weighs a concerning 10kg. In comparison, Kawasaki's weighs under 2kg. Oh, and you cannot switch the Honda's off.)
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedWell there look like being kind of stock Moto3 championships as entry level all over the place. So 350-400 single sports bikes make a kind if sense. So 350 singles, 700 twins, 1000 4s That'll do? — “We will have a new KTM mid-class of bikes within around three years. We are looking at the way this will happen, but we are working on 600 to 800cc V-twins.” Stefan Pierer, KTM That was two years ago. There is an ever growing popularity of Supertwin racing (a production twin cylinder, 4 stroke in production only parts - but from any bike in the manufacturer's range) and the IOM TT introducing their Lightweight class (650cc 4T twin cylinder, standard frame.) Honda announced it would be no longer producing a 600cc supersport, arguing the class is dead. This affects production racing and prototypes/MotoGP~Moto2, as they provide the spec engine for all competitors. So will the Supertwin replace the supersport? And if so, at what capacity? For KTM, with the Duke 690 already out there, I think a 750 would be a likely capacity. It would bridge the cap perfectly between the 690 and the RC8 Superbike. Oh, and a KTM RC750R would be great. The problem is that would not fit the Lightweight or Supertwin capacity as is. Kawasaki having just released a new Ninja 650 would likely be rather pissed if the rules suddenly allowed an extra 100cc and as it stands Kawasaki make up the large majority of such bikes, Suzuki's SV650 providing a smaller number and the occasional sleeved Ducati or Jawa sometimes appears. Can the Lightweight, Supertwin and any replacement for Moto2 be combined to a single set of parameters? Hopefully. KTM really could be the ones to do it. Aprilia have said they too are working on new mid capacity twins. Their SVX lines 450cc and 550cc twins were brilliant engines but needed careful setting up and maintenance to work properly, gaining them an unfair reputation for unreliability. All Aprilia have announced is they are working on a "around 700cc" V twin. That is the extent of the Aprilia sourced information so the following is only really guesswork but there is a rumour in Aprilia circles that they are already testing two models of RSV750. A 'L' version and a 'R'. Now Aprilia already have a 750cc twin in their Shiver model. It makes 95bhp and would work well in supertwin racing but for the problem of capacity. Under current rules it is too big. Sleeving motors is the work of the devil but could be done, although whether it could then be tuned to compete with the 90 - 100bhp Kawasaki and Suzukis in unclear. More intriguing is the possibility of an around 60 - 65 degree twin - an RSV4 cut in half effectively. If they created a new 700cc engine on that basis, there is no reason it could not easily make 110 - 120bhp. Very close to current stock supersport bikes figures (although it would be unlikely they could be tuned to WSS levels.) So, with what are we left? Well wishful thinking maybe and perhaps a hope or two. We should fairly soon hear what will replace the Moto2 engine and like dominoes that could indicate what direction the wider similar classes might adopt. I am hoping it is a capacity and level that can make the bikes fast enough for road use without destroying the supertwin class that has been a welcome and much needed addition to racing.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedThis was an irritation between the 2006 and 2008 600-750s. On the 2006 it was really easy to do a slip on can that connected to the stock headers replacing the cat and stock can. On the 2008, they welded the cat to the collector so a slip on can had to leave the cat in place. This made slip on cans cheaper and kept the noise down because you can have almost an empty pipe after the cat and not be stupidly noisy. Presumably this was for legal reasons. But it led to a healthy ebay market for 2006 headers to fit to 2008 and up bikes. — I'm not too sure about Suzuki's OEM exhaust.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedI can see that these RR versions might be good for Superstock championships round the world. But is there any benefit for SBK teams from the upgraded platform? And is anyone except Aprilia doing RRR versions ready to race in SBK? — 2017 ZX-10RR CNC'd head, reinforced crank cases, higher lift cams, lightest Marchesini Genisi Aluminium wheels, Race ECU and secondary IMU, including: KQS (up AND down quickshifter), launch control, intelligent electronic brake control and KCMF cornering management control. Tappeks are coated in DLC. New double H Brembo pads (along with stock Brembo Nickel alloy calipers) and updated forks. Perhaps more important that ALL of that nonsense is the engraved engine covers with 'RR' script! And you get a matching key. (~ One extra point, as a matter of comparison: Honda's C-ABS weighs a concerning 10kg. In comparison, Kawasaki's weighs under 2kg. Oh, and you cannot switch the Honda's off.)
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedBut now they put the clamp back in front of the CAT and behind the sensor[1], you can just throw everything behind it away and fit a stubby can and a straight through pipe using the existing collectors. [1]Did they? — I'm not too sure about Suzuki's OEM exhaust.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedNow the baby Panigale has grown to 955, it's time for Ducati to re-invent the 650-750 Pantah as well. — “We will have a new KTM mid-class of bikes within around three years. We are looking at the way this will happen, but we are working on 600 to 800cc V-twins.” Stefan Pierer, KTM That was two years ago. There is an ever growing popularity of Supertwin racing (a production twin cylinder, 4 stroke in production only parts - but from any bike in the manufacturer's range) and the IOM TT introducing their Lightweight class (650cc 4T twin cylinder, standard frame.) Honda announced it would be no longer producing a 600cc supersport, arguing the class is dead. This affects production racing and prototypes/MotoGP~Moto2, as they provide the spec engine for all competitors. So will the Supertwin replace the supersport? And if so, at what capacity? For KTM, with the Duke 690 already out there, I think a 750 would be a likely capacity. It would bridge the cap perfectly between the 690 and the RC8 Superbike. Oh, and a KTM RC750R would be great. The problem is that would not fit the Lightweight or Supertwin capacity as is. Kawasaki having just released a new Ninja 650 would likely be rather pissed if the rules suddenly allowed an extra 100cc and as it stands Kawasaki make up the large majority of such bikes, Suzuki's SV650 providing a smaller number and the occasional sleeved Ducati or Jawa sometimes appears. Can the Lightweight, Supertwin and any replacement for Moto2 be combined to a single set of parameters? Hopefully. KTM really could be the ones to do it. Aprilia have said they too are working on new mid capacity twins. Their SVX lines 450cc and 550cc twins were brilliant engines but needed careful setting up and maintenance to work properly, gaining them an unfair reputation for unreliability. All Aprilia have announced is they are working on a "around 700cc" V twin. That is the extent of the Aprilia sourced information so the following is only really guesswork but there is a rumour in Aprilia circles that they are already testing two models of RSV750. A 'L' version and a 'R'. Now Aprilia already have a 750cc twin in their Shiver model. It makes 95bhp and would work well in supertwin racing but for the problem of capacity. Under current rules it is too big. Sleeving motors is the work of the devil but could be done, although whether it could then be tuned to compete with the 90 - 100bhp Kawasaki and Suzukis in unclear. More intriguing is the possibility of an around 60 - 65 degree twin - an RSV4 cut in half effectively. If they created a new 700cc engine on that basis, there is no reason it could not easily make 110 - 120bhp. Very close to current stock supersport bikes figures (although it would be unlikely they could be tuned to WSS levels.) So, with what are we left? Well wishful thinking maybe and perhaps a hope or two. We should fairly soon hear what will replace the Moto2 engine and like dominoes that could indicate what direction the wider similar classes might adopt. I am hoping it is a capacity and level that can make the bikes fast enough for road use without destroying the supertwin class that has been a welcome and much needed addition to racing.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaA Charles Stross comments stream that had gone well past the #300 comments event horizon threw up this nugget. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/facts-of-life-and-death.html#comment-2011485 --- BTW youtube links do not form part of my world. I never follow them, nor any other video link; I have done everything I can to disable or block any ability of my browser to play video or audio, and on the very rare occasions (such as verifying the above youtube link) when I do need to play one, I use the command-line downloader youtube-dl to retrieve it and the command-line player mplayer to play it. * I too am sick of Google's shit - both the tracking and spyware (even though I do have scripts to disable it), and the pages and pages of useless search results composed of one original site (usually wikipedia) plus endless crap sites that have automatically copied it, arsehole sites that want you to pay $40 just to see if the document is even useful, and Google Fucking Books. The final straw was when appending ?nord=1 to the Google URL no longer worked to prevent it from redirecting to HTTPS - which I had been doing as a personal protest against their insistence on forcing everyone onto HTTPS; what the fuck is the point of encrypting the transaction when the endpoint is less trustworthy than the transport layer? So now I use Bing; it turns out that all I need to do is disable javascript, and it gives a much better approximation to what Google used to be like before it turned to shit than I can obtain by writing scripts to de-shitulise Google itself. — Google support the TPP. The TPP is evil. Google are Evil. It's the ISDS, stupid. Another in a continuing series. Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend countries to their will... [A] court so powerful that nations often must heed its rulings as if they came from their own supreme courts, with no meaningful way to appeal. That it operates unconstrained by precedent or any significant public oversight, often keeping its proceedings and sometimes even its decisions secret. That the people who decide its cases are largely elite Western corporate attorneys who have a vested interest in expanding the court’s authority because they profit from it directly, arguing cases one day and then sitting in judgment another. That some of them half-jokingly refer to themselves as “The Club” or “The Mafia.” And imagine that the penalties this court has imposed have been so crushing — and its decisions so unpredictable — that some nations dare not risk a trial, responding to the mere threat of a lawsuit by offering vast concessions, such as rolling back their own laws or even wiping away the punishments of convicted criminals. This is the ISDS. This is what Google are supporting in endorsing the TPP. This is the plutonomist power grab exclusive stacked no-recourse court system Google are seeking. Buzzfeed have been doing stellar reporting on this issue. https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrishamby/super-court Google are Evil.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingWell 15 of the 20 laps were nerve racking. Shakey! High five! — BSB Championship?
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingChaz keeps role-ing — Chaz on a role Really can't find much wrong with the way Chaz Davis is riding the +Aruba.it Racing - Ducati Paggy-Nelly 1199 these last few races. Another fantastic performance in Race 1 at Jerez. Full Race Report by Mr +Jared Earle C/O +David Emmett's MotoMatters Dot Com : https://motomatters.com/results/2016/10/15/2016_jerez_world_superbike_race_one.html _____________________________________ +WorldSBK #WSB #WSBK #WSB2016 #Jerez
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Commented on post by John Englart in Climate ChangeTime, Space and Scale: We're not good at them. So we put our faith in technology that hasn't actually been invented yet. — Climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Glen Peters explain the problem with reliance on negative emissions. Most carbon budget pathways scenarios incorporate large scale negative emissions technologies that presently don't exist and may not be able to be developed at the scale required.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingIt's slipping away, — BSB Championship?
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Commented on post by San Almeida in Climate ChangeNote this is per capita energy demand, not total. — Global demand for energy will peak in 2030, says World Energy Council | via The Guardian http://ow.ly/8hJG3053ORI
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Commented on post by Vera Barreto in Climate ChangeAnd to meet the targets, we're also going to need to invest heavily in CCS technology starting now. That hasn't actually been invented yet.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingWith a 17 point lead, Shakey * only * needs to be 2nd in each race. But BSB this year is so close, that's too big an ask. He really needs to win a couple and get some fast early laps to be sure. — BSB Championship?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingI'm conflicted about this. I've followed Shakey since his Fast Bikes hooligan days and I'd love to see him win a 5th and put the records out of reach. Brands GP is his circuit. But Leon Haslam is clearly too fast for BSB and should be in a world championship. I think he's now under-rated and has just never had the right team for long enough to really shine. And it's a long, long time since he won a championship (CB500? Scooters?). He's also an all round nice guy who's hard as nails. And then, there's going to be some rain. Bad for me camping in the woods, but good for a bit of chaos in the racing. — BSB Championship?
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Commented on post by Agron Selimaj in Google+ UpdatesLocation is just so 2009. Google will morph G+ location into a new augmented reality app using your android phone. Google will track exactly where you are and use it to serve ads to you in AR space, but it won't allow you to tell anyone else. — What's going on with Locations feature on G+ app.
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Commented on post by Alex Diaz Eco in Climate ChangeIt's screwed. Just walk away. — Ground Zero Miami This photo, taken by so many when flying over Miami Beach -- I took this one this week not long after Hurricane Matthew struck the U.S. Atlantic coast -- used to provoke Ahs and Wows at the sheer beauty of the landscape. Today, it provokes concern, even sadness, if not depression, knowing that the city might very well be under water, permanently, in a few short decades. Here's a recent article with the facts http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/miami-beach-global-warming In this article today http://time.com/4527086/hillary-clinton-al-gore-climate-change-florida/ Hilary Clinton joined Al Gore at a Miami rally to rally the country behind solutions. I'll be leading a panel in Ft. Lauderdale in a little over a month to dig into those solutions, joined by a star-studded group of experts from the region. In fact, if you're in the area Nov. 30 - Dec. 2, join us. Details and registration info here: http://www.solveclimatechange.com/ We take the stage Dec. 2 at 10:30 a,m. Our focus will be on how to accelerate urban solutions. Hence the panel's name: Urbanism 3.0. But the total solution is much broader. Let's pray we're on time, or we'll soon be praying for something else.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeGlobal demand for energy per capita will peak in 2030. Hmmm. maybe. But, meanwhile global population is growing linearly at +80m pa. So Global demand for energy will not peak in 2030. And presumably, this is all energy including all fossil fuel use. — The #WorldEnergyCouncil has predicted that Global demand for energy per capita will peak in 2030 thanks to new technology and stricter government policies. #PeakEnergyDemand  
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Artificial IntelligenceUnlike https://plus.google.com/u/0/+SundarPichai/posts who seems to have outsourced the visibility thing. +Sundar Pichai  — Sharing if for no other reason than to encourage +Eric Schmidt's recent increase in sharing stuff here on Google+. Also, the article itself, looks pretty good (unlike everything else I share here, I haven't yet read this one - but will soon).
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in blue hazeYes, not just TSS, but specifically the Aprilia RS250. Either by taking it out to 300. Or fitting a 350LC YPVS or Banshee motor. ISTR Stan Stephens built a couple of race/track day bikes like this. — TSS 500cc Banshee motor in an Aprilia RS250. http://thekneeslider.com/tss-rs500-2-stroke-twin-update/ Are people still trying to build this stuff?
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in blue hazeI think the problem with these was always the tyres. They really needed 250 qualifying tyres. But the rear would never last more than a couple of laps. To get race distance they needed the same tyres as the 500-4s but then they lost the corner speed and agility advantage. But then there was the McWilliams Philip Island pole position lap and the Donington Park 1st win for Rossi when McWilliams led a lot of the race and finished 3rd. And that made up for all of the other races when they just weren't quite good enough. — APRILIA RSW-2 500 Although best known for their later dominance in the lower classes, Aprilia did compete in the 500cc class of GPs too from 1994 to 2000. However, they went about in a different way. Jan Wittenveen, then chief designer of the race department compared corner speeds between the premier class and 250cc, noting the higher corner speeds of the smaller capacity V2 machines. V2s also had a rules weight advantage - 4 cylinder machines were limited to 130kg, which to riders used to modern bikes will sound impressively low. However, 2 cylinder bikes were permitted to be a low as 105kgs. With lower weight and higher corner speed, Aprilia believed they could compete against the might of the Japanese motorcycle manufacturers who dominated the sport. The first iteration was 410cc, although this was later expanded to 420cc, 430cc and finally 460cc (all were named 500cc.) The year 2000 was it's final year in competition and the highest spec bike yet at a full 500cc the highest capacity of a twin in GPs (although it should also be mentioned Honda by now also had a customer V2.) Aprilia brought two bikes on the grid, led by Harada and Jeremy McWilliams. Still using the Gollinelli designed aluminium twin spar frame, it was still able to corner faster than any other bike on the grid. This last evolution had a frame tilted dual beam aluminium frame and carbon fibre swinging arm. It utilised what was referred to as APS suspension. APS or Advance Progressive System, is a name given at the time to variable compression control, allowing relatively plush initial travel gradually stiffer through the stroke and significant resistance to stop from bottoming out. The RSW-2 500 was, sadly, not very successful in the premier class ; although it was a very agile motorcycle (with a total weight of 110 kg, as was the Honda NSR V2) the acceleration and top speed deficit was too great to seriously compete with the 4-cylinder machines. Still, with almost 150bhp while weighing under 110kgs, it would make a heck of a track day bike! And they do come up for sale now and again!!
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawThis seems appropriate here. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/10/blatant-neo-con-lie/ "It is a plain lie that Russia was responsible for the leak of the Democratic National Committee emails to WikiLeaks. It is quite extraordinary that the Obama administration formally adopted the accusation yesterday." ... "The US government cares so little about its relationship with Russia that it is prepared to launch completely false allegations at the Kremlin in order to influence a domestic election. The implications of that are chilling." --- The bullshit, hypocrisy and lies are piling up so high you need wings to stay above it. But that would take you into the "No-Fly-Zone". — If I could draw, you'd see me making an editorial cartoon this week. You'd see Putin on one side of a chess board, with Trump, Khamenei, Kim Jong Un, and the like behind him, and various figures representing the US, Europe, and his domestic opposition opposite. Putin is moving a Knight, and saying "Cheka." Putin has decided to fold the SVR (foreign intelligence) back into the FSB (domestic intelligence) and rename the combined organization the Ministry of State Security, or MGB for short. This completes his reversal of Yeltsin's dismantling of the KGB, and restores the name it had between 1946 and 1953. The grand old tradition of ministries, departments, and committees for state, national, and homeland security continues apace. 
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Commented on postWrong community. This is not a out MotoGP
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeThat's not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Category_4_Atlantic_hurricanes#2001.E2.80.93Present — As Hurricane Matthew Lashes the USA Are American TV News Networks the Last Bastion of Climate Science Denial? http://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/7/as_hurricane_matthew_lashes_us_are
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedGlad to see the upper fairing get a bit bigger and easier to get behind. It's always seemed daft that we all needed to add double bubble screens just to get out of the wind. And even dafter that the IoM and roads riders needed to do this as well. — Nice in depth look at some of the key pieces of tech inside the upcoming new GSX-R1000. Technical but written to understand easily. Well worth a read.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Change+Andrew Nicholson We have to start — Many hail the Paris agreement now set to come into effect, as a panacea for global climate change. Yet tragically, this perspective neglects to take into account the reality of our climate system. Young People's Burden: Requirement of Negative CO2 Emissions provides the underlying scientific rationale for the Children's Trust lawsuit against the U.S. government that argues that climate change jeopardizes the next generation's inalienable rights under the U.S. Constitution to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It offers four key takeaways: 1. The Paris Climate Accord offers mainly wishful thinking (Rio +25yrs) 2. As long as fossil fuels are claimed to be the cheapest reliable energy, they will continue to be the world's largest energy source 3. It is still possible to solve the climate problem if (1) a simple across-the-board rising carbon fee is collected from fossil fuel companies at source, and (2) government supports RD&D of clean energy technologies. 4. Failure of executive and legislative branches to deal with climate change makes it essential for courts, less subject to pressure and bribery from special financial interests, to step in and protect young people, as they did minorities in the case of civil rights #JimHansen . #ClimateChange
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillance+Max Eliaser Me too. Where's my 1Tb iPod Classic? Or my affordable 1Tb Micro-SD card. Or an intelligent sync that doesn't suck. — Quoth +Noah Friedman: On the plus side, my phone can hold my entire music collection now. Fuck you, Cloud. Now who'd be so evil as to cripple something like this? Oh yeah. Google. Google are Evil
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeUnfortunately, +3C is probably a lost goal unless we do a lot more than stop using fossil fuels. And we're not stopping using them. — #JamesHansen 's warning is based on a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper that he wrote with 11 other climate scientists, in which they argue that the Earth has already warmed by about 1.3°C relative to pre-industrial levels, and that the atmospheric concentration of the most potent greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — has been accelerating in recent years. In order to stay below the target of limiting the planet to 1.5°C of warming set in Paris, the paper argues that negative carbon dioxide emissions   will be necessary, and that proposed techniques for carbon sequestration, like carbon capture and storage or air capture of carbon dioxide, could cost anywhere from $104 to $507 trillion this century, with “large risks and uncertain feasibility.” #1.5C  #CarbonSequestration  
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaI'll try and dig deeper. But for now, Here's the EU commission spin. http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ceta/ It's all good. Really. A summary of the opposing view and why CETA is in the vanguard of the new mega trade deals such as TTP and TPP. While it was negotiated in secret, It's already been publicised and signed so we get to read the text. Among all the rest it's got the same IP protection approaches and the same corporate arbitration that allows corporates to sue governments that enact legislation they don't like. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/30/ttip-trade-deal-agreements-ceta-eu-canada The EU is doing loads of this. Not just the CETA and TTIP. There's also China, Japan, Asia, etc, etc. Here's a 2013 summary. http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2012/november/tradoc_150129.pdf And of course, #BREXIT  will mean all of these EU agreements will have to be included into any portmanteau repeal bill that grandfathers in existing EU law into UK law during the exit. [edited to add] And here's the EFF explainer. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/ceta-replicates-acta — Google support the TPP. The TPP is Evil. Google are Evil "But wait, Morb", you say, "this isn't a story about the TPP, it's about the Obama vs. Congress veto fight for 9/11 victims." And this is "the single most embarassing thing the [U.S.] Senate has done in decades". Hang on there, Geeps. I've got an axe I've been grinding for a while, and it's getting kinda sharp. So, yes, the story here is about the 9/11 victims bill, and the rights of those victims to press lawsuits for damages against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Royal Family. Sixteen of the nineteen hijackers on the 11th of September, 2001 were Saudi nationals, and though there's no direct Saudi government involvement I'm aware of, there was at least one Saudi government official tied to several of the hijackers, though not acting as a representative of the government. As the inimitable +Marla Caldwell notes, both the White House, and now a buyers-remorseful legislature, are taking a sudden awareness of the fact that this bill could set dangerous precedent. It was politically expedient for the People's Representatives in US government to allow Sympathetic Victims -- the survivors and families of the 9/11 attacks -- to sue them Ebil Saudis. After all, sixteen of the nineteen hijackers on 11 September 2001 were Saudi nationals, though no evidence of direct Saudi government support has emerged. There is at least one former Saudi official personally tied to supporting several hijackers, though. The coin has another face though, in that the US has been engaged in activities beyond its borders for some time in which others occasionally lose their lives. In five years of unmaned aerial "drone" attacks, or if you prefer, robotic flying killers, some 2,400 people have died, up to 950 of them innocent civillians. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/obama-drone-program-anniversary_n_4654825.html The people of Iraq have a slightly more substantial gripe, with a conservative estimate being 164,000 to 183,000 civilian deaths in Iraq. More inclusive estimates run upwards of 500,000. https://www.iraqbodycount.org http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001533 I'll let Marla explain the next bit: The United States is a signatory to treaties which obligate to accept ISDS - investor/state dispute handling in courts of arbitration - which means it voluntarily allows itself to be sued by corporations for exercising sovereign power. Obama has been a huge champion of the proposed TPP treaty, which would broaden that option to more territories and more subjects. So he thinks it's a good thing for corporations to sue countries. But the idea that people could sue countries, that is the most embarrassing thing the Senate has done in decades. How very corporatist and anti-democratic. So again: * Stacked courts, binding arbitration, corporate access only, no appeals: Good. * Ordinary people suing governments for killing with impunity: Bad. And this is the allocation of power which Google are endorsing by supporting the TPP. And having read patiently through this whole bit, you say "You know, Morb, you might be onto something here." Google are Evil. For more about the TPP and why it's so bad: https://eff.org/issues/tpp https://plus.google.com/+MarlaCaldwell/posts/3G4EViPFMZj
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Commented on post by Trevor Larkum in Electric Vehicles (UK)"It’ll take you a while to recoup the £10k premium over a standard Q7" This is a common problem across the VAG range. The Etron versions all come with a substantial premium over the nearest equivalent in the range.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaBTW. We're making some progress in blocking TTIP. But CETA is also in play. The few politicians trying to block it in Europe need support. https://speakout.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns/please-stop-ceta — Google support the TPP. The TPP is Evil. Google are Evil "But wait, Morb", you say, "this isn't a story about the TPP, it's about the Obama vs. Congress veto fight for 9/11 victims." And this is "the single most embarassing thing the [U.S.] Senate has done in decades". Hang on there, Geeps. I've got an axe I've been grinding for a while, and it's getting kinda sharp. So, yes, the story here is about the 9/11 victims bill, and the rights of those victims to press lawsuits for damages against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Royal Family. Sixteen of the nineteen hijackers on the 11th of September, 2001 were Saudi nationals, and though there's no direct Saudi government involvement I'm aware of, there was at least one Saudi government official tied to several of the hijackers, though not acting as a representative of the government. As the inimitable +Marla Caldwell notes, both the White House, and now a buyers-remorseful legislature, are taking a sudden awareness of the fact that this bill could set dangerous precedent. It was politically expedient for the People's Representatives in US government to allow Sympathetic Victims -- the survivors and families of the 9/11 attacks -- to sue them Ebil Saudis. After all, sixteen of the nineteen hijackers on 11 September 2001 were Saudi nationals, though no evidence of direct Saudi government support has emerged. There is at least one former Saudi official personally tied to supporting several hijackers, though. The coin has another face though, in that the US has been engaged in activities beyond its borders for some time in which others occasionally lose their lives. In five years of unmaned aerial "drone" attacks, or if you prefer, robotic flying killers, some 2,400 people have died, up to 950 of them innocent civillians. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/obama-drone-program-anniversary_n_4654825.html The people of Iraq have a slightly more substantial gripe, with a conservative estimate being 164,000 to 183,000 civilian deaths in Iraq. More inclusive estimates run upwards of 500,000. https://www.iraqbodycount.org http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001533 I'll let Marla explain the next bit: The United States is a signatory to treaties which obligate to accept ISDS - investor/state dispute handling in courts of arbitration - which means it voluntarily allows itself to be sued by corporations for exercising sovereign power. Obama has been a huge champion of the proposed TPP treaty, which would broaden that option to more territories and more subjects. So he thinks it's a good thing for corporations to sue countries. But the idea that people could sue countries, that is the most embarrassing thing the Senate has done in decades. How very corporatist and anti-democratic. So again: * Stacked courts, binding arbitration, corporate access only, no appeals: Good. * Ordinary people suing governments for killing with impunity: Bad. And this is the allocation of power which Google are endorsing by supporting the TPP. And having read patiently through this whole bit, you say "You know, Morb, you might be onto something here." Google are Evil. For more about the TPP and why it's so bad: https://eff.org/issues/tpp https://plus.google.com/+MarlaCaldwell/posts/3G4EViPFMZj
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta+Nila Jones I'm pretty sure each sub-clause of that statement is exactly backwards. Which I guess is the intent. The alt-right is wrong. In the US, each corporation is a citizen. And we should worry. The hypocracy and hand wringing bullshit around Syria is getting so bad you need wings to stay above it. But then you'd be into the no-fly zone. If you bomb Medecin Sans Frontieres hospitals, you legitimise bombing hospitals. So don't act all outraged when hospitals get bombed. — Google support the TPP. The TPP is Evil. Google are Evil "But wait, Morb", you say, "this isn't a story about the TPP, it's about the Obama vs. Congress veto fight for 9/11 victims." And this is "the single most embarassing thing the [U.S.] Senate has done in decades". Hang on there, Geeps. I've got an axe I've been grinding for a while, and it's getting kinda sharp. So, yes, the story here is about the 9/11 victims bill, and the rights of those victims to press lawsuits for damages against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Royal Family. Sixteen of the nineteen hijackers on the 11th of September, 2001 were Saudi nationals, and though there's no direct Saudi government involvement I'm aware of, there was at least one Saudi government official tied to several of the hijackers, though not acting as a representative of the government. As the inimitable +Marla Caldwell notes, both the White House, and now a buyers-remorseful legislature, are taking a sudden awareness of the fact that this bill could set dangerous precedent. It was politically expedient for the People's Representatives in US government to allow Sympathetic Victims -- the survivors and families of the 9/11 attacks -- to sue them Ebil Saudis. After all, sixteen of the nineteen hijackers on 11 September 2001 were Saudi nationals, though no evidence of direct Saudi government support has emerged. There is at least one former Saudi official personally tied to supporting several hijackers, though. The coin has another face though, in that the US has been engaged in activities beyond its borders for some time in which others occasionally lose their lives. In five years of unmaned aerial "drone" attacks, or if you prefer, robotic flying killers, some 2,400 people have died, up to 950 of them innocent civillians. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/obama-drone-program-anniversary_n_4654825.html The people of Iraq have a slightly more substantial gripe, with a conservative estimate being 164,000 to 183,000 civilian deaths in Iraq. More inclusive estimates run upwards of 500,000. https://www.iraqbodycount.org http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001533 I'll let Marla explain the next bit: The United States is a signatory to treaties which obligate to accept ISDS - investor/state dispute handling in courts of arbitration - which means it voluntarily allows itself to be sued by corporations for exercising sovereign power. Obama has been a huge champion of the proposed TPP treaty, which would broaden that option to more territories and more subjects. So he thinks it's a good thing for corporations to sue countries. But the idea that people could sue countries, that is the most embarrassing thing the Senate has done in decades. How very corporatist and anti-democratic. So again: * Stacked courts, binding arbitration, corporate access only, no appeals: Good. * Ordinary people suing governments for killing with impunity: Bad. And this is the allocation of power which Google are endorsing by supporting the TPP. And having read patiently through this whole bit, you say "You know, Morb, you might be onto something here." Google are Evil. For more about the TPP and why it's so bad: https://eff.org/issues/tpp https://plus.google.com/+MarlaCaldwell/posts/3G4EViPFMZj
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Commented on post by Nishioka Yoshio in Climate Change+David Wheeler This is a lie. Why are you repeating it?
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Commented on post by Nishioka Yoshio in Climate ChangeDespite all the noise from Paris, we're on the "Business as usual" RCP 8.5 timeline. But what RCP 8.5 doesn't show is the point where CO2 rise, climate change effects and resource constraints make continued expansion impossible. http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2846/28462101.jpg — CO2 Emission increase by human activity! Badman Nishioka/rainforest group/HUTAN Group
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Commented on post by Alex de NDYAKIRA in Climate ChangeA big problem for the southern hemisphere is the lack of land to migrate to. — Koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) are only endemic to Australia, but are on the verge of extinction due to climate change. Global warming results into droughts & wild bushfires that destroy both food & habitats for the koalas. #joinAlexNDYAKIRA #incombatagainstclimatechange #saveananimal
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedAwww. It's so cute. Should be mounted on the back of a VW Camper. — mo
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Commented on post by datAPoint in Google+ UpdatesAre we asking about desktop web, android, iOS, mobile web? As for desktop web, absolutely, the Classic is better. The only new feature I use occasionally is the activity log. — Which is better?
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Stuart Lamble Brilliant. Stross has a way with these things, doesn't he. — You may not know that there's a rich tradition of chemists writing, shall we say, rather bluntly about their trade. And one of the kings of it is Derek Lowe, a drug discovery chemist who writes a semi-regular blog titled "Things I Won't Work With," primarily about the research that people in other branches of chemistry do that makes him question their sanity. While it helps to know some chemistry to follow what's going on (that e.g., most of the molecules in your body use carbon for their superstructure, because nitrogen in the superstructure tends to want to get out of said superstructure rather quickly, which is to say "with an earth-shattering kaboom"), you don't really need to: "If you or I (’cause we’re sensible, right?) look at a well-known crater-maker like dinitropyrazolopyrazole, we’ll probably decide that it has pretty much all the nitrogens it needs, if not more. But that latest paper builds off the question “How do we cram more nitro groups into this thing?”, and that’s something that wouldn’t have occurred to me to ask. Saying “this compounds doesn’t have enough nitro groups” is, for most chemists, like saying “You know, this lab doesn’t have enough flying glass in it” – pretty much the same observation, in the end." I should also say that Lowe is the person who introduced me to John D. Clark's classic textbook of the history and practice of liquid rocket propellants, Ignition!, and if this sort of writing at all appeals to you (or if you were just always curious about what kinds of things can cause you to accelerate away from them at remarkable speed), then you should dig up a copy as soon as possible. Thanks to +Amber Yust for finding and sharing this latest gem in Lowe's collection. (Bonus: If you go to the homepage of Prof. Shreeve, lead author of the "more nitrogen!!!" paper above, you will find someone who you might mistake for a kindly librarian if you passed them on the street. This is someone who is a distinguished professor of Materials and Fluorine Chemistry, a title which alone will cause most chemists to look for some convenient large object to hide behind. https://www.uidaho.edu/sci/chem/people/faculty/jshreeve)
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Commented on post by Roger Kerr in Climate ChangeWhat we don't have yet is the 10 year old, 100k mile, 5 grand, Ford Focus EV. Or a 2 year old 15 grand VW Golf or Audi A3 EV. At the moment, the EV and PHEV models are being pitched at the high spec end of the price ranges. — "It has been a common belief that low-emissions vehicles, like hybrids and electric cars, are more expensive than other choices. But a new study finds that when operating and maintenance costs are included in a vehicle's price, cleaner cars may actually be a better bet."
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Commented on post by Kevin Kellyhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-30687171 "Fairy control" has had to be brought in at a woods in Somerset to curb the "profusion of elfin construction". Hundreds of fairy doors have been attached to the bases of trees in Wayford Woods, Crewkerne. It is claimed the doors have been installed by local people so children can "leave messages for the fairies". But trustee Steven Acreman said: "We've got little doors everywhere. We're not anti-fairies but it's in danger of getting out of control." — My favorite place in Golden Gate Park -- this little door at base of tree. It's where the leprechauns live.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedIs that a girder or a hossack? Conventional steering head, or spherical bearings inside the upright? I'm guessing, girder. — Yesterday posted the Gentleman's racer and noted the unusual shock placement of the girder front end. Here's an example of a more usual FFE.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedAhem. The very first Hossack XL500 racer. Note the triangulated lower A frame with the shock under the tank. http://www.bikeme.tv/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/HISTORY-OF-FRONT-END_24.jpg Though it's true that most Hossacks have the shock inside the two A frames. — More of the Gentleman's racer On its own the full carbon fibre girder front end is the ultimate expression of an old design, but it’s the way the dampening is controlled that takes the VanderHeide to an all new level. Where the Hossack/Fior examples keep the shock absorber inside the girder, this example uses a linked double wishbone, which is attached to the front shock via pushrods and rockers. The shock itself is the world leading Öhlins TTX 36 with a second identical unit used for the rear suspension mounted inline but in opposing directions so as to drastically reduce the stress on the chassis.
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Commented on post by Sandy Dechert in Climate ChangeBy 2100, 1.5 is a wrap. 2 is certain. 4 is very likely. We're still on the RCP 8.5 "business as usual" path. It's time to stop hiding and playing down the truth because it's politically undesirable.
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPThose last 5 laps were crazy. And his last half lap had me holding my breath. It feels like a while since I've really wanted somebody to win the championship like that. Such a nice guy. Such a good racer. — That was Incredible!!!!!! Brad Binder the South African wins The Moto3 Championship!!!! Man, he tried hard to get that win!!!
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Commented on post by Kim Jae Kyu in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)I've got a 36v-15Ahr and a hub motor. I have done 50 mile trips with just enough juice left to climb the last hill to home. So 36v-30Ahr ought to be able to manage 100 miles. But all that depends on not going really fast and adding plenty of pedal power. If you set max power assist speed to 10mph and can get 15mph on the flat by pedalling, your range will be enormous. So I think your range is mainly about the size of the battery rather than the setup. And I think I'd rather put that hub in the rear wheel where it belongs! — DIY FRICTION DRIVE EBIKE New Li-ion battery is 36V, 30ah. Now I have road test for new friction drive electrc bicycle and battery. Bike motor is 36V, 200W, BLDC gearless hub motor. LCD panel shows total riding distance 103.9Km and Battery icon 7 is full. Now it shows 5 level. From this data, I assumed that new friction drive ebike could run around 150km. Really, It's amazing and awesome performance.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and Politics+David Cameron Staples Things were coming to a head. — in the timeline we all live in, a virtual reality billionaire is paying neo-Nazis to threaten Jewish reporters with cartoon frogs
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedI had a rich neighbour for a while with 4 litre class bikes in his garage. The one that got the most use was the RSV4 track day bike with the unpainted carbon fairing. — Aprilia RSV4 R Factory Works ~ These staggering bikes have been out a year or so now. Aprilia start with their 'base' model RSV4R, which is still palpably exotic and, in many ways, the finest sports motorcycle yet built. They then use their WSBK experience to build the bike to one of their packages: Stock 1, Stock 2, SBK or W-SBK. The final version, the W-SBK can be specced to whatever level you wish. The 'base model' of these being the 'Misano' a 230bhp+, with Ohlins FGR300 forks and balance free shock and forged rims. The price is a shocking reasonable (given what you are getting) £56,000 (around $70,000) They claim that from this base, the sky is the limit and they will build you a full WSBK spec machine to the specification (and budget) and competitiveness the customer desires. When you compare that to some of the specials offered by manufacturers, (for instance Honda's 100bhp 'MotoGP' bike!?) it is hard to not be impressed.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedHell yes. Where's the CBR400NC29, VRF400, ZXR400R-B1 for 2016. Of course there's no money in it now. And with SS600s disappearing as well, apparently even a thou is not enough. Do we have to look to KTM? Imagine if 400s had followed the progression of the Ninja 600. — Kawasaki ZXR400RR ~ We badly need a modern, small capacity 'true' sports bike. The modern alleged sports machines are, in truth, anything but. As I like to deride, they are commuters in a party dress. Steel cradle frames with straight line stability and crap geometry. Pitifully poor quality, non adjustable suspension and cheap and nasty engines. That is not how we make a sports bike.... but this example is!
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeCan you see Big Block? — Dramatic Visualizations Show Just How Quickly The Arctic Is Melting https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/xyasmhqdqgrzxvvqd3is.gif http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/09/dramatic-visualisations-show-just-how-quickly-the-arctic-is-melting/
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in MotoGPInteresting that the story now is that wings make S bends and fast changes of direction more difficult. Leading to Ducati rider arm pump and meaning that tiny people like Dani being unable to make it work. Straight from Nakamoto. — Silverstone 2016. Danni Pedrosa chose to run without wings.
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Commented on post by Sapphire Huang in Electric BikesIn future designs, I'd like to see a USB socket, and/or a 5v outlet in a position where it can be permanently wired into the bike for things like lighting. And if it's the USB socket for a smart phone, having it along the center line so it can be used more easily while riding with the phone in a mount on the top tube or handlebars. — With 5V USB and power switch, this downtube mounted electric bicycle become more safety and practical than other type. Contact me at Skype: sapphirehlm
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Commented on post by Pierre Markuse in Climate Change / Earth+Charles Ward Since TFA is about Arctic sea ice, to what extent is the USA responsible for the CO2 emissions that are responsible for the global warming, which is responsible for the Arctic Sea ice melting? Because most of your rant doesn't seem to have much to do with that. — Arctic Sea Ice Annual Minimum Ties Second Lowest on Record Arctic sea ice appeared to have reached its annual lowest extent on Sept. 10, NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder reported today. An analysis of satellite data showed that at 1.60 million square miles (4.14 million square kilometers), the 2016 Arctic sea ice minimum extent is effectively tied with 2007 for the second lowest yearly minimum in the satellite record. Since satellites began monitoring sea ice in 1978, researchers have observed a steep decline in the average extent of Arctic sea ice for every month of the year. Full story here: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/arctic-sea-ice-annual-minimum-ties-second-lowest-on-record Video: Sea Ice Minimum 2016 https://youtu.be/GVJ9DfVhAYw More information: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/09/2016-ties-with-2007-for-second-lowest-arctic-sea-ice-minimum/ Check out NASA's Global Climate Change Vital Signs of the Planet website with lots of information on global climate change: http://climate.nasa.gov/ This NASA Earth Observatory article on global warming is answering some of the most asked questions: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/ Image credit: These three figures, based on research by Claire Parkinson and Nicolo DiGirolamo, show sea-ice-extent rankings by year for each month, from January through December, over the period spanning from 1979 to 2015, for the Arctic (top), Antarctic (middle) and globally (bottom). In total, 444 months of average sea ice extent are represented in each graph. The darkest blue-colored squares represent a month where sea ice hit a record low extent compared to the previous months on record, while the lightest-colored squares stand for a month where sea ice extent hit a record high. NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens Paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425716302218 #science #earth #seaice #climatechange #globalwarming #arctic #antarctic #seaiceextent #arcticseaice
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeI have several problems with this. 1) I don't believe it. Global GDP figures and Global Carbon emissions are produced by vested interests and frequently revised at a later date. In particular they are highly dependent on China reporting accurately. I suspect that GDP is lower and CO2 emissions higher than is reported and we're talking small changes in big numbers so drawing a conclusion from 1% one way and 1% the other way is deceptive. 2) CO2 production might have flatlined. But we've only managed to limit it to the highest per year it's ever been. 3) CO2 atmospheric concentration is rising faster than ever. IMHO, this "De-coupling" story is a feel-good lie that just encourages inaction and continued "business as usual". Yes, it's good that we're moving from coal to gas to renewables as a source for electricity. And we're doing more with that electricity that we used to do with fossil fuels, but that's only part of the CO2 sources. — There are simplistic arguments made about greenhouse gas emissions regarding both developed and developing economies, arguments aimed at arguing that the other side has to do the heavy lifting. But the arguments are increasingly irrelevant. We are beginning to see globally, evidence that gross domestic product has decoupled from CO2 emissions for the first time in about 250 years. Wind, solar, and other renewables are economic drivers. The costs of climate change and pollution are unsustainable, and inhibit future productivity.
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Commented on postAnd then, Hinkley C.
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Commented on post by Pierre Markuse in Climate Change / EarthThe USA is only part of the problem now. Your per capita consumption and pollution are the highest in the world but your total consumption and pollution has now been overtaken by other regions. If the resource constraints don't get you, the pollution will. And the Arctic is just a major symptom but one with knock on effects. Right now the melting-freezing-weather balance is bumping along the bottom. We may not have seen the minimum area and extent just yet, but it's unlikely to go much lower. — Arctic Sea Ice Annual Minimum Ties Second Lowest on Record Arctic sea ice appeared to have reached its annual lowest extent on Sept. 10, NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder reported today. An analysis of satellite data showed that at 1.60 million square miles (4.14 million square kilometers), the 2016 Arctic sea ice minimum extent is effectively tied with 2007 for the second lowest yearly minimum in the satellite record. Since satellites began monitoring sea ice in 1978, researchers have observed a steep decline in the average extent of Arctic sea ice for every month of the year. Full story here: http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/arctic-sea-ice-annual-minimum-ties-second-lowest-on-record Video: Sea Ice Minimum 2016 https://youtu.be/GVJ9DfVhAYw More information: https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2016/09/2016-ties-with-2007-for-second-lowest-arctic-sea-ice-minimum/ Check out NASA's Global Climate Change Vital Signs of the Planet website with lots of information on global climate change: http://climate.nasa.gov/ This NASA Earth Observatory article on global warming is answering some of the most asked questions: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/ Image credit: These three figures, based on research by Claire Parkinson and Nicolo DiGirolamo, show sea-ice-extent rankings by year for each month, from January through December, over the period spanning from 1979 to 2015, for the Arctic (top), Antarctic (middle) and globally (bottom). In total, 444 months of average sea ice extent are represented in each graph. The darkest blue-colored squares represent a month where sea ice hit a record low extent compared to the previous months on record, while the lightest-colored squares stand for a month where sea ice extent hit a record high. NASA Earth Observatory/Joshua Stevens Paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425716302218 #science #earth #seaice #climatechange #globalwarming #arctic #antarctic #seaiceextent #arcticseaice
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Commented on post by Christopher Hamilton in ChromecastNo way to join from the desktop access. Only Android and iOS.
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in MotoGPNo wings on Dani at Misano. — Silverstone 2016. Danni Pedrosa chose to run without wings.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingGo Dovi! Make it 9. — 8 from 8 Dani Pedrosa took his first of 2016 & made 8 different winners from 8 races in 1 season. A new record for the current 4 stroke era. Race Report via +Dana C C/O +David Emmett's MotoMatters Dot Com : https://motomatters.com/results/2016/09/11/2016_misano_motogp_race_result_a.html Sunday Round Up by David himself: https://motomatters.com/analysis/2016/09/12/2016_misano_motogp_post_race_round_up.html ______________________________________ +MotoGP #MotoGP +Misano World Circuit "Marco Simoncelli"
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeI wonder if the obsession with batteries and energy storage is an artefact of the USA, the state of its existing grid and the commercial environment there. — Making Elon Musk’s clean energy vision a reality will take more than building batteries—at least in the traditional sense. Cleantech developers are exploring other ways to store energy, from old-school hydropower to new-school flywheels, power to gas, railcars and balloons. #EnergyStorage  
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Commented on post by Adrian Marian Maghiar in MotoGPUnbelievable. That was one of the cleaner passes we've seen at this level. — Who's right and who's wrong?
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesBig fan. Particularly like the blog and comments threads. Though they frequently make me feel inadequate with the level of erudition. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/ — Charles Stross: the man who needs no caption.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeElectric assist bikes are great. This isn't. — Over the summer, however, a second-hand Craiglist bike was converted into a fancy electric one thanks to EVELO's Omni Wheel, a motorized wheel that replaces a regular bike's front wheel.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Technology Meets HumanityReminds me (again) of Donald Fagen - I.G.Y. A just machine to make big decisions Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision We'll be clean when their work is done We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young What a beautiful world this will be What a glorious time to be free — All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace I like to think (and the sooner the better!) of a cybernetic meadow where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony like pure water touching clear sky. I like to think (right now, please!) of a cybernetic forest filled with pines and electronics where deer stroll peacefully past computers as if they were flowers with spinning blossoms. I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace. - Richard Brautigan Special thanks to +Matt Perez for highlighting this poem for me. More on the poem and Richard Brautigan: http://www.brautigan.net/machines.html
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Commented on postHow would the grid have to change to accommodate 60% Wind and Solar? What business and commercial changes would be needed. And can we get there from here?
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Commented on post by Pleroma Solar in Climate ChangeDoes it scale? 1 billion gallons and 10 GWHr pa per installation. I don't have a feel for how big this is. And this is guesswork. Electromagnetic desalination https://cleantechnica.com/2013/06/30/desalination-with-small-electrical-fields-simple-new-method-may-revolutionize-seawater-desalination/ Nice design study, but it looks like CGI vaporware that isn't actually practical. — #Solar powered desalination device transforms seawater into clean drinking water. I feel like this is long overdue. http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/pipe-dreams-sun-powered-desalination-device-transforms-seawater-clean-drinking-water
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Commented on post by SUZUKI MOTOGP FAN in MotoGPLast 7 races, 7 different winners, 4 different manufacturers. How good is that! — Suzuki is Back!!!! 👏🏻👏🏻🏁🏁🎉🎉 http://suzukimotogpfan.blogspot.it
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Commented on post by Joshua Robbin Marks in Climate ChangeA cynic writes. The two biggest polluters ratify the agreement. Ironic that they are also the least likely to do anything about it. — The world's biggest polluter just ratified the Paris climate agreement. China is the top global investor in renewable energy. Now it is time for the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions to ratify the deal. No excuses USA!
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawTwo links about Karimov and Uzbekistan from somebody who knew (as UK ambassador), blew the whistle and paid the price. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/08/a-moment-of-hope/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/09/west-karimovs-anti-terrorism-charade/ — I don't see why people are so surprised by this. I mean, if you're going to have a terror war, wouldn't you want someone who boils people alive on your side? That's pretty scary! I'd also want people who eat eyeballs, and maybe those little bug things that get caught under your toenails, you know the ones with the little claws that— What? A war against terror? Oh. Oh, that's different. Nevermind. </litella>
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaThese things keep multiplying. http://www.thecanary.co/2016/09/02/corporate-plot-destroy-public-services-worldwide-underway-ttip-pales-comparison/ TPP, TTIP, CETA and now TISA. And with "most favoured nation" clauses that delegate the worst excesses to the previous treaty. Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_in_Services_Agreement — Google support the TPP. The TPP is evil. Google are Evil. The TPP is not a trade agreement.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chromecast AudioIt's kind of unclear. The FAQ still says it doesn't work. But Chrome can cast either the tab or the desktop as a workaround. https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6279416?hl=en-GB "Chromecast Audio only supports audio apps and this currently does not include YouTube." — Did Google fix the problem of Cast-Audio being unable to play Youtube music videos yet?
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Commented on post by Gail TverbergMaybe it's not the grid that's failing but the government mandated and controlled, regulatory business environment for electricity sales and distribution. — Wind and solar PV provide intermittent electricity. Many expect that this electricity can "scale up" and transform the electric grid. I show why this is highly unlikely in this post. https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/08/31/intermittent-renewables-cant-favorably-transform-grid-electricity/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta+Chris Merle https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/30/france-demands-end-to-ttip-trade-talks-matthias-fekl Gabriel [who leads Germany’s centre-left Social Democratic party and is vice-chancellor in Merkel’s coalition government] said on Sunday that in 14 rounds of talks on the transatlantic pact, the two sides have not agreed on a single common item out of the 27 chapters being discussed. His spokesman blamed lack of movement by the US and said Gabriel had concluded there would not be a deal this year.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingI feel sorry for Guintoli. Hope he lands in a decent ride, but there's not many left now. Brookes and Guintoli back to BSB? Surely not. — Worst Kept Secret in #WSB Becomes Public The Great Dutch Hope Michael van der Mark will be joining +Yamaha Racing Team Cresent for the 2017 +WorldSBK championship. Full Details via YRT Racing : http://www.yamaha-racing.com/worldsbk/articles/news/2016/666135/van-der-mark-joins-lowes-as-yamaha-young-guns-spearhead-2017-worldsbk-attack _____________________________________ +Yamaha Racing +Cresent Racing +WorldSBK +akropovic exhaust +Pirelli +Ohlins Perfromance +Brembo #Rizla +DID Chain +Pata Snack +Beta Tool Store +Regina Chains #VDM #LOWES
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Commented on post by George Kuttamperoor Jose in Google+ UpdatesUgh, those banner colours! And why do I have to use stylish to fix the font sizes. Not happy.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingBut then, he gets 2 GPs subbing for Bradley Smith. Go Alex! https://motomatters.com/news/2016/08/29/alex_lowes_to_replace_bradley_smith_for.html — Suzuka 8Hr Race Results +Yamaha Racing showing how to displease +Honda Pro Racing yet again. To be honest, just like in 2015 they were unstoppable. If the rumours are true that Micky VDM has signed for Yamaha +WorldSBK for 2017 then I can see another Yamaha victory next year too. Pol Esparago will be with +KTM so they will need a fast rider. Johan Zarco is always an option. Anyway, a quick report from this morning's race via +MCN - Motorcyclenews.com : http://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/2016/july/endurance-yamaha-make-it-back-to-back-victories-at-suzuka/ _______________________________________________ +Suzuka Circuit #Suzuka #8Tai #Suzuka8Hours +Yamaha Racing +Kawasaki Motors +Yoshimura Racing +Team Suzuki Racing +Honda Pro Racing +GMT94officiel +Team Yart #7 Yamaha Austria racing Team +RACING TEAM Honda TSR 250 GP2 +Mistresa with HARC-pro +BMW +BMW Motorrad +KTM +Aprilia Official
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Anne-Marie Clark Brilliant. That's a keeper. — Something beautiful, via Prof. Rhodri Lewis at Oxford: a picture of Brian Walton's 1657 "Polyglot Bible," which provides a range of simultaneous translations. On this page, clockwise from the top left, you can see the original Hebrew; the Latin Vulgate; the Greek Septuagint; the Aramaic Targum Onkelos; a Chaldean (Hebrao-Samaritic) translation; a Samaritan translation; an Arabic translation; and a Syriac translation. All but the Hebrew and Latin have literal Latin translations alongside them. Parallel translations like these are tremendously useful for scholars, as they give you senses of how the senses of words have shifted between peoples. The Bible is a particularly rich source of such shifting, as translations have often followed cultural and political norms – leading to such egregious mistranslations as "thou shalt not kill."
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Commented on postScotland <-> England western link Currently being built. http://www.westernhvdclink.co.uk/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_HVDC_Link https://www.ssepd.co.uk/EasternHVDClink/ is in planning. I'm not sure about European links
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Commented on postWe need more interconnect between Scotland, England and Europe to really take advantage of this. It is being done, slowly.
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Commented on post by Bob Payne in Climate ChangeS and SE Asia looks bad. That's a lot of people with nowhere to go.
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Commented on post by Derick Lila in Climate ChangeI'd also like to see projects where solar and wind is matched with dispatchable demand. That's commercial demand based processes that can be switched on and off fast and soak up excess capacity by doing something useful. That could be synfuel production, or lime kilns for cement/concrete, or residential storage heaters. Demand management is the inverse of supply and storage management but can have the same end effect of balancing intermittent supply and peaking demand. — Storage has been no stranger to the energy conversation over the last several years. As the U.S. solar market continues to grow, the industry is beginning to envision a future where solar projects are built with storage units to help offset peak demand (just ask Elon Musk). Where do we stand currently? Is storage growing in the U.S., or is it just a buzz word?
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaI'm a Beta. Betas are the best. Not like those brainy Alphas that don't have a life. At least I'm not a Gamma. Gammas are just stupid. And as for the Deltas, they're barely human. Though I suppose somebody does need to collect the trash. — England: where education is a sausage factory, and the only factory left. "Results day, and the attendant hoopla, is insidious propaganda. It’s the day the media decide to portray most of Britain as one big public school, where academic excellence and clean hair is all that matters. [...] But most of us know people doing rubbish jobs that they hate, feeling trapped and frustrated, a bit bitter, a bit beaten – and also know that things started going wrong for them when they were still listlessly dragging themselves through the best days of other people’s lives. Those photos of GCSE success are like a lot of things in our culture: sweet icing on a cake baked from fear."
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawTo be fair, we have all been on holiday. I'm sure something will kick off in Sept. Farage perhaps. Although he seems to have found a new role as Trump's little helper. Somewhat bizarre to see both US candidates talking about the UK and Brexit. — This Prime Minister is no more; as of Wednesday afternoon, David Cameron will be formally resigning and moving out of 10 Downing Street. While we applaud the bravery of Theresa May in stepping into the mess Cameron and his friends left behind, and look forward to real answers to the question of "Just how can this situation get worse?," we can enjoy a musical delight which Cameron has left for us. What is this? At the end of his resignation announcement yesterday, Cameron walked off, and with his mic still hot, hummed a little tune, ending it with "Right. Good." It was a very British sort of ending, and it was even better fodder for the Internet -- and its tribe of talented composers. Would you like to hear Cameron's little ditty transformed into a waltz? A sad sort of serenade? Acid house? The Internet has all of these for you, and more: not least, Chris Hollis' revelation that the tune is an awfully good intro for something that sounds like John Williams' Imperial March. While we did not get to see David Cameron actually breathing heavily through a mask, I still hold to the hope that tonight, in his last night of privacy at 10 Downing, he will be listening to this and pretending to swing a lightsaber around. Via +Kimberly Chapman.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+Jasper Janssen http://hasarticle50beeninvoked.uk/ 65 days and counting. And not looking any closer than it did 6 weeks ago. — This Prime Minister is no more; as of Wednesday afternoon, David Cameron will be formally resigning and moving out of 10 Downing Street. While we applaud the bravery of Theresa May in stepping into the mess Cameron and his friends left behind, and look forward to real answers to the question of "Just how can this situation get worse?," we can enjoy a musical delight which Cameron has left for us. What is this? At the end of his resignation announcement yesterday, Cameron walked off, and with his mic still hot, hummed a little tune, ending it with "Right. Good." It was a very British sort of ending, and it was even better fodder for the Internet -- and its tribe of talented composers. Would you like to hear Cameron's little ditty transformed into a waltz? A sad sort of serenade? Acid house? The Internet has all of these for you, and more: not least, Chris Hollis' revelation that the tune is an awfully good intro for something that sounds like John Williams' Imperial March. While we did not get to see David Cameron actually breathing heavily through a mask, I still hold to the hope that tonight, in his last night of privacy at 10 Downing, he will be listening to this and pretending to swing a lightsaber around. Via +Kimberly Chapman.
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Commented on post by Brighton E-bikes in Electric BikesNeeds a basket or two. ;) — What a little beauty!
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeI've been enjoying the photos in the "what the buoys are telling us" thread. http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,327.1050.html#msg87319 There's a Disney movie in there somewhere about the brave little buoy that could.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesMost cucumbers are haunted. By feelings of inadequacy. — Today on Twitter: as night comes for us all, the conversation gets steadily weirder. I mean, I spent last night dreaming I was a Red Army colonel from the Civil War reminiscing with his old buddy Stalin while waiting to be executed as an enemy of the state, so really, this is about what you'd expect the rest of the day to go like.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingClassic! Alex Lowes gets a go on the Tech3 Yamaha as some kind of prize for winning Suzuka with Pol in the Brno test. But only does a couple of laps because he fell off. https://motomatters.com/results/2016/08/22/2016_brno_motogp_test_times_lorenzo.html — Suzuka 8Hr Race Results +Yamaha Racing showing how to displease +Honda Pro Racing yet again. To be honest, just like in 2015 they were unstoppable. If the rumours are true that Micky VDM has signed for Yamaha +WorldSBK for 2017 then I can see another Yamaha victory next year too. Pol Esparago will be with +KTM so they will need a fast rider. Johan Zarco is always an option. Anyway, a quick report from this morning's race via +MCN - Motorcyclenews.com : http://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/2016/july/endurance-yamaha-make-it-back-to-back-victories-at-suzuka/ _______________________________________________ +Suzuka Circuit #Suzuka #8Tai #Suzuka8Hours +Yamaha Racing +Kawasaki Motors +Yoshimura Racing +Team Suzuki Racing +Honda Pro Racing +GMT94officiel +Team Yart #7 Yamaha Austria racing Team +RACING TEAM Honda TSR 250 GP2 +Mistresa with HARC-pro +BMW +BMW Motorrad +KTM +Aprilia Official
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeI'm somewhat puzzled by this set of figures. Wheat, Corn and Rice have almost no protein. Not sure why their included. Soy is presumably Soya Beans. In most of the world, Lamb and Goat are farmed on land that is useless for anything else, so how is their land use change bigger than anything else. And why is Pork so low. — The effect of #diet on #ClimateChange and the #Environment .
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyWhere's Rorschach when we need him? "No compromises". — Pinker gives really good arguments why bioethicists have too much sway right now and why we should "get them out of the way." http://www.ipscell.com/2015/08/stevenpinker/
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Public PolicyPerhaps you need some UN observers to keep the elections honest. — Thing is... doesn't HAVA already require this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_America_Vote_Act "HAVA requires all voting systems be auditable and produce a permanent paper record with a manual audit capacity available as an official record for any recount conducted.[8]"
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Commented on post by Robert Llewellynhttp://wondermark.com/1k62/ — Fully-Charged-Electric-Bikes | Fully Charged
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedInteresting. I would expect though that a race parallel twin would use the Phil Irving approach of a crank somewhere around 90 (270) rather than 180 or 360. You lose a little in exhaust tuning, but gain quite a bit in smoothness. A small displacement, short stroke V-Twin is means getting perfect balance is probably less of an issue. So a narrower angle would probably work. You'd get better packaging until the intakes started interfering with each other. 70deg maybe. I suspect this will all be moot though. Much more likely is that the Moto2 spec engine supplier just switches to another manufacturer. Kawasaki? Actual build and support will be outsourced as it is now, so the question is whether Kawasaki could be persuaded to do a bulk deal on castings and spares. — Aprilia twin cylinder 4T Moto2 alternative..?
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedImagine for a moment. Moto2 became 4T, 500cc, Twins. And you had a MotoGP V4. Would you build a V-Twin or a parallel twin? And what if you're Yamaha and Suzuki? Does your straight-4 MotoGP bike automatically mean a 270deg parallel twin? Or do you just ignore the class completely. Honda-Ducati-KTM-Aprilia would be fun. And we might even get a 2020 Pantah out of it. — Aprilia twin cylinder 4T Moto2 alternative..?
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Commented on post by Robert Llewellyn+Scott Dann for what? And which government? — Fully-Charged-Electric-Bikes | Fully Charged
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynSome confusion here. UK-EU rules for unregulated electric assist bicycles is 250W-25kph (approx 15mph). Above that speed the power should drop to zero. These machines are treated as bicycles. In some countries in the EU (like Germany) there are one or two standards above this with more power and more speed in return for some restrictions on usage and age. But these aren't legal at all in the UK. The next step up in the UK is a moped 30mph-5hp, Then Learner motorcycle 12hp. And finally full motorcycle. In the video, all the bikes except the last one are E-bicycles. The last one really ought to be a moped but doesn't meet UK moped type approval. As they said though, it can be sold restricted to 250w-25kph. I would love to see more Electric Mopeds and leaner bikes like the Gogoro scooter but there's still precious few of them available. The USA and Canada are a bit of a mess with different states and cities having different regs but the dominant limit for unregulated bicycles is 750w-25mph. Like everyone I'd like a bit more than 250w-25kph but I think this is too much without licenses and insurance. It's not a bicycle any more. Its a moped. Now if you don't like bicycles using the same roads as your car, please go away. They're legal and there are more and more of them. So deal with it. — Fully-Charged-Electric-Bikes | Fully Charged
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeThat about wraps it up for +1.5C.  Now, let me tell you about +3C. It's inevitable. — Leading climate scientists have warned that the Earth is perilously close to breaking through a #1.5C upper limit for global warming, only eight months after the target was set.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Change+Per Siden It's a common criticism of renewables by the nuclear industry that their intermittency requires backup and that is typically gas powered peaking plants. What I've been unable to find is to what extent nuclear needs gas backup for 2 reasons. 1) Peaking and load following and 2) backup for when the large capacity is offline for planned or unplanned maintenance. FWIW, I think it's both/and, not either/or. Nuclear has a place in a low carbon electricity supply system and so does wind/solar renewables, hydro and so on. The challenge is making that system work with a business/regulatory/political environment, better grids, demand management and so on. An awful lot of the integration problems now are because we're still trying to use systems designed around coal+nuclear for a much more complex mix of supplies. — Some back readiness to expand nuclear power, if only as last resort in warming planet. Pros and cons of nuclear energy in context of climate change. In 2015 a small dust-up played out between Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes, and scientists, James Hansen, Kerry Emmanuel, Ken Caldeira, and Tom Wigley, who argued that in the wake of the Paris climate accords, nuclear energy – particularly next-generation “closed fuel cycle” systems that reprocess spent fuel – show real promise for addressing the intermittency challenge of renewable sources of energy. Oreskes argued that an expansion of nuclear power is unnecessary and would detract from a real commitment to “focusing on wind, water and solar, coupled with grid integration, energy efficiency, and demand management.” Paraphrasing a colleague, Oreskes wrote that “nuclear power is an extraordinarily elaborate and expensive way to boil water.” #NuclearPower
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+David Belliveau Tony Benn: “The older I get, the more I realise every single generation has to fight the same battles again and again and again – there’s no final victory, and there’s no final defeat.” — Today in the death of irony: Oliver North accuses Obama of deceit for sending money to Iran. Boy, it's a good thing he didn't send them weapons or anyth-- what? (Footnote to would-be commenters: if you just want to vent about how eeevil Obama is and you don't actually know why Oliver North saying such a thing is pretty rich, you probably don't actually want to comment on this thread. Trust me on this one.)
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Commented on post by Nishioka Yoshio in Climate ChangeHow much subsidy should Nuclear get for being relatively low carbon? See http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/08/04/3803499/nuclear-power-bail-out/ for a discussion about this. — New Yoker, and another citizens refuse Nuclear Energy from NY near area! If energy accident make, can't live in NY city! Tokyo become dangerous living zone, but Abe Government proceed Tokyo Olympics! Dangerous Olympics! Badman Nishioka/rainforest action group/Osaka
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawYet again, I'm reminded of the question: What would Hunter Thompson have done? — Today in the death of irony: Oliver North accuses Obama of deceit for sending money to Iran. Boy, it's a good thing he didn't send them weapons or anyth-- what? (Footnote to would-be commenters: if you just want to vent about how eeevil Obama is and you don't actually know why Oliver North saying such a thing is pretty rich, you probably don't actually want to comment on this thread. Trust me on this one.)
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Authoritarian RuleYes, of course "CVV". My bad. The xploits get more complicated. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/03/card_shimmers_wave_of_the_future/ Need to read the comments as well. — via +John Poteet https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JohnPoteet/posts/WF3YpvMSosD .
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingI've just watched the classic 2001 Monza race with Bayliss rubbing elbows with Edwards. 3rd was Yanagawa. 15 years later and there's Yanagawa on the podium at Suzuka. Respect. http://www.worldsbk.com/en/videos/2001/2001%20WorldSBK%20Monza%20Race1 — Suzuka 8Hr Race Results +Yamaha Racing showing how to displease +Honda Pro Racing yet again. To be honest, just like in 2015 they were unstoppable. If the rumours are true that Micky VDM has signed for Yamaha +WorldSBK for 2017 then I can see another Yamaha victory next year too. Pol Esparago will be with +KTM so they will need a fast rider. Johan Zarco is always an option. Anyway, a quick report from this morning's race via +MCN - Motorcyclenews.com : http://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/2016/july/endurance-yamaha-make-it-back-to-back-victories-at-suzuka/ _______________________________________________ +Suzuka Circuit #Suzuka #8Tai #Suzuka8Hours +Yamaha Racing +Kawasaki Motors +Yoshimura Racing +Team Suzuki Racing +Honda Pro Racing +GMT94officiel +Team Yart #7 Yamaha Austria racing Team +RACING TEAM Honda TSR 250 GP2 +Mistresa with HARC-pro +BMW +BMW Motorrad +KTM +Aprilia Official
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Commented on post by Electric Cars Guide in Electric Vehicles (UK)I guess there must have been a press release. — Gogoro's #ElectricScooter is on a mission to bring clean, #GreenTransportation to cities around the world
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Authoritarian RuleYes, all UK and EU cards are chip and pin. And increasingly they're all contactless as well. That's both Debit and Credit. And they all work in ATMs. The difference is in the back end account, not in the front end hardware or use. One other factor. All our cards have a CVS 3 digit number on the back that is not part of the electronic IDs or the card number. That must be provided in card not present transactions over the phone. and the merchant is not supposed to store it, though Amazon and others apparently do. — via +John Poteet https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JohnPoteet/posts/WF3YpvMSosD .
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)Under the seat are a pair of removable batteries. I think security should be built in on things like this, purely because they are so easily stolen. The problem is the scooter market is traditionally very price sensitive so it gets left out. — https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/03/with-10000-smartscooters-sold-gogogo-powers-up-a-rental-service-with-bosch-in-berlin/ It's quite hard to find real specs on this machine. But a small scooter equivalent of a 125cc for urban use with swapable batteries looks appealing. A key question is the range. It looks like 2* 1.3Kw batteries I don't really have a feel for what that would mean in distance at say 30mph. https://www.gogoro.com
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)Hmmm. 60 miles range at 25mph. This gets quite interesting for a city vehicle. The removable batteries mean people living in flats and with no off-street parking don't need to run a mains cable across the pavement. I think it really needs some integrated security. And perhaps a bit more luggage space although you can get a full face helmet under the seat. — https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/03/with-10000-smartscooters-sold-gogogo-powers-up-a-rental-service-with-bosch-in-berlin/ It's quite hard to find real specs on this machine. But a small scooter equivalent of a 125cc for urban use with swapable batteries looks appealing. A key question is the range. It looks like 2* 1.3Kw batteries I don't really have a feel for what that would mean in distance at say 30mph. https://www.gogoro.com
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingI'm all in favour of the national SBK championship rules being in line with WSB. But I think it's WSB that needs to dumb the rules down a bit. It's more important that it produces good entertainment with big fields of competitive teams than that the manufacturers push the tech boundaries. MotoAmerica really only has 4 competitive bikes from 2 manufacturers in SBK. It should be more like 14 for a grid of 24 with all the major manufacturers represented. They won't get there by making the tech rules more expensive. — SuperStock vs Superbike Very interesting write up by +MotoAmerica's Rick Matheny on how Moto Americas rules separate between the two classes. Living in the UK (& following the +Official BSB titles closely) I found this a great read. Thanks to +Matthew Miles (+Cycle World) for the link on Twitter. Cover Photo by Brian J Nelson Full Article here: http://www.motoamerica.com/how-does-motoamerica-superstock-1000-differ-from-superbike?src=SOC&dom=tw ___________________________________ +MotoAmerica #AMA +AMA Pro Racing +AMA Pro Road Racing +Cycle World +Yamaha Racing +YamahaMotorUSA +Graves Racing +Monster Energy +Yoshimura Research & Development of America, Inc. +Team Suzuki Racing +Suzuki +BMW +BMW Motorrad +DUCATI CORSE
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingWhat is it, "you can teach a fast rider to stop falling off, you can't teach a slow rider to be fast". The Lowes twins are impressive. I just wish they could learn to be a tiny bit more consistent. — Suzuka 8Hr Race Results +Yamaha Racing showing how to displease +Honda Pro Racing yet again. To be honest, just like in 2015 they were unstoppable. If the rumours are true that Micky VDM has signed for Yamaha +WorldSBK for 2017 then I can see another Yamaha victory next year too. Pol Esparago will be with +KTM so they will need a fast rider. Johan Zarco is always an option. Anyway, a quick report from this morning's race via +MCN - Motorcyclenews.com : http://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/2016/july/endurance-yamaha-make-it-back-to-back-victories-at-suzuka/ _______________________________________________ +Suzuka Circuit #Suzuka #8Tai #Suzuka8Hours +Yamaha Racing +Kawasaki Motors +Yoshimura Racing +Team Suzuki Racing +Honda Pro Racing +GMT94officiel +Team Yart #7 Yamaha Austria racing Team +RACING TEAM Honda TSR 250 GP2 +Mistresa with HARC-pro +BMW +BMW Motorrad +KTM +Aprilia Official
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Authoritarian Rule+Brian Holt Hawthorne I'm having trouble parsing that out. In Europe we just have chip&pin+contactless cards. They can all be used everywhere in ATMs or in card readers. Whether they're debit or credit cards is about the back end account their attached to. And generally the merchant cost is transparent although very occasionally cut price or large transactions pass on the credit card charge. I don't think I've had to sign for a card transaction for 15 years at least. — via +John Poteet https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JohnPoteet/posts/WF3YpvMSosD .
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Authoritarian RuleThe comment was a reference to this. http://qz.com/717876/the-chip-card-transition-in-the-us-has-been-a-disaster/ And that entire story and the associated comments smacks of "it's different in the USA". Europe rolled out Chip&Pin everywhere, ages ago and it just works. For both debit and credit cards. We're now rolling out contactless for small amounts which feels strange but also just works. The whole of the London transport system and overland railways in the commuter belt now works on contactless. You used to need a specific pre-paid "Oyster" card but now any old bank card works as well. And the biggest problem is making sure only one card gets touched in which means taking the card out of your wallet or having a separate wallet for the one card you use for contactless. And yes, Chip&Sign is f***ing ridiculous. — via +John Poteet https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JohnPoteet/posts/WF3YpvMSosD .
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedHere's the thing. All motorcycles eventually fall over. No exceptions. So isn't it about time the manufacturers designed them so they would survive a stationary or low speed (say <10mph) fall with zero damage? If they did that it would go a long way to make <50mph low sides result in minimal damage. Why should we have to add extra parts to do this for them? — Having had a discussion with member +Zone Television Media about crash protection, I thought this was notable. A crash at a UK meet last week saw this damage from a fairly low speed low side. Still the engine casing on the right wore through (writing off the bike!) The bodywork, fairing stays and clip on were also mashed. For crash protection I have my own ideas. I know many riders like crash posts and they can save damage in some instances - particularly at low speeds. The problem is I have seen too many bikes, (all on track but could easily happen on road too) slide then have the post dig in and flip the bike, ultimately destroying the bike. Crash frames, while useful in maneuvering drops, can casue huge damage to a bike's frame; It is, after all, a large rigid structure held on only at two places. This means the full force of any crash is directed into quite a small area. Potentially very damaging. No crash protection though can lead to damage such as this; a low speed spill and slide leading to a total write off by damaging 'just' an engine case. My preference is for engine case protectors - if a road centric bike my favourites are Woodcraft (https://goo.gl/6RqK5b) With replaceable skid pad pucks, that are also coloured if desired or required, (although I like the plain, hard anodized aluminium) backed up by super hard aluminium or plastic they offer a double protection. They are also internally bolted with O ring seals. This means should you crash you will not be stuck trying to drill out damaged mounting bolts - a tricky and potentially damaging action in itself. One of the USA's finest motorcycle parts. Alternatively, especially if you are track riding, GB Racing offer really good value case covers (http://goo.gl/S46tdY). These are much lighter and come with extra long bolts to make fitting a cinch. They are the only items homologated by the FIM for international racing - a good advertising point - and I can attest (sadly) that they really work well. The final item I fit are R&G bar end sliders (http://goo.gl/lrx7c4) These are strong enough with nylon slide puck. As easy to install as unscrewing a single screw, adding the slider and re-screwing. Dirt cheap they are a no brainer and these alone can save an huge amount of damage. Sometimes, mostly just on bikes that will go on track, I further add swing arms bobbins too. Both GB Racing and R&G make swinging arm bobbins that act as crash protection and paddock stand lifting points. A neat double purpose part. That said these are of less value on a road bike, for the most part, unless one routinely uses a paddock stand during washing or servicing. Personally, I use an Abba stand to work on bikes so only add these on track bikes. And, for my preference, that's it. That is the total crash protection I add. With these two or three items, the bike's engine is protected and the likely first point on contact has a sliding surface - and one that won't make matters worse in the event of a crash. Do you have a preference for protection? Or do you prefer to live dangerously and keep the bare looks of your bike?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingWas that a Kawasaki h2r entered in that first set of pics? All the ancillary stuff is fascinating and doesn't get enough coverage. Not just the "Kitty" girls but the club runs and demos round the circuit. — Japan, you so funny cool! http://planetjapanblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/8-hours-suzuka-2016-gallery-1.html
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaSo according to the NYT, trade agreements like TPP and TTIP are "Free Trade". In other news, "War is Peace". — Google support the TPP. The TPP is evil. Google are Evil. Opponents of multilateral trade agreements, convinced that they have unduly harmed American workers, have enjoyed a stunning success that may signal a long-term political and policy realignment in both parties.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingMore here. http://planetjapanblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/8-hours-suzuka-2016-gallery-2.html — Japan, you so funny cool! http://planetjapanblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/8-hours-suzuka-2016-gallery-1.html
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingMost amazing thing? Alex Lowes went fast and didn't fall off! — Suzuka 8Hr Race Results +Yamaha Racing showing how to displease +Honda Pro Racing yet again. To be honest, just like in 2015 they were unstoppable. If the rumours are true that Micky VDM has signed for Yamaha +WorldSBK for 2017 then I can see another Yamaha victory next year too. Pol Esparago will be with +KTM so they will need a fast rider. Johan Zarco is always an option. Anyway, a quick report from this morning's race via +MCN - Motorcyclenews.com : http://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/2016/july/endurance-yamaha-make-it-back-to-back-victories-at-suzuka/ _______________________________________________ +Suzuka Circuit #Suzuka #8Tai #Suzuka8Hours +Yamaha Racing +Kawasaki Motors +Yoshimura Racing +Team Suzuki Racing +Honda Pro Racing +GMT94officiel +Team Yart #7 Yamaha Austria racing Team +RACING TEAM Honda TSR 250 GP2 +Mistresa with HARC-pro +BMW +BMW Motorrad +KTM +Aprilia Official
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Authoritarian Rule+Brian Holt Hawthorne The difference in the USA is that it's different in the USA. And that argument can be used for pretty much anything from gun control, to why chip & pin doesn't work, to why mass transit is impossible, to why any particular problem is national, or by state, or by county. Frankly, I'm tired of it. And yes, as a Brit where we banned hand guns, I cant think of ANY legitimate reason why anyone should need a handgun. Same goes for semi and full auto rifles and shotguns. I can just about accept that SOME people who work on the land need hunting rifles and shotguns for vermin and game control. That shouldn't be hard to control, license and enforce. I find it a bit harder to accept shooting things for sport but the boundary between land management and sport gets a bit murky at times. And I do like Pheasant and Partridge. As for the Police in the UK, there are more and more fully armed officers in evidence in places like airports and major train stations or round specific government public buildings. And the simple rule is "do not talk to them". I don't really know what purpose they serve except as observers. All they seem to do is look at things while carrying a nasty piece of military hardware and with their finger on the trigger guard. If this turns into the usual gun thread, I'm outta here. — via +John Poteet https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JohnPoteet/posts/WF3YpvMSosD .
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Yonatan Zunger Seems like a good match then for excess solar PV power. I've been asking around for processes that can be fairly quickly turned up and down for demand matching to intermittent renewables. Instead of trying to store excess power in batteries (or other storage) use it for some useful process that's not time critical. — For decades, desalination was seen as a pipe dream: so costly in terms of energy that it could never be useful. Reverse-osmosis was hailed as a possible change, but the problem of "biofouling" -- basically, bacterial growth in the filters requiring constant chemical cleaning -- made it impractical. But a few years ago, this problem started to get cracked, and now Israel is doing something previously unthinkable: running a net surplus of water. To give you some context for this: In 1948, Israel was more than half parched, nearly-uninhabitable desert. The steady northward spread of the desert had been greatly accelerated by Ottoman deforestation, and the whole ecosystem verged on collapse. David Ben Gurion, the first president, made it his crusade to make the country green: "There will be bears in the Negev (desert)!," he would famously say. This meant everything from aggressive water conservation across the country, to research in water technologies, to a steady program of reclaiming the desert, with schoolchildren routinely going out in large groups to plant trees. Today, I can barely recognize the country of my childhood; as you go south of Jerusalem, miles and miles which I remember as barren deserts are now lush forests and farms. But this was almost lost in the past decade, as powerful droughts -- the same droughts which triggered the Arab Spring -- have ravaged the Middle East. The Kinneret (also known as the Sea of Galilee) saw its water level drop terrifyingly, year after year, close to the threshold where osmotic pressure would fill it with salt and destroy it as a freshwater lake. The Dead Sea was shrinking into a giant mud puddle, and we talked about it meeting the same fate as the Aral Sea, now just a memory. The rise of modern desalination has changed this calculus completely. Because it doesn't rely on boiling or similar processes, it's energy-cheap. It's maintainable, and while it requires capital outlays in the way that building any large plant does, it doesn't require astronomical or unusual ones. This makes it a technology ready for use across the world. There is one further potential benefit to this: Peace. Water is a crucial resource in the Middle East (and elsewhere!), far more scarce than oil. It's needed not just for humans, but most of all for crop irrigation, as droughts destroying farmland have been one of the biggest problems facing the region. The potential for desalination to change this creates a tremendous opportunity for cooperation -- and there are nascent signs that this is, indeed, happening. At an even higher level, relieving the political pressures created by lack of water, and thus lack of working farms, could have far more profound effects on the region as a whole. Even before the recent droughts, things like the steady desertification of Egypt's once-lush Nile Valley (a long-term consequence of the Aswan Dam and the stopping of the regular flooding of the Nile) were pushing people by the million into overcrowded cities unable to support them. Having farming work again doesn't just mean food, it also means work, and it means a systematic reduction in desperation. Desalination looks to be one of the most important technologies of the 21st century: it's hard to overstate how much it could reshape our world. Via +paul beard 
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingMakes you wonder if Brookes would be doing better in WSB if the team had stayed with Yamaha. He deserves a top ride in WSB but I fear he's not going to get it. — Suzuka 8Tai Top 10 trail results Very interesting session this morning. What we have learned is PJJ is the real deal, Brookes is still bloody quick (when on a full fat cream & 8 sugar factory machine), KYO is happy & the YSP Yamaha crew will be almost unstopple again in 2016. ________________________________ #Suzuka #8Tai #Top10Trail . +Honda Pro Racing +Kawasaki Motors +Yamaha Racing +Yoshimura Racing +Team Suzuki Racing +MORIWAKI IP, P.C. / 特許業務法人森脇特許事務所 +Team Yart #7 Yamaha Austria racing Team +Mistresa with HARC-pro
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingWill Lowes stay on the bike? Will Espargaro keep to the rules? Because if they have a clean race, they look unstoppable. — Suzuka 8Hr QP Results 2 sheets, 1st to 10th then 11th to 30th place. There are 68 teams on the grid for 2016 ! Impressive pace from the Factory +Yamaha Racing R1 YSP #21 crew with +MuSHASHi Harc Pro #634 +Honda Pro Racing in 2nd & Team Green Yanagawa #87 +Kawasaki Motors in 3rd. 1: +Yamaha Racing YSP R1 #21 2: +Honda Pro Racing MuSHASHi HARC Pro #634 3) +Kawasaki Motors Team Yanagawa #87 4) +Team Yart #7 Yamaha Austria racing Team #7 5) +Shell +Yoshimura Racing +Suzuki #12 6) +TSR Factory 遙控車冒險家 FCC #5 7) +Moriwaki 250 Junior Cup Riders TOHO Racing #104 8) +Suzuki #+Verity #Kagayama #17 9) +Suzuki +Moto Map Supply #32 10) +DogFightRacing #TeamJP +Yamaha Racing #83 ____________________________________________ #Suzuka #8Tai #Suzuka8Hour #Suzuka8Hr +Suzuka Circuit #8Tai2016
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Where does the energy come from to power the de-salination plant? And it is carbon neutral, right? — For decades, desalination was seen as a pipe dream: so costly in terms of energy that it could never be useful. Reverse-osmosis was hailed as a possible change, but the problem of "biofouling" -- basically, bacterial growth in the filters requiring constant chemical cleaning -- made it impractical. But a few years ago, this problem started to get cracked, and now Israel is doing something previously unthinkable: running a net surplus of water. To give you some context for this: In 1948, Israel was more than half parched, nearly-uninhabitable desert. The steady northward spread of the desert had been greatly accelerated by Ottoman deforestation, and the whole ecosystem verged on collapse. David Ben Gurion, the first president, made it his crusade to make the country green: "There will be bears in the Negev (desert)!," he would famously say. This meant everything from aggressive water conservation across the country, to research in water technologies, to a steady program of reclaiming the desert, with schoolchildren routinely going out in large groups to plant trees. Today, I can barely recognize the country of my childhood; as you go south of Jerusalem, miles and miles which I remember as barren deserts are now lush forests and farms. But this was almost lost in the past decade, as powerful droughts -- the same droughts which triggered the Arab Spring -- have ravaged the Middle East. The Kinneret (also known as the Sea of Galilee) saw its water level drop terrifyingly, year after year, close to the threshold where osmotic pressure would fill it with salt and destroy it as a freshwater lake. The Dead Sea was shrinking into a giant mud puddle, and we talked about it meeting the same fate as the Aral Sea, now just a memory. The rise of modern desalination has changed this calculus completely. Because it doesn't rely on boiling or similar processes, it's energy-cheap. It's maintainable, and while it requires capital outlays in the way that building any large plant does, it doesn't require astronomical or unusual ones. This makes it a technology ready for use across the world. There is one further potential benefit to this: Peace. Water is a crucial resource in the Middle East (and elsewhere!), far more scarce than oil. It's needed not just for humans, but most of all for crop irrigation, as droughts destroying farmland have been one of the biggest problems facing the region. The potential for desalination to change this creates a tremendous opportunity for cooperation -- and there are nascent signs that this is, indeed, happening. At an even higher level, relieving the political pressures created by lack of water, and thus lack of working farms, could have far more profound effects on the region as a whole. Even before the recent droughts, things like the steady desertification of Egypt's once-lush Nile Valley (a long-term consequence of the Aswan Dam and the stopping of the regular flooding of the Nile) were pushing people by the million into overcrowded cities unable to support them. Having farming work again doesn't just mean food, it also means work, and it means a systematic reduction in desperation. Desalination looks to be one of the most important technologies of the 21st century: it's hard to overstate how much it could reshape our world. Via +paul beard 
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green Technology+Clark Moore I've become convinced that the story "Solar PV is polluting during manufacture" is one of those lies spread by vested interests in other tech. Do please prove me wrong with citations. EROEI is a much abused measure that generates a lot of debate about exactly what should be included. It's nearly as bad as lifetime CO2 for disagreement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested#Low_carbon_power suggests a figure of ~6 for Solar PV vs ~10 for Nuclear. So broadly comparable to an order of magnitude. Except that is by just one measure or version of EROEI. Go and read other papers, especially by Nuclear energy proponents, and you get figures of <3 for solar PV and >75 for Nuclear. Or try this meta-analysis http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513003856 — Hinkley Point C It's going to be the most expensive power station in existence. It will power 7% of the country. It is going to have guaranteed pricing for 35 years to effectively subsidise the power plant. It has a lifespan of 60 years. Previous projects like it have gone billions over budget and taken years longer to complete than planned. When we finally do see Hinkley generating energy, it will force prices up and be so far into the future that it won't matter anymore. I really hope someone in Parliament wakes up and realises what an astonishing mistake this project is.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green Technology+Clark Moore Thorium is a 30 years out technology. +Daise Flowers Condescending, much? — Hinkley Point C It's going to be the most expensive power station in existence. It will power 7% of the country. It is going to have guaranteed pricing for 35 years to effectively subsidise the power plant. It has a lifespan of 60 years. Previous projects like it have gone billions over budget and taken years longer to complete than planned. When we finally do see Hinkley generating energy, it will force prices up and be so far into the future that it won't matter anymore. I really hope someone in Parliament wakes up and realises what an astonishing mistake this project is.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:It would have been Kubrick's 88th birthday. So let's revisit Dr Strangelove. http://thequietus.com/articles/20650-dr-strangelove-article "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb" — This is the Wartime Broadcasting Service. This country has been attacked with nuclear weapons. Communications have been severely disrupted, and the number of casualties and the extent of the damage are not yet known. Part of good nuclear preparedness for a country is thinking about how to tell the public that the world has come to an end. The BBC spent some time preparing for this in the early 1970's, and wrote out a full script -- to be read on-air by Peter Donaldson -- in case the worst should happen. If Nixon's speech prepared in case Apollo 11 failed is known as the "best speech never given," you might consider this to be the "speech we are happiest was never given." I don't really know what to tell you about this, except that it's hard to tell reality from +Scarfolk Council some days. If you go over to @NuclearAnthro on Twitter, he's sharing all sorts of other stuff of that sort, and you'll really get a sense of how insane the world can get. If this is all too depressing, you can read Nixon's planned speech here instead. It's sad, but very beautiful. (With one slight correction: IIRC, the burial service to have followed this was almost like the one for burial at sea, but it would "commend their bodies to the utmost deep") http://www.space.com/26604-apollo-11-failure-nixon-speech.html
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green Technologyhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/29/hinkley-point-bad-business-theresa-may-david-cameron In the lead photo, the whole site looks dangerously close to sea level. What's going to happen when sea level rises? — Hinkley Point C It's going to be the most expensive power station in existence. It will power 7% of the country. It is going to have guaranteed pricing for 35 years to effectively subsidise the power plant. It has a lifespan of 60 years. Previous projects like it have gone billions over budget and taken years longer to complete than planned. When we finally do see Hinkley generating energy, it will force prices up and be so far into the future that it won't matter anymore. I really hope someone in Parliament wakes up and realises what an astonishing mistake this project is.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyMolten salt storage is still experimental. It's also closely linked with CSP which is looking like a dead end given how fast Solar PV is dropping in price. Does battery tech scale sufficiently to handle grid scale storage? Yes it can help a little at the household level, but can it really help at an industrial level? Yes, Hinkley C is new. And yes, we could deploy solar/wind faster as an alternative. But it's not happening in isolation. We're losing capacity at the same time. Both/And, not Either/Or. The Nuclear waste problem is interesting. With short term storage to allow short life waste to decay, followed by re-processing of long term waste the problem is surprisingly tractable. And it's an area where the UK has a lot of experience and expertise that can be sold to the rest of the world. But that's just the fuel. The much bigger problem is power station de-commissioning and safe disposal of the active waste that results. Given we were leaders in early implementation, we should now be leaders in early de-commissioning. — Hinkley Point C It's going to be the most expensive power station in existence. It will power 7% of the country. It is going to have guaranteed pricing for 35 years to effectively subsidise the power plant. It has a lifespan of 60 years. Previous projects like it have gone billions over budget and taken years longer to complete than planned. When we finally do see Hinkley generating energy, it will force prices up and be so far into the future that it won't matter anymore. I really hope someone in Parliament wakes up and realises what an astonishing mistake this project is.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green Technology+Colin Fox I'm not completely convinced that wind+solar+hydro+ a big grid and interconnects can provide 100% of the energy needs without some base load and some peaking gas plants. It's really hard to find unbiased analyses of this that don't have some axe to grind. And some realistic analysis of how much spare capacity and demand management is needed across the grid to make it work. I think we do need at least some base load to keep the lights running. And it probably shouldn't be biomass. The problem is this is a balancing act while we make the transition to 100% renewable just at the same time as we close large amounts of capacity from the old obsolete coal and nuclear stations. One possible way of dealing with this is to over supply considerably, and use the excess for processes that can be spun up/down quickly. Perhaps vehicle charging or ammonia production for fertiliser, or synfuel production. Also both wind and solar have the advantage that they can be turned down quickly. That can balance they're disadvantage of being somewhat intermittent. However all of that means changing the financing approaches somewhat. Wave, Tidal, Geothermal is still experimental. They're not going to help in the next 10-30 years. We need answers now. — Hinkley Point C It's going to be the most expensive power station in existence. It will power 7% of the country. It is going to have guaranteed pricing for 35 years to effectively subsidise the power plant. It has a lifespan of 60 years. Previous projects like it have gone billions over budget and taken years longer to complete than planned. When we finally do see Hinkley generating energy, it will force prices up and be so far into the future that it won't matter anymore. I really hope someone in Parliament wakes up and realises what an astonishing mistake this project is.
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Commented on post by Sisco Vanilla in Mixology 🍸For something so simple, Gimlets are surprisingly hard to get right. Undiluted by the ice, it can be really bitter and unpleasant. Too much dilution and it might as well be a lime cordial with a bit of vodka in it. Somewhere in the middle is a delicious, first evening drink to get you set up in 3 gulps. — The paragraph from the Long Goodbye that inspires tonight's upcoming drink honoring the birthday of Raymond Chandler #TheLongGoodbye #Gimlets #Gimlet #RosesLimeJuice #Gin #PhilipMarlowe #TerryLennox #Literature #DetectiveNovel #LiteraryHistory #Cocktail #Cocktails #Coctel #Cocteles #Cocteleria #SiscoVanilla 
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyWe probably do need some nuclear power to replace the old coal and nuclear stations being de-commissioned and closed. It could even be at Hinkley on the same site. But the Hinkley EPR is absolutely not the design to go with. There are cheaper, simpler, proven designs that would be quicker to build that make far more sense. It's really a mystery why EDF and the French, UK and China govs keep pushing down this current path. And yes, of course we should be building on and off shore wind and solar and the grid interconnections to go with them as well. And subsiding them at least as much as the nuclear and fossil fuel industries. It's not either/or, it's both/and. Again, it's a complete mystery why the UK Tory gov wants to cut subsidies to renewables while simultaneously increasing them elsewhere and making onshore wind planning harder. — Hinkley Point C It's going to be the most expensive power station in existence. It will power 7% of the country. It is going to have guaranteed pricing for 35 years to effectively subsidise the power plant. It has a lifespan of 60 years. Previous projects like it have gone billions over budget and taken years longer to complete than planned. When we finally do see Hinkley generating energy, it will force prices up and be so far into the future that it won't matter anymore. I really hope someone in Parliament wakes up and realises what an astonishing mistake this project is.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Since the TFA is in the BBC and hence UK, - The leader of the opposition (today), Corbyn, is a long time Anti-Nuke, unilateral disarmament CND member. - UK Gov just voted overwhelmingly to spend ridiculous amounts of money on Trident. Post-Brexit, in a falling economy and in the middle of austerity cuts to essential services. - I recently paid a visit to the Secret Nuclear Bunker in Essex, where till the 80s, it was planned that the gov and PM would hide post the zombie apocalypse. Highly recommended, it's like 1950s Half Life. Complete with hidden loudspeakers going "Skkkrrsshh, MEDIC!" http://www.secretnuclearbunker.com/ - Last month I climbed into a Royal Observer Corps (ROC) bunker. There's a 1000 of these 2 man pods buried in the ground and spread evenly across the country. The plan was for two people to hide down there and report back to central control on local conditions. They would have been dead in a week, just like the rest of us. http://www.subbrit.org.uk/category/nuclear-monitoring-posts/ Here's some photos. https://goo.gl/photos/2fj1avcgqZJjUx5eA - Here's a review of the soundtrack, http://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/the-quietened-bunker.html The Quietened Bunker is an exploration of the abandoned and/or decomissioned Cold War installations which lie under the land and that would have acted as selectively populated refuges/control centres if the button was ever pushed; a study and reflection on these chimeric bulwarks and the faded but still present memory of associated Cold War dread, of which they are stalwart but mouldering symbols. http://ayearinthecountry.co.uk/week-3052-quietened-bunker-archives-1-lovely-day-average-des-res/ The cognitive dissonance burns! I kind of understand how the armed forces and civil defence services had to try and come up with survival plans. And there was a budget and department to build and create all this. But they must have known it was pointless and were just going through the motions. And it's 2016 and we should have been marching and shouting about Trident and CND, like we did back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. But we're a bit burnt out on marches because we've had a million on the streets of Britain ignored one too many times. WAR IS OVER! (except it obviously isn't). — This is the Wartime Broadcasting Service. This country has been attacked with nuclear weapons. Communications have been severely disrupted, and the number of casualties and the extent of the damage are not yet known. Part of good nuclear preparedness for a country is thinking about how to tell the public that the world has come to an end. The BBC spent some time preparing for this in the early 1970's, and wrote out a full script -- to be read on-air by Peter Donaldson -- in case the worst should happen. If Nixon's speech prepared in case Apollo 11 failed is known as the "best speech never given," you might consider this to be the "speech we are happiest was never given." I don't really know what to tell you about this, except that it's hard to tell reality from +Scarfolk Council some days. If you go over to @NuclearAnthro on Twitter, he's sharing all sorts of other stuff of that sort, and you'll really get a sense of how insane the world can get. If this is all too depressing, you can read Nixon's planned speech here instead. It's sad, but very beautiful. (With one slight correction: IIRC, the burial service to have followed this was almost like the one for burial at sea, but it would "commend their bodies to the utmost deep") http://www.space.com/26604-apollo-11-failure-nixon-speech.html
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+Matt Schofield In a way I think we're agreeing. If the message is wrong, and the media coverage is missing, then no matter how much effort you put into campaigning at local meetings across the country, it doesn't help. Especially, if it doesn't get reported. And on truth vs lies, he told the truth about migrants and austerity. Unfortunately, the lies carried more weight. And yes, the failure to come up with positive solutions people could get behind was a failing of the entire Remain campaign. Not just Corbyn. The Leave campaign successfully backed them all into a corner where all they could do was campaign negatively. It was fear of failure that failed as a strategy because it didn't offer any balancing anticipation of success. And this is still my criticism of Corbyn. He doesn't appear to have solutions. Whether that's really true or not, that's the way he is allowing the media to portray him. Even if they exist, his solutions might as well not exist, because we never hear about them. That may be a media conspiracy but it's one he's failing to deal with. — Ferrett has a nice way of saying things rather bluntly. Yeah, I'm pretty much with him on all of this.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawIt's becoming obvious during the Labour leadership election that the mass media consistently portrays Corbyn as weak, lackadaisical, principled rather than realistic. When the opposite is frequently the case. If there's a criticism it's that he's lost the ability to control the media cycle. Ironic then that he campaigned relentlessly for Remain, and Labour voters voted for remain by a large majority. While it was Cameron who failed to campaign for Remain, and Tory voters who voted overwhelmingly for Leave. And yet the prevailing story that you're repeating is that Corbyn did nothing and it's his fault. I'm not excusing Corbyn here, because I think he is bad at 21st century politics in that he's failing to get his message across. A strategy of just quietly repeating the truth until you wear them down no longer works in the face of an opposition that shouts untruths until they take hold and we take them as given. — Ferrett has a nice way of saying things rather bluntly. Yeah, I'm pretty much with him on all of this.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond+Zaid El-Hoiydi This is marketing. — Avaaz is raising money for the refugee team at the Rio Olympics. "These refugees have no home, no team, no flag, no national anthem," IOC president Thomas Bach said. I immediately thought of James Bridle and his "Flag For No Nations" essay. Can we get them to walk in the opening ceremony behind a space blanket as well as the Olympic flag? https://secure.avaaz.org/en/rallying_for_refugees_42/ A Flag for No Nations. http://booktwo.org/notebook/a-flag-for-no-nations/ Refugee team to make history at Rio Olympics (CNN) http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/03/sport/rio-olympics-refugee-team/ After she swam for her life, Syrian refugee now Olympic hopeful (Huffington Post) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syrian-refugee-looks-to-compete-at-olympics-months-after-swimming-to-flee-danger_us_56f3f9dfe4b0c3ef521815b7 The refugee team https://www.facebook.com/RefugeeOlympicTeam/
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Commented on post by Julian Bondhttp://booktwo.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/24459469265_ac2dfff3a5_k.jpg — Avaaz is raising money for the refugee team at the Rio Olympics. "These refugees have no home, no team, no flag, no national anthem," IOC president Thomas Bach said. I immediately thought of James Bridle and his "Flag For No Nations" essay. Can we get them to walk in the opening ceremony behind a space blanket as well as the Olympic flag? https://secure.avaaz.org/en/rallying_for_refugees_42/ A Flag for No Nations. http://booktwo.org/notebook/a-flag-for-no-nations/ Refugee team to make history at Rio Olympics (CNN) http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/03/sport/rio-olympics-refugee-team/ After she swam for her life, Syrian refugee now Olympic hopeful (Huffington Post) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/syrian-refugee-looks-to-compete-at-olympics-months-after-swimming-to-flee-danger_us_56f3f9dfe4b0c3ef521815b7 The refugee team https://www.facebook.com/RefugeeOlympicTeam/
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Commented on post by Planet Experts in Climate Changeplonk Mass transport is possible without city level densities of housing and people. So are economies of scale. Cities are very much what got us to where we are. So much so that they are embedded in the word "civilisation". While the article raises a valid point, it offers no solutions. However, the question is important. We've got (finger in the air) 50% (and rising) of the world's population living in cities. that's ~3.7b people or ~6b by 2050. How can cities and their support structures be made sustainable on that scale? I suspect the answer like all the others in this vein is "they can't". Bonus link: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/18/long-wait-hanoi-metro-vietnam-motorbike Hanoi is transforming itself from a city of motorbikes to a city of cars with still no metro. — Unsustainable Cities Are Burdening Our Planet - Planet Experts
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party Politics+John Williams Something from WWE perhaps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMKFIHRpe7I Tag-Team-Partners — I wonder if I've got any anti-immigration nitwits following me like Kee does. Let's find out, shall we?
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Commented on post by Dawn Shepard in Climate ChangeThat was 2013. 3 years later, is the current understanding worse or better? — Seven facts you need to know about the Arctic methane timebomb - "Dismissals of catastrophic methane danger ignore robust science in favour of outdated mythology of climate safety" - "What I discovered was that Skeptical Science's unusually skewered analysis was extremely selective, and focused almost exclusively on the narrow arguments of scientists out of touch with cutting edge developments in the Arctic"
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electronic ExplorationsAnd it was gert lush — Farr festival, UK, 14-16 July, Baldock, just north of London, UK. Last year was fun.  https://www.facebook.com/farrfestival/videos/vb.121067977966869/1100774919996165/?type=2&theater http://www.farrfestival.co.uk/ 10 quid off the current price, if you use this https://tickets.farrfestival.co.uk/rep/jbond-farr-2016 [If you're not in the UK, file this under spam! ;) ]
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynAnd then. TTIP is evil. Google supports TTIP. Which makes Google, ... https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2016/06/the-trans-pacific-partnership-step.html But what really disappoints me is that G+ is 5 years old but still feels like a late beta in so many ways. lots of it is really good but key function (that was even in Buzz) is still missing. And the reboot (Super, New, Beta!) is still missing function in Classic +. Come on guys. Stop trying to meet the management targets for the weekly team meeting and WRITE THE DAMN CODE! Vic Gundrota. Then Dave Besbris. Then some guy who's delegated that public visibility thing. What's his name? — Sad about G+ I'm very sad about G+. For a while it looked like it was genuinely different, genuinely successful and it's so easy to use and understand. Now I have to accept it's shrinking, it's used less and no one really talks about it. I still scroll through posts every now and then but nothing like as much as I once did. I still follow interesting people and they still post interesting things, but not as much as they did. I still link to every episode of Fully Charged on here but the number of +1's and comments is steadily going down. The number of people who follow me on here has stalled for some time and I've just checked now and it's actually gone down. It's sad, it was a brave attempt by google, it works beautifully and I'll keep using it, but it's not what I'd once hope it would be. And wretched Facebook is supremely successful, I post Fully Charged on Facebook and it gets 10's of thousands of hits every week. I say hits, who knows if any of the thousands of view are actually views or simply someone with their facebook page open. That system is really hard to understand
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Commented on post by Andreas SchouIt's not given to everyone to find Candy Mountain. — Okay, what?
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeI've been struggling to find a good explanation of the difference between Dew Point and Wet Bulb temperature. That's important because it looks like Bandar hit Black Flag weather of > 35C wet bulb. This is the point where humans can't regulate their temperature and it's impossible to live outside because you can't shed body heat. Basra had higher air temperatures but very low humidity. It seems to be normal now that each year the coastal and close inland areas of the Gulf hit Black Flag conditions a few times each summer. Black Flag Weather = 95degF/35degC and 95% humidity = 35degC WBGT 46degC + 50% humidity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Wet-bulb_temperature_and_health http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/10/not-a-manifesto.html#comment-1960041
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and Politics+Andres Soolo Or holed up in the Ecuador embassy.
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Commented on post by Google ChromeCast in ChromecastWhat release did this appear in? Because I'm up to date with 51.0.2704.106 m and don't have the built in Cast. Do you have to uninstall or de-activate the cast extension for the built in cast to appear? — Google Chrome for web has got another amazing feature in its menu. Google has added Cast button in the Chrome for Web Menu
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsI'm just watching the UK news as it jumps from Kerry ripping into Johnson in London to Melania and Trump supporters from the RNC floor. And amid mild hysterics, I'd like to offer a deal. I'll apologise for our politics if you apologise for yours! Good grief, what are they all thinking?
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedNo joke. I'm just reading the figures off. Open the image in a new tab, zoom in. There's a couple of digits I might have got wrong, but it's close. — Closer pic of the unusual undefined lever under the right clip on, as per earlier post.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsThe best bit was the RickRoll at the end. He will never give up. And most importantly, he will never let you down.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modified829.1.643.1A 06.02.16 I think. — Closer pic of the unusual undefined lever under the right clip on, as per earlier post.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedBetter pic here. http://www.ducati.com/media_gallery/desmosedici_gp/index.do?type=racing#MGI1383997 It could be a two position kill switch. Or also something to cycle through displays on the instrument panel. — Closer pic of the unusual undefined lever under the right clip on, as per earlier post.
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Commented on post by All In One in Motorcycles - ModifiedSlightly weird exhaust. Maybe it's got a turbo.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedIs that a black push button at the top of the clamp? Remember that thing about Yamaha using artery clamps to hold the front brake on, and then somebody forgetting to remove them. I wonder if there's some kind of parking brake when starting the engine. I suspect the answer is much simpler and It's just a kill switch. For an added bonus what are the functions of the 5 coloured buttons on the left? — Closer pic of the unusual undefined lever under the right clip on, as per earlier post.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedHave they finally stopped using an early 90s Fireblade/cbr400 kill switch? Shame! Ooops & Doh! It's a Ducati, not a Honda. — Closer pic of the unusual undefined lever under the right clip on, as per earlier post.
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Commented on post by Dawn Shepard in Climate Changehttp://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#table-forecast On current UN figures, 9.7b in 2050. Linear growth since 1965. 80m added pa. 12-14 years per added billion. When does the next demographic transition kick in and linear growth starts to slow down? Because it's not happening yet. — Hot, crowded, and running out of fuel: Earth of 2050 a scary place - 9.2 billion people by 2050, requiring 80% more energy... - "locking in" of global warming, with a rise of as much as 6° C (about 10.8° F) predicted by the end of the century.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsReal Models™ are getting amazingly good these days. But the problem with the commercial grade knock-offs from the eastern bloc is that you have to think in Russian to make sure all their needs are filled and they stay under control. ps. Getting a mental image of Scanners, and the Mars customs scene in Total Recall happening at the RNC! But that's just fiction, right?
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Commented on post by Aron Knifström in Climate ChangeThere's a small question of scale here. Medical emissions of N2O are several orders of magnitude smaller than agricultural emissions. It's just not a climate change problem. However, the over use of Nitrogen fertilisers definitely is from production to use to the side effects of run off. But don't get me started on the litter problem and non-recycled waste from cream whipper canisters. — Sometimes emissions are hidden were you don't think about them like this is one in maternity care. To reduce this is a measure that I work for where I live. Badly translated to english from Swedish below. How is it in your area? Are you using nitrous oxide in maternity care? Are you destroying it or releasing it to the air? "Dalarna County Council has not yet installed nitrous oxide destruction in maternity care. This should be fixed as soon as possible as this is a large portion of the emissions within the County Council and this gas affects the climate very strongly as it's both durable and has a very strong greenhouse effect. Nitrous oxide also damages the ozone layer, so this measure is also a step towards the Swedish national environmental objective: "protective ozone layer". Several measures of this type was financed in the first round of the "Klimatklivet" which is a clear signal that the technology is now mature, and that it is a very profitable climate action as the most profitable measures were prioritized in "Klimatklivet". Funding from the "Klimatklivet" can still be sought to cover part of the costs. The Green Party is actively working in the County Council to reach a concrete solution to this issue that is so important to reduce health care climate emissions." In Swedish: http://www.dt.se/opinion/insandare/forlossningsvardens-klimatpaverkan
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party PoliticsIt's the only way to be sure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q — Gee, sounds kind of like that Democratic convention in Nevada.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and Politics+Andres Soolo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky-uzsw0kqw "Must Think In Russian!"
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPAs ever, https://motomatters.com/analysis/2016/07/18/2016_sachseningring_sunday_round_up_of.html for the full SP and explanation. — Best strategic WIN of his career!!!!! That Was Incredible!!!! Yeah I had to watch it late.....lol
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Analysis and News About Google+Francisco Nogueira I've given up. G+ and Location seems abandoned. — Google - Share Your Location with People You Choose Um, have I just not been paying attention? When did this happen?
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawI'd be pessimistic if I thought it would help. Still, mustn't grumble. I'll just go back to my quiet desperation and hope the NHS is still there when I need it and they haven't increased the pension age and NI contribution rules again. I'll get my coat. — This Prime Minister is no more; as of Wednesday afternoon, David Cameron will be formally resigning and moving out of 10 Downing Street. While we applaud the bravery of Theresa May in stepping into the mess Cameron and his friends left behind, and look forward to real answers to the question of "Just how can this situation get worse?," we can enjoy a musical delight which Cameron has left for us. What is this? At the end of his resignation announcement yesterday, Cameron walked off, and with his mic still hot, hummed a little tune, ending it with "Right. Good." It was a very British sort of ending, and it was even better fodder for the Internet -- and its tribe of talented composers. Would you like to hear Cameron's little ditty transformed into a waltz? A sad sort of serenade? Acid house? The Internet has all of these for you, and more: not least, Chris Hollis' revelation that the tune is an awfully good intro for something that sounds like John Williams' Imperial March. While we did not get to see David Cameron actually breathing heavily through a mask, I still hold to the hope that tonight, in his last night of privacy at 10 Downing, he will be listening to this and pretending to swing a lightsaber around. Via +Kimberly Chapman.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawLooks like May's first appointments consist of giving the Brexiteers plenty of rope. David Davis in charge of Brexit. Who doesn't appear to know how the EU negotiates despite being Minister for Europe in the past. https://twitter.com/StevePeers/status/753315030884548608 He doesn't actually have a building for the dept yet, but I'm sure a corner cupboard can be found somewhere. Boris Johnson as Foreign Sec. But with the hard work moved elsewhere, the post is all showbiz. Any foot-in-mouth moments (Brexit lies, 1000 year Reich, ) can be dismissed for a while as "that's just BoJo, haha!". Liam Fox to Trade Sec. Multiple failures and allegations of sleaze. I can see no flaws in this plan. — This Prime Minister is no more; as of Wednesday afternoon, David Cameron will be formally resigning and moving out of 10 Downing Street. While we applaud the bravery of Theresa May in stepping into the mess Cameron and his friends left behind, and look forward to real answers to the question of "Just how can this situation get worse?," we can enjoy a musical delight which Cameron has left for us. What is this? At the end of his resignation announcement yesterday, Cameron walked off, and with his mic still hot, hummed a little tune, ending it with "Right. Good." It was a very British sort of ending, and it was even better fodder for the Internet -- and its tribe of talented composers. Would you like to hear Cameron's little ditty transformed into a waltz? A sad sort of serenade? Acid house? The Internet has all of these for you, and more: not least, Chris Hollis' revelation that the tune is an awfully good intro for something that sounds like John Williams' Imperial March. While we did not get to see David Cameron actually breathing heavily through a mask, I still hold to the hope that tonight, in his last night of privacy at 10 Downing, he will be listening to this and pretending to swing a lightsaber around. Via +Kimberly Chapman.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+Cye Lannford That'll be the same Winston Churchill who was a key player in the Hague Congress which set the ground rules for what became the common market and then the EU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union#Preliminary_.281945.E2.80.9357.29 History. We haz some. ps. I blame De Gaulle. — This Prime Minister is no more; as of Wednesday afternoon, David Cameron will be formally resigning and moving out of 10 Downing Street. While we applaud the bravery of Theresa May in stepping into the mess Cameron and his friends left behind, and look forward to real answers to the question of "Just how can this situation get worse?," we can enjoy a musical delight which Cameron has left for us. What is this? At the end of his resignation announcement yesterday, Cameron walked off, and with his mic still hot, hummed a little tune, ending it with "Right. Good." It was a very British sort of ending, and it was even better fodder for the Internet -- and its tribe of talented composers. Would you like to hear Cameron's little ditty transformed into a waltz? A sad sort of serenade? Acid house? The Internet has all of these for you, and more: not least, Chris Hollis' revelation that the tune is an awfully good intro for something that sounds like John Williams' Imperial March. While we did not get to see David Cameron actually breathing heavily through a mask, I still hold to the hope that tonight, in his last night of privacy at 10 Downing, he will be listening to this and pretending to swing a lightsaber around. Via +Kimberly Chapman.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawAnd round and round we go. Continuing to argue the merits of Remain vs Leave is pretty pointless now[1]. The argument ought now to be centered around the mechanics of how and when we leave.[2] Unfortunately, just hitting the Art50 button immediately out of spite and with no plan is one of the more destructive things we could do. I sincerely hope that the government of the day and the civil service behaves sensibly and treats the withdrawal process with the seriousness it deserves. Given that the process is hugely complex it's not going to be quick. And if we've actually left by 7-May-2020 I shall be amazed. There's some argument over whether a debate in Parliament is actually required prior to invoking Art50. But I would hope that the plan is debated and voted on just as the bi-yearly budgets would be. And they are linked because it's going to become pretty much impossible to define a budget without the detail of how Brexit is achieved. [1] I find the Godwin politics from the Leave camp amazing. Given that a good part of the reason the EU exists is exactly BECAUSE so many people died in the two 20th century world wars. The EU was formed in part to prevent that ever happening again and so far it has succeeded in that. [2] Except of course that it seems highly likely that a 2nd referendum now would produce the opposite result. That's not to say that there should be a 2nd referendum but that the untested wishes of the >50% needs to be taken into account if we're to avoid unpleasantness. — This Prime Minister is no more; as of Wednesday afternoon, David Cameron will be formally resigning and moving out of 10 Downing Street. While we applaud the bravery of Theresa May in stepping into the mess Cameron and his friends left behind, and look forward to real answers to the question of "Just how can this situation get worse?," we can enjoy a musical delight which Cameron has left for us. What is this? At the end of his resignation announcement yesterday, Cameron walked off, and with his mic still hot, hummed a little tune, ending it with "Right. Good." It was a very British sort of ending, and it was even better fodder for the Internet -- and its tribe of talented composers. Would you like to hear Cameron's little ditty transformed into a waltz? A sad sort of serenade? Acid house? The Internet has all of these for you, and more: not least, Chris Hollis' revelation that the tune is an awfully good intro for something that sounds like John Williams' Imperial March. While we did not get to see David Cameron actually breathing heavily through a mask, I still hold to the hope that tonight, in his last night of privacy at 10 Downing, he will be listening to this and pretending to swing a lightsaber around. Via +Kimberly Chapman.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawCameron's greatest mistake. He fed the troll. — This Prime Minister is no more; as of Wednesday afternoon, David Cameron will be formally resigning and moving out of 10 Downing Street. While we applaud the bravery of Theresa May in stepping into the mess Cameron and his friends left behind, and look forward to real answers to the question of "Just how can this situation get worse?," we can enjoy a musical delight which Cameron has left for us. What is this? At the end of his resignation announcement yesterday, Cameron walked off, and with his mic still hot, hummed a little tune, ending it with "Right. Good." It was a very British sort of ending, and it was even better fodder for the Internet -- and its tribe of talented composers. Would you like to hear Cameron's little ditty transformed into a waltz? A sad sort of serenade? Acid house? The Internet has all of these for you, and more: not least, Chris Hollis' revelation that the tune is an awfully good intro for something that sounds like John Williams' Imperial March. While we did not get to see David Cameron actually breathing heavily through a mask, I still hold to the hope that tonight, in his last night of privacy at 10 Downing, he will be listening to this and pretending to swing a lightsaber around. Via +Kimberly Chapman.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+Per Siden Perhaps the UK electorate will get a harsh lesson in representative democracy and Art50 will be delayed indefinitely. We're a deeply divided country now. The 52% won. But the 48% are still here. That also has to be resolved. There's an emotional element to this as well as the process issues of disentangling ourselves from the EU. http://hasarticle50beeninvoked.uk/ — This Prime Minister is no more; as of Wednesday afternoon, David Cameron will be formally resigning and moving out of 10 Downing Street. While we applaud the bravery of Theresa May in stepping into the mess Cameron and his friends left behind, and look forward to real answers to the question of "Just how can this situation get worse?," we can enjoy a musical delight which Cameron has left for us. What is this? At the end of his resignation announcement yesterday, Cameron walked off, and with his mic still hot, hummed a little tune, ending it with "Right. Good." It was a very British sort of ending, and it was even better fodder for the Internet -- and its tribe of talented composers. Would you like to hear Cameron's little ditty transformed into a waltz? A sad sort of serenade? Acid house? The Internet has all of these for you, and more: not least, Chris Hollis' revelation that the tune is an awfully good intro for something that sounds like John Williams' Imperial March. While we did not get to see David Cameron actually breathing heavily through a mask, I still hold to the hope that tonight, in his last night of privacy at 10 Downing, he will be listening to this and pretending to swing a lightsaber around. Via +Kimberly Chapman.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawCameron, the phased out remix, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS0mwRFuLZw — This Prime Minister is no more; as of Wednesday afternoon, David Cameron will be formally resigning and moving out of 10 Downing Street. While we applaud the bravery of Theresa May in stepping into the mess Cameron and his friends left behind, and look forward to real answers to the question of "Just how can this situation get worse?," we can enjoy a musical delight which Cameron has left for us. What is this? At the end of his resignation announcement yesterday, Cameron walked off, and with his mic still hot, hummed a little tune, ending it with "Right. Good." It was a very British sort of ending, and it was even better fodder for the Internet -- and its tribe of talented composers. Would you like to hear Cameron's little ditty transformed into a waltz? A sad sort of serenade? Acid house? The Internet has all of these for you, and more: not least, Chris Hollis' revelation that the tune is an awfully good intro for something that sounds like John Williams' Imperial March. While we did not get to see David Cameron actually breathing heavily through a mask, I still hold to the hope that tonight, in his last night of privacy at 10 Downing, he will be listening to this and pretending to swing a lightsaber around. Via +Kimberly Chapman.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Brains, Minds and SoulsPeter Watts? http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=5875 — Octo Brains So cool. I love hearing about alternative organizational structures for intelligence, especially when they're found right here on Earth. An octopus’ arms are kind of amazing, Grasso says. “Each octopus arm has roughly 3,000 suckers apiece,” Grasso explains. “Each one of those has on the order of 10,000 sensory neurons. Their suckers can discriminate not only textures, but shapes. Their suckers are chemical sensors; they provide a sense of taste.” There is a lot of “intelligence” in an octopus arm, Grasso says. In fact, the arms make up about three-fifths of an octopus brain — insofar as this rather unique organ can be defined as a brain, as we typically understand it. “We talk about the central nervous system of these animals because there's a distinction between the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system,” Grasso explains. “To call it the brain is technically incorrect, but in terms of the computational function of the nerve cords that run through the arms, they really are acting like eight brains that are wired together to the central brain, which is the one that we would consider the cerebral ganglia.” Also: cephalopods may end up being winners as the oceans warm and are depleted of fish: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/23/octopuses-squid-cuttlefish-warming-oceans-climate-change Oh, and has anyone here yet read Soul Of An Octopus, by Sy Montgomery? Sounds really interesting, though I've not read it (yet). #octopus  
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Commented on post by Julian BondYou think they can force a 2/3 majority when they have 330 of 650? That's quite a long way from the 434 needed when Labour isn't ready. Would Labour/SNP vote for an early election? Neither of them stand to gain much. — You'll hear a lot of talk about calls for a UK General Election because Theresa May wasn't democratically elected. Quite apart from misunderstanding representative democracy there's a small problem that hardly gets mentioned. It took Nick Clegg last night to recognise it in public, but even he glossed over the problems. He was the architect of the Fixed term act of 2011. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-term_Parliaments_Act_2011 which was a sop to the LibDems to get them on board for the coalition. This act requires 5 year fixed terms but Clegg claimed on TV that there are methods built in whereby elections can be called early. Well, in order for a general election to be held before the term is up, one of three things has to happen. 1) The act is repealed 2) There is a vote of no confidence in the government, without a second vote of confidence in the government in 14 days. Both by a simple majority in the House of Commons. 3) There is a vote for an early election passed by 2/3 of the MPs There is precedent in Europe for option 2) to be deliberately pushed by an incumbent coalition but it's very unusual. Try and imagine a Tory government with a majority calling for no confidence in itself with a 3 line whip to make it happen! Not going to happen. Try and imagine a coalition of SNP, Labour and Tory renegades getting a vote of no confidence passed against a Tory 3 line whip. Again, not going to happen. So unless something really, really bad happens or for some reason Theresa May resigns, it looks like we're stuck with her and the Tories till 7-May-2020. And she'll be watching you. http://www.thecanary.co/2016/07/11/theresa-may-becomes-new-pm-need-share-sht-video/ https://youtu.be/D2fSXp6N-vs ps. http://hasarticle50beeninvoked.uk/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaG+ has been running five years and it's still barely half-baked Say it again.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedWhat you're describing is BSB, I think. There, the Kawasakis are competitive rather than dominant. — Ducati's first WSBK contender from the second year of the World Superbike championship, 1989. According to the rules, the Ducati Factory should not have been contending the championship. This was distinct from the FIM's other championship (500cc) Grand Prix racing in being a sport for teams to buy a motorcycle and modify it and race against other privateers. When the (then) tiny, really tiny, Bologna factory bought a bike to compete no one thought to complain. After all how would ever compete against the might of the Japanese factories? They weren't even doing it right! After all they were using scaffolding for a frame and a twin cylinder trying to compete with hi tech 4s with cutting edge aluminium frames. What harm could letting them race do? Ooops! By the time other manufacturers complained it was basically too late. Ducati had been there a couple of years - 'clearly' they argued, it was a complaint just because they beat the opposition. In turn this changed the entire make up of WSBK as a series. Honda, always pissed off when they fail to get their way, threw the might of HRC behind the championship (the racing corporation previously only directly involved with GPs.) As Honda invested, building essentially prototype race bikes then selling them as production bikes so the competition ultimately had little choice. It spawned some great machines (Yamaha R7, Honda RC45) and even directed some manufacturers production lines (Suzuki SRAD, Kawasaki ZX-RR) but something - a great idea for a race series ultimately died. As did any possibility of it being a 'cheap' race series. Were I motorcycle racing boss for the day, I would change the series. I wouldn't allow any manufacturer presence (they should be proving their worth in MotoGP) and only allow independent teams. I would require all bikes to start on the showroom floor then be built minimally: they strip the road kit and anything else can be bolt on tuning ONLY. Weight limit would be 20% (or whatever figure) below the weight of the donor production road bike. Ideally I would like them to keep all the road kit - suddenly we would see far stronger yet lightweight lights, bikes that crash better and, of course, lighter bikes. I really see no downside.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaSeen in the Guardian today. Of its former relationship with Alec [sic], the Google chairman, Eric Schmidt, has declared: “I think the consensus within the company was that that was some sort of mistake.” So ALEC was too evil for Google but TPP/TTIP/CETA is not. That's some fine hair splitting Google has got going on there. The article was about Andrea Leadsom being paid to attend ALEC seminars in the USA. Which explains a lot but is not important right now. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/09/andrea-leadsom-tea-party — Google's recently announced official support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is wrong and evil I'll be devoting my future use of G+ exclusively to objecting to this treaty and Google's support of it until such time as Google changes its position. I encourage you to do similarly. I've also disabled all Circle feeds to my Home stream. I'll not be seeing much of what you post. I encourage you most strongly to do similarly. Should the treaty pass, I'll cancel this and other active G+ profiles and wipe content. I'm also organising an area for intelligent discussion based on an earlier experiment begun here at G+, though at Reddit. The URL is https://reddit.com/r/MKaTH While that's currently private, please message the mods (that's me) for access. Oh: and Reddit oppose TPP. https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2016/06/the-trans-pacific-partnership-step.html
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsCurrent betting is 2/1 on NO exit before 2020. — Remarkable. The catastrophic own-goal that is Brexit has managed to decapitate everything but the Lib-Dems, who managed to autodefenestrate by forming a coalition with the Tories. Don't these people do politics for a living?
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Commented on post by World Economic ForumDifferent, yes. I'm not sure about very different. Subsistence farming in S, E, SE Asia or Africa is still brutal. — Hope for the world's poorest people.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsWell Tim Farron seems a nice enough chap, like Nick Clegg before him. But the LibDems are all a bit irrelevant at the moment outside local government. Then there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Bennett resigning from leading the Greens as well. — Remarkable. The catastrophic own-goal that is Brexit has managed to decapitate everything but the Lib-Dems, who managed to autodefenestrate by forming a coalition with the Tories. Don't these people do politics for a living?
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and Politics- Blair is gone but he won't shut up. - Same for Johnson - Same for Farage - Cameron's gone, but he's still here - Lots of people wish Corbyn was gone but he won't leave - Gove might as well be gone because everyone think he's a backstabbing gossipy drunk who can't be trusted. Not long now. - Duncan-Smith is quietly and hypocritical nasty just like he's always been. I wish he was just gone. - Theresa May is scarily nasty and apparently wants the poison chalice. Give it to her and force her to drink it all. It's going to be a short leadership and PM-ship. Meanwhile we're the 48%, all 16,141,241 of us and we haven't gone anywhere. But that was 2 weeks ago. There's more of us now. And any way forward has to include us. Here's how I think it pans out (borrowed from a comment on the Stross' blog http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/06/constitutional-crisis-ahoy.html#comment-2005174). -- As PM you accept the legal advice that you don't have the right to trigger Art. 50 without a vote in parliament. There's plenty of it flying around after all. You don't make it whipped but you do make it a government bill. The opposition should largely vote against, the SNP will probably vote against. If it's not whipped, it's technically not a rebellion for Remain Tories to vote against, and you only need 6 of them to vote their conscience and oops... can't trigger Art. 50. It's not your fault. Sorry Brexiteers. -- then -- 1) Some clever political/legal footwork to say "Sorry, we couldn't do it" and those with BRegret heave a sigh of relief, some of those with crappy political reasons suck it up, and we get to (metaphorically at least) shoot the racists. That I think will be unpopular and there will be some political sword falling but I find I can live with politicians falling on their swords. -- And we stumble on, taking 10 years to get back to a place where the EU begins to listen to us and our views again. — Remarkable. The catastrophic own-goal that is Brexit has managed to decapitate everything but the Lib-Dems, who managed to autodefenestrate by forming a coalition with the Tories. Don't these people do politics for a living?
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Commented on post by World Economic ForumOne of the better sources I can find on these figures is here. https://ourworldindata.org/world-poverty/ Absolute numbers in extreme poverty 1820 1021m 1970 2218m 2010 1127m 2015 705m In 2013 551 Million in Asia 436 Million in Africa India 300m Nigeria 107m China 84m What is particularly striking is the rapid drop between 2000 and 2015 which is directly linked to extremely rapid GDP growth in China. Also that there were the same number of the same type of people in 1820 and 2010 as if we'd done nothing in the intervening 2 centuries. Except that the global population had gone from 1b to 7b so we'd added 5.5b to 6b NOT in extreme poverty. — Hope for the world's poorest people.
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Commented on post by World Economic ForumHas the absolute number changed in that time? It's always deceptive to talk about percentages when the grand total is increasing. In 1990 there were 5,309,667,699 in the world. In 2015, 7,349,472,099 If the absolute number in extreme poverty didn't change, the percentage would still go down. — Hope for the world's poorest people.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeLots of issues here. But first, why do US trains keep having accidents where they simply fall off the rails? Never mind the contents, why doesn't the rail system work? — We need to just stop moving #OilByRail . There’s no safe way to do it because of where the rail lines go — and this isn’t anyone’s fault — through major populated areas, and major waterways which are sources of drinking water and irrigation." Oil trains are an issue primarily in #Canada and the #US where oil is often extracted in areas not served by pipelines. #BombTrains #RailSafety
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google+The problem is a private community that is being closed down and moved elsewhere[1] There's no easy way short of screen scraping of backing up the posts in that community. Even without the comments. We're prepared to write code but there's no way of getting the posts in the API either. And no RSS/Atom. Yes, I've seen and starred https://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?id=639 G+ communities are a roach motel. You can check in, create content but never take it elsewhere. [1]In reaction to Google's support of TPP/TTIP — Is there anyway of doing a takeout dump to JSON of an entire community and all it's posts?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPI like Jeremy's face. "This is so going to hurt tomorrow. Oh, go on then." — http://msmproduction.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/content/MotoGP%20Assen/miller_mcwilliams_assen_2016.jpg via http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/opinion/motogp/jackass-joins-aussie-pantheon via https://motomatters.com/blog_entry/2016/06/29/guest_blog_mat_oxley_what_will_be_salom.html Looks legit.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedShould never have sold my B1. Deeply flawed (hah!) but one of the all time greats. — Before the current fad for GP style exhausts, that nowadays seem to be by far the most popular style on sportsbikes, end cans were generally big. Not just bigger but big. While these make for optimum fuelling, best possible performance and beautiful low 'woofle' soundtrack, they can (geddit?) look ungainly. One of my favourite of the older exhausts was the Mivv. It was much smaller than most yet, somehow, retained that lovely deep tone. I had them on my first ZX-10R, a J model ZX-6R, B model ZX-6R and two on my Honda SP-1(RC51). These days, you get very little performance gain from a slip on end can, unless used in conjunction with a decat pipe but back then (say pre 2004) adding an good half system could get you substantial gains. Manufacturers have caught on that if it is 'so simple' then they may as well make the adjustment and thus be able to market the bike as more powerful. All of which to say, is just an excuse to post this sound clip of one of my favourites!
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Commented on post by Robert Llewellyn+David Belliveau Because this is Bat Country. — Top Gear | Fully Charged Self explanatory really, and very apposite now that Chris Evan's has thrown in the towel already. Spooky.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Just for FunObligatory http://xkcd.com/1702/ And yes, Chiggers are the worst. Especially https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombicula_autumnalis which we get in the UK in my wood. — Dealing with mosquito bites Heat a spoon under really hot water, then press the spoon directly onto your bite to eliminate the itching. "When mosquitoes bite, they inject proteins under the skin to keep blood from clotting. This protein causes an allergic reaction and subsequent itch, but it cannot survive hot temperatures. Try pressing a towel soaked in hot water or use a hot spoon right on the area for a few seconds to stop the itching."
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Commented on postLooking at Paul's takeout dump, its not clear which posts are Miranda's. And they're just yours, right, not posts in MKaTS from other people? Do the owners have any way of dumping an entire community to JSON/HTML?
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Commented on post by Wood Spoon in ChromecastBeing unable to Cast the audio from Youtube to a CCA is beyond ridiculous. Fix it Google. — Hi, new to this community Looking for a bit of advice Had a chromecast for a little while and love it so bought myself a chromecast audio, got it plugged into the mic on my hi-fi What I'm after is plugin's or apps that will let my android play directly to it without mirroring it through google cast Something like, Play Music. don't know why but for some reason YouTube won't connect to it either, non compatible hardware or something I'm guessing. anybody got any good suggestions?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaI keep seeing the Krell monster from Forbidden Planet in that image. The mind plays tricks like that, Dr.Morbius. — Google Supports the TPP. The TPP is evil. Google are evil
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedDirt drag? Hill climb? Needs a supercharger. — Above all you want an off road or dula purpose bike to be light and maneuverable!!
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Commented on post by Dawn Shepard in Climate ChangeAnd beware of other misinformation campaigns arising from the same organisations. Such as "wind power kills birds", "GMOs are good" or how about "immigrants spread terrorism". — - Global Warming Skeptic Organizations (aka 'Think Tanks' aka 'Scheme Tanks' aka Science Deniers). Memorize these names - so when you hear their BS spiels echoed at the water cooler, you'll know what you are dealing with: These greedy, wrongheaded, narcissist fellowships are enemies of the environment and they- "... play a key role in the fossil fuel industry's "disinformation playbook," a strategy designed to confuse the public about global warming and delay action on climate change." American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Americans for Prosperity (AFP), American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Beacon Hil Institute at Suffolk University (BHI), Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, Institute for Energy Research, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsI believe it was Cameron who called Gove a Maoist into creative destruction. Well if you meet Shiva on the road, kill him. I hope that creative destruction thing stops soon. Can Corbyn hold out till July 6 so he can formally call Blair and Straw war criminals in Parliament? How quickly will Theresa May remove the UK from the ECHR? Will anyone ever press the button on Art50? Confused? You won't be after this episode of "Lemmings". — Ship is sinking; captain always goes down with ship; Tories presently playing musical chairs in order to avoid being captain.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaFWIW, G+ is 5 years old. — Google's recently announced official support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is wrong and evil I'll be devoting my future use of G+ exclusively to objecting to this treaty and Google's support of it until such time as Google changes its position. I encourage you to do similarly. I've also disabled all Circle feeds to my Home stream. I'll not be seeing much of what you post. I encourage you most strongly to do similarly. Should the treaty pass, I'll cancel this and other active G+ profiles and wipe content. I'm also organising an area for intelligent discussion based on an earlier experiment begun here at G+, though at Reddit. The URL is https://reddit.com/r/MKaTH While that's currently private, please message the mods (that's me) for access. Oh: and Reddit oppose TPP. https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2016/06/the-trans-pacific-partnership-step.html
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in LawIt occurs to me that Article 50 is a poison pill that can never, ever be triggered. Multiple officials in the EU are saying there will be no negotiation before the UK triggers Art50. But if you do trigger it, they can act in bad faith and refuse to negotiate. Or simply say non/nein to every suggestion. They run the 2 year clock down until at the end the UK has left the EU with nothing. Everybody loses. I think this is why several people are saying that the UK's best negotiating position is to refuse to trigger Art50. This leaves Boris (and any other Pro-Brexit Tory candidate) in an impossible situation if he wins the leadership election. But then this comment has it best, I fear you're doing the residents of Broadmoor a disservice. They're in there for being crazy [and criminally insane], not because they're blithering, purblind imbeciles with massive senses of personal entitlement and less notion of how to run the government and foreign affairs of a modern nation than my fucking dog does. — A Couple Questions and Answers on the Legal Authority Underlying Brexit Q: So, the referendum passed, right? Britain is leaving? A: Yes, it passed. But no, it's not leaving yet. Q: Why's that? A: Because the referendum was advisory, not binding. What sets off the process is an Article 50 notification, which hasn't happened yet. Q: A what? A: Article 50(2) of the Lisbon Treaty. Here, it's short. I'll quote it for you: A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament. Cameron is resigning, so he's not doing that. Q: But, surely, the next Prime Minister is going to do that, right? A: Well, we don't know who the next Prime Minister is going to be. Let's just punt, though, and say that it's going to be Boris Johnson. He's vocally anti-EU, and ... ... oh, wait, he wants to wait before getting out? Okay. Q: But if the Prime Minister pulled the trigger, it would start the two year process to get out of the EU, right? A: Uh... Q: You're hedging. A: Uh... where does it say that the Prime Minister has that power? Q: You're the answer section. You tell me. A: Okay, I'm cheating. Most of the UK's constitutional system isn't actually written down. But, theoretically, the Prime Minister would leave the European Union by invoking the Royal Privilege. Q: The what? A: The power of the Queen. Which devolves to the Parliament. Which the Parliament then grants to the Prime Minister. Which the Prime Minister uses to invoke Article 50 and leave the European Union. Typically, that's how the Prime Minister deals with issues of foreign relations. And that's what seems to be contemplated here. Q: And there's some kind of problem there? A: Let's assume that some rogue Prime Minister decided that he wanted out of the EU, and -- without consulting with Parliament or his ministers -- he pulled the trigger on Article 50. What result? (Note that this abrogates a lot of British law.) Q: I don't know -- the Article 50 process starts? A: Yeah, maybe -- if the Law Lords agree. But here's the thing: it requires them to come up with some really novel law. Typically, because the UK is a parliamentary democracy and not a serial dictatorship, the Prime Minister doesn't have the power to unilaterally abrogate statutes. As one would expect. Q: But there was a referendum! A: The referendum was advisory. Can a purely advisory enactment grant the Prime Minister powers which he is constitutionally denied? Q: That seems less clear. But this seems like an issue of UK constitutional law. Why does the EU have to care? A: Because of Article 50(1). Which says this: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements." Q: So, what, Parliament has to sign off on it? A: Maybe. And that isn't even getting into the problems caused by Scottish and Northern Irish home rule: they're both bound to EU law semi-directly, and not even the UK's Parliament clearly seems to be able to abrogate their consent to EU law.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and Politics+Aaron McDaid There's that paradox. - Corbyn allegedly didn't do enough to support Remain but a large majority of Labour voters voted Remain. - Cameron worked hard on Remain. But a large majority of Tory voters voted Leave. So we'll blame Corbyn for the referendum result and stick the knife in. After also blaming young people, old people, uneducated people and anyone else we can think of. I'm conflicted now though. Is a vote for Corbyn in the upcoming Labour leadership election a vote for continued chaos or a vote for sanity? The reasons for voting for him haven't actually changed in a year. But his ability to make a positive difference may have. — What fresh hell is this?
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in LawIt's complicated. https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2016/06/28/sionaidh-douglas-scott-brexit-the-referendum-and-the-uk-parliament-some-questions-about-sovereignty/ — A Couple Questions and Answers on the Legal Authority Underlying Brexit Q: So, the referendum passed, right? Britain is leaving? A: Yes, it passed. But no, it's not leaving yet. Q: Why's that? A: Because the referendum was advisory, not binding. What sets off the process is an Article 50 notification, which hasn't happened yet. Q: A what? A: Article 50(2) of the Lisbon Treaty. Here, it's short. I'll quote it for you: A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament. Cameron is resigning, so he's not doing that. Q: But, surely, the next Prime Minister is going to do that, right? A: Well, we don't know who the next Prime Minister is going to be. Let's just punt, though, and say that it's going to be Boris Johnson. He's vocally anti-EU, and ... ... oh, wait, he wants to wait before getting out? Okay. Q: But if the Prime Minister pulled the trigger, it would start the two year process to get out of the EU, right? A: Uh... Q: You're hedging. A: Uh... where does it say that the Prime Minister has that power? Q: You're the answer section. You tell me. A: Okay, I'm cheating. Most of the UK's constitutional system isn't actually written down. But, theoretically, the Prime Minister would leave the European Union by invoking the Royal Privilege. Q: The what? A: The power of the Queen. Which devolves to the Parliament. Which the Parliament then grants to the Prime Minister. Which the Prime Minister uses to invoke Article 50 and leave the European Union. Typically, that's how the Prime Minister deals with issues of foreign relations. And that's what seems to be contemplated here. Q: And there's some kind of problem there? A: Let's assume that some rogue Prime Minister decided that he wanted out of the EU, and -- without consulting with Parliament or his ministers -- he pulled the trigger on Article 50. What result? (Note that this abrogates a lot of British law.) Q: I don't know -- the Article 50 process starts? A: Yeah, maybe -- if the Law Lords agree. But here's the thing: it requires them to come up with some really novel law. Typically, because the UK is a parliamentary democracy and not a serial dictatorship, the Prime Minister doesn't have the power to unilaterally abrogate statutes. As one would expect. Q: But there was a referendum! A: The referendum was advisory. Can a purely advisory enactment grant the Prime Minister powers which he is constitutionally denied? Q: That seems less clear. But this seems like an issue of UK constitutional law. Why does the EU have to care? A: Because of Article 50(1). Which says this: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements." Q: So, what, Parliament has to sign off on it? A: Maybe. And that isn't even getting into the problems caused by Scottish and Northern Irish home rule: they're both bound to EU law semi-directly, and not even the UK's Parliament clearly seems to be able to abrogate their consent to EU law.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeWell that's truthy! Interestingly, the Ashcroft poll figures suggest the dividing line on age where voters moved from >50% Remain to >50% Leave was around 40. And it does look like 25 -40 year olds were quite engaged. It's the 18-25 that's in question. The Independent article links to this, https://twitter.com/SkyData/status/746700869656256512 Which seems to be a Sky poll. I have no detail yet as to what that is, but here's their turnout figures. 18-24: 36% 25-34: 58% 35-44: 72% 45-54: 75% 55-64: 81% 65+: 83% — It’s hard not to pay outsize attention to the parts of big pictures that resonate most with one’s sensibilities. Britons’ #Brexit vote to leave the European Union provides the intellectual equivalent of a cold shower, offering a sobering reminder that, far more often, most young people are deeply disengaged — even when an issue could affect their demographic slice most. #YouthEngagement
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeInteresting. And annoying that even that FT graphic is one step removed. Turnout vs Media age by returning area. And then there's Glasgow. Glasgow didn't vote! Media age of ~37 and only ~56% turnout. — Youth will bear the brunt of the poor decisions being made by today’s older generations. #Brexit #ClimateChange
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeI can't see any analysis in that article of the age split of voting/not voting. There's a lot of speculation and it is widely understood that of those who voted young people were more likely to vote Remain while old people voted Leave. But it seems that people under 30 were engaged. If that's not the case, I'd love to see some real analysis. Can anyone find any? — It’s hard not to pay outsize attention to the parts of big pictures that resonate most with one’s sensibilities. Britons’ #Brexit vote to leave the European Union provides the intellectual equivalent of a cold shower, offering a sobering reminder that, far more often, most young people are deeply disengaged — even when an issue could affect their demographic slice most. #YouthEngagement
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeHave you got a good citation for the age breakdown of those who didn't vote? I'd like to see it. Meanwhile, http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why/ — Youth will bear the brunt of the poor decisions being made by today’s older generations. #Brexit #ClimateChange
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Changehttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/28/leave-vote-makes-uks-transition-to-clean-energy-harder-say-experts Investment in replacement (cleaner) power plants more costly No new nuclear Frozen out of the EU's IEM (Internal Energy Market) It's not good for the environment. But then the Leave camp was/is heavily in bed with climate deniers so what do you expect? — Britain, of course, had been reaping the benefits of North Sea energy since the 1970s. but since 2005 the country has become a net importer of fossil fuels This trend combined with the effects of high energy prices on productivity growth has had a negative effect on the incomes of middle- and lower-class voters who now spend a higher proportion of their incomes for increased energy bills. This double whammy has likely contributed to discontent among such voters who were looking for a way to express their frustration and found it in the Brexit vote. #Brexit   #EnergyBills  
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in LawAll because a bunch of ageing paedophiles wanted to fuck our kids. "Now get off my lawn before I vote LEAVE!". https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/jun/27/the-inter-generational-theft-of-brexit-and-climate-change Bitter? Moi? With my reputation? We should have been trying to make the EU bigger. Everything N of the Sahara and West of the Urals and Gulf. Because pulling together is the only way we're going to survive the next century. But instead we got all upset because the butcher that's been there forever is now a Polish supermarket. (((weeps))) — A Couple Questions and Answers on the Legal Authority Underlying Brexit Q: So, the referendum passed, right? Britain is leaving? A: Yes, it passed. But no, it's not leaving yet. Q: Why's that? A: Because the referendum was advisory, not binding. What sets off the process is an Article 50 notification, which hasn't happened yet. Q: A what? A: Article 50(2) of the Lisbon Treaty. Here, it's short. I'll quote it for you: A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament. Cameron is resigning, so he's not doing that. Q: But, surely, the next Prime Minister is going to do that, right? A: Well, we don't know who the next Prime Minister is going to be. Let's just punt, though, and say that it's going to be Boris Johnson. He's vocally anti-EU, and ... ... oh, wait, he wants to wait before getting out? Okay. Q: But if the Prime Minister pulled the trigger, it would start the two year process to get out of the EU, right? A: Uh... Q: You're hedging. A: Uh... where does it say that the Prime Minister has that power? Q: You're the answer section. You tell me. A: Okay, I'm cheating. Most of the UK's constitutional system isn't actually written down. But, theoretically, the Prime Minister would leave the European Union by invoking the Royal Privilege. Q: The what? A: The power of the Queen. Which devolves to the Parliament. Which the Parliament then grants to the Prime Minister. Which the Prime Minister uses to invoke Article 50 and leave the European Union. Typically, that's how the Prime Minister deals with issues of foreign relations. And that's what seems to be contemplated here. Q: And there's some kind of problem there? A: Let's assume that some rogue Prime Minister decided that he wanted out of the EU, and -- without consulting with Parliament or his ministers -- he pulled the trigger on Article 50. What result? (Note that this abrogates a lot of British law.) Q: I don't know -- the Article 50 process starts? A: Yeah, maybe -- if the Law Lords agree. But here's the thing: it requires them to come up with some really novel law. Typically, because the UK is a parliamentary democracy and not a serial dictatorship, the Prime Minister doesn't have the power to unilaterally abrogate statutes. As one would expect. Q: But there was a referendum! A: The referendum was advisory. Can a purely advisory enactment grant the Prime Minister powers which he is constitutionally denied? Q: That seems less clear. But this seems like an issue of UK constitutional law. Why does the EU have to care? A: Because of Article 50(1). Which says this: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements." Q: So, what, Parliament has to sign off on it? A: Maybe. And that isn't even getting into the problems caused by Scottish and Northern Irish home rule: they're both bound to EU law semi-directly, and not even the UK's Parliament clearly seems to be able to abrogate their consent to EU law.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in LawAnd for shits and giggles, the Chilcot report into the Iraq War will be published on July 6. Which may involve people in Parliament saying the words "war criminals". Which partially explains why Corbyn is being stabbed in the back repeatedly. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/06/still-iraq-war-stupid/ While we're at it. Madeleine Albright - The deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was worth it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE Hillary Clinton "We Came, We Saw, He Died" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmIRYvJQeHM Madeleine Albright: There’s A Special Place In Hell For Women Who Don’t Vote For Hillary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZCNhlmV-X0 — A Couple Questions and Answers on the Legal Authority Underlying Brexit Q: So, the referendum passed, right? Britain is leaving? A: Yes, it passed. But no, it's not leaving yet. Q: Why's that? A: Because the referendum was advisory, not binding. What sets off the process is an Article 50 notification, which hasn't happened yet. Q: A what? A: Article 50(2) of the Lisbon Treaty. Here, it's short. I'll quote it for you: A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament. Cameron is resigning, so he's not doing that. Q: But, surely, the next Prime Minister is going to do that, right? A: Well, we don't know who the next Prime Minister is going to be. Let's just punt, though, and say that it's going to be Boris Johnson. He's vocally anti-EU, and ... ... oh, wait, he wants to wait before getting out? Okay. Q: But if the Prime Minister pulled the trigger, it would start the two year process to get out of the EU, right? A: Uh... Q: You're hedging. A: Uh... where does it say that the Prime Minister has that power? Q: You're the answer section. You tell me. A: Okay, I'm cheating. Most of the UK's constitutional system isn't actually written down. But, theoretically, the Prime Minister would leave the European Union by invoking the Royal Privilege. Q: The what? A: The power of the Queen. Which devolves to the Parliament. Which the Parliament then grants to the Prime Minister. Which the Prime Minister uses to invoke Article 50 and leave the European Union. Typically, that's how the Prime Minister deals with issues of foreign relations. And that's what seems to be contemplated here. Q: And there's some kind of problem there? A: Let's assume that some rogue Prime Minister decided that he wanted out of the EU, and -- without consulting with Parliament or his ministers -- he pulled the trigger on Article 50. What result? (Note that this abrogates a lot of British law.) Q: I don't know -- the Article 50 process starts? A: Yeah, maybe -- if the Law Lords agree. But here's the thing: it requires them to come up with some really novel law. Typically, because the UK is a parliamentary democracy and not a serial dictatorship, the Prime Minister doesn't have the power to unilaterally abrogate statutes. As one would expect. Q: But there was a referendum! A: The referendum was advisory. Can a purely advisory enactment grant the Prime Minister powers which he is constitutionally denied? Q: That seems less clear. But this seems like an issue of UK constitutional law. Why does the EU have to care? A: Because of Article 50(1). Which says this: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements." Q: So, what, Parliament has to sign off on it? A: Maybe. And that isn't even getting into the problems caused by Scottish and Northern Irish home rule: they're both bound to EU law semi-directly, and not even the UK's Parliament clearly seems to be able to abrogate their consent to EU law.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Law"this thing is a fractal constitutional nightmare. It's rabbit holes all the way down." http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/06/constitutional-crisis-ahoy.html#comment-2004451 — A Couple Questions and Answers on the Legal Authority Underlying Brexit Q: So, the referendum passed, right? Britain is leaving? A: Yes, it passed. But no, it's not leaving yet. Q: Why's that? A: Because the referendum was advisory, not binding. What sets off the process is an Article 50 notification, which hasn't happened yet. Q: A what? A: Article 50(2) of the Lisbon Treaty. Here, it's short. I'll quote it for you: A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament. Cameron is resigning, so he's not doing that. Q: But, surely, the next Prime Minister is going to do that, right? A: Well, we don't know who the next Prime Minister is going to be. Let's just punt, though, and say that it's going to be Boris Johnson. He's vocally anti-EU, and ... ... oh, wait, he wants to wait before getting out? Okay. Q: But if the Prime Minister pulled the trigger, it would start the two year process to get out of the EU, right? A: Uh... Q: You're hedging. A: Uh... where does it say that the Prime Minister has that power? Q: You're the answer section. You tell me. A: Okay, I'm cheating. Most of the UK's constitutional system isn't actually written down. But, theoretically, the Prime Minister would leave the European Union by invoking the Royal Privilege. Q: The what? A: The power of the Queen. Which devolves to the Parliament. Which the Parliament then grants to the Prime Minister. Which the Prime Minister uses to invoke Article 50 and leave the European Union. Typically, that's how the Prime Minister deals with issues of foreign relations. And that's what seems to be contemplated here. Q: And there's some kind of problem there? A: Let's assume that some rogue Prime Minister decided that he wanted out of the EU, and -- without consulting with Parliament or his ministers -- he pulled the trigger on Article 50. What result? (Note that this abrogates a lot of British law.) Q: I don't know -- the Article 50 process starts? A: Yeah, maybe -- if the Law Lords agree. But here's the thing: it requires them to come up with some really novel law. Typically, because the UK is a parliamentary democracy and not a serial dictatorship, the Prime Minister doesn't have the power to unilaterally abrogate statutes. As one would expect. Q: But there was a referendum! A: The referendum was advisory. Can a purely advisory enactment grant the Prime Minister powers which he is constitutionally denied? Q: That seems less clear. But this seems like an issue of UK constitutional law. Why does the EU have to care? A: Because of Article 50(1). Which says this: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements." Q: So, what, Parliament has to sign off on it? A: Maybe. And that isn't even getting into the problems caused by Scottish and Northern Irish home rule: they're both bound to EU law semi-directly, and not even the UK's Parliament clearly seems to be able to abrogate their consent to EU law.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in LawFWIW. http://hasarticle50beeninvoked.uk/ — A Couple Questions and Answers on the Legal Authority Underlying Brexit Q: So, the referendum passed, right? Britain is leaving? A: Yes, it passed. But no, it's not leaving yet. Q: Why's that? A: Because the referendum was advisory, not binding. What sets off the process is an Article 50 notification, which hasn't happened yet. Q: A what? A: Article 50(2) of the Lisbon Treaty. Here, it's short. I'll quote it for you: A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament. Cameron is resigning, so he's not doing that. Q: But, surely, the next Prime Minister is going to do that, right? A: Well, we don't know who the next Prime Minister is going to be. Let's just punt, though, and say that it's going to be Boris Johnson. He's vocally anti-EU, and ... ... oh, wait, he wants to wait before getting out? Okay. Q: But if the Prime Minister pulled the trigger, it would start the two year process to get out of the EU, right? A: Uh... Q: You're hedging. A: Uh... where does it say that the Prime Minister has that power? Q: You're the answer section. You tell me. A: Okay, I'm cheating. Most of the UK's constitutional system isn't actually written down. But, theoretically, the Prime Minister would leave the European Union by invoking the Royal Privilege. Q: The what? A: The power of the Queen. Which devolves to the Parliament. Which the Parliament then grants to the Prime Minister. Which the Prime Minister uses to invoke Article 50 and leave the European Union. Typically, that's how the Prime Minister deals with issues of foreign relations. And that's what seems to be contemplated here. Q: And there's some kind of problem there? A: Let's assume that some rogue Prime Minister decided that he wanted out of the EU, and -- without consulting with Parliament or his ministers -- he pulled the trigger on Article 50. What result? (Note that this abrogates a lot of British law.) Q: I don't know -- the Article 50 process starts? A: Yeah, maybe -- if the Law Lords agree. But here's the thing: it requires them to come up with some really novel law. Typically, because the UK is a parliamentary democracy and not a serial dictatorship, the Prime Minister doesn't have the power to unilaterally abrogate statutes. As one would expect. Q: But there was a referendum! A: The referendum was advisory. Can a purely advisory enactment grant the Prime Minister powers which he is constitutionally denied? Q: That seems less clear. But this seems like an issue of UK constitutional law. Why does the EU have to care? A: Because of Article 50(1). Which says this: "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements." Q: So, what, Parliament has to sign off on it? A: Maybe. And that isn't even getting into the problems caused by Scottish and Northern Irish home rule: they're both bound to EU law semi-directly, and not even the UK's Parliament clearly seems to be able to abrogate their consent to EU law.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party PoliticsAs if all this chaos wasn't enough we're going to have the Chilcott report out in a couple of weeks. And we can't have a current leader of the Labour party standing up in Parliament and calling a previous leader of the Labour party and his foreign Secretary war criminals, now can we. So we'd better get Hilary Benn who spoke so eloquently about bombing Syria and supporting Israel to stick the knife in. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/06/still-iraq-war-stupid/ — This seems to put a lot of heated political debate in more or less objective terms. It seems obvious to me -- and to many of us -- what the answers to these questions are, but apparently the opposite answers seem equally obvious to a lot of other people.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Public PolicyI no longer have any idea why 17,410,742 voted to leave the EU, but they did. — The Daily Mail is notorious -- any claim they make should be presumed false until proven otherwise. (Tempted to start a Collection for Brexit stuff... this doesn't look like it's going to quietly fade into history anytime soon...) via +Mel Orr https://www.facebook.com/MelvinFrankOrrIII/posts/783658555460?notif_t=like&notif_id=1466796286519330 via +Harena Atria .
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party PoliticsOne of the better analyses of all this stuff that's emerged recently. http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit/ — This seems to put a lot of heated political debate in more or less objective terms. It seems obvious to me -- and to many of us -- what the answers to these questions are, but apparently the opposite answers seem equally obvious to a lot of other people.
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Commented on post by Woozle HypertwinAs if by magic a post about BRexit, the UK and the EU ends up in comments about the USA, guns, Trump and Clinton. Jeez' Meanwhile we have strong gun control in the UK and it generally works. Except we've just had a political assassination by a terrorist. Farage (spit on his name) tried to say on Friday morning "we got the result we wanted without a shot being fired" and even that was a lie. — For any Britons who might be following me... #signalBoost
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Commented on post by Woozle HypertwinWe live in Post-Factual times when you can go on repeating a lie even after it's exposed and it still has the desired effect. Hard to tell when this started but WMD, 45 minutes and Saddam caused 9/11 were when it was ramped up. Remember that when Chilcott is released. The Leave camp lied consistently, repeatedly and loudly. Which reduced the Remain camp to simply repeating "Liar!" rather than making any coherent argument. And now Farage can say "yes, 350m per week could be spent on the NHS was probably a mistake", and we all just nod our heads and say, yes, we already knew it was a lie and he was a lying bastard who lied and lied and lied. And the lie worked. — For any Britons who might be following me... #signalBoost
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in LawThis may come in handy in these "Post-Factual" times. http://hasarticle50beeninvoked.uk/ — One quick fact about Brexit: the referendum isn't actually binding. What's binding? The PM's invocation of Article 50. There's still a chance for Cameron not to do it
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in LawAs I understand it. - Cameron has announced his resignation - He intends to act as caretaker - He hopes that a new leader of the tory party will be decided by the party conference in Oct - Various Tory grandees would rather the new leader is chosen after the party conference to give time for all likely parties to make their pitch. - Cameron will not trigger Article 50. He will leave that to "who ever comes after him" All that has been announced in public. That doesn't mean people can't change their mind. They're politicians after all. - Meanwhile the Labour party is starting to implode because Corbyn wasn't leaderly enough and didn't pull his weight for Remain. Not surprising given his mentor Tony Benn was anti-EU. But also unfair because Labour voters voted Remain narrowly, unlike Cameron's Tories who voted hard for Leave. - So a Labour leadership crisis and election is highly likely. - So the incoming Tory will want to call an election in order to cement a large majority and allow negotiation from strength. So before triggering Article 50 we probably need two leadership changes and a general election. Hard to see that happening before March 2017. Meanwhile there will be loads of horse trading. Starting with the EU demanding we act on our referendum now. We will of course ignore this. Because once Article 50 gets triggered, the treaty says it MUST be completed in 2 years. And to try and get back in afterwards (with all the loss of face that entails) will mean Schengen, Euro and being treated like Turkey. There doesn't look like there's any going back or changing your mind. But up until that point, the referendum is just a statement of request from the citizens. It's going to be a hard sell to construct enough spin, smoke and mirrors to simply ignore the referendum. But that doesn't mean anything has to be done that's hasty. All of that is just process though. All it says is that there's lots to do and it'll take time. The people have spoken and 23-June-2016 won't go away. [1] Damn. There's that 23 again. I can't believe I've only just noticed it. — One quick fact about Brexit: the referendum isn't actually binding. What's binding? The PM's invocation of Article 50. There's still a chance for Cameron not to do it
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyWhat happens now about recycling smaller scale lithium batteries? Like laptop, power tools, electric bicycles. In the UK we've got well developed processes for car lead-acid and household NIMH batteries. I'm not sure we know how to deal with LiOn at all, at all. — What do you do with those EV batteries? Recycle them of course! I really must go back to the Citroen garage I was at recently where the salesman told me you can't dispose of the batteries... He needs correcting! http://blog.caranddriver.com/bmw-i3-batteries-to-be-recycled-for-home-use/
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsWuh? — “It’s because I’m black,” said one of the vendors, who identified himself as Clinton Sanders, 28, a member of the all-black sales team that sticks out in the sea of white faces at Trump rallies. “They want to know who I’m voting for, and I tell them: ‘That’s confidential.’ And they ask me why I’m doing this, and I say: ‘I mean, it’s work.’ ” Dammit, Washington Post, you missed the world's best misleading headline: Sanders, Clinton and Lewandowski Found to Be Involved in Trump T-Shirt Sales
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and Politics+Anne-Marie Clark It doesn't upset me, I'm just confused. Trying to keep up with exactly what words are acceptable in the USA now and what are so offensive they have to be asterisked out. And somewhat amused by an article in a national newspaper that has to say things like "begins with B and rhymes with witch". — “It’s because I’m black,” said one of the vendors, who identified himself as Clinton Sanders, 28, a member of the all-black sales team that sticks out in the sea of white faces at Trump rallies. “They want to know who I’m voting for, and I tell them: ‘That’s confidential.’ And they ask me why I’m doing this, and I say: ‘I mean, it’s work.’ ” Dammit, Washington Post, you missed the world's best misleading headline: Sanders, Clinton and Lewandowski Found to Be Involved in Trump T-Shirt Sales
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsStupid Google auto-formatting! It should be B * * * * or Bitch for the hard of hearing. So why can't the WP say Bitch? Is it a rude word now in the US? — “It’s because I’m black,” said one of the vendors, who identified himself as Clinton Sanders, 28, a member of the all-black sales team that sticks out in the sea of white faces at Trump rallies. “They want to know who I’m voting for, and I tell them: ‘That’s confidential.’ And they ask me why I’m doing this, and I say: ‘I mean, it’s work.’ ” Dammit, Washington Post, you missed the world's best misleading headline: Sanders, Clinton and Lewandowski Found to Be Involved in Trump T-Shirt Sales
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party PoliticsNice production values — This seems to be an accurate reflection of how many of Trump's fans feel about him. The ending also seems accurate.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsI'm confused. Why is the Washignton Post unable to say the word b** that rhymes with w** ? — “It’s because I’m black,” said one of the vendors, who identified himself as Clinton Sanders, 28, a member of the all-black sales team that sticks out in the sea of white faces at Trump rallies. “They want to know who I’m voting for, and I tell them: ‘That’s confidential.’ And they ask me why I’m doing this, and I say: ‘I mean, it’s work.’ ” Dammit, Washington Post, you missed the world's best misleading headline: Sanders, Clinton and Lewandowski Found to Be Involved in Trump T-Shirt Sales
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Commented on post by Mike Rotch in Climate ChangeWe need to do all of it, subsidising nuclear as well as wind/solar/hydro. But what we also need to do is to stop subsidising fossil fuel production and severely tax it instead. ps. I'm tired of the story that wind requires large areas of land. Offshore wind doesn't. And onshore wind doesn't stop productive use of the land underneath the turbines.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaWho is Google's audience? Hint: unless you work at Amazon's ad placement department, you're not Google's customer, you're their product. — Google turns evil and backs controversial Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership The comments left on Walker's blog post illustrate that Google's users are far from impressed, with the suggestion being that the company has turned evil, and one commenter saying: "Wow. Clearly, Google does NOT know their audience".
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Commented on post by The Real Slim ShadySure. We're stuck with the requirement. We can still have a good moan about the implementation though. — YouTube issues: Julian, Lauren might be able to help. Lauren: Julian's got a friend whose YT account was nuked following some other-than-clear actions. I think you've got some guides on that. Might even be a general consulting opportunity if you parlay it out right.
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Commented on post by Trevor Larkum in Electric Vehicles (UK)What will this do to all the Uber and private hire people in Toyota Prius?
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Commented on post by The Real Slim ShadyThe channel is back now. It was a mistaken copyright claim by one person on a bunch of tracks who basically didn't know what he was doing. He's retracted one claim and we're now trying to persuade him to do the job properly and remove the others. Meanwhile a music industry contact with an inside track to somebody in Google helped get the channel restored quickly. Until all the claims get retracted the channel is on double secret probation for a year. One more strike and he's out again. Now there's another channel in the same scene going through the same process. https://www.youtube.com/user/OnlyVibez and two others at risk because they've also promoted some of the same music from the same producer. This situation is messed up. While the underlying legal stuff is unfortunate, Google is still making it worse with their processes. This is not even an automated copyright claim bot, it's another Google customer being clueless that ends up doing the damage. — YouTube issues: Julian, Lauren might be able to help. Lauren: Julian's got a friend whose YT account was nuked following some other-than-clear actions. I think you've got some guides on that. Might even be a general consulting opportunity if you parlay it out right.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyThe channel is back now. It was a mistaken copyright claim by one person on a bunch of tracks who basically didn't know what he was doing. He's retracted one claim and we're now trying to persuade him to do the job properly and remove the others. Meanwhile a music industry contact with an inside track to somebody in Google helped get the channel restored quickly. Until all the claims get retracted the channel is on double secret probation for a year. One more strike and he's out again. Now there's another channel in the same scene going through the same process. https://www.youtube.com/user/OnlyVibez and two others at risk because they've also promoted some of the same music from the same producer. This situation is messed up. While the underlying legal stuff is unfortunate, Google is still making it worse with their processes. This is not even an automated copyright claim bot, it's another Google customer being clueless that ends up doing the damage. — Youtube auto-ban I have a close friend who is very well known in a small backwater of Lo-Fi club music. He's been responsible for promoting and spreading the love for a large number of DJs, Producers and labels. Then this happens https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY2mgHbe4QiYjLHrtF5FMYQ https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/13418376_1158192090908432_329998432217639135_o.jpg He says, "i followed the rules, i got permission for my uploads, i never monetized, i didn't squabble with video content owners for monetizing their work, i didn't have strikes... i'm so confused :(" How does this happen? Is there any way of dealing with it? Discussion here https://www.facebook.com/groups/StrictlyLoFi/permalink/1769547059943508/ FWIW. I've sent this feedback to Youtube. I don't suppose it will help, but it might. "A much loved Youtube channel has been deleted due to claimed copyright infringement. Given the nature of the content and the work the channel has done to promote independent labels, producers and music I find it very hard to believe this is not a gross mistake. Please investigate. If this has been done in error due to some automatic algorithm, please re-instate it as soon as possible."
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Commented on post by John HummelWith all the talk about the TPP, let's try not to forget the other half, the TTIP. One looks west and one looks east but they're the same. — Opposition to TPP slowly growing as people start to figure out what it would entail Forbes, a pro-free trade publication, warned on Dec. 13 that critics of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement are gaining the upper hand: “Characterizations of TPP as secretive, corporatist, undemocratic, unconstitutional, anti-poor, pro-tobacco, job-killing, and a threat to public health and safety have begun to stick and have energized opposition from activists who suspect the agreement is an effort to circumvent the domestic democratic process.” [In] May 2012 Wyden took the floor to attack the Obama administration: “The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations – like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America – are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement. As the Office of the USTR [U.S. Trade Representative] will tell you, the President gives it broad power to keep information about the trade policies it advances and negotiates secret. Let me tell you, the USTR is making full use of this authority.” Issa and other members of Congress have voiced concerns that the leaked versions of TPP suggest that the United States is promoting Internet policies that Congress specifically rejected in January 2012, when the House killed the Stop Online Piracy Act. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a leading nonprofit advocate of open access on the Internet, argues that under a cloak of secrecy, the TPP, “raises significant concerns about citizens’ freedom of expression, due process, innovation, the future of the Internet’s global infrastructure, and the right of sovereign nations to develop policies and laws that best meet their domestic priorities. In sum, the TPP puts at risk some of the most fundamental rights that enable access to knowledge for the world’s citizens.” The seemingly neutral term “advisory committee” serves to obfuscate the immense influence of commercial interests with privileged access to the formation of the trade policy of the United States. All 19 members of the steel advisory committee are, for example, industry executives, nine of them steel corporation presidents, C.E.O.'s or chairmen, or a combination of the three. There are no labor, environmental or consumer representatives on any of the 16 industrial advisory committees.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietySo. The 3 strikes from one accuser happened all at once which resulted in an instant ban and account deletion with no prior notification. It turns out this was an error and the strikes have been quickly retracted once it was found out who and what was responsible. But it's extraordinarily hard to then get Google to reinstate the account and all the years of content. As we all know when trying to deal with Google as a private individual you get stuck in a maze of dead ends and robot responses. What's messed up with this is that an error by someone claiming copyright infringement has few side effects. While the damage done to the person being accused is enormous and hard to rectify. And that the scale of the problem means Google isn't good at arbitrating the process and dealing with the errors. And when things do go wrong, Google is appallingly bad at providing process to sort it out. Not just at Youtube, but the whole way across the Googleplex. Is there any alternative to Youtube and Soundcloud (or even Facebook) for promoting new music from independents, small labels and self-published white label? Because if they're not working for us, it's time we moved on. Oh, and can I just say, "Fuck the RIAA, the DMCA and the US legal system" that's led us to this. — Youtube auto-ban I have a close friend who is very well known in a small backwater of Lo-Fi club music. He's been responsible for promoting and spreading the love for a large number of DJs, Producers and labels. Then this happens https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY2mgHbe4QiYjLHrtF5FMYQ https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/13418376_1158192090908432_329998432217639135_o.jpg He says, "i followed the rules, i got permission for my uploads, i never monetized, i didn't squabble with video content owners for monetizing their work, i didn't have strikes... i'm so confused :(" How does this happen? Is there any way of dealing with it? Discussion here https://www.facebook.com/groups/StrictlyLoFi/permalink/1769547059943508/ FWIW. I've sent this feedback to Youtube. I don't suppose it will help, but it might. "A much loved Youtube channel has been deleted due to claimed copyright infringement. Given the nature of the content and the work the channel has done to promote independent labels, producers and music I find it very hard to believe this is not a gross mistake. Please investigate. If this has been done in error due to some automatic algorithm, please re-instate it as soon as possible."
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Commented on post by The Real Slim ShadyWhat's messed up with this is that an error by someone claiming copyright infringement has few side effects. While the damage done to the person being accused is enormous and hard to rectify. And that the scale of the problem means Google isn't good at arbitrating the process and dealing with the errors. And when things do go wrong, Google is appallingly bad at providing process to sort it out. Not just at Youtube, but the whole way across the Googleplex. Is there any alternative to Youtube and Soundcloud? Because if they're not working for us, it's time we moved on. Oh, and can I just say, "Fuck the RIAA, the DMCA and the US legal system"! — YouTube issues: Julian, Lauren might be able to help. Lauren: Julian's got a friend whose YT account was nuked following some other-than-clear actions. I think you've got some guides on that. Might even be a general consulting opportunity if you parlay it out right.
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Commented on post by The Real Slim ShadyThe channel owner says: trying to contact youtube is like pissing into the wind ive had the strikes against my channel removed, but cant find any info properly explaining if i'll definitely get access/content back.. and if so when, from what ive seen of some people that did get theirs back, it took close to a month to get any sort of action and they had no word before it happened --- I do understand that this is a legal minefield, but the user/owner and dispute experience is horrible. — YouTube issues: Julian, Lauren might be able to help. Lauren: Julian's got a friend whose YT account was nuked following some other-than-clear actions. I think you've got some guides on that. Might even be a general consulting opportunity if you parlay it out right.
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Commented on post by David BrinWell, yes, but that is to miss the point which is that knowledge of an SSN doesn't and shouldn't authenticate anything. "First, most people consider their SSN private" which is part of the problem. It's an understandable position, but it shouldn't be necessary. Because if it becomes non-private, which is inevitable, it shouldn't matter. — Should you even use paper checks, anymore? Or give others your bank account and routing number? Even though it moves much more money than all of the credit card companies combined, the system the US uses to move money in and out of bank accounts – the Automated Clearing House, or ACH – is in many ways less secure than the credit card system.
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Commented on post by The Real Slim ShadyThanks, Lauren, I have a close friend who is very well known in a small backwater of Lo-Fi club music. He's been responsible for promoting and spreading the love for a large number of DJs, Producers and labels. These are all independents, and often self-published white label tracks. The channel receives lots of unpublished music as requests for his services and he's done work for a whole raft of small labels. Then out of the blue this happens https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY2mgHbe4QiYjLHrtF5FMYQ https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/13418376_1158192090908432_329998432217639135_o.jpg "OOUKFunkyOO has been terminated because we've received multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement regarding material that the user posted." He says, "i followed the rules, i got permission for my uploads, i never monetized, i didn't squabble with video content owners for monetizing their work, i didn't have strikes... i'm so confused :(" Basically he's tried hard to play by the rules and he does actually have permission to upload from every artist/copyright owner. I think it is being resolved and the source of the problem found and being fixed. However, there's a big problem here that he never received any warnings or detail of what he had done wrong until the account got nuked. And of course the other problem that it's really hard to find a friendly source of help and process to try and get the account re-instated. I found your article https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LaurenWeinstein/posts/K8ST9dTLwHr in the community suggested and have forwarded it. — YouTube issues: Julian, Lauren might be able to help. Lauren: Julian's got a friend whose YT account was nuked following some other-than-clear actions. I think you've got some guides on that. Might even be a general consulting opportunity if you parlay it out right.
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Commented on post by David BrinSSN is a perfectly good ID used as a primary key since the issuing authority, the gov, guarantees it to be unique and only given to one person. What you shouldn't do is use it as an authenticator and assume that the person who knows it is the same as the person it refers to. Same goes for bank account numbers and credit/debit card numbers. Knowledge of the number should not authenticate the person with the knowledge as the person with control over the account. — Should you even use paper checks, anymore? Or give others your bank account and routing number? Even though it moves much more money than all of the credit card companies combined, the system the US uses to move money in and out of bank accounts – the Automated Clearing House, or ACH – is in many ways less secure than the credit card system.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyIt looks like it is being sorted out. I'll report back once I know the full story. There's several sides to this. - How do the algorithms and process work? - How do you deal with the situation when it goes wrong - How do you get validated as an official marketing channel — Youtube auto-ban I have a close friend who is very well known in a small backwater of Lo-Fi club music. He's been responsible for promoting and spreading the love for a large number of DJs, Producers and labels. Then this happens https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY2mgHbe4QiYjLHrtF5FMYQ https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/13418376_1158192090908432_329998432217639135_o.jpg He says, "i followed the rules, i got permission for my uploads, i never monetized, i didn't squabble with video content owners for monetizing their work, i didn't have strikes... i'm so confused :(" How does this happen? Is there any way of dealing with it? Discussion here https://www.facebook.com/groups/StrictlyLoFi/permalink/1769547059943508/ FWIW. I've sent this feedback to Youtube. I don't suppose it will help, but it might. "A much loved Youtube channel has been deleted due to claimed copyright infringement. Given the nature of the content and the work the channel has done to promote independent labels, producers and music I find it very hard to believe this is not a gross mistake. Please investigate. If this has been done in error due to some automatic algorithm, please re-instate it as soon as possible."
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Commented on post by David BrinIt really is about time the USA stopped using knowledge of publicly visible identifiers as authentication. This applies to SSN, Bank account numbers, Credit/debit card numbers, driving license numbers, among others. — Should you even use paper checks, anymore? Or give others your bank account and routing number? Even though it moves much more money than all of the credit card companies combined, the system the US uses to move money in and out of bank accounts – the Automated Clearing House, or ACH – is in many ways less secure than the credit card system.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyAye, there is that. I'm mostly curious about how this happens. Every vid has the permission of the artist. In fact in most cases, they've asked him to do the promotion. He's never had a warning from YT. But presumably some auto-system has flagged the channel enough times, quickly enough to trigger the full ban hammer. — Youtube auto-ban I have a close friend who is very well known in a small backwater of Lo-Fi club music. He's been responsible for promoting and spreading the love for a large number of DJs, Producers and labels. Then this happens https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY2mgHbe4QiYjLHrtF5FMYQ https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/t31.0-8/13418376_1158192090908432_329998432217639135_o.jpg He says, "i followed the rules, i got permission for my uploads, i never monetized, i didn't squabble with video content owners for monetizing their work, i didn't have strikes... i'm so confused :(" How does this happen? Is there any way of dealing with it? Discussion here https://www.facebook.com/groups/StrictlyLoFi/permalink/1769547059943508/ FWIW. I've sent this feedback to Youtube. I don't suppose it will help, but it might. "A much loved Youtube channel has been deleted due to claimed copyright infringement. Given the nature of the content and the work the channel has done to promote independent labels, producers and music I find it very hard to believe this is not a gross mistake. Please investigate. If this has been done in error due to some automatic algorithm, please re-instate it as soon as possible."
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Commented on post by stevie rial in Motorcycle RoadracingWhat actually happened to John McGuiness? — http://roadracingnews.co.uk/tt-2016-bruce-anstey-wins-seven-bike-ses-tt-zero/
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Commented on post by Stewart BrandIt wasn't much of a problem (<1000 birds pa). Most of the "shock horror" stories grossly exaggerated the numbers. And now it's not a problem at all. http://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/16/one-weird-trick-prevents-bird-deaths-solar-towers/ — Solar farms cook wild birds in flight Rooftop solar is mostly fine.  Some big solar farms, like at Ivanpah in California, are turning out to be even tougher on wildlife than first thought.  They displace ground animals like the desert tortoise on a large scale, and now, it turns out, they turn passing birds into smoking “streamers.”
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsI've wondered if the existence of the frontier in 19th century America has lodged itself deep in America's psyche. The idea that you can just walk away from problems because there's always somewhere new to start again. The problem now being of course that there's no space left to just start again. — Not just law enforcement, but all civil institutions, and industry, are thin in rural areas “Folks found it really wasn’t so easy to diversify in these rural areas, because there’s nothing there,” said Laura Cleland, spokeswoman for the Association of Oregon Counties. “You can’t just create industries out of thin air.” +Marla Caldwell​ might find this of interest. The areas discussed are still favourably situated as compared to others recently discussed.
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyThe early 90s were fun. Not just Wired, but the Cyberpunk edition of Time. Mondo 2000. The first paper bOingbOing and Fringeware Review. The major achievement of getting winsock and Cello to display an early web page. Of course also fun because I was that age then. [later] Took a while but I just found my copy of "Mindgrenades - Manifestos from the future" published by the Hotwired team in 1996. It was 20 years ago. And looks curiously naive. https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Grenades-Manifestos-John-Plunkett/dp/1888869003/ref=sr_1_1 — A good book today would be a reproduction of the first decade of Wired magazine, as it was, ads and all. One reporter for the New Yorker read the back issues (when I was editing) recently and was surprised by what she found. http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/on-reading-issues-of-wired-from-1993-to-1995
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyIt's strange to me that the USA keeps treating public Identifiers as secret authentication. It's absurd that knowledge of a bank account number alone should allow withdrawal of funds from that bank account. Just as it's absurd that knowledge of a printed credit/debit card slip should allow charging against that card. Or that knowledge of a Social Security ID number should allow identity theft. It's not just the banks that need to start taking security seriously. — Paper checks are an unsafe method of payment. It's very easy to anyone hack your account. http://fusion.net/story/309392/stop-using-paper-checks/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Institutions+Marla Caldwell probably their fault for choosing the wrong career. And probably their fault for choosing the wrong location. — Not just law enforcement, but all civil institutions, and industry, are thin in rural areas “Folks found it really wasn’t so easy to diversify in these rural areas, because there’s nothing there,” said Laura Cleland, spokeswoman for the Association of Oregon Counties. “You can’t just create industries out of thin air.” +Marla Caldwell​ might find this of interest. The areas discussed are still favourably situated as compared to others recently discussed.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillance+Alex Schroeder Google Takeout (and all the rest from facebook, Twitter and all the others) are classic examples of the Snowflake API problem. It's all just JSON, but it's all different schemas. And please, won't anyone think of the poor programmer who has to parse and code round each one individually. Feed aggregators. Now there's a friendfeed sized problem. The need still exists. Time for somebody to have another go at it. — SNML is a concept that's occurred to me as well Components?
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief Dispatches+Kimberly Chapman Proper Tea is theft. — Well, you certainly can't accuse them of false advertising.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesStewart Lee's wonderful rant on "Pear cider that's made from 100% pears" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xd4FfNpYxF0 — Well, you certainly can't accuse them of false advertising.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in WingnutteryThese floods are not caused by global warming because that's just a liberal hoax. They're just 1 in a 1000 years weather. Just like last year's. See. It's easy. — Naah... that was clearly a "God smiting the liberal heathens for too much gay" flood.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThis is so 2005. FOAF, Microformats, (fucking) RDF, PSHB, tags, Semantic Web, XMPP, Markup Languages. aka "Everything is Miscellaneous". It's kind of funny how tree structured XML turned into net structured RDF turned into unstructured JSON. While formal Schema standards turned into open schemas turned into snowflake schemas. Hashtag #BeenThereDoneThat . — SNML is a concept that's occurred to me as well Components?
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Commented on post by Mike Rotch in Climate ChangeMeanwhile in southern India, nuclear may not be appropriate technology. http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jun/06/lonely-struggle-india-anti-nuclear-protesters-tamil-nadu-kudankulam-idinthakarai — IPCC shows that one of the cheapest and most efficient way of reducing GHG emissions is nuclear power : source: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_wg3_ar5_chapter7.pdf #nuclear   #nuclear4climate  
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Commented on post by Mike Rotch in Climate ChangeSo Nuclear is an important part of the future in CO2 mitigation of electricity generation. And so are renewables. As they get cheaper and faster to deploy year on year. And see my comment on that other post. I suspect we're in violent agreement. I'm just pointing out your link to an outdated source. M'kay? — Nuclear power is humanities best bet to lower GHG emissions. according IPCC
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Commented on post by blanche nonkenFreedonia — Make Fredonia Great Again.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedWhat might have been. It would have completely changed the Ducati DNA — 350cc Ricardo Triple When Ducati prepared to re-enter Grand Prix racing in the early 1970s after a 10-year absence, it developed two separate engines: a house-built 500cc V-twin and a 350cc inline-triple farmed out to British engineering firm Ricardo. Intended to beat then-dominant MV Agusta triples ridden by Giacomo Agostini, Ricardo engineer Martin Ford-Dunne’s design was cutting-edge in every way, incorporating liquid cooling and mechanical fuel injection. Belt-driven dual overhead cams operated four valves per cylinder, with a dry clutch and seven-speed gearbox attached to the back of the engine. The triple was engineered to safely rev as high as 18,250 rpm. The sound was reportedly amazing, with split exhaust ports emptying into six separate, small-diameter headers.
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Commented on post by Mike Rotch in Climate ChangeYes, but quoting from an out of date report when there's a newer one easily available doesn't do your argument any favours. I also have a problem with reducing lots of pages of executive summary and analysis of the different energy resources to a single chart of numbers. Reality is more complicated than that. The IPCC reports recognise that. — Nuclear power is humanities best bet to lower GHG emissions. according IPCC
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeIs it the same trade and lobby groups that are pushing the big Agro agenda and promoting GMOs + Herbicides + Insecticides + Fertilisers + monoculture? — The Deny, Ignore, Stall, and Delay Strategy of Big Tobacco THEN and Big Oil Coal and Gas NOW: Today's climate science denier trade and lobby groups are the modern updated version of the tobacco industry denial trade and lobby groups of yesteryear
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Commented on post by Mike Rotch in Climate ChangeThere is no one solution. Nuclear on it's own doesn't solve the problem. One key issue is that while it's good at reliably producing base load, it's bad at load and peak following so it needs to be matched with fast reacting resources like Hydro and Gas. The next problem is that it tends to be highly centralised so that during maintenance and trips, large quantities of resource go off line at once. Again requiring large amounts of backup. That's a common criticism of renewables like Solar and Wind but due to intermittancy rather than lack of flexibility. That can be solved to some extent by continent wide grids and energy markets. But we do have to actually build out the grid that's smart enough to average out the peaks and troughs. The biggest problem I have right now with Nuclear is the capital cost and build time. It means that build requires state level actors and are heavily dependent on debt financing that requires long term business as usual. And long term business as usual requires oil. So while we're failing to build nuclear and develop next generation designs, and they still look 10-30 years out, we're actually deploying renewables at an accelerating rate year on year and that's starting to have a major effect on the total energy and GHG mix. — IPCC shows that one of the cheapest and most efficient way of reducing GHG emissions is nuclear power : source: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_wg3_ar5_chapter7.pdf #nuclear   #nuclear4climate  
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Commented on post by Mike Rotch in Climate ChangeYou should link to the latest AR5 and not AR4. A lot has happened in the last 5 years. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_wg3_ar5_chapter7.pdf "Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), many RE technologies have demonstrated substantial performance improvements and cost reductions, and a growing number of RE technologies have achieved a level of maturity to enable deployment at significant scale" — Nuclear power is humanities best bet to lower GHG emissions. according IPCC
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Commented on post by stevie rial in Motorcycle RoadracingShame the field is so small. Only 4 riders did a lap. — http://roadracingnews.co.uk/tt-2016-electric-machines-take-to-the-mountain-course/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPAnd then today we get the story that the back wheels were coming off the ground, the new, more primitive electronics couldn't catch the over-rev quick enough, and that was what destroyed two engines. — https://twitter.com/tonygoldsmithgp/status/734411821860392960 Mugello, flat out, top speed just as they crest the rise and just before they start braking. The wings help to keep the front down so they don't wheelie like they used to. But that rear wheel off the ground is going to spin up and hit the rev limiter. Is that partly what broke both Yamaha engines? seeAlso: https://motomatters.com/analysis/2016/05/23/2016_mugello_motogp_sunday_round_up_of.html
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Knowledge and Information+Sean McLean Keep widening the Bell curve — These are the big applications for Facebook’s newest artificial intelligence system called“DeepText”. 400,000 new stories and 125,000 comments on public posts are shared every minute on Facebook. DeepText will help Facebook analyze several thousand per second across 20 languages with near-human accuracy.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle Roadracing+Simon Williams Thanks for that. I had no idea that was happening. Turns out Quest is owned by Discovery, like Eurosport, and they did the same thing last week with BSB. And it's the normal Eurosport commentary team. — BSB & WSB TV in the UK No UK live coverage of WSB this weekend at Donington. And no live coverage of BSB last weekend at Brands Indy. Did Dorna upset Eurosport UK? Or is it just that we're in the middle of tennis-cycling season? I can't remember when this last happened.
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Commented on post by Steve Liberty in Chromecast AudioIf you have a big local collection of music stored on a home NAS or server/share, there's no good way of playing it on a CCA or Chromecast. There's 3 options I'm aware of. 1) Upload all the collection to Google Play and then play it from there. <50k tracks. 2) Use a local music server program like Plex. 3) Use the beta Chrome Cast extension, and cast the whole desktop and then play your normal music app like Winamp. To be honest I'm not really happy with any of these as they've al got downsides. Curiously Chromebooks and Chrome-OS have the same problem of not being able to play music off a home NAS or share. Very recently, some code has been released to access shares from Chrome-OS and as the Chromecast is a custom Chrome-OS device internally, it's possible this will eventually migrate. I think what I'd really like is Google to release a windows audio device driver so any windows app could "cast" it's audio. This would make it easy to play music in WMP, iTunes, Winamp, VLC or whatever but I'm not holding out any hope of that happening. — I have not bought a Chromecast Audio yet (although I own 5 Chomecasts for my TVs). I have a question: Is there any way to send locally stored audio to the Chromecast Audio device, such as music on my iPhone or Mac? Or is it really only for internet streamed music like Spotify?
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeNot just Bangla Desh but large areas of the Indian Sub-continent are at risk of major disruption from sea level rise. And this on top of general weather weirding and all the side effects that has. It's a pressure cooker.
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Commented on post by Busa Bob in Motorcycle Roadracinghttps://motomatters.com/opinion/2016/05/26/opinion_can_cameron_beaubier_revive_the.html
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in ResourcesSome of those are just straight pollution and not necessarily related to sinks except in the sense that the Whole Earth (sic) is a sink. I was wondering about specific sinks that are becoming full and no longer able to absorb any more pollution supply. I'm not sure the logical rather than material issues fit in the same area. Debt, moral breakdown and social isolation may be considered as social pollution, but it's a stretch to lump them in directly with, say, asbestos. Even though they are all perhaps side effects of unfettered capitalism. — Metals Recycling in the US: 28% - 80% recovery Related to other projects I happened across the US Geological Survey's reports on metals recycling in the US. The report only covers select metals: aluminium, chromium, copper, iron & steel, lead, magnesium, nickel, tin, titanium, and zinc. Notably absent: lithium. The recycled percentage of consumption (the amount of new metal supply that is from recycled material) ranges from a low of 28% to a high of 68%. Lead, somewhat surprisingly, is the most-recycled metal (and as much as 80% of it has been recycled in the reporting period). Given limits on resources, recycling is a key way to extend metal supplies. I've noted that at a 90% recovery rate, you still lose much of your initial resource, over 50%, in just 7 generations. At lower rates of recovery, that loss is further accelerated. Interesting if you're the sort of person who finds this kind of thing interesting. http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/myb1-2014-recyc.pdf
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Resources- Nitrogen runoff. Leading to algae blooms and anoxic ocean dead zones. - Slurry pits from industrial animal agriculture - Coal and Steel slag heaps. The Aberfan disaster came to mind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster — Metals Recycling in the US: 28% - 80% recovery Related to other projects I happened across the US Geological Survey's reports on metals recycling in the US. The report only covers select metals: aluminium, chromium, copper, iron & steel, lead, magnesium, nickel, tin, titanium, and zinc. Notably absent: lithium. The recycled percentage of consumption (the amount of new metal supply that is from recycled material) ranges from a low of 28% to a high of 68%. Lead, somewhat surprisingly, is the most-recycled metal (and as much as 80% of it has been recycled in the reporting period). Given limits on resources, recycling is a key way to extend metal supplies. I've noted that at a 90% recovery rate, you still lose much of your initial resource, over 50%, in just 7 generations. At lower rates of recovery, that loss is further accelerated. Interesting if you're the sort of person who finds this kind of thing interesting. http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/myb1-2014-recyc.pdf
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in ResourcesOne of the questions is where the proportion of materials that are not recycled goes and finally ends up. - Helium floats out of the atmosphere - We don't really know how to recycle CO2+H20 back into fossil fuels (or anything) - Plastics go into the ocean, get ground up into tiny pieces and then enter the food chain or become sediment The stuff that ends up in landfill but shouldn't, could still become a new raw material. But some stuff is effectively lost forever as part of it's processing cycle. If the resource constraints don't get you, the pollution will. ;) — Metals Recycling in the US: 28% - 80% recovery Related to other projects I happened across the US Geological Survey's reports on metals recycling in the US. The report only covers select metals: aluminium, chromium, copper, iron & steel, lead, magnesium, nickel, tin, titanium, and zinc. Notably absent: lithium. The recycled percentage of consumption (the amount of new metal supply that is from recycled material) ranges from a low of 28% to a high of 68%. Lead, somewhat surprisingly, is the most-recycled metal (and as much as 80% of it has been recycled in the reporting period). Given limits on resources, recycling is a key way to extend metal supplies. I've noted that at a 90% recovery rate, you still lose much of your initial resource, over 50%, in just 7 generations. At lower rates of recovery, that loss is further accelerated. Interesting if you're the sort of person who finds this kind of thing interesting. http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/recycle/myb1-2014-recyc.pdf
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeFrank Landis explores this in http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392 https://heteromeles.com/ The title is "Hot Earth Dreams: What if severe climate change happens, and humans survive?" It's a 400k years narrative of the side effects of burning all the remaining fossil fuels. The question is how long it takes to turn that carbon into one long #terafart  of atmospheric CO2. That's 1TeraTonne of Carbon or 1TtC. To me at the moment, it's only a question of whether it takes 1 century or two. Because 10b of us will collectively find reasons to burn each last bit. — The planet would warm by searing 10C if all fossil fuels are burned, according to a new study, leaving some regions uninhabitable and wreaking profound damage on human health, food supplies and the global economy. The Arctic, already warming fast today, would heat up even more – 20C by 2300 – the new research into the extreme scenario found. “I think it is really important to know what would happen if we don’t take any action to mitigate climate change,” said Katarzyna Tokarska, at the University of Victoria in Canada and who led the new research. “Even though we have the Paris climate change agreement, so far there hasn’t been any action. [This research] is a warning message.” #FossilFuels #GHGEmissions
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Institutions+Hartmut Noack One of Phil K Dick's revelations that has long stuck in my mind. "The Empire Never Ended" — A.H.M. Jones, Augustus, The Breakdown of the Republic The following is the introduction to Jones' 1970 biography of the Roman emperor Augustus, founder of the Roman Empire and ruling from 27 BC to 14 AD. I chanced on a copy at a friend's house during recent travels, and finally tracked down a copy (it does remain in print as a print-on-demand book, but is otherwise surprisingly difficult to locate for sale). Though short, the book is quite densely written. This introductory chapter is among the better and more accessible within it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus). What struck me most was the description of the political situation which begins the work -- what follows are quite literally the first few paragraphs of the book, which I typed out a couple of days ago. The parties -- a plutonomic obligates, the proletarian populares, and the swing-voting equites, and the fundamental platforms: strong property rights and absolute honoring of debt by the obligates, land reform (democratising the means of production) and grain subsidies (one way to accomplishing what a living wage would provide), and the interests of each in either securing more power for themselves, or of weakening the power of the opposition. Oh, and complete with extrajudicial executions of the unfortunate. It all sound stunningly contemporary. Frighteningly so. The book itself is brief, 167 pages. I'm going to try to force myself to a strict online diet to plow through it. It's Jones' final work, he died prior to its publication, though all but the index was complete at the time. Pithy, expert, and compelling, from the first bits. I've been meaning to share this for a while, +John Poteet​​​ got a highly misquoted preview some weeks ago. But yeah: it's all about power, my droogs. <quote> The breakdown of the Roman Republic has been called Hannibal's legacy, and there is some truth in the epigram. The long years (218-201 B.C.) of fighting and ravaging up and down Italy, and the long years of military service at home and abroad, impoverished the peasantry and brought many of them to ruin. In the years that followed, the Spanish provinces acquired during the war meant more long-term service abroad, while the Eastern wars brought in a flood of money, most of which found its way into the pockets of the upper classes, particularly senators. Their invevitable reaction was to invest this money in land and, since the wars produced a glut of slaves, to stock their new estates with slaves. The peasant proprietors began to be squeezed out, and a rural proletariat of landless peasants began to form. These were the origins of the agrarian problem which was to dog the Roman Republic for the rest of its existence. The second Punic War, and still more the wars overseas which followed it, also embittered relations betwen Rome and her Italian allies. The cities and tribes of Italy, as they had one by one been subdued, had been given treaties, under which they were obliged to supply troops to fight in Rome's wars. As long as these wars were in Italy, against such common enemies as the Gauls, the allies felt no particular grievance. But now that they had to fight to win provinces or indemnities for the sole benefit of Rome, they began to be restive. Roman magistrates and the Senate had, moreover, in the period of the second Punic War grown used to ordering the allies about in an arbitrary fashion, and continued to do so in peace time. It was the agrarian problem that sparked off the violence that was ultimately to destroy the Republic. Tiberius Gracchus' bill, enacted in 133 B.C. for distributing the public land, after leaving a generous allowance to the occupiers, in small lots to poor citizens, excited such furious resistance among the senatorial landowners that a group of them lynchded Gracchus. This was the first in a series of violent clashes between two groups who called themselves the optimates and the populares. The nucleus of the optimates was the small clique of nobles (men whose fathers, grandfathers, or more remote ancesters had been consuls) who more or less monopolized the highest offices and dominated the Senate, but they had wide support among the propertied class, even, as Cicero says, propserous freedman; otherwise they could not have maintained their unbroken hold on the higher magistracies. They were conservatives, who regarded the rights of property as sacred, and therefore resisted bitterly any attempts to redistribute land or cancel debt. They were upholders of the constitution and of religion, which could be used to block any revolutionary legislation. Though at times they had to yield to popular pressure, they always remained the government. The populares were a much less well defined group. Their leaders were individual politicians or very small groups of politicians, who at intervals attempted to legislate in the interests of the people, by which they meant the common people. Most of them were also nobles, and their usual weapon was the tribunate of the plebs, which was the normal legislative office --- when the Senate wanted a law passed it normally requested the tribunes to put it to the plebeian assembly, and a tribune could pass a law without the assent of the Senate --- and possessed other formidable powers, such as an all embracing veto and the right of impeaching the most senior magistrates (after their year of office) before the people: it was also an office to which it was easy to be elected, since there were ten tribunes a year. The populares developed a regular programme of legislation. First came the distribution of smallholdings to landless citizens. These were at first offered to all. Later, when Marius began to recruit landless peasants into the army, the distribution was limited to time-served soldiers, who obviously had a superior claim. The next point in the programme was the provision by the state of corn for the proletariat of Rome at a price that they could afford. From time to time the populares were interested in the problem of debt, which frequently meant agricultural indebtedness. They were early successful in introducing the secret ballot into voting in the assembly, for legislation, elections and trials. They also stood up against the execution of Roman citizens without a lawful trial; the Senate was very prone to ignore this elementary right of the citizen in what it deemed to be political crises. Most populares advocated the grant of citizenship to the Italian allies. They were generally interested in the welfare of the provincials; most of the extortion laws were promoted by populares. Finally, they substituted equites (citizens owning 400,000 sesterces who were not senators) for senators as jurors in the criminal courts. Support came to the populares from different sections of the population according to the measures that they advocated from time to time. The landless peasants flocked to Rome to vote for land allotments, but the urban poor were more interested in distribution of corn. It was the peasant proprietors who clamoured for abolition of debt. The equites were uncertain in their allegiance. They would support a popular leader who championed their control of the criminal courts, but the thought of distribution of land or abolition of debt promptly sent them into the camp of the optimates. Apart from the allies themselves, who having no votes were politically valueless, no one favoured their enfranchisement; for one reason or another optimates, the equites, the urban proletariat and the peasantry were opposed to it. We know the fact but we can only infer the reasons. In general there was a reluctance to extend and therby dilute the privileges of citizenship. The nobles no doubt feared that the aristocratic families in the Italian cities would break their monopoly of high office at Rome. The equites may have feared that wealthy Italian groups would outbid them for the tax contracts and compete for the equestrian militiae, the offer-posts of prefect and tribune in the army. The urban proletariat may have feared that poor Italians would migrate to Rome and compete for the wheat ration, the peasants that they would apply for land allotments. </quote> Title: Augustus Author: A. H. M. Jones W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York (c) 1970 SBN 393 04328 2 Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 70-128042 Table of Contents: Geonealogical Table of the Julian Family Main Events of Augustus' Live and Reign Preface and Note 1. The Breakdown of the Republic 2. Caesar's Heir 3. Triumvir 4. The Restoration of the Republic 5. The Principate 6. The Constitutional Position 7. The Magistrates and the Senate 8. The Provinces. 9. The Armed Forces 10. Finance 11. Justice 12. Social Policy 13. Religion 14. Literature and the Arts 15. Augustus 16. The Sources Maps Glossary Select Bibliography Index http://www.powells.com/book/augustus-9780393005844/61-0 (Repurposed from an earlier private share.)
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsWhat's the minimal population needed for a technological society based on computing? Did that number just drop by 60k? As for the effect on Foxconn's ability to pwn devices on behalf of state security actors, I doubt this does anything at all, at all. The jobs lost were fiddly but robotic activity that didn't question or change or perhaps even have any knowledge of how the devices worked. Or of what they were doing. Hmmm. Pwning silicon by inserting malware into the chip mask layout software. That's kind of related to a hardware version of inserting malware into gcc! — Supposing you wanted to install hardware compromises on a maximum set of devices? Would robotising your assembly ops be on your strategy list? Foxconn is probably a consortium of international spy agencies into various central locations so that the build outs could be controlled and the proper chipsets with the proper spywear could be more easily installed, depending on the PO's country of origin.. -- +Doug Senko​​ commenting on +Woozle Hypertwin​​'s post here. You'd have 60k fewer potential whistleblowers. NB: "You" need not be the notional owner of the automation plant. It could be the pwner instead.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modifiedhttps://photos.google.com/u/0/album/AF1QipPcWxqxmHhyMv87xRv429pcffEcGYpzmLPivXec not found — Yoshimura R&D's Cafe Concept Yamaha R1
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in Motorcycle RoadracingDoh! — Amazing moto3 racing at Mugello. Like 2 wheeled NASCAR.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - Modified+H.T.V. Blu that link is 404? — Yoshimura R&D's Cafe Concept Yamaha R1
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Commented on post by Julian BondFrom tomorrow (May 24) for one week. Tickets @ £75 and 3 for £150. Get in there. https://tickets.farrfestival.co.uk/rep/jbond-farr-2016 — One more time, with feeling. Farr festival is a boutique electronic dance festival on July 14-15-16. Near Baldock on the A1, 30 miles N of London. For just a little longer, the ticket link below is for weekend camping tickets at a heavy discount. https://tickets.farrfestival.co.uk/rep/jbond-farr-2016 http://www.farrfestival.co.uk/
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedI approve of this trend towards styling modern sports bikes like 80s endurance racers. eg the Praem BMW. http://www.bikeexif.com/bmw-s-1000-rr Let's have more road sports bikes with proper fairings and screens that look like you could hide behind and maintain 130mph the whole way across Europe, one tank full at a time. All M/C fall over eventually. If you remove the lower fairings, its a great opportunity to fit some crash protectors. ;) — Yoshimura R&D's Cafe Concept Yamaha R1
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Commented on post by Marty McWreckanoid in Motorcycle RoadracingWhat started as a technically interesting class with a bunch of amateurs quickly became dominated by 2 teams and then 1. It's hard to see how anyone can compete with Honda Mugen.
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Commented on post by Graham Reed in Motorcycle RoadracingNascar? What's that? ;) — Amazing moto3 racing at Mugello. Like 2 wheeled NASCAR.
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate Change+Allen Insight There's a half way house which is to use the excess energy on things that are long lived. Like Ammonia based fertiliser production. — So an entire country is powered on 100% renewables for nearly four and a half straight days. 4.5 days of FREE power, ZERO air pollution, and ZERO water pollution. THIS is how we will stop the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere. We are only at the beginning the revolution in energy and sustainable transportation. Hopefully this will be repeated in more nations around the world for longer and longer stretches of time. And it must, because we are almost out of time to Stop Runaway Global Warming.
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Commented on post by Antonio Cuenca in MotoGPGo back and watch it again. The final lap of all three races was as good as it gets.
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Commented on post by Antonio Cuenca in MotoGPWhat a day. Epic Moto3. Intensely irritating cock up in Moto2. Both sad and amazing race in MotoGP. What a strange year its turning out to be.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green Technology+Art Hutchins And then unfortunately it also gets repeated by people like the pro-nuclear lobby. eg https://plus.google.com/116951145888391044655/posts/SNWvsg2NQjK — Constructing a wildlife friendly windmill I have heard it said as an argument against windmills, that they are dangerous to birds, etc. Well, the thing is that anyone who is really concerned about generating clean energy, is also concerned about the safety of our wildlife. That's why it's nice to see projects like this one where a windmill has been constructed in collaboration with the RSPB, to ensure it is as safe as possible to surrounding wildlife.
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Commented on post by Pierre Markuse in Climate Change / EarthWe are definitely in unknown territory http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,230.msg77524.html#msg77524 — Early Breakup of the Beaufort Sea Ice Every spring, the expansive pack of sea ice that coats the Beaufort Sea (https://goo.gl/t6YIqQ) during the winter starts to thin and break up when the spring sunlight arrives and temperatures rise. Normally, that breakup does not reach full swing until late May. In 2016, much of the Beaufort Sea’s ice started breaking up by mid-April. Take a look at the images showing the break up of sea ice in April 2014, 2015, and 2016. Clearly visible is the extent of open water in 2016, showing the early break up of the ice. Read the full story here: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=88065 You may also want to read "2016 Arctic Sea Ice Wintertime Extent Hits Another Record Low": https://plus.google.com/+PierreMarkuse/posts/GHzj8PpfapU Take a look at the other materials at the National Snow and Ice Data Center website: http://nsidc.org/ Check out NASA's Global Climate Change Vital Signs of the Planet website with lots of information on global climate change: http://climate.nasa.gov/ This NASA Earth Observatory article on global warming is answering some of the most asked questions: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/ Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using MODIS data from LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response #science  #earth #arctic  #seaice   #seaicecover   #climate   #climatechange   #BeaufortSea   #eos   #modis  
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green Technologyhttp://www.pembina.org/blog/a-whirlwind-tour-of-wind-energy-myths Scroll down to "Turbine avian genocide". It's just not a problem. So there's not a whole lot of need to find a solution to it. — Constructing a wildlife friendly windmill I have heard it said as an argument against windmills, that they are dangerous to birds, etc. Well, the thing is that anyone who is really concerned about generating clean energy, is also concerned about the safety of our wildlife. That's why it's nice to see projects like this one where a windmill has been constructed in collaboration with the RSPB, to ensure it is as safe as possible to surrounding wildlife.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingHas the music stopped yet? That must be most of the major seats filled now. — Team Red: JL99 & ........ AD04 Confirmed, Dovi will stay at #Ducati & as we know will be team mate with Jorge Lorenzo. Full Details via MCN : http://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/motogp/2016/may/confirmed-dovi-to-partner-lorenzo-at-ducati-next-year/ ___________________________________ +MotoGP #MotoGP #Ducati
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawPeople who like this, might also like a short essay by James Bridle of his experience photographing congestion charge CCTV cameras in London. http://shorttermmemoryloss.com/nor/2014/11/07/all-cameras-are-police-cameras/ — There are a lot of things you don't realize are unusual until you step outside of them for a while. The article below is by +Brad Templeton, and his experience of being questioned by the FBI for taking a photo of the Sun. (His camera was apparently pointed in a direction which could have also caught a Federal building, although the building wasn't marked as such) If you live in the US, you're probably nodding your head and thinking that "yes, that's about what you should expect" – whether your second thought is "and that's horrifying" or "the government has to protect its buildings." A few years ago, I was in Tel Aviv, and was carrying my camera, having spent some time photographing the city. My cousin (a professor of political science) and I were talking as we went to a meeting she had with some government official she was interviewing at a Ministry of Defense building. When I realized that we were right next to the building, I said "Oh, shit!" and hurriedly put my camera away. She was completely confused; why was I doing this? It was only when she didn't understand at all that I realized how the behavior that I'm completely used to – that having a camera out in the vicinity of a government building (a military one, at that!) would be taken as such an open provocation that I would be almost certainly detained and the camera seized, if I was lucky – is neither historically normal in the US, nor is it common in the rest of the world. Even in Israel, a country that has good reason to have an extremely alert security posture, it had never occurred to anyone that possession of a camera in the vicinity of a government building should draw an immediate armed response. The rest of that trip was a similar exercise in noticing small differences. Re-entering the United States was another one; surrounded by signs warning you not to attempt to use a phone or photograph anything, you are moved through passport control, screens playing videos about the various crimes you are warned not to commit. At the end you show papers, and are fingerprinted, photographed, and interrogated. (This is what they did for citizens; I can't imagine what the non-citizens line was like) All the officials present, from the people inspecting papers to the people moving people about through the line, were overtly hostile; after the INS/DHS merger, USCIS clearly viewed its primary mission as preventing people from entering the country. Not all of it has to do with "national security;" consider how children are allowed to play. In the US, they need to be monitored 24/7; playing in the front yard, much less going to the park on their own, is a sign of possibly criminal neglect. As a child in the US, I would go all over the neighborhood when playing; in Israel, my friends and I would roam over a good mile's radius, and my mother would routinely send seven-year-old me to the grocery store to pick things up. When in the US for any length of time, this entire situation seems perfectly normal, and people wonder what I'm complaining about. And that's the thing: it had been feeling perfectly normal to me as well, until being out of the country for a few weeks reminded me that not only do other places not do this, but until recently, the US didn't, either. Brad Templeton now has a police record, and any future investigations that touch on him will turn up that he was questioned for suspicious photography (and maybe more) of a government building. The fact that he has only this, and wasn't arrested or imprisoned, is largely because he looks like a respectable, white, professor. I would ask when we started considering this "normal," but we all know the answer to that: after 9/11, when "security" became the watchword which would trump any question of legality or constitutionality. What worries me is that, fifteen years later, we are entering a world where there are adults with no memory of any other world. How do you move a world towards freedoms that nobody remembers, or argue against safety measures that "everybody knows" are required, since they've always been there?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaI'm probably late to this one, but I just stumbled across https://aboutme.google.com/ while looking at briefly at Spaces. Is this a new thing? — Google Spaces is a new social / discussion product release The Next Web's article literally starts out: "With Google+ dying a slow death...". http://thenextweb.com/google/2016/05/16/google-just-launched-new-app-sharing-stuff/ I'm more than slightly burnt on Google, but I see a few items of promise here. G+'s original organising conceit was Circles. These have all but disappeared in latest iterations of G+, as the complaints of critics from the first days of G+ have pretty much born out: Circles organise people but not content, they're unidirectional, those you have circled don't know where they are put. A very frequent statement early in G+, from all sorts, was "you're using Circles wrong". Which, quite frankly, should have been a massive indication of a fundamental architectural error. The management tools for Circles have also been abysmal. Often the best approach is to simply delete all Circles and members and start over from scratch. Google have insisted on maintaining them regardless. Another early observation was that G+ lacked a construct of warrens vs. plazas. There were specific areas that small groups could discuss items, but far less so for large discussions. Most of those that did exist quickly became utterly untenable. Even individuals with large numbers of followers would abandon all attempts at maintaining order (a high-cost activity) with the result that the potentially most-attractive members of G+ had the most atrocious comments sections. Instead, what emerged are what I've termed "salons" -- specific hosts (Google's own Yonatan Zunger is among the better) who would come up with and foster intelligent discussion. This does mean hauling out the trash and active moderation, but when it works, it works well. "Spaces" suggests that the new model has an intrinsic concept of, well, social space, an understanding Google have proven highly resistant to understanding. In particular, a social space is define by what it includes and excludes. This sounds an awful lot like a spin-out of G+ Communities. This is another feature that sounds useful in theory, is almost a complete waste of electrons in practice, scales poorly, and rapidly becomes a magnet for spam and abuse with, again, very poor moderation tools. My experience is that small Communities, with tightly controlled membership, and a zero-tolerance policy toward fuckwittery, can be useful. That's little help from Google, though. As I've noted in one: G+ doesn't handle complex problems well, ergo its domain is simple problems. Among the spectacular failures of G+ were its immensely misguided and ill-fated mergers with Gmail (no, random asshats from public fora shouldn't populate my email autocomplete entries), and YouTube (no, my work and family contacts shouldn't know what my video watching habits are, nor do my G+ comments belong in YouTube space nor vice versa). Google took loads of criticism for this, much from me. Some Googlers (again, notably Yonatan) have exhibited signs of having learned from the experience. I have little hope of the lessons actually sticking, but I'm open to the possibility. My concern with Spaces is that it will prove too structured, rigid, and fragmented. If it's aping another service, that would be Reddit, and it's helpful to remember that Reddit emerged as a single forum, splitting off into multiples only with time. Today, the challenge on Reddit is finding the appropriate middle ground -- a warren large enough that there's an actual conversation, but not a plaza so large that it precludes any structure from emerging. Hacker News discussion has proceeded along various fronts, some insightful, some predictable. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11706771 Many comments concern Google's tendency to kill products. Duly noted. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_services There's the question of whose taillights Google are chasing this time: Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram, Reddit, ... One suggestion is for Google to create an open source, federated protocol, something I'd very much like to see credibly backed, and have suggested as much myself. https://redd.it/1t21cj My own personal interests for an online discussion service have been iterated a few times. I'd like a place that fosters intelligent discussion. Not necessarily exclusively. But it shouldn't actively discourage it. If this isn't what you're planning to offer, let me know so I don't waste my fucking time. Get your use-case story straight. State what it is. State what it isn't. Listen to your users and see what you can or cannot incorporate around that, readily. It should be very, very possible to filter in signal and filter out noise. Posts and content should be structured. Titles, authors, and publication dates at a minimum for metadata. Internally, a structure AT A MINIMUM including: 1. Bold, italic, underlined, strikeout, superscript, subscript, and monospace text. 2. Lists, numbered and bulleted. 3. Citations or quote blocks. 4. Tables. 5. Code blocks. 6. Links and/or URLs. Preferably revealing the target link, and possibly with a preview feature. 7. Sections. 8. Inline images. Any and all animations, videos, and sound, should be presented at user discretion and subject to default show/hide controls. The ability to stop animations, video, or audio, instantly, for all instances, should be present. No video, audio, or animation should autoplay. Support of all standard image forms including jpg, png, gif, and svg. 9. Unambiguous references to system objects, including users, posts, comments, and other textual content. 10. Idempotency. 11. For the geeks: formula input. 12. Reasonable embeds. Video, audio, CodePen, etc. See above re: user controls. 13. Footnotes and/or sidenotes. Much of this is offered through basic markup languages, including Markdown or a simplified HTML set. Since most users seem averse to using such tools, a GUI editor would likely be a very good option. The ability to input in a choice of composing languages (though reasonable restrictions might apply), which are then translated to the system's internal representation. Suggested: plain text, simplfied HTML, Markdown, bbCode, ASCIDoc, LaTeX. At least the first 3-4. Well structured, well-composed posts don't just happen. If one goal is public content publication, then a mechanism for either group or specific-leader editing is going to be required. The lack of a "drafts" feature on far too many sites is yet another major disappointment. I'm heartened to see search built in from the start. This may avoid some future embarassement. Search should include at least the following filters: 1. Exclusion. 2. Author (inclusion or exclusion). 3. Date ranges. 4. Context (forum/space, post, image, to/from author, comment, etc.). 5. URLs or references included (or excluded). 6. Media types (inclusion or exclusion). Users should have robust killfile capabilities. Topics, sources (e.g., URLs / domains), authors, keywords, media types. Users should also have the capability to lift those restrictions temporarily. For that time when, yes, as a matter of fucking fact Kim Kardashian's ass is relevant to some research interest. Extensive moderation controls. Much as, say, Google+ Communities lack. See Reddit, particularly Automoderator. Robust user-oriented metrics. What have I read? What haven't I read? What are my typical engagements? Who (followers/community) is or isn't active? User last active date? Relative correspondence of interest w/ other users, etc. Go Away / Time Out / Banish / Flag controls. On everything. A "begone" need not be peremanent (and it's often not necessary). But that should be an option. Direct user communications. For those times you don't want to talk in a group. Non-Member Access. I've commented before regards Hangouts -- the requirement for every member to have to belong to G+ is a huge obstacle for the service. Offering a facilitator the capacity to invite others, with that token used for access, would be useful. Full/permanent membership need not be an up-front requirement. Ad-hoc and anonymous discussions Sometimes it's precisely your friends you don't want to talk to. Or you want to create a quick forum for people outside a specific space. A wiki functionality. With search. Seriously, Reddit's Wiki isn't very powerful, but it's hugely useful. Data export and import. I've now got ~5 years of crap in G+. Some of it's good. At least when I'm drunk. I want to be able to extricate information from Spaces, or whatever else. And import. Think highways more than boxes. The Interwebs have lots of stuff on them. They're hurting for ways to link that stuff up. Duct tape rather than vaults would be useful. Retain the best parts of G+. Those are Notifications, Search (craptacular as it is), a pretty good Mobile editing functionality (including the It Doesn't Lose Morbius's Shit[tm] patented feature), and a very robust underlying technical structure. Fix the broken bits. Bad UI/UX. Too-small fonts. Losing state and content. Inconsistent use case story. Utterly fucked fundamental architecture. If you realise your wrong, or others are telling you you're wrong, stop fucking insisting on being wrong, and fix the problem or figure out what the fucking problem or confusion is. Your fanbois are your worst enemies. They'll happily eat up any shit you serve them, or at least so long as they think there's profit in it. You want to be careful about your sworn enemies (historically Microsoft, these days possibly Facebook, Apple, or Oracle), though they often point out crucial truths within the barbs. I've got a soft spot for crusty old farts who've seen some shit myself. Especially if they've got a few "I told you so" badges they can wear. Think REALLY FUCKING HARD about founder cohorts. G+ had a large appeal from the initial SV / startup / tech crowd. The marketing asshats not so much. Google's advertising foundations are a strength but also a tremendous liability. Take the money, scuttle the culture. Facebook's Harvard founding cohort was a seriously underappreciated strength. Note the use of "was" in the preceding sentence. Remember Sturgeon's Law at Web Scale. If it were only six-sigma compliant, it would be vastly too high. Bullshit floods out content, and what's crucial is a highly-efficient, fast-bypass filter. It doesn't have to be accurate. It's got to be efficient. The algorithm is an idiot. The algorithm is an idiot. The algorithm is an idiot. No matter how good you think your recommendation system is, if the user says no, the algorithm is fucking wrong. Shoot it dead there. Another thought is on who this might appeal to. I'm going to suggest. This should be a service soccer moms, gay teens, FBI agents, business startups, secret agents, terrorists, offshore-investors, offshore-investor-investigating journalists, and paranoid space alien cats can all benefit from and would all be comfortable using, and can use without compromising themselves. If it's not, you're doing it wrong. That's going to mean stuff like Tor, crypto, repudiability, etc. https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2016/05/introducing-spaces-tool-for-small-group.html
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Commented on post by Trevor Larkum in Climate ChangeElectric cars are a prime candidate for demand matching. Taking advantage of excess electricity from renewables when it's available. And waiting to charge when there's less renewable capacity. That doesn't feel like a hard tech problem. — I wrote this earlier today - did I get it about right? ‘I Drive Electric Because I Love My Children More Than You Do’ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/i-drive-electric-because-love-my-children-more-than-you-larkum
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Commented on post by Kevin Kelly30 years is 2046 or ~2050. Looks like it might be a wild ride. — · “Right now, today…there has never been a better day in the whole history of the world to invent something.” · “Anything that can be copied will be copied. Anything that can be tracked will be tracked.” · “Possession is not as important as it once was. Accessing is more important than ever. Access beats ownership.” More? I have a lot more to say In my new book. http://bit.ly/TheInevitable
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Code DependencyFor a while now my windows mouse-touchpad drivers have a switch to automatically disable the touchpad when a mouse is plugged in. Don't other platforms have that? — <update> A working solution to the touchpad problem has been found by the ever-erudite +Cindy Brown : http://vajiv.com/blog/disable-touchpad-in-linux-mint/ ...although I remain mystified as to why laptop manufacturers apparently consider it more important to be able to turn off the wireless. </update> Laptops generally have a way of turning off the wireless (why?), but only some have a way of turning off the touchpad -- and it seems to be software-dependent (even when it's a dedicated button); it may work in Windows, but not in Linux... ...and I've never run into a situation where I felt I needed to turn off the wireless, but I'm always accidentally brushing past the touchpad, resulting in a random scroll or click. Just now, I had spent about 20 minutes typing a post when (apparently) I accidentally brushed the touchpad, which resulted in clicking on some random link on the page... and everything is gone. (No, Lazarus does not work on G+ in Firefox. I've tried it.) And while I'm ranting about hardware: why are there no mice anymore that have places to rest your fingers?? The first generation of mice did -- the buttons were actual buttons, and you could rest your fingers between them, or off in the margins, and not worry about accidental clicks. I'm always accidentally right-clicking in random places... which usually just brings up a menu, but can cause issues (especially on laggy systems). Does nobody else experience this? Now I have to go recreate a difficult post from scratch. If I have time. <rage>
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Code Dependency/me is a php dev and proud of it! I offered to help a favourite website fix a couple of small bugs they had. Then discovered it had been written for them in Ruby on Rails. Then found out there was no strip_tags() function or even anything like it. Then gave up. As for the install problems, I remember the early days of python where it seemed to be strangely hard to build a web server that ran something in python that output a "hello world" web page. Had exactly the same experience with Java. There are lots of things to dislike about php and to sneer at. But the support and documentation is exceptional. If only the other similar systems were even half as good. — Ruby <insert>On Rails</insert> is impossible to work with from a system administration standpoint. Either it works right the first time, or you spend forever going through Stack Overflow posts about problems which sound similar to yours but aren't quite. There's no ground-up explanation of how things are supposed to work. <insert>My view is that I shouldn't have to know a language in order to install or upgrade an app written in that language. Ruby on Rails configuration seems to assume that you develop in it regularly. :-P</insert> (Discuss.)
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPThe best thing about Le Mans is the party in the camp ground. And getting away with being breathalysed on the ride back from the town on Sat night. Moto3 race was good. Moto2 was boring. And probably the best bit of the MotoGP was Petrucci's heart on the last lap. Like Jerez, le Mans desperately needs re-surfacing. The circuit layout is just about ok and has some interesting corners but the rain most years and the surface make it all a bit of a lottery. But then look at the top 6 or so. They DIDN'T fall off. — THAT'S all MotoGP had to say about the ridiculous wrecks (if that's what people want to call those) on Sunday.......and to think some people say COTA is just not meant for MotoGP, Moto2 or Moto3 racing??? 68 crashes over the weekend.....10 less then last year....If anyone has better info about these "wrecks" please share! This stupid video may not show for everyone......
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsThe comic strip "Five go mad in Dorset" comes to mind: blah blah blah, nuclear scientist, blah blah blah, kidnap, blah blah blah, akbah trap, blah blah blah And Cryptonomicron: Keep widening the Bell Curve. Perhaps your boombox could just play a good white noise source like the sound of rain or the sound of turning on all the taps in the washroom. — Correlated story: Google's Parsey McParseface FBI agents hid microphones inside light fixtures and at a bus stop outside the Oakland Courthouse without a warrant to record conversations, between March 2010 and January 2011. I need to learn Navaho.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Systems & ComplexityThere's a concept I liked for a while that there's a difference between the northern and southern European approach to laws. The north believes that it's the rule of law that keeps society safe and ordered and without law we would descend into anarchy. So you should obey all laws but work to get them changed if they are incorrect or don't reflect the wishes and needs of society. You must not "take the law into your own hands". This way leads to a Police state as laws grind everyday life into finer and finer parts. And it leads to the wagging finger of society self -policing. And finally it leads to Brazil (Terry Gilliam) levels of bureaucracy both creating and amending the laws and applying them. The south believes that what governments do is to create laws because that's what they do. So just let them get on with it. Everybody else then continues as they were in the understanding that quite a lot of the laws make no sense. So they follow some laws and ignore others. And everybody, the Police included, plays the game. Even though the systems appear tightly controlled, they actually work by consent. Although this largely works, this way can lead to a capricious application of the law and corruption. Nobody really knows what you can get away with until you can't. These two attitudes spread round the world as the Roman Empire diaspora exported culture and civilisation. In particular, the Americas took the two approaches and ran with them. With the USA and Canada following the Anglo-Saxon, northern European way and most of the rest following the Mediterranean way. And then there's the Discordian 5 stages of chaos (Hail Eris!) that all apparently ordered societies go through. Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, Aftermath. Which then spirals back inevitably to the beginning. Or as they are also known, Tribal, Feudal, Imperial, Democratic, Bureaucratic, Decadent. Right now in the WEIRD countries, we are leaving the 4th stage and falling rapidly into the 5th. — Quoth the Woozle: too much order leads to chaos too, as you never know whether today will be the day that the unquestionable authorities decide you have violated some detail of the law. That's +Woozle Hypertwin​ elsewhere commenting on the degrees of liberty and/or order which are ideal. A comment by Will Durant (historian, from his The Lessons of History) has been sticking with me: It is better to have too much order than too much liberty. For when you have too much order, you still have order. But when you have too much liberty, you have chaos. While I agree with the final sentence, it's the middle one I've been questioning, and I think Woozle's nailed it. An overspecification, overly complex, excessively regulated system ("too much order") is one in which the application of rules itself becomes either arbitrary or unpredictable. Excess order itself leads to chaos, through, to tie this to another concept I've been kicking around for the past few weeks, the law of unintended consequences. An aspect or relation to Gresham's Law. Pondering continues.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Joseph Moosman The Demographic Transition Model (DTM) is well understood now and has some merit. And yet, and yet, total global population continues to grow at a constant linear rate of 80m per year and has done for 50 years. So while the factors discussed in the DTM may be what is producing linear growth instead of exponential growth, the total population shows no signs of actually slowing it's linear growth. Indeed even the most optimistic forecasts from the UN that take into account the DTM still don't see a growth stopping or peak population this century. When I asked when we would see a transition I was talking about a transition in the modes of the graph. If it's following a logistical S Curve, we've seen the transition from the intial exponential curve to the middle linear part of the S (in about 1960-70). But we haven't yet seen the transition from linear to slowing growth and peak in the top of the S curve. As for poverty, the absolute numbers in extreme poverty haven't changed although they are finally beginning to drop. But of course what we have done is to add huge numbers of people NOT in extreme poverty. That is an extraordinary achievement in global civilisation. But of course we've also added hugely to the total population, so the percentage has dropped dramatically. Both cases point out the dangers of only looking at percentages in a field where the total is increasing. Percentage growth is dropping. Yes, but linear growth in absolute numbers added each year is constant. Percentage poverty is dropping. Yes, but the absolute number in poverty is constant. The UN figures are fairly dry though the management summary is not too unreadable. http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/theme/trends/index.shtml An easier overview is here. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#table-forecast The poverty data is here. http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-prosperity/world-poverty/ Hard to point directly at it, but there's a graph on that page that shows 2010, people living in absolute poverty ~1bn and the same in 1820. — Warning: Nerd Sniping Ahead This is an absurdly interesting Wikipedia article: a timeline of various events in geology, biology, physics, and culture which we can expect at various points from ten thousand years in the future on forward. Almost each line of this table has a giant story behind it which could be the seed for an hour of discussion or more. I blame +Craig Sosin for this, and for the fact that I will have to consciously avoid reading this if I want to get work done today.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:I'm beginning to think that belief in techno-cornucopianism, resource constraint denial, pollution denial and indefinite growth is every bit as dangerous (if not downright evil) as climate change denial. — Warning: Nerd Sniping Ahead This is an absurdly interesting Wikipedia article: a timeline of various events in geology, biology, physics, and culture which we can expect at various points from ten thousand years in the future on forward. Almost each line of this table has a giant story behind it which could be the seed for an hour of discussion or more. I blame +Craig Sosin for this, and for the fact that I will have to consciously avoid reading this if I want to get work done today.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Joseph Moosman Hans Rosling tells a good story based on the publicly available data from the UN demographers. The problem is that while exponential growth peaked around when Ehrlich was writing in the late 60s, growth in global population didn't stop. It's been on slightly faster than constant linear growth ever since of 80m pa, 12-14 years per billion. Only last year, the UN adjusted their forecasts to show faster growth than previously thought, reaching 10b in 2056. And while linear growth in total global population is slower than exponential, it still racks up. And while agricultural production is just about keeping pace it's hitting the limits of fossil fuel powered nitrogen fertilisers. Eventually, we're still likely to hit the brick walls of resource constraints and pollution. Just a few decades later than looked likely from the late 60s. Now it is possible that we can still transition to sustainability and that growth in all the indicators slows to a stable plateau. But every year we continue with business as usual that becomes less and less likely and the predictions of the Club of Rome of overshoot, crash and burn become more likely. Rosling (and others) predict a slow down in the growth in global population due to a reduction in fertility and births following an increase in education (especially of women) and a reduction in poverty. The problem is that it hasn't happened yet. So when does the transition become apparent and how will we know? Growth in population stubbornly remains constant. And there's still as many people in extreme poverty as there were in 1820. — Warning: Nerd Sniping Ahead This is an absurdly interesting Wikipedia article: a timeline of various events in geology, biology, physics, and culture which we can expect at various points from ten thousand years in the future on forward. Almost each line of this table has a giant story behind it which could be the seed for an hour of discussion or more. I blame +Craig Sosin for this, and for the fact that I will have to consciously avoid reading this if I want to get work done today.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Hot Earth Dreams suggests that anthropogenic CO2 will take about 400k years to be fully re-absorbed by the earth's systems. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1 I'll just pick out 2 related predictions from TFA. 2 million years. Estimated time required for coral reef ecosystems to physically rebuild and biologically recover from current human-caused ocean acidification. 50 - 400 million years. Estimated time for Earth to naturally replenish its fossil fuel reserves. We are but dust and shadow. Or the hagfish on fossil fuel's whale-fall. It's impressive how fast hagfish and the other denizen's of the deep can devour a dead whale when it lands in their lap. It's equally impressive how fast we can change Earth's composition and how many millenia it takes for natural processes to restore it. And how many millenia it took to create the whale we're now eating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall — Warning: Nerd Sniping Ahead This is an absurdly interesting Wikipedia article: a timeline of various events in geology, biology, physics, and culture which we can expect at various points from ten thousand years in the future on forward. Almost each line of this table has a giant story behind it which could be the seed for an hour of discussion or more. I blame +Craig Sosin for this, and for the fact that I will have to consciously avoid reading this if I want to get work done today.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesSome suggestions for improvements to the feature. https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/1DbR4KU3aNb At the moment, it feels very unfinished. — Some better "blocked people" management in the beta desktop web version. Accessible in two ways. Via Activities, https://plus.google.com/u/0/apps/activities/blocked_users Via MyAccount https://myaccount.google.com/blocklist Both routes are hard to find and the end result is incomplete. But it's a start.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangePer-capita is not so much about efficiency as consumerism. And be very dubious about any numbers that fail to account for outsourced manufacturing and shipping. A significant amount of China's use goes to produce and ship products to be consumed in the USA. And btw. I'm strongly in favour of de-baiting stories like this by sharing the underlying link and not the Daily Mail link-bait copy. http://www.britishgas.co.uk/the-source/carbon-emissions/ — Interactive infographic by British Gas lets users explore the carbon footprint of countries around the world #CarbonFootPrint  
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Commented on post by The Real Slim ShadyLooks to me like we hit peak "exponential growth" in the mid 70s. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22exponential+growth%22&year_start=1950&year_end=2015&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%22%20exponential%20growth%20%22%3B%2Cc0 — Why ... it's growing ... virally!
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynGood: Small light car, fully regenerative braking, aerodynamics, 4 wheel motors. Bad: hydrogen — Riversimple | Fully Charged A very different, very disruptive way of thinking about not only what a car is, what makes it move, but even our relationship with cars. The highly inspirational Hugo Spowers from Riversimple takes me for a spin and explains the ideas behind the revolutionary concept.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green Technology+Phillip Beynon Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these? — How Tesla Will Change The World I have to agree with +Jason Mayes, this is really well written and so very informative. It's a must read if you have a bit of time to spare. The only thing it doesn't mention specifically, is the energy cost in refining oil to be used as fuel in cars. It's massive.
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Commented on post by Amber Yust in GoogleI've been wondering about that default blue profile. Even people with valid profiles and pictures seem to get it. It just feels like a bit of missing/unfinished code[1]. At least you can click through now to their profile. Except the names are active links if you get there via the activity log, but not if you get there via MyAccount. And surely this function be available via "People" [1]Just write the damned code, please! — We just recently rolled out a new section of My Account - a list of the accounts you've blocked. No more jumping through hoops to find someone if you need to unblock them, or to check if you already have someone blocked. Just visit https://myaccount.google.com and click on "Your personal info" -> "Blocked users" to open the list. Want to unblock someone? Find them in the list and click the 'X' next to their name. Note that you can't create blocks from My Account. New blocks are created in the products where you interact with people. This helps avoid blocking the wrong account: as it turns out there are a lot of people with similar names out there. We put the 'create block' option in places like G+ post menus or Hangouts conversation options so you know exactly who you'll be blocking.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaAnd straight to it. Via the activity log. Bookmark?https://plus.google.com/u/0/apps/activities/blocked_users Which is subtly different from https://myaccount.google.com/blocklist — Blocked User management through MyAccounts is live News of this leaked a few days back. I noted a few improvments which could yet be made, though this is already drastically better than the old interface (a paragon of poor design). For those keeping tabs, I've 910 blocked profiles on G+. Previously: https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/1DbR4KU3aNb
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceSome times the bait is in front of a rabbit hole. Where it's an echo chamber of tweets of a share of a blog post of an article of an AP story of a press release of a PDF summary of a research paper behind a paywall from a lobbyist group. Yay! De-Bait Uncoupling! — De-Baiting is strongly endorsed here Also referred to as link disintermediation. Ran across this looking for something else, but yes, it deserves a signal boost. h/t +Peter da Silva​
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Commented on post by The Real Slim ShadyThe Donald Trump butt-plug knows where you've been. lol, wut! — The Internet of Things Stuck Up your Ass. (Does my broomstick count?)
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Commented on post by Amber Yust in Google+Jared Brees https://plus.google.com/u/0/apps/activities/blocked_users seems to take you straight to it. There seems to be a couple of routes to get here. Nether of which are intuitive or obviously linked, at all, at all. — We just recently rolled out a new section of My Account - a list of the accounts you've blocked. No more jumping through hoops to find someone if you need to unblock them, or to check if you already have someone blocked. Just visit https://myaccount.google.com and click on "Your personal info" -> "Blocked users" to open the list. Want to unblock someone? Find them in the list and click the 'X' next to their name. Note that you can't create blocks from My Account. New blocks are created in the products where you interact with people. This helps avoid blocking the wrong account: as it turns out there are a lot of people with similar names out there. We put the 'create block' option in places like G+ post menus or Hangouts conversation options so you know exactly who you'll be blocking.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeSo how do we expect the shipping industry to cut their emissions? — Disagreement among nations means no carbon emissions targets have been set for international shipping, but voices from within the industry are calling for global curbs to be set soon. #MaritimeShipping   #GHGEmissions  
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeUncharted territory — Yesterday, according to the data at  ADS https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/vishop-extent.html?N the Arctic dropped another 130k km2 worth of Ice extent, a huge amount for this time of year, something you'd expect during peak melt season.  Just the beginning of this weather event.
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyHow often does this happen? — This can't be right, but it seems as if the US commercial airlines have decided to allow the most easily scared person on the plane decide if it takes off. What's weird to me about the apparent current policy are two things. 1) When someone complains they are "uncomfortable" with the threat of another passenger, there appears to be no attempt to verify, confirm, investigate the claim. All attention is on dealing with their report, going through the procedures, but not hearing what the target person has to say until the plane has already been delayed and "professionals" intervene. Therefore the initial fate of the flight is in the hands of most easily disturbed person on the plane. 2) There does not appear to be any penalty for a "false," incorrect, or unappropriate accusation. With no counterforce to be accurate or reasonable the most ignorant or most xenophobic or most easily scared person on the plane will determine the level of security. I could be wrong. Are instances such as the one below, examples of a good policy we don't know about breaking down, or are they happening with more frequency because the policy is at it appears to be: let the most easily scared person (whether passenger or crew) dictate the security status? https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/05/07/ivy-league-economist-interrogated-for-doing-math-on-american-airlines-flight/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in LimitsToday's Bonus Link: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-dawn-of-cthulhucene-retrospective.html Towards a "Good Cthulhucene" — Rebutting Leigh Phillips Austerity Ecology and the Collapse Porn-Addicts: A Defence of Growth, Progress, Industry and Stuff Phillips' book claims to be a response to the "cretinous anti-intellectualism" of current thought. I'd run across reference to it from +Cory Doctorow​ at BoingBoing, and found its message and logic (admittedly at second hand) somewhat lacking. I've posted a review earlier from Resilience, and discovered among its references the post below. While I often advocate reading a work directly (e.g., Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations), there are times a good review can save considerable time. This is one. It's a strikingly intelligent rebuttal. I'll note that while the review makes use of Marxist philosophy, that's largely in answer to the book itself claiming a Marxist vantage point -- I'm something of a fan of countering like with like where possible, though like-with-neutral is another option. Pitting advocates of one side vs. advocates of the other is rarely particularly productive as one then comes to the questions of credibility and authority. LIke vs. like handily subverts that. There are some particularly good bits on the Malthusian argument, I've selected the shorter one-paragraph instance to highlight, I recommend the first as well. Simple dismissal of a Cassandrian viewpoint as "Malthusian gloom" achieves nothing through logic and exposes the advocate as wallowing in wishful thinking: Here’s where the Malthusian bogeyman derails rational thought. It’s possible that countries like Britain and the USA will never again enjoy such cheap, abundant and versatile energy as they did throughout the 20th century. Not inevitable, but possible. And there is nothing ‘Malthusian’ about that statement. A recent commenter on this site wrote that scientists will solve the problem of cheap clean energy in the future because they have to solve it. Here’s where our modern approach to science and technology becomes a kind of magical thinking. Fingering our talismans, we mutter incantations like ‘scientific progress’ to assure ourselves that our techno-priests can resolve all the contradictions of our civilisation. And we issue the gnarly curse of ‘Malthusian’ to any heretic who dares to wonder whether resource constraints might ever be a problem. There's also a link to a nice deconstruction of the "oil saved the whales" argument: [I]f we take the example of blue whale populations in the Southern Ocean where historically they were most populous, estimates are that prior to large-scale 20th century whaling there were about 300,000 of the animals there, whereas in the early 2000s – about 40 years after a complete ban on hunting them came into force – the population was estimated at around 1,00013. In other words, modern humans obliterated them to the point of extinction but didn’t quite finish them off entirely. Mike considers this exemplary of modernization’s success. Well, I guess if you’re allowed to choose your own criteria for judging a favoured project there’s a lot to be said for setting the bar low. But however Mike wants to spin it, I can’t see the story of the blue whale as a good advert for modernization. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-09-10/ecomodernism-a-response-to-my-critics
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in LimitsHeh. I am my own evil twin. — Rebutting Leigh Phillips Austerity Ecology and the Collapse Porn-Addicts: A Defence of Growth, Progress, Industry and Stuff Phillips' book claims to be a response to the "cretinous anti-intellectualism" of current thought. I'd run across reference to it from +Cory Doctorow​ at BoingBoing, and found its message and logic (admittedly at second hand) somewhat lacking. I've posted a review earlier from Resilience, and discovered among its references the post below. While I often advocate reading a work directly (e.g., Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations), there are times a good review can save considerable time. This is one. It's a strikingly intelligent rebuttal. I'll note that while the review makes use of Marxist philosophy, that's largely in answer to the book itself claiming a Marxist vantage point -- I'm something of a fan of countering like with like where possible, though like-with-neutral is another option. Pitting advocates of one side vs. advocates of the other is rarely particularly productive as one then comes to the questions of credibility and authority. LIke vs. like handily subverts that. There are some particularly good bits on the Malthusian argument, I've selected the shorter one-paragraph instance to highlight, I recommend the first as well. Simple dismissal of a Cassandrian viewpoint as "Malthusian gloom" achieves nothing through logic and exposes the advocate as wallowing in wishful thinking: Here’s where the Malthusian bogeyman derails rational thought. It’s possible that countries like Britain and the USA will never again enjoy such cheap, abundant and versatile energy as they did throughout the 20th century. Not inevitable, but possible. And there is nothing ‘Malthusian’ about that statement. A recent commenter on this site wrote that scientists will solve the problem of cheap clean energy in the future because they have to solve it. Here’s where our modern approach to science and technology becomes a kind of magical thinking. Fingering our talismans, we mutter incantations like ‘scientific progress’ to assure ourselves that our techno-priests can resolve all the contradictions of our civilisation. And we issue the gnarly curse of ‘Malthusian’ to any heretic who dares to wonder whether resource constraints might ever be a problem. There's also a link to a nice deconstruction of the "oil saved the whales" argument: [I]f we take the example of blue whale populations in the Southern Ocean where historically they were most populous, estimates are that prior to large-scale 20th century whaling there were about 300,000 of the animals there, whereas in the early 2000s – about 40 years after a complete ban on hunting them came into force – the population was estimated at around 1,00013. In other words, modern humans obliterated them to the point of extinction but didn’t quite finish them off entirely. Mike considers this exemplary of modernization’s success. Well, I guess if you’re allowed to choose your own criteria for judging a favoured project there’s a lot to be said for setting the bar low. But however Mike wants to spin it, I can’t see the story of the blue whale as a good advert for modernization. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-09-10/ecomodernism-a-response-to-my-critics
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in LimitsIf you need to point to a rebuttal of that book, keep this one in your armoury as well. It's another well argued critique. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-04-06/a-critique-of-leigh-phillips-assertion-of-the-tech-fix-ecomodernist-faith It's probably the one Edward mentioned earlier. I was not really surprised but I was deeply disappointed to see Cory come out as a full fledged Ecomodern. — Rebutting Leigh Phillips Austerity Ecology and the Collapse Porn-Addicts: A Defence of Growth, Progress, Industry and Stuff Phillips' book claims to be a response to the "cretinous anti-intellectualism" of current thought. I'd run across reference to it from +Cory Doctorow​ at BoingBoing, and found its message and logic (admittedly at second hand) somewhat lacking. I've posted a review earlier from Resilience, and discovered among its references the post below. While I often advocate reading a work directly (e.g., Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations), there are times a good review can save considerable time. This is one. It's a strikingly intelligent rebuttal. I'll note that while the review makes use of Marxist philosophy, that's largely in answer to the book itself claiming a Marxist vantage point -- I'm something of a fan of countering like with like where possible, though like-with-neutral is another option. Pitting advocates of one side vs. advocates of the other is rarely particularly productive as one then comes to the questions of credibility and authority. LIke vs. like handily subverts that. There are some particularly good bits on the Malthusian argument, I've selected the shorter one-paragraph instance to highlight, I recommend the first as well. Simple dismissal of a Cassandrian viewpoint as "Malthusian gloom" achieves nothing through logic and exposes the advocate as wallowing in wishful thinking: Here’s where the Malthusian bogeyman derails rational thought. It’s possible that countries like Britain and the USA will never again enjoy such cheap, abundant and versatile energy as they did throughout the 20th century. Not inevitable, but possible. And there is nothing ‘Malthusian’ about that statement. A recent commenter on this site wrote that scientists will solve the problem of cheap clean energy in the future because they have to solve it. Here’s where our modern approach to science and technology becomes a kind of magical thinking. Fingering our talismans, we mutter incantations like ‘scientific progress’ to assure ourselves that our techno-priests can resolve all the contradictions of our civilisation. And we issue the gnarly curse of ‘Malthusian’ to any heretic who dares to wonder whether resource constraints might ever be a problem. There's also a link to a nice deconstruction of the "oil saved the whales" argument: [I]f we take the example of blue whale populations in the Southern Ocean where historically they were most populous, estimates are that prior to large-scale 20th century whaling there were about 300,000 of the animals there, whereas in the early 2000s – about 40 years after a complete ban on hunting them came into force – the population was estimated at around 1,00013. In other words, modern humans obliterated them to the point of extinction but didn’t quite finish them off entirely. Mike considers this exemplary of modernization’s success. Well, I guess if you’re allowed to choose your own criteria for judging a favoured project there’s a lot to be said for setting the bar low. But however Mike wants to spin it, I can’t see the story of the blue whale as a good advert for modernization. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2015-09-10/ecomodernism-a-response-to-my-critics
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Commented on post by Duncan Booth in Electric Vehicles (UK)Interesting. Any word on the change in battery tech that puts 50% more energy in the same volume? Also. Upgrade option with the old batteries having a second life as stationary storage. BMW starts to compete with Musk's home power batteries? Also. Rex model gets a slightly bigger petrol tank. Maybe. Or perhaps can use more of it. I wonder how many Rex owners keep a full jerry can in the boot! — 50% more range for the i3 and very nice new blue color.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaGah! Of course, comments are (still) not uniquely addressable. — Google Blocklist Feature Apparently Google are generalising this feature and making it available at https://myaccount.google.com/blocklist +Yonatan Zunger​​ mentioned this as a "relatively new feature" and, of course, won't comment on future plans (or future unplans, I suspect). https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/ANg8RC5tpgq As a plus: 1. This is hugely more useful than the old, "Old G+" blocked user management feature, which presented a grand total of about 6 users at a time. This means something like 1,000 screens for me to look at/for specific blocks. 2. This looks as if it will be offered across multiple Google products. Presently G+ and Hangouts are mentioned. I've loudly advocated that #YouTube also be included, as in, blocking channels. No word or indication of that yet, though I can hope. 3. The location may prove more findable. As a hint, plugging in Feedback posts under something remotely similar would be useful. My long list of want-to-haves 1. Provide metadata on the blocks. At a minimum: the date, location from which the block was applied, and a note possibly indicating the block reason. "Fuckwit" should be among those reasons, though I'll accept a suitable translation for the term so long as it entirely preserves the initial meaning. 2. Provide search/sort/filtering of blocks. By date, at a minimum. Classified by product (G+, Hangouts, etc.). Zone of application of blocks might also be valid. There are, say, YouTube channels whose G+ activity I might not be averse to seeing, or vice versa. I also have a hierarchy of annoyance on who and what can reach me. E.g., There are perhaps a half-dozen people I'd accept a Hangouts request from, I REALLY do not like realtime interrruptions. 3. At a deeper level, the Block mechanism is a bit of overkill, What's wanted, mostly, is a level of enabling or disabling of contact or presence. There are people/organisations/profiles I'd rather not have interacting with me -- I don't want to see their posts, comments, videos, Hangout attempts, etc. Events and email are another. And there are those I'd be willing to allow expedited (whitelist) access. The "Block" feature, as I've stated repeatedly, offers false security to those who need it most (a stalker can still access publicly posted content), and excess filtering to those who use it for noise control. A generalised blacklist / whitelist permissions management interface is what this probably wants to be. Oh, and that includes domains, publishers, authors, authorities, topics, and other elements. The algorithm is an idiot. And I think that's actually about it for now. 3 want-to-haves. Not that #3 is entirely trivial, but it would be immensely useful. Addenda 4. Provide counts. EVERYTHING that is posted should have a fucking counter on it. Christ on a stick. 5. Provide direct access to profiles. Interfaces which don't allow ready access to the most salient aspect (e.g., go from "this is the blocked profile" to, you know, the actual blocked profile) are like sex near a Kardashian. Fucking close to useless.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaThis link doesn't work for me. Goes to something about Uber. https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/ANg8RC5tpgq — Google Blocklist Feature Apparently Google are generalising this feature and making it available at https://myaccount.google.com/blocklist +Yonatan Zunger​​ mentioned this as a "relatively new feature" and, of course, won't comment on future plans (or future unplans, I suspect). https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/ANg8RC5tpgq As a plus: 1. This is hugely more useful than the old, "Old G+" blocked user management feature, which presented a grand total of about 6 users at a time. This means something like 1,000 screens for me to look at/for specific blocks. 2. This looks as if it will be offered across multiple Google products. Presently G+ and Hangouts are mentioned. I've loudly advocated that #YouTube also be included, as in, blocking channels. No word or indication of that yet, though I can hope. 3. The location may prove more findable. As a hint, plugging in Feedback posts under something remotely similar would be useful. My long list of want-to-haves 1. Provide metadata on the blocks. At a minimum: the date, location from which the block was applied, and a note possibly indicating the block reason. "Fuckwit" should be among those reasons, though I'll accept a suitable translation for the term so long as it entirely preserves the initial meaning. 2. Provide search/sort/filtering of blocks. By date, at a minimum. Classified by product (G+, Hangouts, etc.). Zone of application of blocks might also be valid. There are, say, YouTube channels whose G+ activity I might not be averse to seeing, or vice versa. I also have a hierarchy of annoyance on who and what can reach me. E.g., There are perhaps a half-dozen people I'd accept a Hangouts request from, I REALLY do not like realtime interrruptions. 3. At a deeper level, the Block mechanism is a bit of overkill, What's wanted, mostly, is a level of enabling or disabling of contact or presence. There are people/organisations/profiles I'd rather not have interacting with me -- I don't want to see their posts, comments, videos, Hangout attempts, etc. Events and email are another. And there are those I'd be willing to allow expedited (whitelist) access. The "Block" feature, as I've stated repeatedly, offers false security to those who need it most (a stalker can still access publicly posted content), and excess filtering to those who use it for noise control. A generalised blacklist / whitelist permissions management interface is what this probably wants to be. Oh, and that includes domains, publishers, authors, authorities, topics, and other elements. The algorithm is an idiot. And I think that's actually about it for now. 3 want-to-haves. Not that #3 is entirely trivial, but it would be immensely useful. Addenda 4. Provide counts. EVERYTHING that is posted should have a fucking counter on it. Christ on a stick. 5. Provide direct access to profiles. Interfaces which don't allow ready access to the most salient aspect (e.g., go from "this is the blocked profile" to, you know, the actual blocked profile) are like sex near a Kardashian. Fucking close to useless.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingThat summer break is too long. But pity the poor WSS guys who don't get to go to Laguna. 3 months off, mid season? — Bye Bye Monza A sad day in +WorldSBK history when The Autodromo Nazionale di Monza is removed from the calender. " The FIM and Dorna WSBK Organisation must regretfully announce the cancellation of Round 10 of the 2016 MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship. After extensive efforts made by all parties involved to come to an agreement allowing the 2016 season to cover a full 14-Round calendar, no accord with any replacement circuit for the Autodromo Nazionale di Monza has been reached. The 2016 final WorldSBK calendar will therefore contain 13 Rounds. " ___________________________________ +WorldSBK +WorldSBK #WSB #Monza
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Commented on post by R. Sumpter in Climate ChangeNot at all convinced that big turbines kill birds. I strongly suspect this is a myth. http://www.pembina.org/blog/a-whirlwind-tour-of-wind-energy-myths "In fact cats, windows and powerlines kill hundreds of millions of birds while wind turbines kill tens of thousands of birds annually. According to one study “wind farms killed approximately seven thousand birds in the United States in 2006, but nuclear plants killed about 327,000 and fossil-fueled power plants [killed] 14.5 million.” The New York State Energy Research and Development authority found wind has the second lowest overall impact on wildlife of all the methods of generating electricity." — Interesting theory! This opportunity should definitely be explored!
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Science, Medicine, and StatisticsI've been thinking about the renewables intermittency problem. With wind and solar PV the problem is that you can't turn them on fast when the underlying source of energy is absent. However, you can turn them on and off fast in good conditions. By contrast, nuclear power and old school coal power stations are always available but they're not very good at load following. Another aspect of this is that wind and solar pv can be finely adjusted in that a farm of large numbers of units can be progressively turned up or down in response to demand. They're also multiply redundant. Lose one windmill in a farm and total output of the farm only changes a little. Again by contrast old school power stations tend to be all or nothing. Trip out a nuclear reactor and you lose all the power for days. Combine a widespread grid with load demand management and incentives, multiple supply types, redundancy and over capacity and I'm not convinced there even is a storage problem. Somebody mentioned above the problem of putting gravity storage in suburbia. Um, why does it have to be localised like that? That's why we have an electricity grid isn't it? However what we can do with suburbia is to use solar PV to charge all our personal storage when it's at highest production (cars, phones, tablets, laptops, storage heaters, hot water). And keep all that demand off the grid and satisfied locally. Hmmm. Battery powered, LCD TVs, speaker systems. — I've been saying this for years: we do not have to worry as hard about storing energy as we think we do. Most of the discussion I've seen about how to deal with intermittent renewable power storage has been as resolutely high-tech as the renewable energy sources themselves. Massive flow batteries. New types of lithium-ion cells, and where are we going to get the lithium to do it? Self-driving electric cars being used as on-grid storage. Exotic molten fluoride salts being pumped into huge thermoses. Massive vacuum flywheels running at fractions of the speed of light. That's all nice. Maybe some of those technologies will turn out. But we don't need them. The solution isn't to think smarter. The solution is to think dumber. We already deal with storing renewable power to normalize energy supply to meet energy demand. In hydroelectric power, the store of energy is literally the reservoir: we take the water we have, and run it through at a consistent rate. For other types of renewable energy, we take water and pump it uphill, then run it through a dam to get the power back out. Here, we think even dumber than that. This energy storage is literally just moving rocks uphill. You can't get dumber or more scalable than that.
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Commented on post by Alan Stainer in Green TechnologyHmmm. 80 miles for 8 quid. That's about what I get from my big scooter. Smaller engine, but similar size to the BMW 650 that provided the engine for the i3Rex. I suspect that it would carry one Robert sized person the same distance in the same time for the same money and same amount of fuel. But less comfort, obvs. Makes you wonder if there's an electric megascoot to be built with a 125/50cc range extender. Perhaps a Honda Genny in the top box. — BMW i3 REx If you think of a hybrid as a stepping stone between a petrol car and a fully electric, then this range extended BMW is the stepping stone between the older style hybrid and the fully electric car. In other words, the petrol engine only kicks in when you need it to recharge the battery. Interesting car, but why all the knobs and dials?
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Commented on post by Robert Llewellyn+James Field It's the 650 scooter engine. Laid down, parallel twin.  — BMW i3 REx | Fully Charged A longer test drive of the rather wonderful BMW i3 Rex, the range extended version of this electric car has a motorcycle engine and generator tucked into the back, amazing engineering, a joyful drive and some help with mathematics from the newly appointed Fully Charged maths consultant.
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Commented on post by Electric Cars Guide in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)Would it be possible to have E-Assist citibikes? — #CitiBike certainly has taken off in #NewYork City
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesAnd only Stalin gets the pineapple. — Via +Steven Flaeck. I blame him for this.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Metamore ... Of course "from you" means your posts, not your comments. "From her" is still unavailable. SeeAlso in the new beta G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/apps/activities/comments which is roughly equivalent to the Facebook "Activity Log" Except that THERE's NO F*CKING SEARCH @!@! — I really cannot say, right now, just how much I'd like the ability to search G+ posts by user For starters:  searching by me. Among the reasons I've been spamming my own stream with stuff is as a quasi-note-stashing scheme.  Except, of course, that it's fucking excruciating to track stuff down after. There's data take-out. Old-school G+ had a "search by your own posts".  That's, apparently, dead...  Um.  Yeah.  I'm actually back on (old) desktop right now, and there are no search options (other than "best" and "most recent", which never seemed to work). But yeah, a few other folks I'd like to track down as well. Google.  Search.  You'd think they'd buy a solution or something.
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Commented on post by Julian BondNothing says "future" like blue LEDs — Why is the colour of the digital future predominantly blue? http://goo.gl/GLmE9r
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaYour recent post about some libertarian arsehat reminded me that Blogger search is also terrible.  Are we talking new improved beta desktop web G+ or not-quite-so-terrible Classic G+? Because the old classic web search did have a "from you" option. Neither are as good as the old Buzz search with it's author: and commenter: modifiers. — I really cannot say, right now, just how much I'd like the ability to search G+ posts by user For starters:  searching by me. Among the reasons I've been spamming my own stream with stuff is as a quasi-note-stashing scheme.  Except, of course, that it's fucking excruciating to track stuff down after. There's data take-out. Old-school G+ had a "search by your own posts".  That's, apparently, dead...  Um.  Yeah.  I'm actually back on (old) desktop right now, and there are no search options (other than "best" and "most recent", which never seemed to work). But yeah, a few other folks I'd like to track down as well. Google.  Search.  You'd think they'd buy a solution or something.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Capsule ReviewsHuge, huge fan of Blindsight because there's a Dick-esque moment 2/3 in that throws you sideways. While I enjoyed Echopraxia, it wasn't so thought provoking for me. — Capsule Review, Echopraxia: If you read Blindsight, but couldn't stand its shallow treatment of technical subjects, found the aliens to be humans-in-funny-suits, and thought that its fairytale ending was implausibly optimistic, this is the book for you. (4/5 stars)
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Energy+Edward Morbius I'm bothered by the numbers and scale although I don't have actual figures to back up the lingering dread. Electricity to jet/marine/transport fuel is likely to be costly in energy efficiency terms. Scale that up to the 6% global fuel consumption and I suspect we'd need to cover the sahara in PV panels to provide the electricity requirement. Or maybe not. I just don't have a good feel for the orders of magnitude. This is a problem with articles like the ones form the IEA, nuclear industry as well as the pro-renewables lobby. The focus there is almost always on electricity production to deal with current electricity demand. How much worse does the problem get if we start using electricity as the basic power to create fuel, fertiliser, steel, plastics, desalination, etc. Instead of the oil/coal we're currently using as both energy source and feedstock. I know it's not trivial. But I also don't know if it means doubling, say, the current electricity generating capacity, or "just" adding 10%. — Solar Impulse 2 has arrived in San Francisco as part of its multi-stage around-the-world flight The Solar Impulse, a/k/ SI2, is a solar-powered airplane. Its flight is conducted without fuel, only in the energy provided through sunlight, as stored onboard in batteries, and as gravitational potential energy in its flight profile. Though a considerable accomplishment, I see this as a tremendously cautionary tale of the future of manned flight. +David Herron​ has one of the best, and most technical, writeups I've yet seen on the project (I was visiting its homepage earlier and could not only not find much technical information but little by way of schedule or itenerary for the remainder of the trip...). While Herron seems largely upbeat and impressed, my takeaway is shaded differently. Over the course of a day, SI2 captures about 600 kWh of electricity from sunlight. GNU Units, my favourite calculator evar tells me this is about equivalent to15 gallons of petroleum. Given the Solar Impulse has an electric drive, that is, one more efficient at turning input energy (elecricity vs. aviation gasoline) to motive power, and probably sees 85% rather than 35% efficiency, we can multiply that by about 2.4, to get the equivalent energy of 36 gallons of petrol. Mind that's the total energy used in a day, not the storage capability. From the flight profiles Herron includes, you provide, SI2 has two batteries. One is the electric batteries it carries. The other is its daytime elevation. By climbing to 30k ft and gliding to 5k, the aircraft acts as a glider for several hours. Battery drain doesn't start in earnest until the plane has arrived at 5k ft. But the SI2 is banking gravitational potential just as much as it is electric. And the mean speed-over-ground is about 28 mph. I can ride my bicycle that fast, in short sprints by myself, for hours in a pace line with few other riders. While the experiment is interesting, I see the real lessons here as the challenges facing flight in a world without abundant liquid hydrocarbon fuels. A wingspan longer than that of a 747, a groundspeed only modestly challenging to an accomplished cyclist, and a need to squeeze every bit of storage from both batteries and altitude, and the aircraft can only carry a single human pilot. One thing this isn't is the future of commercial aviation. Jet aircraft require prodigious amounts of fuel, and though surprisingly efficient on a per-mile basis (about equivalent to a middlin' car), because of the mileage involved, contributing a huge amount to personal energy consumption with any given flight. Alternatives aren't particularly forthcoming, and most of the possible avenues touted have proven not very promising.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in EnergyCurious about the overall energy efficiency and energy cost of Seawater+electricity -> co2+h2 -> c9-c16 hydrocarbon jet fuel. Because direct electric planes seems unlikely. There are numerous other industrial civilisation uses and needs for hydrocarbon feedstock where the end goal doesn't really work with just electric energy as a source. Nitrogen fertiliser is another one. We can make them by electric hydrolysis of water followed by an electric powered haber-bosch process but at what energy cost? And is that energy requirement sustainable? — Solar Impulse 2 has arrived in San Francisco as part of its multi-stage around-the-world flight The Solar Impulse, a/k/ SI2, is a solar-powered airplane. Its flight is conducted without fuel, only in the energy provided through sunlight, as stored onboard in batteries, and as gravitational potential energy in its flight profile. Though a considerable accomplishment, I see this as a tremendously cautionary tale of the future of manned flight. +David Herron​ has one of the best, and most technical, writeups I've yet seen on the project (I was visiting its homepage earlier and could not only not find much technical information but little by way of schedule or itenerary for the remainder of the trip...). While Herron seems largely upbeat and impressed, my takeaway is shaded differently. Over the course of a day, SI2 captures about 600 kWh of electricity from sunlight. GNU Units, my favourite calculator evar tells me this is about equivalent to15 gallons of petroleum. Given the Solar Impulse has an electric drive, that is, one more efficient at turning input energy (elecricity vs. aviation gasoline) to motive power, and probably sees 85% rather than 35% efficiency, we can multiply that by about 2.4, to get the equivalent energy of 36 gallons of petrol. Mind that's the total energy used in a day, not the storage capability. From the flight profiles Herron includes, you provide, SI2 has two batteries. One is the electric batteries it carries. The other is its daytime elevation. By climbing to 30k ft and gliding to 5k, the aircraft acts as a glider for several hours. Battery drain doesn't start in earnest until the plane has arrived at 5k ft. But the SI2 is banking gravitational potential just as much as it is electric. And the mean speed-over-ground is about 28 mph. I can ride my bicycle that fast, in short sprints by myself, for hours in a pace line with few other riders. While the experiment is interesting, I see the real lessons here as the challenges facing flight in a world without abundant liquid hydrocarbon fuels. A wingspan longer than that of a 747, a groundspeed only modestly challenging to an accomplished cyclist, and a need to squeeze every bit of storage from both batteries and altitude, and the aircraft can only carry a single human pilot. One thing this isn't is the future of commercial aviation. Jet aircraft require prodigious amounts of fuel, and though surprisingly efficient on a per-mile basis (about equivalent to a middlin' car), because of the mileage involved, contributing a huge amount to personal energy consumption with any given flight. Alternatives aren't particularly forthcoming, and most of the possible avenues touted have proven not very promising.
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Commented on post by Roy Gripper in MotoGPSeveral people afterwards complaining about lost rear grip and straight line spinning. Was that Dovi's problem as well? Big up to Brad Binder and Lowes as well. — Well done that man...
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Commented on post by Cody Lawson in Google+ UpdatesSeems like it works on the original post author, but not on comments. Or not reliably. Or only when comments are expanded. Or something. — OMG, I've missed this feature!
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaThat smacks of a junior programmer who doesn't know better and the lack of management over sight and QA. Putting the ellipsis at a word boundary is trivial when you're already writing the code to truncate the abstract. Just write the damn code. But then why is there any truncation in the first place? — Somehow I don't think this abbreviation was intended... But as a demon, I approve.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in LimitsIf the EU blocks immigrants going from Turkey to Greece, they'll try the more dangerous Libya-Italy crossing. If that's closed they'll try Morocco-Spain which is even tougher. I'm curious as to why Russia doesn't take Syria refugees. The route North from Turkey is hard though and the region is also politically unstable. — UNHCR: 500 Migrants Dead at Sea So far this year 179,552 refugees and migrants have reached Europe by sea across the Mediterranean and Aegean. At least 761 have died or gone missing attempting the journey. Among the larger desperate migrations of modern history continues.
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in Motorcycle RoadracingThis is turn 4, right? Both the Yamahas seem to be hooking up earlier than the Hondas and driving up towards Sito Pons. Which does tend to square with the story that the Honda's are lacking in rear grip. — This is just so cool.... I wish they did more of these types of quick videos.....
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeYup. With continuing record lows. http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,230.2000.html#msg74506
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeOr not. Notice (04/21/2016): On 04/05/2016 a change in the solar panel position to shade the nitrogen tank on board the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F-17 satellite was made. In doing so, the integrity of the vertically polarized 37 GHz channel (37V) of the Special Sensor Microwave Imager and Sounder (SSMIS) was compromised. On 04/13/16 an additional change in the solar panel position was made. This change had improved the problems we were seeing in the 37V GHz channel for data from April 13 to April 19; however, on April 20, the 37V GHz channel started to produce bad data again. Thus, data from April 20 onward should not be used until further notice. The affected daily files from 04/05 – 04/13 have been removed from distribution. http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1457.150.html#msg74511
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPThey both go. Dovi is really really good. He's just not quite good enough. And as for Iannone, I think Ducati will just get tired of his bullshit. I reckon Dovi will go to Suzuki. I don't know what happens to Iannone. And when the music stops, Dani will get a one year contract with Honda. — Still undecided if Dovi or or Iannone stays. http://www.motogp.com/en/in+the+media/2016/04/19/ciabatti-it-was-not-difficult-to-convince-lorenzo/198731
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in LimitsBTW. TFA copies http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2016/apr/19/why-limits-to-growths-forecasts-are-still-relevant-today Unusually, the comments on that show a surprisingly high SN ratio. — Why Limits to Growth’s Forecasts Are Still Relevant Today ...In the early 1970s, Opec was flexing its economic muscles and constricting oil supply. The price rocketed. At the same time some oil wells in the US were running dry. But since then, enhanced oil recovery techniques such as fracking have been developed to gain access to even more fossil fuels. The threat of “peak oil” is now very last century. Over this same period, agricultural productivity increased significantly as the green revolution was rolled out across the world. So, rather than running out of resources, we live in a world of plenty. However, this fails to address the other half of the limits equation - pollution. In 1972, global annual emissions of greenhouse gasses was equivalent to approximately 16bn tons of CO2. In 2014 it was 36bn tons. Pollution from burning fossil fuels is rapidly changing the Earth’s climate....
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in LimitsIt painted a picture of our over-inflated global industrialized civilization going bang. We are still here and growth continues, so it must be wrong, right? It predicted peaks, overshoots and collapse in the second half of this century, roughly. So because we haven't got there yet, it must be wrong. — Why Limits to Growth’s Forecasts Are Still Relevant Today ...In the early 1970s, Opec was flexing its economic muscles and constricting oil supply. The price rocketed. At the same time some oil wells in the US were running dry. But since then, enhanced oil recovery techniques such as fracking have been developed to gain access to even more fossil fuels. The threat of “peak oil” is now very last century. Over this same period, agricultural productivity increased significantly as the green revolution was rolled out across the world. So, rather than running out of resources, we live in a world of plenty. However, this fails to address the other half of the limits equation - pollution. In 1972, global annual emissions of greenhouse gasses was equivalent to approximately 16bn tons of CO2. In 2014 it was 36bn tons. Pollution from burning fossil fuels is rapidly changing the Earth’s climate....
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPThey should fire both of them and hire Maverick Vinales — Still undecided if Dovi or or Iannone stays. http://www.motogp.com/en/in+the+media/2016/04/19/ciabatti-it-was-not-difficult-to-convince-lorenzo/198731
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Commented on post by Bruce Woodside in Climate ChangeAnd then this. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/04/19/3770317/greenhouse-emissions-higher/
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Commented on post by Lev OsherovichWhat kind of evil is it that deliberately breeds infantile behaviour into a species in order to have something to love? — A fun read in The New York Times on behavioral and physical adaptations that have made dogs such a successful species: Puppies, after they are weaned, cannot compete with adults, so unless disease or dogcatchers have put a dent in the adult population, most of them starve. They have a true superpower in reserve, however, that can help them escape their fate. They can convince a human to feed them. So looking cute and helpless is an effective survival strategy?
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Commented on post by Shibi Payamal in MotoGPOooh, errr, Lorenzo. What have you done! — Its official now. #JorgeLorenzo  is leaving #Yamaha  for #Ducati  
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingCouple of thoughts. I'm amazed that Sykes and his team didn't have a procedure prepared, practised and agreed to ensure he got the tyre he wanted. I didn't see anyone being held back at the pit exit until their 61s were up. So how is the time in the pits during a tyre change enforced?   — What comes in twos? ....... Socks, shoes, buses & Rea's wins at +TT Circuit Assen. Outstanding work. Full wtire up & results from out friends over a Paddock Chatter : https://paddockchatter.com/2016/04/17/wsbk-rea-does-the-double-in-mixed-conditions/ Additional reading via +Jared Earle C/O +David Emmett's MotoMatters Dot Com : https://motomatters.com/results/2016/04/17/2016_assen_world_superbike_race_two.html ____________________________________ +WorldSBK #WSB +TT Circuit Assen
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingThat second race was a laugh! And you have to sympathise with Ten Kate. that's a lot of broken fairings for two 3rd places. — WSB from Assen Superbike Race 1 Results & Write up What a race. Gutted for #60, happy for #69. Double Whammy ! No point me typing my none sense, read a proper report from +Jared Earle​ C/O MotoMaters dot com : https://motomatters.com/results/2016/04/16/2016_assen_world_superbike_race_results.html __________________________________ +WorldSBK​ #WSB #WSB2016 +TT Circuit Assen​ #CoS +Kawasaki Motors​ +Monster Energy​ +Aruba.it Racing - Ducati​ #TenKate +Honda Pro Racing​ +BMW​ +BMW Motoradd #Pata +Yamaha Racing​ #SMR +Milwaukee Tool​ #MV Sadly no +Erik Buell Racing​ 
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle Roadracing- What happened to Lowes late in the race? - Shame we didn't see Davies saving it on his knee, 1st corner, last lap. It was just off shot. - Van De Mark had the biggest front end slide on one of the fastest parts of the track 1/2 a lap before his crash. - That's how Rea will win the championship, and Sykes won't — WSB from Assen Superbike Race 1 Results & Write up What a race. Gutted for #60, happy for #69. Double Whammy ! No point me typing my none sense, read a proper report from +Jared Earle​ C/O MotoMaters dot com : https://motomatters.com/results/2016/04/16/2016_assen_world_superbike_race_results.html __________________________________ +WorldSBK​ #WSB #WSB2016 +TT Circuit Assen​ #CoS +Kawasaki Motors​ +Monster Energy​ +Aruba.it Racing - Ducati​ #TenKate +Honda Pro Racing​ +BMW​ +BMW Motoradd #Pata +Yamaha Racing​ #SMR +Milwaukee Tool​ #MV Sadly no +Erik Buell Racing​ 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Bullshit+PEAK OIL happened 2006 Closer to 6m per month, I think. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ Bonus graph for people who like models: https://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2846/28462101.jpg  — Denialism, Wishful Thinking, and Fabulation: This is how you do it apathetically Jim Rose is a Class-M idiot. Solidly in the middle of the pack. Not even vaguely near bad enough to be amusing.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Bullshit+John Poteet techno-hand-wavium = Dubstep ;) — Denialism, Wishful Thinking, and Fabulation: This is how you do it apathetically Jim Rose is a Class-M idiot. Solidly in the middle of the pack. Not even vaguely near bad enough to be amusing.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Bullshit+Alexander Wait Zaranek _In the meantime as education and wealth improves, population growth is slowing by itself (until we figure out how to move into space)._ Gotta love the non-sequiter there. Space is big. It's also unbelievably hostile to meat-sacks that evolved at the bottom of a deep gravity well. And that gravity well is deep. I wouldn't bet on mass exodus this century and probably not this millenium without some techno-hand-wavium[1]. When Paul Ehrlich wrote his early work, global population growth was just peaking at it's highest exponential rate. Since forecasting is pretty much always taking now and extrapolating for a short distance into the future with nothing changing, it was reasonable to think that would continue. What he didn't realise at the time was that population was following an S-Curve and was right on the transition from the early exponential growth to the middle linear growth. What we've had ever since (40-50 years) is linear growth of 80m pa, 1b every 12-14 years. That's a fall in exponential growth rate (yearly growth as proportion of total reached) as you say but it's NOT a fall in linear growth rate. Now it is possible that we're just about to transition to the last phase of the S-Curve. But right now we're not seeing it. The last couple of billion (5.5->7.5) were actually added faster than the previous couple (3.5->5.5). The big question is when the resource constraints and/or the pollution begin to slow the linear growth. This century or next? And what model of population growth beyond 2050 appeals to you most? — Denialism, Wishful Thinking, and Fabulation: This is how you do it apathetically Jim Rose is a Class-M idiot. Solidly in the middle of the pack. Not even vaguely near bad enough to be amusing.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangePretty good article about this here. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/14/is-it-possible-to-reduce-co2-emissions-and-grow-the-global-economy — Surprising new statistics show that the world economy is expanding while global carbon emissions remain at the same level. Is it possible that the elusive “decoupling” of emissions and economic growth could be happening? #EconomicGrowth
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in Motorcycle RoadracingI think it's kind of hard for Beaubier. He's done the Red Bull rookies and got thrown into a season of CEV and then one of 125GP. He did OK, but nothing stunning. But then his team mate was one Marc Marquez. That 2009 season in 125GP was Marc Marquez, Scott Redding, Bradley Smith, Pol Espargaro, Andrea Iannone, Stefan Bradl ! Like Moto3, 125GP was always hard and competitive, but that year was exceptional. So do you stay as a big fish in a small pond, get to live at home in the USA, get paid and have a pretty good life. Or do you follow Hayden, Spies, Jacobson, Rispoli, Chaz Davies, Herrin and try World racing again, perhaps via a European series like BSB. You typically only get one shot at the MotoGP paddock, but there's glory to be had in WSB/WSS. The question is whether he wants it. Is there anyone else in MotoAmerica right now with a reasonable shot at going world racing? Good enough, young enough and with enough desire. — MotoAmerica rider Josh Hayes was one of the many amazing riders that shared the track with MotoGP, Moto2 & Moto3 this past weekend! He was absolutely amazing and spent like 20 minutes talking to me about what it is like to work so hard to do what they love and having Beaubier be the up and coming rider as a team mate. July they will be at Laguna Seca with WSBK. So, I had to asked him if riders  loved riding The Corkscrewas much as us viewers loved watching them coming down it??? His answer kind of shocked me!! Hmmm?? I seem to think I am a reporter when I get the incredible opportunities to ask any of the people associated with Pro racing questions!!!! LOL Also, I just happened to ask out of the blue, how they were treated by MotoGP and WSBK when sharing the track. Based on the look I got, I just had to ask......Who treats you guys better? MotoGP or WSBK? Now that I think about it........  Damn, I wish I had spoken with Kenny Roberts After Josh Hayes and not before!!!!! I would have loved to hear his response?? He does not mince words..At All!! LOL
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in Motorcycle RoadracingDo you think Beaubier will ever leave or is he in the US series for the duration now? — MotoAmerica rider Josh Hayes was one of the many amazing riders that shared the track with MotoGP, Moto2 & Moto3 this past weekend! He was absolutely amazing and spent like 20 minutes talking to me about what it is like to work so hard to do what they love and having Beaubier be the up and coming rider as a team mate. July they will be at Laguna Seca with WSBK. So, I had to asked him if riders  loved riding The Corkscrewas much as us viewers loved watching them coming down it??? His answer kind of shocked me!! Hmmm?? I seem to think I am a reporter when I get the incredible opportunities to ask any of the people associated with Pro racing questions!!!! LOL Also, I just happened to ask out of the blue, how they were treated by MotoGP and WSBK when sharing the track. Based on the look I got, I just had to ask......Who treats you guys better? MotoGP or WSBK? Now that I think about it........  Damn, I wish I had spoken with Kenny Roberts After Josh Hayes and not before!!!!! I would have loved to hear his response?? He does not mince words..At All!! LOL
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeWhile nuclear investment bumps along at the bottom and doesn't get any cheaper. What's not shown is investment in grid transmission capacity. — "Recent solar and wind auctions in Mexico and Morocco ended with winning bids from companies that promised to produce electricity at the cheapest rate, from any source, anywhere in the world."  Falling prices for green energy is pushing skyrocketing investments in green energy everywhere.  And this is WITHOUT a carbon tax in places like the United States.  If the world decided to increase taxes on fossil fuels, the age of fossil fuels would come to an abrupt and unexpected end. 
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in Motorcycle RoadracingSo who treats those guys better? — MotoAmerica rider Josh Hayes was one of the many amazing riders that shared the track with MotoGP, Moto2 & Moto3 this past weekend! He was absolutely amazing and spent like 20 minutes talking to me about what it is like to work so hard to do what they love and having Beaubier be the up and coming rider as a team mate. July they will be at Laguna Seca with WSBK. So, I had to asked him if riders  loved riding The Corkscrewas much as us viewers loved watching them coming down it??? His answer kind of shocked me!! Hmmm?? I seem to think I am a reporter when I get the incredible opportunities to ask any of the people associated with Pro racing questions!!!! LOL Also, I just happened to ask out of the blue, how they were treated by MotoGP and WSBK when sharing the track. Based on the look I got, I just had to ask......Who treats you guys better? MotoGP or WSBK? Now that I think about it........  Damn, I wish I had spoken with Kenny Roberts After Josh Hayes and not before!!!!! I would have loved to hear his response?? He does not mince words..At All!! LOL
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Commented on post by Joerg FliegeSome of you may have seen this before but I'l post it again. Looking at the Indian Sub-Continent as a whole, it appears to contain a perfect storm of chaos factors. - 1.6b people growing at 20m/year. Maybe 2b by 2030. - Nowhere to go since the land routes out all involve 15,000ft passes that are closed, easily defensible and that already have military presence. Or into Myanmar which is dense jungle. Or into Iran and that route's harsh and lawless. Or into Afghanistan which is an active war zone. The sea routes are difficult, long and the likely destinations uninviting. All of which makes any mass emigration very unlikely.  - Pollution problems (see all the main cities but especially Delhi, Karachi) - Large areas at risk of flooding from rising sea water when they're not being flooded by the monsoon. - One country (India) that controls water flow to two others (Pakistan, Bangla Desh) - Dysfunctional governments - Religion - Nuclear weapons - Severe and increasing danger of Black Flag weather every year. That's a combination of heat and humidity that kills humans without air conditioning. - Mass exposure to Black Swan weather. Bangla Desh in particular is densely populated and prone to flooding. But so are the poorest states in India. - Very rich anarcho-capitalists, in control of technological industry, powered by very large reserves of coal but with little oil. - A proxy war zone on one porous border with Afghanistan that keeps spilling over into Pakistan with the help of US drones. That's quite a pressure cooker. — Just what you need when you don't have anything else to worry about. 'Alarmingly, the nuclear competition between India and Pakistan has now entered a spine-chilling phase. That danger stems from Islamabad’s decision to deploy low-yield tactical nuclear arms at its forward operating military bases along its entire frontier with India to deter possible aggression by tank-led invading forces. Most ominously, the decision to fire such a nuclear-armed missile with a range of 35 to 60 miles is to rest with local commanders.'  (Emphasis mine.) Holy Moses, have they thought that through? '[Tactical] nukes are pre-assembled at a nuclear facility and shipped to a forward base for instant use. In addition to the perils inherent in this policy, such weapons would be vulnerable to misuse by a rogue base commander or theft by one of the many militant groups in the country.'
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich+Boris Borcic It's looking at the dodgy comics cartoon. And recognising that the images and descriptions are about US internal stereotypes. When it's US external foreign policies that might have been a better satirical target. Combined with the recent article about a Pakistani who thinks he's on the US Kill List and has been targeted by the war machine, using weapons created and sold by the war machine. In an area that is the last refuge of polio, in part because the CIA scared the locals away from vaccinations as a side effect of trying to find Osama. And it's an area that is not technically a warzone but might as well be. Where gunships can destroy a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital and all that happens is a report that there were "errors of protocol" or some other weasel words. And where food and water can be scarce and uncertain at the best of times. Perhaps what we need is GMO opium poppies that express the Polio vaccine instead of golden rice or roundup-ready-corn. And on, and on. It is to weep and to be sick. The four horsemen are all too real, not just metaphorical interpretations of some ancient text. Fergedaboutit. Jus-havin-a-rant. — Spot on.
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Commented on post by Lev OsherovichI suppose the OP is funny and perhaps even satyrical. I'm just having trouble getting past the Pakistan tribesman being fired on by a drone as he tries to get food for his son who's got polio. Or Yemen. Or Syria. Or Somalia. Or,   — Spot on.
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Commented on post by Lev OsherovichWhich one is resource constraints and which one is pollution? Or are those 2 the primary drivers and the 4 horseman are the secondary consequences? — Spot on.
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Commented on post by Busa Bob in Motorcycle Roadracing2 great races. and BSS had it's moments too. Last half of the last lap between Shakey and Hickman was epic. The spec ECU and weak traction control does seem to do the job at this level.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingCompare and contrast the racing in BSB and MotoA this weekend. I hope MotoA finds it's feet soon but it's still got a long way to go. — Tiger Toni can still growl 2010 #Moto2 World Champion Toni "Tiger" Elias has had a rather up & down few seasons after becoming the first Moto2 champ. Difficult times on the MotoGP machines, WSB deals that fell through, Supersport rides on uncompetitive equipment, but it would seem the +MotoAmerica​ championship is well suited to Toni. Stand in rider for the Yoshimura USA Suzuki team & goes & does the double at #COtA . Nice work Tony. Welcome back to the podium. Race 1 Results & Write up via our friend Paul Carruthers over at Moto America : http://www.motoamerica.com/elias-wins-in-motoamerica-debut-at-cota Race 2 Results & Write up again by Paul : http://www.motoamerica.com/elias-again-in-motoamerica-superbike-at-circuit-americas
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Commented on post by Mike Lewis in Motorcycle Roadracing+Melissa LuvsPlease Did you not notice the 15min delay of the Moto3 race while they dealt with more of the oil from * sat* night. Or the oil and cement dust the whole way down the back straight? Riding a full lap with a bike that's spewing oil is unforgiveable in a small club race. At a support race for a world championship it's beyond ridiculous. IMHO, Indianapolis is also not really a great track and they've had their share of problems mostly due to poor surfaces. It shares the same problem with COTA of being designed for F1. Those kinds of tracks tend not to make for good bike racing. Instead of the track tending to bring the pack back together it tends to spread them apart. And you get processional races like we did with only one pair of bikes within a second of each other in the main event. Both Moto3 and Moto2 weren't quite as bad but still had the top 10 covering 20s where usually it's more like 10s And yes, Moto3 is frequently the best race of the day and makes a great appetiser. What's not to like. There may be another factor in the problems people had this weekend. And that's the travel chaos from Europe to Argentina to Texas. And then there's the tyres with Michelin bringing new ones in, in batches on thur, fri, sat.  I wonder why it is that M/C racing in the USA so often ends up being a bit rubbish. Not every time because there have been some truly memorable battles (Fogarty-Kocinski, Haga-Corser, Rossi-Stoner, Rossi-Marquez) but too often. — The rumors of Marquez's demise were greatly exaggerated. But the reality of #COTA hit home again. The surface was an issue but it wasn't the biggest problem: Its nature as an F1-designed track is. Only two riders finished within a second of each other: https://motomatters.com/results/2016/04/10/2016_austin_motogp_race_four_just_became.html
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingWhat's up with Ellison and Haslam? It's a bit of a struggle to find people to root for, but 12 riders in 10s and 15 riders in 15s (on a big track) shows there's plenty of strength in depth. — BSB Silverpuddle Superbike Results Great days racing for the opening race for +Official BSB at Silverstone. Race 1 : http://www.britishsuperbike.com/news/laverty-holds-off-shakey-for-opening-race-win-of-2016/ Race 2 : http://www.britishsuperbike.com/news/hickman-claims-race-two-win-by-0099s-after-incredible-last-lap-battle-with-shakey/ SuperSport Result Won by Andy Reid. Top race.
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Commented on post by Mike Lewis in Motorcycle RoadracingThere's that. And then there's sharing the weekend with a minor national championship that leaves oil all over the track. Deeply disappointed with the whole weekend. We shouldn't be going to a track that consistently fails to provide a decent Moto3 race. — The rumors of Marquez's demise were greatly exaggerated. But the reality of #COTA hit home again. The surface was an issue but it wasn't the biggest problem: Its nature as an F1-designed track is. Only two riders finished within a second of each other: https://motomatters.com/results/2016/04/10/2016_austin_motogp_race_four_just_became.html
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPOil on the track? And not just the whole way along the back straight. Several people commenting on how slippery it was offline, especially Bradley Smith. Cal's little dance after Bradley's bike went past him was cute. The race as a whole was deeply disappointing. As a friend is fond of saying, we shouldn't go to a track that consistently produces a boring Moto3 race. And we should think very carefully about sharing the weekend with a national racing series. — #USMotoGP       L I V E  R A C E  N O T E S  - - starting during warm-up lap. I'm calling it "Notes" this time as I reserve the right to watch the race. LOL. 
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Change A blog, about a bit of copypasta journalism, from some PR, from a "Research Institute", quoting figures from the analysis arm of an oil company and an agency responsible for analysing the energy industry, that consistently underestimates the deployment of renewables, using data from countries that are basically lying about both their GDP growth and their carbon emissions. And which cherry picks the data to try and persuade you that business as usual is just fine thank you. Follow the links and you'll end up here,  http://www.wri.org/blog/2016/04/roads-decoupling-21-countries-are-reducing-carbon-emissions-while-growing-gdp and this final paragraph, Beyond the aggregate trends described here, more information is needed on the potential leakage of carbon emissions to other countries as nations move their industries overseas, factors that enable sustained and absolute decoupling, and what’s needed to support larger-scale emissions mitigation. Over the 14-year period covered here, the aggregate annual CO2 reduction for these 21 countries amounted to slightly more than 1 billion metric tons. Given that total annual global carbon dioxide emissions grew by more than 10 billion metric tons over this period, it’s clear that decoupling needs to be scaled up rapidly to have any chance of limiting average warming this century to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, the current international target for preventing the worst impacts of climate change. It's the same kind of story as the one about how "global carbon emissions have flatlined for 2 years". When what they mean is that China has reported their totals as staying static at the highest they've ever been for 2 years but that they might get revised considerably when the local officials doing the reporting get hauled off for corruption. And anyway, they're only counting electricity production and not shipping or agriculture or any of the other CO2 sources like concrete production. Meanwhile atmospheric CO2 concentration is growing faster than ever before as measured by scientists who actually know what they're doing rather than bureaucrats, analysts and commentators trying to make a point. No cornucopia to see here. Move along. ps. I'm so tired of this bullshit. And the MSM bullshitters who spread it for clicks, ads and giggles. — Is it possible to reduce emissions while growing the economy? This is a major question for policy-makers hoping to combat climate change. #EconomicGrowth   #GHGEmissions  
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeLots to be sceptical about here. Not least is that the west outsourced it's manufacturing and consequently outsourced the CO2 emissions associated with the electricity supply to that manufacturing. And then the process of shipping it across the world added more CO2. So while it's great that the western countries are going post-industrial, maintaining GDP growth, reducing their direct CO2 emissions and installing renewable electricity supplies, they've just shifted the problem somewhere else. And meanwhile the atmospheric CO2 concentration is growing faster than ever. 
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Code DependencyBruce Sterling has some scuttlebutt here. http://wolfliving.tumblr.com/post/142283862506 In the case of Revolv, it gets intense because Internet-of-Things things are becoming dead-media Internet-of-Dead-Things.  Software does this sudden-collapse dance all the time, but not hardware, supposedly.  Still: lie down with software dogs, get up with software fleas. Also: https://medium.com/@arlogilbert/the-time-that-tony-fadell-sold-me-a-container-of-hummus-cb0941c762c1#.13aotm5oj — And this, folks, is why I don't buy devices (or use software) -- no matter how seemingly shiny -- that are dependent on a central service and can't be reconfigured to use a different one. It isn't shiny if you can't control it.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Code DependencyYour car? — And this, folks, is why I don't buy devices (or use software) -- no matter how seemingly shiny -- that are dependent on a central service and can't be reconfigured to use a different one. It isn't shiny if you can't control it.
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Commented on post by The Real Slim Shady+Yonatan Zunger Mix it in with some Lovecraftian horror. Adam Smith's Monkey's Claw. Or perhaps even better,  Adam Smith's Invisible Basilisk.  — Almost all discussion of "Adam Smith's Invisible Hand" is absolutely, completely, utterly false, and a modern 20th century fabrication This cannot be repeated too often.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Unconditional IncomeI can't comment on the OP so I'll comment here. In a comment Cindy says: Note also that revised growth estimates have declined, for a variety of reasons (see for example <http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/human_pop/human_pop.html> under the Future Global Population Growth section). --- 2006 article about 1999 UN world projections. In 2015 the UN were revising growth projections upwards not downwards. Expected date for 10b is 2056, not the previous 2062. We're still on the straight bit of the S curve of Stage 2-3 and have not yet reached stage 4. Particularly in S and E Asia and Africa. In short, we're still on linear growth of 80m pa, 12-14 years per additional billion. But don't get too distracted by that. Population growth in S&E Asia is several layers removed from issues around social-democracy policies in the USA. Re basic income vs minimum income and employment controls. This all reads like yet another anarcho-capitalist, libertardian, corporatist, rentier justification for why employment law and social justice are BAD! If you mess with the market by introducing concepts like basic income or negative income tax OF COURSE you need to balance it with enhanced employment law or OF COURSE employers like Walmart will abuse it unmercifully.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Metahttps://www.washingtonpost.com/people/chris-mooney The stories continue at a rate of 3-4 a week. They just don't get cross posted and promoted on G+ Or at least not directly by Mooney. They do frequently get shared though on places like the Climate Change community. https://plus.google.com/communities/103573721476890866382 They all still get cross posted to Twitter and Facebook. Maybe he lost his intern? A quick scan of his old posts suggests few comments on the posts and no comments from him, so no engagement. Compare that with the expected 200 and upwards comments from the usual climate trolls on the originals. There's not much engagement on Facebook or Twitter either. His articles don't add much analysis or have much added value. They're repeating stories that turn up elsewhere in places like the Guardian's Environment pages. But they're also not obviously biased or spun. So is there anything to learn here? — G+ AWOL: Chris Mooney (Washington Post) Last post: 51 weeks ago. Mind, his clickbait headlines were driving me absolutely nuts.
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeIf you follow the story back to the paper, you'll find scientists talking about the Antarctic ice turning into water in a 200-1000 year time frame. So that's all right then because even my grandchildren will be long gone. :( Time: We're not good at it. What we're doing now will affect the next 400k years. — We are now dangerously close to 'locking in' 6 feet of sea level rise by 2100. Which probably means 3 feet of sea level rise by 2050.  Which means banks will likely abandon 30 year mortgages in Florida by the 2020s (if not sooner).  The cost of doing nothing to solve the climate crisis has just increased exponentially. 
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Commented on post by Stewart BrandI'm curious about the relationship between improving photosynthesis via C3->C4 gene engineering and the need of the plant for nitrogen. If you push up the photosynthesis rate does that also mean you have to provide more nitrogen fertiliser? The point being of course that nitrogen fertiliser currently depends on Haber–Bosch processes which are (again currently) heavily fossil fuel dependent. If we're unlucky we just replace one limit with another. And if the resource limits (fossil fuels) don't get us, the pollution (nitrogen run off) will. ps. to the previous commenter, "plonk".  — Converting rice from a C3 to a C4 plant will revolutionize agriculture My summary of Jane Langdale’s Long Now talk: Feeding the world (and saving nature) in this populous century, Jane Langdale began, depends entirely on agricultural efficiency — the ability to turn a given amount of land and sunlight into ever more food.  And that depends on three forms of efficiency in each crop plant: 1) interception efficiency (collecting sunlight); 2) conversion efficiency (turning sunlight into sugars and starch); and 3) partitioning efficiency (maximizing the edible part).  Of these, after centuries of plant breeding, only conversion efficiency is far short of the theoretical maximum.  The photosynthesis in most plants (called “C3“) is low-grade, poisoning its own process by reacting with oxygen instead of carbon dioxide when environmental conditions are hot and dry. But some plants, such as corn and sugar cane, have a brilliant workaround.  They separate the photosynthetic process into two adjoining cells.  The outer cell creates a special four-carbon compound (hence “C4“) that is delivered to the oxygen-protected inner cell.  In the inner cell, carbon dioxide is released from the C4 compound, enabling drastically more efficient photosynthesis to take place because carbon dioxide is at a much higher concentration than oxygen. Rice is a C3 plant — which happens to be the staple food for half the world.  If it can be converted to C4 photosynthesis, its yield would increase by 50% while using half the water. It would also be drought-resistant and need far less fertilizer. Langdale noted that C4 plants have evolved naturally 60 times in a variety of plant families, all of which provide models of the transition.  “How difficult could it be?” she deadpanned.  The engineering begins with reverse-engineering.  For instance, the main leaves in corn are C4, but the husk leaves are C3-like, so the genes that affect the two forms of development can be studied.  Langdale’s research suggests that the needed structural change in rice can be managed with about 12 engineered genes, and previous research by others indicates that the biochemical changes can be achieved with perhaps 10 genes.  The genes needed for the eventual fine tuning will emerge later. When is later?  The C4 Rice project began in 2006 at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  The research is on schedule, and engineering should begin in 2019, with the expectation that breeding of delicious, fiercely efficient C4 rice could be complete by 2039. It is the kind of thing that highly focussed multi-generation science can accomplish.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeI'm not convinced by the arguments that Solar+Wind+Hydro is too intermittent and requires too much transmission infrastructure. And because of that we need large quantities of Nuclear+Gas. But having said that, Solar+Wind+Hydro is currently a pretty small proportion of electricity production world wide despite some local success stories like Denmark or Scotland. So a lot of these arguments are about the validity of models for the future rather than analysis of current or past. http://cleantechnica.com/2016/03/02/base-load-power-is-a-myth-used-for-defending-the-fossil-fuel-industry/   — Utilities around the world risk wasting nearly one trillion dollars of investment in new coal-fired power plants as the global demand for coal declines, according to a new report. #StrandedAssets #CoalFiredPlants
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeWhich parts of the world and which populations are most at risk from rising sea water? Bangla Desh is one. I'm sure there are others in S and E Asia. Florida is likely to be financially painful for a lot of people, but the actual population is quite small and capable of moving. At least they're not dependent on the potentially flooded land for food. — We are now dangerously close to 'locking in' 6 feet of sea level rise by 2100. Which probably means 3 feet of sea level rise by 2050.  Which means banks will likely abandon 30 year mortgages in Florida by the 2020s (if not sooner).  The cost of doing nothing to solve the climate crisis has just increased exponentially. 
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Commented on postGive me sufficient head of water and I can move the earth. I'm looking forward to Elon Musk's personal hydro energy storage unit that couples a large tank in the roof with a revolutionary two way pump-turbine in the basement. Usefully combining storage and time shifting of surplus solar power with a shower and lawn sprinkler.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in Motorcycles - ModifiedLoud pipes don't save lives. They're f***ing anti-social. Not impressed with what racefti has done to us all. Owning a K8 with high bars it's annoying that the L2 is just that bit better. That's the first year with BPM forks (or whatever they're called), right?  — Suzuki GSX-R750 L2 Lightly modified customer street bike. Boy the Racefit exhaust sounds great on this bike. If I had to have just one bike for all purposes for life, this would be it.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesHave mythbusters ever done a piece on rolling shit in glitter? I'm not convinced it's possible. "You can't polish a turd but you can roll it in glitter"" — This is surprisingly pleasing. I may need to learn how to do this. The Mythbusters episode +Murphy Jacobs mentions is quite amusing as well: it turns out that you can, in fact, polish a turd, and lion feces in particular seems to produce quite a nice shine. (http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/polishing-a-turd-minimyth/)
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Google UpdatesSo who has he delegated the "visibility" bit of being a CEO to? — +Sundar Pichai has been Google's CEO since last August, when we restructured the company to separate out a lot of our more far-flung ventures into Alphabet. However, he's a far more low-profile figure than (say) Larry Page, Tim Cook, or Elon Musk; someone who can still wander around the Consumer Electronics Show without being recognized. As a result, many people haven't had a chance to get a sense of who he is. So it's great to see this piece by +Mathew Honan about him: it talks about him as a person, and his vision for the future of the company and of technology. I think the piece captures him well, and it shows why I've been really enjoying working for him this past year or so. h/t +Don McArthur for finding this!
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Institutions"battle tested" — That's nothing. You should watch them fighting in Washington, DC
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Economics+Edward Morbius Hmmm. Corporate gut flora. That'll be the lawyers then. — An excellent debunking of one of the larger errors of modern economic theory In 1970, Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman published a famous essay in the New York Times arguing that the only proper goal of business was to maximize profits for the company’s owners, whom Friedman assumed (incorrectly, we shall see) to be the company’s shareholders.9 Even more influential was a 1976 article by Michael Jensen and William Meckling titled the “Theory of the Firm.”10 This article, still the most frequently cited in the business literature,11 repeated Friedman’s mistake by assuming that shareholders owned corporations and were corporation’s residual claimants. From this assumption, Jensen and Meckling argued that a key problem in corporations was getting wayward directors and executives to focus on maximizing the wealth of the corporations’ shareholders. There's much else in here -- including addressing the fallacy that stockholders own a company (they don't, they own shares, a type of structured investment), rather, the company is a legal entity which owns itself. There's a whole 'nother ontological argument of what "ownership", "control", "interest", and "obligation" likely mean. Thought occurs to me that Milton Friedman has done more harm to economics than any single other person in at least the 2nd half of the 20th century. Perhaps all of it and then some.
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeIt's a bit of a stretch isn't it to single out one product (solar panels) as responsible for the pollution by-products of the whole of China's industrial economy. Yes, China's investment in solar panel manufacturing has resulted in cheap panels used worldwide. The same is true for everything from ipods to rubber ducks to chainsaws. And the energy for ALL of that has largely come from dirty coal electricity plants. And those plants chuck out long term CO2 pollution as well as short term cancer causing particulates. The west has outsourced and exported its manufacturing. It's also exported the pollution from manufacturing. And if the resource constraints don't get you, the pollution will get them (and you). — Few people appreciate how much of the current solar boom in America is the direct result of unhealthy air in China. Without the decision by the Chinese government to begin MASSIVE investments in renewable energy several years ago, prices for solar panels today would be MUCH higher. 
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Code Dependency"Are we all just being trained to let apps have whatever permissions they want?" Yes. And while you're at it, turn off your ad blocker, do not track, privacy badger, firewall, UAC, clever /etc/hosts, etc, etc. They're just stopping perfectly legitimate apps from running. — Dear +Android, Why in the world does a photo gallery app need access to my Identity, my Contacts, and my "Device ID & call information"?? Assuming they're actually needed (which they aren't), why can't I deny it access to these things for now and then grant them later at need? Why doesn't the drop-down offer any explanation of why these things are needed (assuming they are, which they aren't)? And why do I have to run this update now just so I can browse my photos on the phone? Are we all just being trained to let apps have whatever permissions they want? Why even bother having permissions in the first place, if key apps are going to demand permissions they don't need?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Economics"the company is a legal entity that owns itself". Which acquires capital funding by issuing paper. That paper comes with a story of promises and goals. To some extent it's worth to the holders of the paper is affected by the performance of the company and the appeal of the story. That may affect the company's ability to play the same game again at some stage in the future. If there's a liquid market in that paper and especially if there's some volatility as well, then there will be actors who create secondary derivative markets in the paper. And Governments will want their cut. --- I'm reminded again of a Charles Stross post from a couple of years ago. Companies are non-human aliens that just happen to come with an ecosystem of parasitical humans.   We are living in the aftermath of an alien invasion. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/invaders-from-mars.html We are now living in a global state that has been structured for the benefit of non-human entities with non-human goals. They have enormous media reach, which they use to distract attention from threats to their own survival. They also have an enormous ability to support litigation against public participation, except in the very limited circumstances where such action is forbidden. Individual atomized humans are thus either co-opted by these entities (you can live very nicely as a CEO or a politician, as long as you don't bite the feeding hand) or steamrollered if they try to resist. — An excellent debunking of one of the larger errors of modern economic theory In 1970, Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman published a famous essay in the New York Times arguing that the only proper goal of business was to maximize profits for the company’s owners, whom Friedman assumed (incorrectly, we shall see) to be the company’s shareholders.9 Even more influential was a 1976 article by Michael Jensen and William Meckling titled the “Theory of the Firm.”10 This article, still the most frequently cited in the business literature,11 repeated Friedman’s mistake by assuming that shareholders owned corporations and were corporation’s residual claimants. From this assumption, Jensen and Meckling argued that a key problem in corporations was getting wayward directors and executives to focus on maximizing the wealth of the corporations’ shareholders. There's much else in here -- including addressing the fallacy that stockholders own a company (they don't, they own shares, a type of structured investment), rather, the company is a legal entity which owns itself. There's a whole 'nother ontological argument of what "ownership", "control", "interest", and "obligation" likely mean. Thought occurs to me that Milton Friedman has done more harm to economics than any single other person in at least the 2nd half of the 20th century. Perhaps all of it and then some.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawTo quote the Hitchhiker's Guide: Oh, Belgium! — Twenty-four hours after an attack by Da'esh (the organization formerly known as ISIS [1]) on Paris left 129 dead and 352 wounded, the Internet and the airwaves alike have been filled with profound waves of self-serving nonsense and stupidity from left and right alike. Everyone seems to have found a way in which this situation justifies their position – protect the refugees! Exile the refugees! Bomb someone! Stop all bombing of anyone! – and magically, it seems that one of the most complex political situations of our time can be reduced to simple slogans. Well, I've run out of patience with this, so let me seriously discuss what just happened here, and what it tells us. I'm going to talk about three things which have combined to lead to yesterday's massacre: the refugee crisis, Europe's Muslim population, and Da'esh. I'll then talk about a few things which I think have little or nothing to do with what we're seeing – most importantly, religion and oil – and a few things which do – such as food and water. And finally, we'll talk about what it's going to take to fix this, both in the short term and the long term. Being entirely out of patience right now, forgive me for being particularly blunt. I suspect that, by the end of this, you will be thoroughly offended by my opinions, whether you are American, European, or Middle Eastern, left or right: nobody has behaved well in the lead-up to this. The first thing to realize about the refugees streaming into Europe from Syria and its environs is that not only are they not, by and large, terrorists – they're people fleeing these exact terrorists. France was just hit by Da'esh, with over five hundred casualties; in Syria, people are surrounded by Da'esh on one side, and a bloodthirsty army on the other side, and have been seeing death on the scale of yesterday's attack every single day for the past four and a half years. [2] If you were living there, you would very likely be fleeing, too. But the second thing to realize about the refugees is that there are, in fact, Da'esh members among them. It's clear that at least one of the attackers came in from Syria as part of October's refugee flood, and there's no reason at all not to believe that quite a few more are among them, working both at short- and long-term goals. (More on which in a moment) Everyone seems to have simplistic solutions, here: kick out all the Muslims (as America's Ann Coulter and Donald Trump suggest), settle the refugees more permanently, build giant prison camps. These solutions tend to miss a few very basic points: (1) When you have hundreds of thousands of people who are quite literally willing to risk not only their deaths, but the deaths of their families, in order to escape, your odds of being able to keep them out aren't actually great, unless your plan is to mobilize a giant army and start attacking inward until they're fleeing in the opposite direction. (2) You do not have enough prison camp capacity to handle this many people, nor could you build it. Nor do you have enough housing and residential infrastructure capacity to easily settle this many people, because the flux you're seeing out of Syria is very far from the end of it.  This is why large regional disasters quickly tend to spread into adjacent regions. This is why it's important not to let regional disasters get out of hand, no matter how politically appealing isolationism may appear. The second thing to be aware of is that this didn't happen in a vacuum: Europe has a very large Muslim population, and it seems that most of the attackers were French or Belgian citizens. This started out with Europe's colonial ambitions, back in the day: France, for example, ruled over Algeria with a mind-bogglingly bloodthirsty approach [3] for decades, but now has a large population of people with a right to French residence who have been moving in to the country in search of a better economic situation. (Hardly surprising, when you leave behind a colony wracked by a horrifying civil war for decades) And France is far from alone in this. Europe's Muslim population is both profoundly European and profoundly not European. They are European in that they have been living there, often for more than a generation; they work there, they pay taxes, they have become as assimilated as they can. They are not European in that Europe has been profoundly unwilling to allow them to assimilate. This is far from a historical anomaly: Europe has historically defined itself in terms of villages or cities and their local populations, which one can't really join very easily. Groups marked as outsiders – be they Jews, Romany, or Muslims – have been considered only marginally European. At times, there has been a high degree of apparent assimilation: for example, Jews were thoroughly integrated into European culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, intermarrying, forming friendships and professional associations across the board. As you may notice, "thorough integration" can be an awfully chancy business.  Muslims in today's Europe, on the other hand, don't have anything close to this superficial level of integration; France has been routinely passing laws banning Muslims from dressing the way they did in their home countries in the past few years, which should tell you a great deal about local opinions of that population. So you have a large population who finds it systematically hard to find work, impossible to be accepted, the regular target of police, and told every day that they should probably be kicked out of the country. I'm sure you will find it shocking that, if you do this to a few tens of millions of people for a few decades at a stretch, you will end up with a disillusioned and disenfranchised youth, some of which will combine this with the general hot-headedness and stupidity of being a young adult to become easy fodder for people who have shown up to recruit. Lots of people seem to have half-assed solutions here, and they tend to be even more foolish than the solutions to the refugee crisis. "Send them back," the European right frequently cries: back to where? Most of the Muslim population is no longer fresh immigrants; they are second and third generation Europeans. They don't have homes anywhere else. The European left, on the other hand, preaches a mealymouthed combination of urging assimilation and unmistakeable racism.  For some context, go back to the Charlie Hebdo attacks several months ago. There was a large outcry, saying that what the magazine (a notable left-wing satirical organ) had been doing was entirely in the bounds of proper satire, that the satire of religion was a hallowed European tradition. What this explanation glosses over is that nobody on the receiving end of the satire saw it as satire of religion, for the simple reason that religious affiliation, in Europe as in the Middle East, has little to do with what you believe and much to do with who you are. Charlie Hebdo's targets weren't simply religious extremists preaching from Saudi mosques; they were a portrayal of the French Muslim population as violent extremists, the dangerous other. And that's precisely the European left-wing line: Muslims are fine, so long as they become completely European, to the extent that we can forget that they were ever from someone else. Which, realistically, might mean they have to intermarry for a few generations and acquire blue eyes and blond hair, but that's OK, we welcome them! The honest fact is this: neither the European left nor the right have ever made the large Muslim community into a full part of society. One side has covered it in nice words, while the other side has blared its xenophobia from the rooftops, but nobody on the receiving end of either of these has been fooled. You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. What did you expect was going to happen? And then we come over to our friends in the Middle East, the psychotically bloodthirsty bastards of Da'esh itself. It's a bit off to even refer to them as Islamist extremists in the mold of al-Qaeda; they've gone so far off the rails of Islam that the only clear ideology that often seems left is power and murder. Exhortations from theologians of any stripe aren't really going to have an effect on them. But they seem to have realized that they are on an upswing of power, nobody having the resources or will to stop them, and have come up with the idea of spreading this worldwide, with attacks spreading to places like Russia and France – and, as soon as they can, everywhere else. Because as far as anyone can tell, they want to take over the world. (Yes, this is a kind of screwy plan, and they barely even control chunks of land in the ass end of Syria and Iraq. But they've had enough luck with killing people that they seem to have convinced themselves that if they engage in even more killing people, it'll continue to work just as well. [4]) They seem to have one fairly simple strategic objective with these new attacks: drive a hard wedge between Muslim and infidel populations around the world, so that the Muslims will have no choice but to join them and become their army, overthrowing the local governments and establishing a world-wide Caliphate. Unfortunately, political stupidity seems likely to help them. If the response to these attacks is to further isolate Muslim populations – both settled and refugee – then they will certainly have a far easier time recruiting among them. It's not actually going to lead to them taking over the world, but it will lead to bloodshed. This recruitment tends to take a few forms. One is to recruit fighters to come and help in the bloodshed in existing battlefields; the second is to recruit suicide bombers and the like in other countries. These are somewhat disjoint processes, since the process of recruiting someone to commit suicide is rather different and targets different sorts of people, but there is also overlap: one strategy which al-Qaeda long favored was to recruit people to come to places like Iraq, Afghanistan, or Chechnya to fight, and later export trained fighters elsewhere. One important thing about these tactics is that they seem to be realizing that surprisingly little training and planning is required. Yesterday's attack required some coordination among teams, but nothing spectacular; it did require practice in gunplay. But even this was fairly complex compared to the bare minimum required; consider the amount of chaos caused by the D.C. Sniper back in 2002. Da'esh poses a particular danger because they seem to have latched onto the idea of exporting their violence to the rest of the world, but they're hardly the first or the last group to do this. If they were to be wiped out, I wouldn't bet any money that someone else wouldn't get the same idea soon after, much like al-Qaeda did before them. It's not even a particularly regional idea; the notion that if we kill enough people we can restructure the world to be perfectly {Aryan, Muslim, Democratic, Christian, Communist, etc.}, or to be the economic vassal states of the {X} empire, is frankly a cliché by now on pretty much every square kilometer of the planet. So let's review where we are, for a moment. There's a large European Muslim population which is disillusioned, disenfranchised, underemployed, and generally treated as outsiders and fair political punching bags by the society as a whole. There's a giant stream of refugees pouring in to Europe, combining huge numbers of people running for their lives from bloodthirsty maniacs with small numbers of bloodthirsty maniacs looking to recruit. There's a factory of particularly bloodthirsty maniacs with a vision of taking over the world through (a) killing people and (b) convincing the rest of the world to treat Muslims even more like outsiders, who are actively trying to both create refugee streams and send out recruiters, to this end. At this point, I expect to hear a chorus of voices blaming two things for this: religion (specifically, Islam), and oil (specifically, the West's insatiable need for it). To which my main response to both is "hogwash." The reason I reject Islam as an explanation for this is that there's nothing particularly Muslim about any of it. The European Muslims which are being treated as second-class citizens aren't being treated that way because they pray on rugs facing Mecca, rather than in pews facing an altar; they're being treated this way because they're "dirty foreigners." (I'll spare you the actual terms used to describe them) Da'esh's plan to take over the world isn't rooted in a theological destiny of Muslims; it's rooted in an explicitly political vision of conquest. And quite frankly, the people being shot at the most are Muslims, too; remember who the refugees were running from? More profoundly, people in the Middle East aren't systematically any more religious than people are in America. You have the same spectrum from the wholly secular to the crazed fundamentalist, with the former predominating in cities and the latter in the countryside. There's a tendency to assume (for example) that any woman wearing a headscarf must be extremely devout, or subject to domination and terror by some devout man; you have to back away and look at it in its local context, where sometimes it's a sign of devotion or a political statement, but it's also just what people wear; for many people, walking around with one's hair exposed is not done in much the same way people don't walk around in most of the US or Europe with their asses hanging out. Oil is generally used as a proxy for "if only the Americans|Europeans never intervened in the Middle East, it would be peaceful there!" This bespeaks a rather curious innocence as to the history of the Middle East, combined with a reversed vision of (generally American) exceptionalism, that somehow our surpassing evil can corrupt otherwise noble savages. It's certainly true that without oil, most of the Middle East would be desperately poor – but as it happens, most of it is desperately poor anyway. Oil is not uniformly distributed, and Syria doesn't have that much of it to begin with. There is one sense in which this is true, which is that the 2003 invasion of Iraq created a spectacular disaster. George W. Bush's belief that if we just created enough of a power vacuum, democracy would magically rush in to fill the void – the precise belief which his father didn't have, mind you, which is why GHWB made the explicit and deliberate decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power – proved to be exactly as unwise as it sounds when written so plainly. The result was a giant area of anarchy and civil war smack in the center of the Middle East, into which would-be fighters from all over the region (as well as other regions) swarmed: veterans of Chechnya and Bosnia found new employment in Iraq, as Sunnis and Shi'ites alike slaughtered one another. This anarchy, never resolved, has been the perfect factory of chaos which quite easily spilled over elsewhere. But there's one profound factor which has driven the violence in the Middle East far more than oil ever could: water. The entire Middle East has been in a water, and thus food, crisis for decades. In Egypt, for example, the Nile Valley has been drying out ever since the Aswan Dam was completed in 1970; as this once-fertile soil turned to desert, people have streamed into Cairo, doubling and tripling its population by forming tremendous shantytowns. Unemployment was extreme, as it's not like the cities suddenly had tens of millions of new jobs in them; the government kept order as well as it could by importing grain in tremendous quantities (the government's by-far largest annual expense) and selling bread cheaply. Unfortunately, a drought in Russia and Ukraine, Egypt's primary suppliers, caused those countries to cut off wheat exports in 2011 – and the government collapsed soon after. Syria is a similar story: the lead-in to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship was steady droughts in the Syrian countryside driving people into the cities by the hundreds of thousands, leading to mass unemployment and unrest. People's livelihoods had simply disappeared. Stories like this repeat across the entire Middle East. When we talk about the ultimate causes of the situation, this is the fact we tend to ignore: at the root of it, there isn't enough water, and there isn't enough food, and droughts have been hitting the area harder and harder for a decade. When there isn't enough food, people move from the countryside to the cities; and now you have giant groups of people who still don't have jobs or food, and that's a recipe for the collapse of governments as surely today as it was in Europe in the 1840's. If you've ever wondered why I have often said that we need to be very actively worried about climate change, this is it. Changing climate breaks agriculture in various areas; the people who were farming there don't magically turn into factory workers or teleport to places which are (slowly) becoming more fertile; they become desperate former farmers, generally flooding into cities.  So given all of this, what can we actually conclude? I think the most important thing is that you can't bury your head in the sand, and assume that problems in some other part of the world aren't your own. A drought or a civil war somewhere else can easily start to spill over in unexpected ways. If you want to avoid terrible consequences, what you have to do is plan, and in particular never let kindling build up. For example: (1) If you have a large, disenfranchised, population, this is trouble waiting to start. The only way to fix this problem is to enfranchise them: give them a full stake in your society. Yes, that means treating people who are very different from you like full equals. Yes, it also means that your society – that is, the set of people that you're responsible for – now includes a bunch of people who are a lot poorer than you are, and this is going to be expensive to fix. You're not going to like it. But you're going to like the alternative a whole lot less. (2) If there's political instability, or worst of all, food supply instability somewhere else in the world, it doesn't matter how far away it seems: you need to get together with everyone else and have a serious plan to deal with it. Once masses of hundreds of thousands of people start streaming across the countryside, chaos will follow in their wake.  (3) Climate change isn't an abstract fear for the future; it's a major political problem right now. You can't punt it away and talk about what to do about carbon emissions or its effect on the economy; you have to sit down and come up with serious strategic plans for what to do when agricultural productivity in critical breadbaskets drops sharply, or watersheds dry up. Contingency planning for any government needs to include anything from hurricanes to long-term droughts, and not just as one-offs, but what to do if these start happening a lot. The reason you need to plan for this is that it's not a goddamned hypothetical, you idiot. What do we do in the short term? This is harder, because right now Da'esh has been sending agents across the planet to cause as much trouble as they can. One obvious prong of the solution is ordinary police work; that's proven far more effective than complex intelligence solutions at catching terrorists. Another prong is stopping their support system at the root. Because Da'esh's plans are so focused on actual conquest, a collapse of their regime back home is likely to have more of an effect on their satellite agents than the collapse of a more ideologically-oriented organization like al-Qaeda. A third prong is to stabilize the situation in Syria: here the key isn't so much blowing anyone up as giving people a way to stop fighting. There are three key obstacles to this. One is Da'esh, which seems to be pretty committed to fighting for its own sake; this is unlikely fixable by any means short of straightforward military defeat. One is the underlying lack of food availability. The third is that quite a lot of people have reason to believe that they will be killed either if al-Assad regains power, or if he loses power. They need a serious guarantee of personal safety in any peace. What this probably means is that a peace agreement will require very heavy international support: aid to rebuild the country, neutral military forces to guarantee cease-fires, and some way to deal with the underlying economic issues. That's going to require heavy international coordination of the profoundly unsexy sort: not deploying giant militaries to bomb targets and wave banners, or propping up regimes and helping them "suppress insurgencies," but working on the long-term realities of helping locals build a government that they're invested in – even when said government is unlikely to be either similar to Western norms, or friendly to Western aims. Military force to crush Da'esh is almost certainly needed as a precondition to this, but it's by far the smaller part of the game. The short version is: if you want to fix problems, you're going to have to deal with some very serious, expensive, and unsexy solutions. Because life isn't simple, and you can't just bomb your way out of trouble. [1] See this recent editorial for the argument for switching to the term Da'esh more broadly: https://www.freewordcentre.com/blog/2015/02/daesh-isis-media-alice-guthrie/ [Thanks to +Lisa Straanger for finding this more in-depth discussion than the Boston Globe op-ed which I had earlier cited] [2] cf, for example, this infographic: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/14/world/middleeast/syria-war-deaths.html [3] cf, for example, this obituary of a proud French torturer: https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/1PQQQ3XfnYA [4] cf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B3slX6-_20
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Commented on post by Richard Cronin in Climate ChangeHmmm. 28,000 pa or 695 pa or is it 3500 pa or maybe it's only 8 pa. http://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/26/bird-killing-solar-falls-short-foes-kill-rate-hopes/ ISTR that Ivanpah is on it's expected scheduled ramp up. http://cleantechnica.com/2015/09/07/breaking-ivanpah-generation-track/ That last link also debunks the gas turbine part of the story. So is WSJ and Marketwatch playing fast and loose with the truth. And are you also by linking to them? — After $2.2 billion in federal subsidies, the Ivanpah solar installation is a net carbon emitter because it must run its back-up gas turbines almost constantly to offset low solar output, kills an estimated 28,000 birds per year like a big bird zapper, and is being sued for non-performance by the California power utility. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/could-californias-massive-ivanpah-solar-power-plant-be-forced-to-go-dark-2016-03-16
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeBut it's ok, because last year carbon emissions were the same as the year before. — Researchers calculate that humans are pumping out carbon 10 times faster than at any point since the extinction of the dinosaurs. #CarbonEmissions
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Less frightening and easier to say than "Shaggy Soggoth Story". Thanks, Digamma! — If this poem seems a little bit strange, be aware that not only did it coin a new word ("polyphloisboisteros"), but a new academic obscenity. ("What the digamma?") Not that Greek (of the Modern, Ancient, or Archaic varieties) was ever lacking in obscenities. One of our best sources on the early evolution of the language comes from graffiti, some of it written as early as 750BCE – right around the time that writing was reintroduced to Greece after its Dark Age – and almost all of which was vividly obscene. This can make texts on ancient history a lot more amusing than you may at first expect.
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeIt would also be better to see accurate reporting of accurate statistics prepared by neutral parties who don 't have skin in the game. Explained by accurate and non-sensational journalism that doesn't try to sell advertising by hyping a questionable conclusion. But that's all too much to hope for, right. Hence the need for large grains of salt and a bit of fact checking. ;) And especially, beware stories that say it's not quite as bad as we thought it might be. Dig a bit deeper and it often turns out it's just as bad as we thought it was. —  The bad news: We are in deep water, it is over our heads, and the wind is beginning to kick up big waves all around us.  The good news: we have finally decided to swim.
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeAgain. An article pointing to an article pointing to a press release from the IEA about an IEA study that says that energy-related CO2 emissions per year have not grown from the highest level ever but they haven't dropped either. This is primarily about electricity generation running costs from fossil fuels. It probably doesn't include fossil fuels used in transportation, agriculture, construction and so on. And it probably doesn't include the fossil fuel element of the roll out of renewable infrastructure. Meanwhile the actual state of the global economy as well as the global fossil fuel consumption figures are uncertain. So claims that the global economy has uncoupled from energy use or fossil fuel use all need to be taken with a big dose of salt. —  The bad news: We are in deep water, it is over our heads, and the wind is beginning to kick up big waves all around us.  The good news: we have finally decided to swim.
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPWell that was a load of old bollocks. Not just all the people jumping the start for whatever reason, but the inconsistency of the way a bad rule was applied. — I am Freakin Losing My Mind Here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cleary Morbidelli jumped the line with Zarco!!!! How in the hell is Morbidelli still on this track????? Rins may have slightly started to, but stopped his bike.....I can understand that even a little bit counts, but Morbidelli is a foot over the line!!!!
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Commented on post by Julian Bond+Rupert Wood Always. The only problem is finding quality, single origin, high solids, dark chocolate. Deeply disappointed that Waitrose have stopped carrying the plain Madecasse which was a fav. And I really hate the tendency to try and differentiate everything by adding ingredients. I don't want sea-salted caramel with buffalo milk, nibs, chili, ginger, orange and coffee bits. I just want an honest 75% plain from Madagascar. And get off my lawn! — Happy Vernal Equinox Day. The equinox was actually at 04:30 UTC, with sunrise for the pagans at Stonehenge at 06:06 UTC. But I wasn't awake for either. And next Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon (Wed 23rd, 12:01 UTC) after the Vernal Equinox. So thanks to the calculations for the date of the Jewish feast of Passover, that's Easter. Trying to unpack the symbolism surrounding all this is beyond me. The blood of sacrificed spring lambs, eh. M'kay, err, say what?
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Commented on post by Bruce Woodside in Climate Change+Kaikki Kasvissa You think I don't know that? ;) What's also slightly weird is that the IEA figures are for "energy-related" sources. It's not really made explicit what that means but it appears to be primarily about electricity generation. That's dominant but there's a lot of other CO2 emission sources.
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Commented on post by Bruce Woodside in Climate Changehttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/16/surge-in-renewable-energy-stalls-world-greenhouse-gas-emissions IEA PR claims CO2 emissions constant[1] for 2 years, while GDP grows >3% [1]That's constant at their highest ever level of ~32GtCo2 pa which is ~10GtC pa Which is on course for around 1TtC this century.
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Commented on post by Robert LeesSeek out "Hot Earth Dreams".  http://heteromeles.wordpress.com — The debate of whether its happening or not is absurdly late. Preparations towards feeding yourself as food scarcity progresses will be very important. The one item which is strangely absent is this: The moment of food scarcity, science, manufacturing, engineering and professions of the like cease to exist. I am an expert gardener and I will tell you that producing 100% of your caloric needs is difficult and for some impossible. It takes a lot of time leaving little time or energy to do anything else, like making the infrastructure for carbon capture and sequester machines.
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Commented on post by Julian Bondyup — "Pavlov's Dogwhistle" Or is that redundant?
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Commented on post by Julian BondThe particular irritation is the unintentional Pavlovian dogwhistle. And the person who having spotted it is incapable of reading any further and compelled to comment on it. Thus missing the main point of the post entirely. Of course all of this is made worse by tech automation taking Google's auto-summary of a link, which then gets reflected through http://dlvr.it or IFTTT into a Facebook post. The dogwhistle may not be in what you wrote but in the meta-summary or first paragraphs of the thing being linked. — "Pavlov's Dogwhistle" Or is that redundant?
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Commented on post by Julian Bondhttp://i.imgur.com/xR505FA.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics — "Pavlov's Dogwhistle" Or is that redundant?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric BikesCame across an interesting idea in this area. Since UK cities and towns are increasingly trending towards 20mph limits, maybe UK E-Bicycles should be limited to 20mph and not 15mph. There's an obvious argument that increased speed makes it more important to have training, helmets, roadworthiness testing and so on. However, most people can mange 20mph on a bicycle for short distances or downhill. And while 20mph feels fast it doesn't start feeling dangerous till 30mph or so. And it does raise the question again of whether there should be a utility vehicle class between the 15mph e-bicycle and the 30mph moped. — The UK Motorcycle Industry Association (MCIA) and Bicycle Association (BA) have recently posted another bit of PR about this year's problem. One of a long line of things like minimotos, pitbikes, segways, electric skateboards and microscooters, hoverboards. These things don't fit into the UK legal framework so are not road legal. But they're powered vehicles so they're not off road legal in public places either. It's a rant about the scourge of illegally powerful electric bicycles, especially German legal S-Pedelecs being sold as "Off Road only". And people buying them and then riding them on the road without full Moped or Lightweight motorcycle legality of MOT, Testing, Insurance, licenses, reg plates and so on. http://www.mcia.co.uk/About/News/Article/Electric-bicycles-and-mopeds-there-are-no-grey-areas.aspx http://www.mcia.co.uk/Press-and-Statistics/Press-Releases/Article/Electric-bicycles-and-mopeds-there-are-no-grey-areas.aspx Stealthbikes don't get specifically mentioned although they did display at the recent Excel Bicycle Show. I've got some lengthy replies and have engaged with them on facebook, but I'm not getting much response beyond marketing flack.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Good NewsHow good is Oregon as a location for wind power? And how good is the grid both in Oregon and into neighbouring states? — "On Friday, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed into law one of the most ambitious and sweeping pieces of energy legislation in the country’s history, one which will eradicate the use of coal for electricity generation entirely within two decades." via private share
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The HypertwinsGlobal Weirding. And that's the politics as well as the weather. — So, last night we had a summer thunderstorm. There was another one tonight -- and right now, we're having marble-sized hail. I could be wrong, but I think this is a little unusual for March. (Also, it was over 70 pretty much all today and yesterday.)
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Commented on post by Bruce Woodside in Climate ChangeExcept meanwhile, the CO2 concentration rose by it's biggest yearly amount ever. And the emissions data depends on accurate reporting of both consumption and GDP, both of which are deeply suspect. And even if it's slightly down, that's from the highest it's ever been. Trying to look for slight changes in output (0.1%) and draw conclusions from that only 2 months after the reporting period (when they might be adjusted later by 5-10% either way) seems like a fool's errand. Sorry, about that, because it would be nice to get some good news for a change. 
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in Motorcycle RoadracingProper race in race 2 as well. I think somebody should have a little word to Sykes about weaving. There's covering your line, pulling across on the straight to force the following rider to go wide. But there were a couple of moves that were a bit too aggressive and nearly ran into Rea. — Jonathon Rea's year again?!?!? ;) Looking good.....3 1st places = 75 points Poor Nicky.....That bike just started acting like it was shooting bullets for him. :(
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in SustainabilityIf the "Ship of Fools" tries to pull into port and dock, tell them to go away. — The backup plan is "Don't Fuck This Up"
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Commented on post by Rick Li in Climate ChangeAs long as it's not at the expense of renewables and other climate mitigation and adaptation strategies.
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeI do get the importance of methane and the dangers of atmospheric methane released from warming methane clathrates. But I couldn't see anything in those links suggesting that high methane release leads directly to rising atmospheric CO2 concentration. Maybe I missed it.  — Highest ever annual rise in atmospheric CO2 carbon dioxide levels just recorded in Hawaii in February 2016 It is not just temperature records that are falling. The average carbon dioxide level recorded at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, during February 2016 was 404.02 parts per million – 3.76 ppm higher than the average for February 2015, according to preliminary figures. That is the biggest ever increase over a 12-month period. The previous 12-month record at Mauna Loa was 3.70 ppm, from September 1997 to September 1998. Bad news because the higher the levels of CO2 are in the atmosphere, the more the planet will warm in the future. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2079995-highest-ever-annual-rise-in-carbon-dioxide-levels-recorded/ warming climate
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate Change+John Poteet I thought that produced Methane, not CO2. and both the OP and my comment were referring to CO2 concentrations and emissions. A more likely source of the discrepancy is the effect of things like the Indonesian fires. — Highest ever annual rise in atmospheric CO2 carbon dioxide levels just recorded in Hawaii in February 2016 It is not just temperature records that are falling. The average carbon dioxide level recorded at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, during February 2016 was 404.02 parts per million – 3.76 ppm higher than the average for February 2015, according to preliminary figures. That is the biggest ever increase over a 12-month period. The previous 12-month record at Mauna Loa was 3.70 ppm, from September 1997 to September 1998. Bad news because the higher the levels of CO2 are in the atmosphere, the more the planet will warm in the future. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2079995-highest-ever-annual-rise-in-carbon-dioxide-levels-recorded/ warming climate
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Commented on posthttp://cassandralegacy.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/an-epochal-change-have-co2-emissions.html https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600871/have-global-co2-emissions-peaked/ http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2016-03/09/carbon-dioxide-highest-level Global CO2 emissions have peaked and total output was less in 2015 than 2014. Hooray! Except that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere rose in 2015 by the greatest yearly amount ever. Oh Noes! As one wag in the comments put it, "It may be that we are burning dirtier stuff now, which can increase emissions even if less is burned. But the simplest explanation for any decrease is a contracting world economy. Maybe emissions estimates are a better measure of the world economy than official GDP figures!" And yet the CO2 concentration keeps rising faster and faster. So it feels like none of the figures can be trusted and the margin of error is +/- 10%. Looking for 0.1% changes over one year, 2 months after its end is a fool's errand.
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Commented on post by Google+ in Google+ CreateSadly, I'm not terribly interested in the featured accounts. Is there a bigger list somewhere? They lost me on "must have: Themed Collections". How do I get a verified name? And actually, how do I get a short link without numbers in it? Although it's a little late for that. — Google+ Create Collection This Create Collection introduces each Create member along with their interest(s). We collect their story and share it here to recognize their amazing work, spread their passion, and inspire you. What is the Create Program: Today we are thrilled to launch Google+ Create (http://g.co/PlusCreate), a program that celebrates the inspiring individuals behind the most captivating Google+ content. Create is the bridge between Google+ and its most passionate content creators. The Create Community is full of inspiration and energy from engaged Google+ users with an insatiable passion. Create helps members grow their audience and their interests, recognizes their efforts and dedication while giving them the opportunity to help shape Google+ by talking directly to the Google+ team, getting updates before the public and testing upcoming features. - Visit http://g.co/PlusCreate to learn about the benefits and see if Create is right for you. We are always accepting applications to join so apply when you are ready! - If you don’t have Collections or want to improve yours, check out: https://plus.google.com/+SophieBonnetWorldExplorer/posts/SfwDgTNSgyz or visit our Collections Community where you will get support from our team and our Create members: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/104797282868426074024. - Or just sit back and lose yourself in the diverse Collections of Google+ (http://g.co/Collections%29.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Google UpdatesThey lost me on "Must have: Themed collections". Now how do I get a verified name? And sadly, I have little interest in any of the small number of featured accounts. Is there a bigger list somewhere? — One of the best things about Google+ is the way it can work for creators: photographers, artists, writers, educators, chefs, anyone who makes things that they want to not just broadcast, but talk to people about. Quite a few people (myself included) have found this a great place to build a community, a following, and even a career. Today, we're announcing "Google+ Create:" a program for serious content creators who are producing high-quality collections to get to know each other as well as the Google+ team. There are quite a few benefits involved. If you're familiar with YouTube's partner programs, this is in much the same vein: helping our creators make their creations take off.
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeS Asia worries me. It's a pressure cooker. — India Will Be One Of The Worst Hit Countries By Climate Change, Claims Oxford University Study http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/india-will-be-one-of-the-worst-hit-countries-by-climate-change-claims-oxford-university-study-251566.html indian indians
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeBut it's ok, because CO2 emissions have flat lined or dropped. Or have they? — Highest ever annual rise in atmospheric CO2 carbon dioxide levels just recorded in Hawaii in February 2016 It is not just temperature records that are falling. The average carbon dioxide level recorded at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, during February 2016 was 404.02 parts per million – 3.76 ppm higher than the average for February 2015, according to preliminary figures. That is the biggest ever increase over a 12-month period. The previous 12-month record at Mauna Loa was 3.70 ppm, from September 1997 to September 1998. Bad news because the higher the levels of CO2 are in the atmosphere, the more the planet will warm in the future. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2079995-highest-ever-annual-rise-in-carbon-dioxide-levels-recorded/ warming climate
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Bikes+Paul Kunitzer Where is that? Which country?  — The UK Motorcycle Industry Association (MCIA) and Bicycle Association (BA) have recently posted another bit of PR about this year's problem. One of a long line of things like minimotos, pitbikes, segways, electric skateboards and microscooters, hoverboards. These things don't fit into the UK legal framework so are not road legal. But they're powered vehicles so they're not off road legal in public places either. It's a rant about the scourge of illegally powerful electric bicycles, especially German legal S-Pedelecs being sold as "Off Road only". And people buying them and then riding them on the road without full Moped or Lightweight motorcycle legality of MOT, Testing, Insurance, licenses, reg plates and so on. http://www.mcia.co.uk/About/News/Article/Electric-bicycles-and-mopeds-there-are-no-grey-areas.aspx http://www.mcia.co.uk/Press-and-Statistics/Press-Releases/Article/Electric-bicycles-and-mopeds-there-are-no-grey-areas.aspx Stealthbikes don't get specifically mentioned although they did display at the recent Excel Bicycle Show. I've got some lengthy replies and have engaged with them on facebook, but I'm not getting much response beyond marketing flack.
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Commented on post by John Hunter in ChromecastWhat would be good would be to upload the photos to Google Photo. Then just cast the album to a Chromecast. Or set them as the Chromecast backdrop. But I don't believe either is possible from desktop Chrome. Desktop Photo doesn't even have a Slideshow feature. Google's development priorities are ... strange. — Ok, I apologize in advance for what's surely to be a noob question, but what's the best, easiest, fastest way to cast local photos from a laptop running Win10?  (I don't upload photos to Google Photo app)
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Commented on postMostly I think 5-10 generations is trivial in evolutionary terms. But the question does make one wonder. Does improved sanitation and hygiene make cholera more virulent? We know that modern medicine is driving evolution of some strains particularly those partially removed by antibiotics. But does basic sanitation and hygiene do the same thing? Just by asking that I'm probably confusing evolution of viruses and bacteria among other things.  I also suspect that the global mixing of the human gene pool in modern life is having an evolutionary effect but we're in dangerous territory here. 
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Commented on postIt's tempting to reverse the OP. Did evolutionary selective pressures on infancy and early childhood over the course of 100-200 years -- 5-10 generations prior to the era of modern medicine and sanitation, do much of anything at all? I'd suggest not. It didn't wipe out the un-viable so much as the unlucky. And humans compensated by having more kids.
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Commented on postStrongly recommend Hot Earth Dreams. If only for a change of perspective. The TL;DR, short option is just to read chapter 5 which is available on the web. https://heteromeles.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams-sample1.pdf Frank Landis has put a lot of research into the effects of blowing the remaining easily accessible fossil fuels over the next 50-100 year or so in one last #terafart [1]. A big part of the book is about turning that analysis into a 400k year story but with special emphasis on the first 1000 years or so. I suspect that all the good news about building renewable infrastructure will just put off the bad news for a few decades. As we use the new sources of energy to keep business as usual going for a few decades longer. It's only a question of how long the terafart takes not whether it happens. [1]#terafart = 1GtC = ~3GtCO2
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in PlusocalypseWorking for Bradley Horowitz. FOR THE LOLZ! — I suppose moot knows all about reputation destruction management.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Ice Cream for Crow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqRHr5pEIFU — The past few years have had a great deal of research showing extraordinary cognitive abilities in some birds – especially corvids (crows, ravens, jackdaws, and the like) and parrots, who can solve complex puzzles, understand and synthesize language at the level of simple syntax, and display an understanding of object permanence typically reached by humans around age two. Up to now, there has been a good deal of argument that these are limited tactical skills, usable only in specific contexts but not in general. However, a new review article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, collecting the results of this wide range of research, seems to show fairly definitively that this is not the case: the same kinds of cognitive abilities show up, over and over in these species, no matter what context they find themselves in. These birds have intelligence comparable to those of some apes. What's most fascinating about this is that birds' brains are very little like primates'. Most visibly, they have no neocortex at all – that being the large, highly folded section of the brain which we use for most of our complex thinking. Instead, they seem to do their thinking in the pallium, a part of the brain common to almost all vertebrates, but somehow developed differently in these species. This could well imply that complex intelligence evolved separately in birds and in mammals, not coming from any shared origin. This would suggest that, like vision or locomotion, abstract thought is a powerful general adaptation which may arise in any number of ways. Among the corvidae, the pressure leading to this has fairly clearly been that of being clever scavengers – not too different from the pressures which likely led to our own development of such tools. This combination of intelligence and opportunism has also made them highly successful in a human-dominated world: the ecosystem we create is full of tasty treats.  via +Pratik Mukherjee 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Models & FramesBrand can change his mind in the light of new information. He is fond of saying that he's changed his mind on the dangers of population growth and nuclear power. So what do you think it would take to get him to change his mind on say, the worth of renewable sources of energy. Or the dangers of wind and solar power. Or the dangers of unconstrained growth. Or the reality of asteroid mining as a means of maintaining that growth. Sorry, couldn't resist. That's obviously sarcasm. — Prediction is hard, especially about the future. 2000 A.D. edition +Stewart Brand​'s Peace Dividend prediction. Now what was it as happened the next year? I'm having trouble remembering... New York, wasn't it?
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Jonathan Tweet Canada Geese? Note also it's curious that Corvus brachyrhynchos (American Crow) gathers in flocks as does Corvus frugilegus (European Rook) but not Corvus corone (Carrion Crow) while all mate for life. — The past few years have had a great deal of research showing extraordinary cognitive abilities in some birds – especially corvids (crows, ravens, jackdaws, and the like) and parrots, who can solve complex puzzles, understand and synthesize language at the level of simple syntax, and display an understanding of object permanence typically reached by humans around age two. Up to now, there has been a good deal of argument that these are limited tactical skills, usable only in specific contexts but not in general. However, a new review article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, collecting the results of this wide range of research, seems to show fairly definitively that this is not the case: the same kinds of cognitive abilities show up, over and over in these species, no matter what context they find themselves in. These birds have intelligence comparable to those of some apes. What's most fascinating about this is that birds' brains are very little like primates'. Most visibly, they have no neocortex at all – that being the large, highly folded section of the brain which we use for most of our complex thinking. Instead, they seem to do their thinking in the pallium, a part of the brain common to almost all vertebrates, but somehow developed differently in these species. This could well imply that complex intelligence evolved separately in birds and in mammals, not coming from any shared origin. This would suggest that, like vision or locomotion, abstract thought is a powerful general adaptation which may arise in any number of ways. Among the corvidae, the pressure leading to this has fairly clearly been that of being clever scavengers – not too different from the pressures which likely led to our own development of such tools. This combination of intelligence and opportunism has also made them highly successful in a human-dominated world: the ecosystem we create is full of tasty treats.  via +Pratik Mukherjee 
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:There's an old English country saying. "If you see a lot of crows together, they be rooks." "If you see one rook on it's own, that's a crow." And yet there is a famous collective noun for Crows "a murder of crows". And every so often I'm sure you see a field or playing ground with lots of crows on it looking for worms. It's just that they're all on their own and keeping their distance where a field of rooks doing the same thing is much more social. Which makes me wonder about the social life of crows. They do seem to pair up for long lived partnerships. But you don't really seem to see them interacting much with their own kind either as a group or fighting for mates or territory. It's as though they work all that stuff out quietly and almost invisibly. But then this is just from observations. I guess somewhere there are numerous phd research papers about this stuff.   And note I'm talking about the European Carrion Crow (Corvus corone) and the European Rook (Corvus frugilegus). When I went looking for detail about this, I kept hitting the American Crow which seems to be highly social like the European Rook and roosts in a group of large numbers. The European Carrion Crow doesn't do this.  — The past few years have had a great deal of research showing extraordinary cognitive abilities in some birds – especially corvids (crows, ravens, jackdaws, and the like) and parrots, who can solve complex puzzles, understand and synthesize language at the level of simple syntax, and display an understanding of object permanence typically reached by humans around age two. Up to now, there has been a good deal of argument that these are limited tactical skills, usable only in specific contexts but not in general. However, a new review article in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, collecting the results of this wide range of research, seems to show fairly definitively that this is not the case: the same kinds of cognitive abilities show up, over and over in these species, no matter what context they find themselves in. These birds have intelligence comparable to those of some apes. What's most fascinating about this is that birds' brains are very little like primates'. Most visibly, they have no neocortex at all – that being the large, highly folded section of the brain which we use for most of our complex thinking. Instead, they seem to do their thinking in the pallium, a part of the brain common to almost all vertebrates, but somehow developed differently in these species. This could well imply that complex intelligence evolved separately in birds and in mammals, not coming from any shared origin. This would suggest that, like vision or locomotion, abstract thought is a powerful general adaptation which may arise in any number of ways. Among the corvidae, the pressure leading to this has fairly clearly been that of being clever scavengers – not too different from the pressures which likely led to our own development of such tools. This combination of intelligence and opportunism has also made them highly successful in a human-dominated world: the ecosystem we create is full of tasty treats.  via +Pratik Mukherjee 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Ramos Says the iPhone Did It... says iPhone may contain traces of nuts. ... a clue ... a sense of proportion ... his lost youth ... roko's basilisk ... may be full of stars ... a portal to another universe — San Bernardino County DA Michael A. Ramos says iPhone may contain his lost marbles. Ups the ante in bid to get Apple to write backdoor software. I mean, he's right, it might. Couldn't it?
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingLooks nice, but it appears to be slow. — The 2016 Aprilia RS-GP Racer Looks very nice. Lets hope SB6 & AB19 can find some good pace & good results. Full Hi Res Gallery : https://motomatters.com/news/2016/03/02/aprilia_2016_rs_gp_photo_gallery.html Full Press Release : https://motomatters.com/press_release/2016/03/02/aprilia_press_release_aprilia_launch_bra.html Both above links via +David Emmett​'s MotoMatters dot com. ______________________________________ +MotoGP​ +Aprilia Official​ +GresiniRacing​ +akropovic exhaust​ +piaggio vespa​ +MotoRacingLive Michelin​ +Brembo Brakes​ +Ohlins Perfromance​ +MOTUL​
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyStrange days — If you're waiting for the USA to wake up from this nightmare, I don't think it's going to happen. I think the Democrats are going to tie themselves in knots trying to decide between two old people offering nothing but nostalgia for the last century. While the Republicans will be unable to find the wings to keep their heads above the bullshit. So enjoy the 6 month bender and we'd better prepare ourselves for a horrible 4 year hangover when we discover that that man has actually won the presidency. It occurs to me that Trump is not Hitler or Stalin or Emperor Norton, he's Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.  Trump: Are my methods unsound?  Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.  But that's wrong; there is indeed, method. And it's founded in the discovery that the more bullshit you spout, the more press you get, the stronger the brand grows. Everybody else is playing by self-imposed rules and the need to maintain the appearance of rationality, whereas Kurtz realises that there are no rules, only ends. Without a radical change in opposition the only way to stop this Jagganath is to stop reporting it. Which of course is never going to happen. Where and what is the game-changer that stops it in it's tracks? There is no cavalry. There's nobody to make the suicide call and phone in the coordinates. And there's no fast movers or drones to deliver the surgical strike. Only "The horror. The horror".    Which is all just riffing on one of Dave Cohen's masterful essays.  http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2016/03/the-critique-of-pure-bullshit.html Meanwhile, guess which GOP climate view won Super Tuesday  https://twitter.com/ClimateDesk/status/704828971796570112
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law* if * he wins the nomination, who might he pick as a VP? — With Trump's strong showing in yesterday's "Super Tuesday" vote, I've had several questions about what life might be like under a Trump administration. I did some research, and it turns out that not only am I not the only one to be asked, but someone has gone so far as to produce an instructional video -- and gotten Disney to animate it! So without further ado, here's another famous Donald, providing some practical advice for daily life.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawGeorge Carlin had some things to say about this. https://youtu.be/XPrRxhYJMkQ — With Trump's strong showing in yesterday's "Super Tuesday" vote, I've had several questions about what life might be like under a Trump administration. I did some research, and it turns out that not only am I not the only one to be asked, but someone has gone so far as to produce an instructional video -- and gotten Disney to animate it! So without further ado, here's another famous Donald, providing some practical advice for daily life.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea Society+Steve S Thus losing all credibility. But then they have some form for stealing elections and ignoring the actual vote, no? — If you're waiting for the USA to wake up from this nightmare, I don't think it's going to happen. I think the Democrats are going to tie themselves in knots trying to decide between two old people offering nothing but nostalgia for the last century. While the Republicans will be unable to find the wings to keep their heads above the bullshit. So enjoy the 6 month bender and we'd better prepare ourselves for a horrible 4 year hangover when we discover that that man has actually won the presidency. It occurs to me that Trump is not Hitler or Stalin or Emperor Norton, he's Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.  Trump: Are my methods unsound?  Willard: I don't see any method at all, sir.  But that's wrong; there is indeed, method. And it's founded in the discovery that the more bullshit you spout, the more press you get, the stronger the brand grows. Everybody else is playing by self-imposed rules and the need to maintain the appearance of rationality, whereas Kurtz realises that there are no rules, only ends. Without a radical change in opposition the only way to stop this Jagganath is to stop reporting it. Which of course is never going to happen. Where and what is the game-changer that stops it in it's tracks? There is no cavalry. There's nobody to make the suicide call and phone in the coordinates. And there's no fast movers or drones to deliver the surgical strike. Only "The horror. The horror".    Which is all just riffing on one of Dave Cohen's masterful essays.  http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2016/03/the-critique-of-pure-bullshit.html Meanwhile, guess which GOP climate view won Super Tuesday  https://twitter.com/ClimateDesk/status/704828971796570112
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The HypertwinsOne of my fav mashups. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kkv50SSWNM War of Confusion. What is Phil Collins good for? — You can sing the words of "The Ballad of Billy the Kid" (Billy Joel) to the tune of "As" (Stevie Wonder). More obscurely, the words of "Blinded by the Light" can be sung to the tune of "Oh What a Shame" by Roy Wood (as can the words of "The Way Life's Meant to Be" by Roy's former band, ELO). I'm calling these "lyric transplants". If I had a cover band, we would perform them, along with intermanglings (combining the words and music of two of more songs, aka "mashups") and parodies. (This is the sort of thing my brain does when I'm not watching it.)
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeAnd then India? — What China is doing a “war on coal” because it is: across the board in every sector and driven top-down from Beijing almost entirely for environmental reasons — primarily to reduce the horrific urban air pollution, and secondarily to avoid catastrophic climate change. #China #WarOnCoal
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle Roadracing+Wiggysan Wiggysan BSB manages to have a packed Sunday meeting with SS Sprint on Sat and occasionally an extra SBK on Sat. the main thing is that even on triple header weekends, you can ride across country get a full day's racing and not feel you've been short changed. Compare this with what's likely to happen at Donington this year. Expensive Sunday, plus camping, plus cheaper but still expensive Sat. Think I'll go to Oulton, Brands and Cadwell and camp in the woods for the same money. And then watch WSB on the tele. ps. It's not quite as bad as that. http://doningtonpark.seetickets.com/event/world-superbike-championship/donington-park/932175 £57.75+£26.25=£84 one person weekend plus camping. And it's a long time since I've actually paid for Donington camping. I wonder if the hole in the wall is still there in the field above the old hairpin? — I used to like the old format of WSB. It gave a full days racing and had a natural flow of excitement to it.  - STK1000 - WSB 1 - WSS - National race - WSB 2 - National race I'm not at all sure about this game of splitting the races over 2 days. 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Random Thoughts+blanche nonken I had almost managed to forget that was what I was doing. Thank you for reminding me. * nose wiggle * — Pokemism : A tendency to collect and try out cognitive biases to see how they feel. Can you collect them all? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Analysis and News About Google+Francisco Nogueira Try the mobile web interface. https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream and use an extension like this https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/user-agent-switcher-for-g/ffhkkpnppgnfaobgihpdblnhmmbodake to change the user agent to a phone-browser. — Google - Share Your Location with People You Choose Um, have I just not been paying attention? When did this happen?
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou/me apologises for half-a-troll — A Slightly Irate Note on My Politics: Half a loaf is better than none. Half a bridge isn't. Knowing the difference between the two is the difference between pragmatism and rote centrism.
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Commented on post by Andreas SchouYou can still live under half a bridge. — A Slightly Irate Note on My Politics: Half a loaf is better than none. Half a bridge isn't. Knowing the difference between the two is the difference between pragmatism and rote centrism.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Analysis and News About GoogleOnly works on (some)Android, not on iOS, desktop web, mobile web, Chromebooks. For a little while there were ways to update your current location in your G+ Profile but that's gone. And there's no reliable way to add a location to G+ on most platforms. So "nearby posts" is useless. And that's not available on most platforms either. It really seems that when Latitude was cancelled, Google lost interest in location. And frankly none of the very few remaining other apps like Foursquare or Swarm are any good either. In other news, laptops and chromebooks still don't come with GPS as standard. Finally, you can get at some of this from a desktop machine, by using the mobile web interface and changing the browsers user agent to a phone or tablet OS/Browser. But that's of academic interest only. It does expose the weirdness though that Chrome's geo-location by wifi and IP is pretty good and find me on google maps does work acceptably. So the lack of support for location in G+ desktop web is not a technical issue but a code design and build issue. — Google - Share Your Location with People You Choose Um, have I just not been paying attention? When did this happen?
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Changehttp://solpowerpeople.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/What-Would-Jefferson-Do-Final-Version1.pdf — Ever hear the story about why renewable energy can’t compete without a subsidy? You hear it all the time from the fossil fuel industry. And the response from renewables? Take away fossil fuel subsidies, and they’d be glad to compete on level terms. #Subsidies #FossilFuels #RenewableEnergy
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeCan the US provide the panels cheaper than the locals (without anti-competitive subsidies and gov funded loans)? Why is it complaining? — The World Trade Organization delivered a blow to India’s ambitious solar power program on Wednesday at the behest of the United States. So much for all that nice chatter about international climate cooperation back in December. Responding to a U.S. complaint, a WTO dispute panel ruled that several provisions of India’s National Solar Mission were “inconsistent” with international trade norms, particularly those that require a certain percentage of cells and panels to be manufactured locally. These types of provisions, called domestic content requirements, are prohibited under most international trade agreements. Want to be part of the WTO? You gotta be open to trade — every time — or you’re guilty of the dreaded protectionism. #WTO   #India   #SolarPower  
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeCan we get a link to the original presentation and a description of the data, assumptions and methodology used. This is a really important point but it needs backup.  — Ever hear the story about why renewable energy can’t compete without a subsidy? You hear it all the time from the fossil fuel industry. And the response from renewables? Take away fossil fuel subsidies, and they’d be glad to compete on level terms. #Subsidies #FossilFuels #RenewableEnergy
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou[OBSCURE CULTURAL REFERENCE WRAPPED IN TWO LAYERS OF INDIRECTION AND A PUN THAT NOBODY GETS] — [AUTHOR] is [BASICALLY, ENTIRELY, PRECISELY] [WRONG / RIGHT]. To be fair, [CONCESSION]. But [UNCHARITABLE RETRACTION OF THAT CONCESSION]. In this case, [SPECIAL PLEADING]. Presuming [THING WHICH IT IS INSANE TO PRESUME], then [OVERSTATED CONCLUSION.] But if [INSANE MISSTATEMENT OF OPPOSING ARGUMENT], then [UNCONDITIONAL RETRACTION OF MY BASIC POINT]. When [THING WHICH WILL NEVER HAPPEN] happens, then I will be proven conclusively right. But until that time, no one can criticize me for having made unfalsifiable conclusions, because they were merely conditional at the time I made them. [SHORT STATEMENT WHICH IS LESS PITHY THAN I INTENDED]
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou[SUGGESTS POSTER MUST BE PAID BY MEGACORP | BIG-GOV] because poster only ever promotes [BIG TECH | GOV-POLICY] while downplaying and ignoring all competing [SMALL TECH THAT WORKS AND IS BEING DEPLOYED] — [AUTHOR] is [BASICALLY, ENTIRELY, PRECISELY] [WRONG / RIGHT]. To be fair, [CONCESSION]. But [UNCHARITABLE RETRACTION OF THAT CONCESSION]. In this case, [SPECIAL PLEADING]. Presuming [THING WHICH IT IS INSANE TO PRESUME], then [OVERSTATED CONCLUSION.] But if [INSANE MISSTATEMENT OF OPPOSING ARGUMENT], then [UNCONDITIONAL RETRACTION OF MY BASIC POINT]. When [THING WHICH WILL NEVER HAPPEN] happens, then I will be proven conclusively right. But until that time, no one can criticize me for having made unfalsifiable conclusions, because they were merely conditional at the time I made them. [SHORT STATEMENT WHICH IS LESS PITHY THAN I INTENDED]
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Commented on post by Dan Gillmor+Kam-Yung Soh +1 for RSS/Atom. And note that G+ still doesn't have any feeds. — Took a deep dive into Google's "Accelerated Mobile Pages" -- and mostly liked what I saw. Read more at Medium's Backchannel tech site.
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Commented on postFor my sins, I've been watching the Ecomodernists in their native habitat and came across this from Mark Shellenberger. He's a key light in the Breakthrough Institute, Ecomodernist manifesto and Save Diablo Canyon movement. http://www.orfonline.org/expert-speaks/why-energy-transitions-are-the-key-to-environmental-progress/ You don't need to read it unless you're interested in the propaganda being spread by those groups. It's an appallingly badly written collection of half truths and downright lies that exposes what all those groups and their supporters actually think. - Pro-Nuclear. They deny being funded by the nuclear industry but you have to wonder. Lots of arm waving that deny any problems and put their hope in "GenIV" nuclear technology from breeders to traveling wave to thorium to fusion  - Anti-Renewables. Lots of arm waving about how Germany is proof that wind-solar doesn't work, takes vast amounts of land, uses vast amounts of steel and concrete, kills birds and wildlife, simultaneously depresses the market price for electricity while increasing the retail price, only works at mid day. - Pro fracking and natural gas. Though of course hedged about that it'll get replaced by nuclear one day. - Lomborgian/Ridleyan levels of denial about short term (100 year) resource problems, population problems, energy decoupling, climate change harm. All the usual cherry picking of stats by carefully choosing the scale. This country is doing better so if the whole world did that - Except that this country exported it's problems to Asia. That state has loads of wind power but if we ignore cross state interconnect, it obviously doesn't work. - Dig deeper and you find WUWT levels of pseudo-science and statistical trickery with impressive looking academic papers full of footnotes. That all seem to point to studies done by the nuclear and oil industries.     None, of this should be a problem. It's just a bunch of Techno-cornucopians doing their self-deluded thing and can be ignored. Except that they play into the western and US hope and belief that "It's all ok, nothing needs to change, if we just continue doing what we are doing we'll think our way out of any problems." And so gets an unjustified amount of publicity.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawHow will we know that the feared dystopias are happening? - A major city collapses as it's systems fail. And we don't bother rebuilding it. - The Arctic goes ice free in late August - The Russian harvest fails two years in succession - Petrol rationing - A major western developed country introduces exit visas — Your depressing, yet accurate, tweet for the evening.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyBump! I'm finding Heteromeles' blog entertaining. He's currently exploring ideas about what California might look like >100 years from now, post climate change. http://heteromeles.com/ ps. The font choices are a bit strange. You might want to fiddle with the style, use reader mode or just read the RSS.  — Nobody wants to talk much about what I might call mid-term futures. That's the 100 to 1000 year time scale. A couple of Sci-Fi authors have reacted to this by encouraging us to explore ideas in this area. Making the future understandable by speaking it. So for instance we have Bruce Sterling calling for #22C - thoughts and writing set in the 22nd Century. And Neal Stephenson's Hieroglyph project looking for non-dystopian fiction to counter the relentless dystopianism of this decade's popular (zombie) culture.  One of Charles Stross' commentators has just published a book called Hot Earth Dreams. This is a set of essays exploring the factual basis for potential mid-term futures in the 100->400,000 year range to be used as the basis for SciFi fiction. It tries to answer the question, what does the future look like when severe Climate Change happens but humans survive? As he points out, this is one of those questions that tends to silence people. It's the one we really don't want to think about. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams.html Hot Earth Dreams is now on sale at Createspace (https://www.createspace.com/5799140) on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392)  and on Kindle on November 13 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017S5NDK8) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392 The first 5 chapters can be read here. I recommend Page 8 for a summary. https://heteromeles.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams-sample1.pdf Meanwhile, the CO2, CH4, NOx atmospheric concentration graphs are still rising as fast or faster than they have been for the last 50 years. https://www.wmo.int/media/content/greenhouse-gas-concentrations-hit-yet-another-record The real test of the Paris talks and the country pledges to de-carbonise the global economy is if these graphs start to level out. It should be apparent by now that so far all the talk has been ineffective because the graphs are all still accelerating. And we're trying to sell a story about all this on the basis of global figures that are wildly inaccurate. When China can restate their coal use up by 17% we have to admit that we have no idea what the real values are. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/11/note-on-chinese-coal-consumption.html We can't really measure things like global energy consumption, but we can measure CO2. And that shows that we're not even beginning to try and deal with the source of Climate Change. On the contrary, we're still growing our fossil fuel use rate rather than capping it or reducing it.    It's worse than it appears.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Change+Mike DeSimone Despite a growing number of environmentalists that see the need for Nuclear as part of a general plan to reduce carbon emissions. It's not either/or nuclear vs renewables. It's both/and.  — Now that solar power is reaching prime time, the US  fossil fuel industry is doing all that it can to stop its growth. #SolarPower   #USA  
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeThis statement is important. "Between losing farmland in the south, and starting large-scale farming in the north, the costs would be huge." Migrating existing farming practices to cooler areas is hard and my not be possible. But also uncertainty and weird weather makes farming harder. It's not just that what you're familiar with no longer works, it's that you don't know what will work from one year to the next.  
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeTimescale? How hot is it going to get by 2100 or in the next 400k years? For one set of answers, I can recommend Frank Landis - Hot Earth Dreams — Now that the Supreme Court has blocked the Obama Clean Power Plan, the worst case scenario for Runaway Global Warming is back on the table.  Thanks Republicans!   So "How Hot Is It Going To Get?" Much hotter than you realize. 
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawSitting on the age boundary, I devoured late 60s, early 70s SF and fantastic literature as a kid. - Dangerous Visions - the "New Worlds" crew - JG Ballard - Moorcock : Jerry Cornelius - The Hospital Ship - PK Dick - Borges - John Brunner So I didn't expect flying cars. The future was going to be way stranger than that. Yup. Even the dystopias aren't what they used to be. — Your depressing, yet accurate, tweet for the evening.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+Peter da Silva On dead TV channels. In 2016 it would be black with the words "No Signal" floating across it. And yet. As we replace the sodium street lights with white LEDs, the reflection onto low lying polluted cloud creates just the kind of noisy monochrome bit storm that Gibson imagined. — Your depressing, yet accurate, tweet for the evening.
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Commented on post by Robert Llewellyn+James Froude My first vote at 18 was the Wilson government referendum on staying in the EU in 1974. And here we are again, and again I shall be voting for staying in. — You know all this European Union business "We've been at peace because of NATO." "We can't make our own laws, we are ruled by unelected bureaucrats from Brussels." "Britain is best, nationalism for the win, love Europe, hate the EU." I've received all these Tweets after I mentioned that Europe had been at peace for 70 years, the longest time in recorded history there hadn't been a war in somewhere in Europe and the fact that this might have something to do with the European Union. Yes, there were the vile outrages in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990's, but in what we now recognise as the EU, there hasn't been anything that can be described as a war since 1945. As Stephen Pinker explains in his seminal work, 'The Better Angels of our Nature' there have been so many wars in Europe it's impossible to remember more than a handful. Everyone in Europe was busy hacking each other to pieces for centuries, usually under the guise of some sort of national pride or daft allegiance to some inbred Prince. Then in the first half of the 20th century we had two massive bloodbath conflicts which literally tore the place apart.  Last August I visited the home (now a museum) of Robert Schuman, one of the founding fathers of the European Union. He'd been born and raised in the thick of two world wars, right on the border between France and Germany and he had the outrageous idea that dialogue, negotiation and empathy might be a better way of solving differences than shooting someone in the face. Silly hippie. So I'm not sure about leaving the EU, I'm confused as I'm sure many people are. When we had a referendum to join back in the 1970's many of my hard leftie activist mates were totally opposed to it. 'It's a bankers charter' 'It's all about money.' At that time the conservative party were all for it, Tony Benn was against it. I was, as usual, all wishy washy and not sure. Anyway, we joined and after a few decades it struck me as a much better idea than having a load of disparate countries who all think they are the best and sod the rest of you. Then it turned out that many of the ideas coming out of Brussels were a little more benign. Maybe we shouldn't pollute the skies and rivers and should hold corporations who do so to account. Silly greenie hippy nonsense, pour to toxic waste into the river and make more money. Some of the legislation was to try and encourage equality and combat the ugly face of racism and nationalism among EU states. Stupid namby pamby attitude, if you disagree with someone, start a war and make money! So I genuinely do think of myself as a European, I know this drives some nationalist flag wavers batty but if you stray beyond the confines of Europe, to say the far east, south America, Africa, it doesn't matter what you claim, you are seen as a European. I'm an old white bloke, no one in Africa is going to wonder where I'm from, I'm a European. The only joy we can get from this nonsense is that the likes of Michael Gove and George Galloway, two total nutters, are walking arm in arm toward an independent Great Britain. Jolly good show chaps, hand me a flag, Ra Ra Britannia. I can't help the feeling that the nasty bully boys on either side of politics, the extreme left and right are the ones who want to leave the EU, (I flatly refuse to use the nasty little Britain Exit hashtag)  The majority don't give a toss and a few middle of the roaders and people who can see beyond a Daily Mail headline think we should remain within Europe. I'm probably among them... Additional I accidentally clicked the share button before I'd finished writing this, I've been busy editing it because I'm working out what I believe as I write it. Okay, a hard nosed politico would already have an opinion set in concrete, they would be able to hammer out an argument in moments.  The rest of us need to work it out.  
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeSame for wind power. And weirdly the nuclear industry seems to have a tendency to, if not fight renewables directly, at least damn them with faint praise.  — Now that solar power is reaching prime time, the US  fossil fuel industry is doing all that it can to stop its growth. #SolarPower   #USA  
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynWe should be trying to make the EU larger, not leaving it. Let's have a return to the Roman empire and bring in everything north of the Sahara and west of the Urals. So that's Carthage^w sorry, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria. Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Western Russia et al. And that will have the side effect of forcing the wealthier countries in the EU to work out how to deal with the poorer. — You know all this European Union business "We've been at peace because of NATO." "We can't make our own laws, we are ruled by unelected bureaucrats from Brussels." "Britain is best, nationalism for the win, love Europe, hate the EU." I've received all these Tweets after I mentioned that Europe had been at peace for 70 years, the longest time in recorded history there hadn't been a war in somewhere in Europe and the fact that this might have something to do with the European Union. Yes, there were the vile outrages in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990's, but in what we now recognise as the EU, there hasn't been anything that can be described as a war since 1945. As Stephen Pinker explains in his seminal work, 'The Better Angels of our Nature' there have been so many wars in Europe it's impossible to remember more than a handful. Everyone in Europe was busy hacking each other to pieces for centuries, usually under the guise of some sort of national pride or daft allegiance to some inbred Prince. Then in the first half of the 20th century we had two massive bloodbath conflicts which literally tore the place apart.  Last August I visited the home (now a museum) of Robert Schuman, one of the founding fathers of the European Union. He'd been born and raised in the thick of two world wars, right on the border between France and Germany and he had the outrageous idea that dialogue, negotiation and empathy might be a better way of solving differences than shooting someone in the face. Silly hippie. So I'm not sure about leaving the EU, I'm confused as I'm sure many people are. When we had a referendum to join back in the 1970's many of my hard leftie activist mates were totally opposed to it. 'It's a bankers charter' 'It's all about money.' At that time the conservative party were all for it, Tony Benn was against it. I was, as usual, all wishy washy and not sure. Anyway, we joined and after a few decades it struck me as a much better idea than having a load of disparate countries who all think they are the best and sod the rest of you. Then it turned out that many of the ideas coming out of Brussels were a little more benign. Maybe we shouldn't pollute the skies and rivers and should hold corporations who do so to account. Silly greenie hippy nonsense, pour to toxic waste into the river and make more money. Some of the legislation was to try and encourage equality and combat the ugly face of racism and nationalism among EU states. Stupid namby pamby attitude, if you disagree with someone, start a war and make money! So I genuinely do think of myself as a European, I know this drives some nationalist flag wavers batty but if you stray beyond the confines of Europe, to say the far east, south America, Africa, it doesn't matter what you claim, you are seen as a European. I'm an old white bloke, no one in Africa is going to wonder where I'm from, I'm a European. The only joy we can get from this nonsense is that the likes of Michael Gove and George Galloway, two total nutters, are walking arm in arm toward an independent Great Britain. Jolly good show chaps, hand me a flag, Ra Ra Britannia. I can't help the feeling that the nasty bully boys on either side of politics, the extreme left and right are the ones who want to leave the EU, (I flatly refuse to use the nasty little Britain Exit hashtag)  The majority don't give a toss and a few middle of the roaders and people who can see beyond a Daily Mail headline think we should remain within Europe. I'm probably among them... Additional I accidentally clicked the share button before I'd finished writing this, I've been busy editing it because I'm working out what I believe as I write it. Okay, a hard nosed politico would already have an opinion set in concrete, they would be able to hammer out an argument in moments.  The rest of us need to work it out.  
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynRe controlled tilting, I have the same reaction as to the Lite C1 and the Toyota I-Road. I look forward to seeing the vehicle negotiating a typical UK roundabout at speed. That's 60mph, 30 round the roundabout and accelerating back to 60 with all the slalom steering changes that entails. And secondly, the elk / deer / pothole / cyclist / pedestrian / SMIDSY avoidance test. That's sudden steering on an S curve at 30mph to avoid something unexpected. And finally seeing what happens when there's a loss of traction mid corner. I'm not saying you haven't done it or can't do it. I'm saying this stuff is hard, so show me! — Looks very interesting
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynI'd strongly recommend not trying to re-invent the user interface. Do it either like a conventional car (steering wheel, pedals) or like a conventional motorcycle (handlebar, throttle, handbrakes). You don't want your customers to have to relearn how to drive. Getting the tilt mechanism right is hard. The free tilting MP3 works because it behaves exactly like a motorcycle just with slightly heavy low speed steering. The Carver (powered, controlled tilting) worked eventually but it took a long time to get right. IMHO you must have luggage space for at least 4 bags of groceries or it's useless. — Looks very interesting
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Commented on post by David Powell in Electric Vehicles (UK)I like the idea but I want it to be battery electric with a small range extender running on something like chip fat. The basics of a lightweight, highly aerodynamic, two seater are in the right direction. Now why won't VW productionise the XL1? And BTW. Hydrogen for private vehicles is still bullshit. — A super lightweight hydrogen fuel cell EV built in Wales. Interestingly it uses a much smaller fuel cell than most other HFCVs, using a lightweight design to achieve a sub-ten second 0-60 mph time.
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Commented on post by Electric Cars Guide in Electric Vehicles (UK)Nice style but the price is too high and the battery too small. — Conquer hills in style with the elegant #Faraday Cortland #electricbicycle
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Institutions+Edward Morbius There's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala as well. — Cash as Institution: Freedom of commerce and livelihood It isn’t hard to see, though, that the end of cash would give governments almost unlimited power to deny resources to those they consider undesirable. The war on cash -- prosecuted by numerous parties, typically banks, governments, and payment or loan processors -- has been largely unsuccessful to date. Though it may yet succeed. Other recent stories talk of the withdrawal of large-denomination notes. $100 bills are challenged in the US, in Europe the 500 Euro denomination. CrookedTimber points to a Guardian piece by Paul Mason, also worth reading: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/15/crime-terrorism-and-tax-evasion-why-banks-are-waging-war-on-cash h/t uncertain but quite probably +paul beard​​ http://crookedtimber.org/2016/02/16/cash-and-freedom/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsThe small scale black economy won't go away. So what will we use instead? I guarantee that we'll just re-invent cash and banks, or something like it, for that. Fagin/Scrooge/Marley, a notebook and IOUs. — Cash as Institution: Freedom of commerce and livelihood It isn’t hard to see, though, that the end of cash would give governments almost unlimited power to deny resources to those they consider undesirable. The war on cash -- prosecuted by numerous parties, typically banks, governments, and payment or loan processors -- has been largely unsuccessful to date. Though it may yet succeed. Other recent stories talk of the withdrawal of large-denomination notes. $100 bills are challenged in the US, in Europe the 500 Euro denomination. CrookedTimber points to a Guardian piece by Paul Mason, also worth reading: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/15/crime-terrorism-and-tax-evasion-why-banks-are-waging-war-on-cash h/t uncertain but quite probably +paul beard​​ http://crookedtimber.org/2016/02/16/cash-and-freedom/
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Commented on postAh, yes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixmaster_anonymous_remailer and http://anon.penet.fi I remember it well. Won't anyone think of Baby Jesus?
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatismEPG -> LPG -> ZPG -> NPG I like it. — "In terms of productivity, they found that organic yields averaged 10 to 20 percent less than conventional—but that's not always the case." It seems to me that even if it were always the case, that's made up for by the loss of arable land due to unsustainable practices. (I'd like to see a study that takes this into account. I'd also like to see a study that looks at sustainable practices in general, rather than "organic" farming -- whose practices tend strongly to be sustainable, but my understanding is that it is health-oriented rather than sustainability-oriented. There may also be non-organic farming practices which are nonetheless sustainable and healthy.) And even if it weren't made up for by other factors, there's this: <paste> ...as food system reform advocates like Food First's Eric Holt Gimenez have said, there's already more than enough food being produced for the world—low yields are not the root of hunger. "If you look at calorie production per capita we’re producing more than enough food for 7 billion people now, but we waste 30 to 40 percent of it," Reganold said. "It’s not just a matter of producing enough, but making agriculture environmentally friendly and making sure that food gets to those who need it." </paste> (7b was the estimated world population in 2011; this is expected to rise to 9.2b by 2050, if current trends continue.) It would be nice to know how much more we are producing, so we have some idea of how much food waste is sustainable. (0% waste is basically impossible, in any system.) via rms:// (Star Trek connection: enough for everyone; global thinking; humanity as a united entity)
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Commented on post by Stewart Brand+Thomas Scoville Motorcycles; WTF? No I don't race. I got my kids to self sufficiency and breeding age. It's their problem now. And I don't see what that's got to do with anything.    When Erlich did his first big analysis, we'd had 40-50 years of accelerating exponential growth peaking at around 2% pa. If we'd continued that we'd be at 9b now and hit 18b in 2050. That was justifiable cause for concern. What he missed at the time was that we were at an inflection point where we transitioned from 2%pa to a linear growth of 80m pa which we've maintained for 50 years or so. It's not unreasonable to think that will continue that at least for a few decades. Which means we hit 10b around 2050 and 12b around 2100. Which is still justifiable cause for concern and doesn't look sustainable. Now maybe we're on another inflection point and global population growth is making a transition to zero or negative growth. Where's the evidence and why? — Hans Rosling on “peak children” This week at the World Economic Forum Rosling dissected some wonderful trends in population, disease, and poverty.  He points out that when we are wronger about predicting his results than chimps (ie random), it has to be because we have a wrong theory of the world.  That’s why we’re worse than what mere ignorance would guess.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatism+Brian Holt Hawthorne I've been pacing the cage about this. ;) Projections and futurists usually take a predictable approach. Take what's happening right now, project the graphs out to 15 years with no real changes in approach. Then push the models to 30 and then to 60 years with some changes that make a certain amount of sense. Now go back to 1970 when Erlich and crew were predicting Malthusian apocalypse. They'd had 40 years or so of accelerating exponential growth in global population and it was currently peaking at 2% pa compound. If that had continued we'd be on 9b now (2016), 12b in 2030 and 18b in 2050. Understandably they couldn't see how the Earth could possibly support that. But given the current situation they were seeing around them at the time, it was reasonable to wonder what would happen. As it turned out they were writing just as the first demographic transition happened from exponential growth to linear growth. Instead of 2% pa, the system switched to 80m pa. It's now kept that linear growth up for 50 years. So if you were projecting right now it would be reasonable to expect that linear growth to continue for at least another 15 years, maybe to 30 years out. And you'd be stretching the point to justify it for 60 years. Now it is possible that we're on the threshold of the next transition from linear growth to zero growth or even falling growth. But right now in 2016 it's hard to see. So what is underpinning these 3 regimes? - Exponential growth: Agricultural revolution. Crop science. Industrialisation of agriculture. Cheap nitrogen fertiliser produced with cheap energy. Antibiotics. - Linear growth: Urbanisation. Falling fertility rates among developed populations. Underdeveloped areas with exponential growth becoming a smaller proportion of the whole. What else? - Zero and falling growth: Pollution and resource constraints. Food capacity constraints. Ageing menopausal populations. What else? What have I missed as justifications? And why should the transition happen from linear growth to zero growth? What I don't feel I've got a handle on is why we've had constant linear growth for 50 years. And why it should stop. And this becomes interesting. Instead of arguing about the details of which futurist was right or how previous predictions turned out to be absurd, where's the analysis of what was happening then, now and in the 30 year future? — "In terms of productivity, they found that organic yields averaged 10 to 20 percent less than conventional—but that's not always the case." It seems to me that even if it were always the case, that's made up for by the loss of arable land due to unsustainable practices. (I'd like to see a study that takes this into account. I'd also like to see a study that looks at sustainable practices in general, rather than "organic" farming -- whose practices tend strongly to be sustainable, but my understanding is that it is health-oriented rather than sustainability-oriented. There may also be non-organic farming practices which are nonetheless sustainable and healthy.) And even if it weren't made up for by other factors, there's this: <paste> ...as food system reform advocates like Food First's Eric Holt Gimenez have said, there's already more than enough food being produced for the world—low yields are not the root of hunger. "If you look at calorie production per capita we’re producing more than enough food for 7 billion people now, but we waste 30 to 40 percent of it," Reganold said. "It’s not just a matter of producing enough, but making agriculture environmentally friendly and making sure that food gets to those who need it." </paste> (7b was the estimated world population in 2011; this is expected to rise to 9.2b by 2050, if current trends continue.) It would be nice to know how much more we are producing, so we have some idea of how much food waste is sustainable. (0% waste is basically impossible, in any system.) via rms:// (Star Trek connection: enough for everyone; global thinking; humanity as a united entity)
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Brainstorming- Advertisers (Ford) - Agencies (Numerous, Google-adsense) - Ad Servers (Doubleclick-Google) - Publishers (The web site (sometimes using Google AdSense), Google-Search) - Customers (We the public, Google account) Notice how one name stands out! A huge part of their business is acting as middle man for advertisers to buy impressions on Google properties like Search so they are Agency, Server, Publisher while owning both the advertiser and the customer and handling all the transactions. I've been in several positions with this. 1) Hosted http://Wordpress.com-Blogger.com blogs earning pocket/beer money from Adsense. <£50 pm. Very little code control 2) Privately Hosted drupal and own code blogs earning pocket/beer money from Adsense. <£50 pm. Complete code control. 3) Commercial social media getting 1m-10m page impressions per month. Complete code control. Using Google AdSense, the best we did was £5k pm. Using a private agency selling adspace served by doubleclick the best we did was £10k pm. That wasn't enough to support the business. The big problem for a mid range website using an agency was that we just weren't big enough to get the ad salesman's attention and they only wanted to sell to mega-corporates. So we tended to get scraps. Their business was about selling the Guardian to Volvo.   — The first idea relates to online advertising, which pretty much everyone agrees sucks in a lot of ways even when it is doing what it is supposed to do, i.e. provide revenue for web sites that provide free content. I have an idea for a better model of ad delivery that should almost eliminate the sorts of problems I see ad hosts* running into -- inappropriate content, undesired media (e.g. moving ads, auto-play video, pop-ups, unmovable boxes that hide content, malicious code...), and what I need to know is this: For those who host ads (on a blog or whatever) -- 1. What kind of revenue do you currently see? 2. How does this compare to how much you'd like or need to see? 3. How much control do you have over your hosting (e.g. can you install your own html files, can you install scripts)? 4. Would it make a difference if you knew that all ads served were from businesses that met some reasonable ethical criteria (exact nature to be decided; further discussion of that detail is welcome)? Feel free to answer at length. (If you don't want to post money-stuff publicly, feel free to private-message me.) (*is that the right term? I mean, like, a blog that displays ads to help pay its hosting costs. The service providing the ads is the "ad server" or "ad service", the company whose ad is featured is the "ad owner". "Ad provider" could refer to either of the latter, so it doesn't seem like a good term to use.)
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Economics/sub — Paul Krugman, on "Supposed" Limits to Growth, and Energy's non-special-snowflake status (2014) [W]here does the notion that energy is somehow special come from? Mainly, I’d say, from not thinking about concrete examples. When you read this stuff you hear lots of metaphors about bacteria or whatever, nothing about shipping or manufacturing — because if you think about actual economic activities even briefly, it becomes obvious that there are tradeoffs that could let you produce more while using less energy. This entry from Krugman's New York Times blog turned up on Reddit's /r/collapse in discussion. I feel it's crucial to examine it and find the holes within it. I'll tackle -- and discard -- the obvious first. Krugman claims that Limits proponents never discuss shipping or manufacturing. This is GOP debate-grade stupity in trivially debunked falsehoods -- pop open, say, any of Richard Heinberg's books, or William Ophuls Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity, or Vaclav Smil's many explorations of energy and society, or Amory and Hunter Lovins'. But so what. People think, and talk, and describe, in simile and metaphore. It's useful way to convey one meaning -- a novel or unfamiliar one -- in terms of one quite familiar. I was chagrined to find that Krugman successfully avoids the use of simile -- comparisons using "like" or "as" -- throughout this whole piece. But he opens with a metaphor: "Environmental pessimism makes strange bedfellows." Surely our Nobel Laureate doesn't intend that the objects of his remarks are literally sleeping together. Moreover: the beauty of the laws of thermodynamics, inclusive of that troublesome second child, is that they apply to all physical systems. Including bacteria. And economies. And ships steaming, fast or slow, across oceans, lakes, or rivers. Even Princeton professors and their word-processors are governed by these laws. Physicists, ecologists, and ecological economists, as orthodox economists, use simplified models to explain and understand complex systems. Or does the Good Professor really want to go there.... But as I said, enough of that. Stripped of that bogosity, Paul's remaining objections are two: 1. It is possible to produce more while consuming less energy. 2. Energy is "just an input like other inputs." For the first, Krugman's argument is: a. Slow-steaming ships consume less fuel (and in greater proportion to speed reduction) than fast ones. b. They travel slower. c. But more total shipping volume per unit time is possible by increasing the number of ships and crews employed. (Or, alternatively and in reality: by making ever larger ships, with more favourable crew/tonnage ratios.) That is: by re-allocating resources other than fuel, a greater total tonnage of goods can be shipped than is currently being shipped. Less fuel. Moar cargos. Ointment fly observed: one could increase output further by both maintaining high shipping speed and employing more and/or larger ships and/or crews (well, more crew, not necessarily larger). And: for any given capital + labour investment of ships and crews: more energy equals more shipping. The concept Krugman has forgotten here is one that was drilled into my head by my (frankly, rather Libertarian-indoctrinated) freshman Economics professor: ceteris paribus. All else being equal. There are other elements of this which we could look at as well, among them the concept I've been fascinated by in recent weeks: of eMergy (with an 'm'), Howard T. Odum's "energy memory" -- the total embedded source energy embodied in a product, good, or service. I suspect that if you looked at embedded energy of fuel, crew, ships, cargo-time and financial cost (longer trips mean greater financing overhead), his proposals would start leaking out in other areas as well. Krugman's other assertion is that energy is an input, just as any other. I don't have quite so tidy a response to this, yet, particularly in my present state of less-than-optimal lucidity, but I see some ointment-flies here as well. a. Energy is defined as "the capacity for doing work". That is, for imparting change on a system. If you want something closer, further, higher, lower, hotter, colder, faster, slower, ... or changed in any other way, the one element you must apply to it is energy. The traditional economic inputs, capital, raw materials, and labour, can be translated, roughly, as "tools" (which act on a thing), "inputs" (which are transformed), and "energy" (which does the transforming). Mind: classical economic labour was an odd hybrid: humans are engines with innate capabilities and skills or knowledge, which tranform energy from their environment to useful work. That is, the energy applied by labour actually came from food. Physicists, biologists, and ecologists recognise this, and speak instead of energy, material inputs, processing mechanisms (often organisms, or components of them), and some processing operation (often encoded as genetic traits, or individual, population, or community behaviors). Economists are catching up. b. While capital depreciates slowly in production, and material inputs are transformed, low-entropy energy sources are "consumed" in the sense that they are transformed to high-entropy waste. It's possible to refurbish and repair capital, and to recycle the material inputs and outputs of a process. The energy, though, is once-through. In an ecological sense, capital and inputs serve to help convey energy through the system. c. In many cases, the carriers of energy which humans rely on are utterly transformed in the process. Not so much for renewables -- sunlight, wind, water, biomass. But fossil fuels, nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion are effectively once-through processes. Fossil fuels accumulated over 100s of millions of years, and may well not be "reset" over the remaining life of the Earth (about 800 million - 1 billion years, before increasing solar radiation and exhaustion of the carbon cycle make life as we know it impossible). Heavy fissible elements are created in supernovas or neutron-star collisions, and hydrogen was formed once in the life of the universe -- in the Big Bang or shortly after (though yes, a considerable supply was created). Carbon will likely return to the ecosystem eventually, and possibly to forms similar to coal or petroleum or natural gas, though much more likely shorter-cycle biological forms: woody matter, biological oils, and methane from digestion and rotting of vegetation. Uranium, plutonium, thorium, when split, and hydrogen when fused, will forever be entirely different elements. d. There's the additional problem that in failing to account for the replacement costs of fossil fuels, relying instead on their extraction costs, and then utilising these heavily in the production functions of almost all other goods, products, and services, fossil fuels have skewed the price basis for the entire economy. I hate to tell you this, but oil, even at $120/bbl, isn't expensive. It's far, far too cheap. Our market (and accounting) systems don't properly account for the full costs, however, leading to not only a massively under-assessed cost of oil, but of everything. Yes, this is the best of times, if you're a fan of raw productive capacity. But we're building up one hell of an emergy debt. Oh, +David Brin​​​​, this is where your rose-coloured glasses shatter, by the way. That emergy debt is the many millions to one cost of initial solar energy input represented by fossil fuels, as compared with their renewable alternatives. Say, the fuelwood and olive lamp-oil of the Greeks. Fuels for which they (and earlier and later civilisations) were already ravaging the Mediterranian basin. Yes, coal and oil and gas enabled so much more, but only by failing to account for (and, quite honestly, not knowing until the past century or so) the true cost of their formation. Note too: that's an expense in addition to the negative externalities of their consumption -- from extraction impacts to pollution and global warming effects. But yeah, Paul. Energy? She's different. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/slow-steaming-and-the-supposed-limits-to-growth/?_r=2
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsThe "Bush's Poodle" argument is not just offensive, it's also a distraction. IMHO, Blair and Straw were and are much, much worse than that. Arguably, if the UK had refused to back the war in the same way as France, Bush would have found it considerably harder to get round the UN legality problem. For 45 minutes at least.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsI have trouble describing any of that particular band of un-convicted war criminals as "poor guy". That is tongue in cheek satire, right? The kind of bad joke that we tell ourselves to try and forget just how much death and destruction was involved and is still going on. Anything to avoid getting a bit upset about it all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Inquiry is still going on.
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynReminds me a bit of this two wheeler built on top of a Burgman 650. http://www.bikeweb.com/node/1065 http://www.bikeweb.com/image/tid/18 There's a fully enclosed machine like this to be designed based on the growing number of tilting 3 (and 4) wheel scooters like the Piaggio MP3, Adiva, Peugeot, Yamaha Tricity, Quadra, etc. I'm also curious about something close to an electric Velomobile but a bit more finished. Go for streamlining rather than utility and >60mph. Which then raises the problem of MSVA, type approval, tax, MOT, insurance, etc etc. — Looks very interesting
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsThis is not even late stage capitalism's final form. — #KnowHope #KnowTerror
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsNone of that explains Tony Blair.
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Commented on post by Darkberg Aryavis in Electric Vehicles (UK)Will it tilt? If it does tilt, will it be free tilting? — The first #blockchain ed electrical #trike
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatism+Brian Holt Hawthorne This is going to take a bit of digging. One thing I've found so far is that the UN 2000 report projects a total of 9.3b in 2050. The 2015 report projects 9.7b. This seems to be a consistent trend. Each successive report has to raise the projected results of the medium fertility model a little. What I'm not sure about is whether this is due to revising the fertility rate up, the mortality rate down or a bit of both. The other possibility is that the projected slowing down should have started but didn't so 15 years of linear growth means the base line is higher than expected. What I'm feeling at the moment is that the neo-optimist view that population growth is slowing or will slow dramatically due to some kind of demographic transition needs to be put on hold, because it's not happening yet. It feels like a story from the 90s that was too hopeful. 15-20 years later it's not being born out by reality. My question now is that if it's going to be real, what should we be seeing and when should we start seeing it? — "In terms of productivity, they found that organic yields averaged 10 to 20 percent less than conventional—but that's not always the case." It seems to me that even if it were always the case, that's made up for by the loss of arable land due to unsustainable practices. (I'd like to see a study that takes this into account. I'd also like to see a study that looks at sustainable practices in general, rather than "organic" farming -- whose practices tend strongly to be sustainable, but my understanding is that it is health-oriented rather than sustainability-oriented. There may also be non-organic farming practices which are nonetheless sustainable and healthy.) And even if it weren't made up for by other factors, there's this: <paste> ...as food system reform advocates like Food First's Eric Holt Gimenez have said, there's already more than enough food being produced for the world—low yields are not the root of hunger. "If you look at calorie production per capita we’re producing more than enough food for 7 billion people now, but we waste 30 to 40 percent of it," Reganold said. "It’s not just a matter of producing enough, but making agriculture environmentally friendly and making sure that food gets to those who need it." </paste> (7b was the estimated world population in 2011; this is expected to rise to 9.2b by 2050, if current trends continue.) It would be nice to know how much more we are producing, so we have some idea of how much food waste is sustainable. (0% waste is basically impossible, in any system.) via rms:// (Star Trek connection: enough for everyone; global thinking; humanity as a united entity)
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatism+Alan Light Gimme some of that old time retro-futurism. A couple of years back, I thought that China understood about the potential problems with industrial society. So they'd made a conscious decision to go absolutely flat out towards a post-industrial society in the hopes they could outrun the inherent limits. I think this century, mankind as a whole is faced with that. Can we burn through enough of the carbon fast enough to get us to the point where we don't need it any more before it's all gone. Now, I don't think there's anything very conscious about that. It's just emergent behaviour from a temporary set of preferential circumstances. The stars aligned so we took advantage until they weren't aligned any more. And re AI and robotics providing cheap labour, what's the minimum viable population and society that can support the chip foundries that provide the substrate for the AI. And similarly for any talk of O'Neill habitats and asteroid mining. What's the minimum viable earth population/civilisation that can get us there from here. To quote one of my favourite delphic oracles. Time and space. You're not good at it. SeeAlso here. http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Fermi.html A Thermodynamic Answer to Fermi's Paradox — "In terms of productivity, they found that organic yields averaged 10 to 20 percent less than conventional—but that's not always the case." It seems to me that even if it were always the case, that's made up for by the loss of arable land due to unsustainable practices. (I'd like to see a study that takes this into account. I'd also like to see a study that looks at sustainable practices in general, rather than "organic" farming -- whose practices tend strongly to be sustainable, but my understanding is that it is health-oriented rather than sustainability-oriented. There may also be non-organic farming practices which are nonetheless sustainable and healthy.) And even if it weren't made up for by other factors, there's this: <paste> ...as food system reform advocates like Food First's Eric Holt Gimenez have said, there's already more than enough food being produced for the world—low yields are not the root of hunger. "If you look at calorie production per capita we’re producing more than enough food for 7 billion people now, but we waste 30 to 40 percent of it," Reganold said. "It’s not just a matter of producing enough, but making agriculture environmentally friendly and making sure that food gets to those who need it." </paste> (7b was the estimated world population in 2011; this is expected to rise to 9.2b by 2050, if current trends continue.) It would be nice to know how much more we are producing, so we have some idea of how much food waste is sustainable. (0% waste is basically impossible, in any system.) via rms:// (Star Trek connection: enough for everyone; global thinking; humanity as a united entity)
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatism+Brian Holt Hawthorne citation needed about birthrates falling faster than previous predictions. Rosling does a reasonable job of explaining the UN figures and will happily tell you that the UN demographers are the best source of data. Two key facts are that:- - The 2015 report revised the predictions that we would reach 10b 6 years earlier than the previous report. So the consensus among all the models was that birthrates fell and would fall less and lifespans increased more than the previous model runs. - Rosling and the UN predict no peak his century. The global population will still be rising in 2100. As stated above, the UN forecasts are mostly based on predictions of birthrates and mortality rates, finely ground by detailed analysis that takes into account economics in specific countries. That's probably pretty good for 30 years but is suspect for 60 years and upwards. What they don't really do is the kind of whole system analysis of the Limits to Growth people. It's saying that population as one factor will keep doing more or less what it's doing now with some changes but doesn't allow for things like a 3C rise in temperature, a 2m rise in sea level, declining fossil energy sources or Black Swan events like a major multi-year crop failure due to Climate weather weirding. All of those other potential factors suggests the smooth curve models will break down this century. The point is though that even under a business as usual, most optimistic view, growth in agricultural output is JUST matching growth in population. And barring anything else happening we're on target for another 50% population and don't really know how we get another 50% agricultural output. Even if you ignore all the other factors, an SFPD (system failure, people die) event is on the horizon before the 22nd century. You don't have to wade through al the models. The UN press releases do a pretty good summary. eg http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=51526#.VsLWKvKLTHU is only a 3 minute read. — "In terms of productivity, they found that organic yields averaged 10 to 20 percent less than conventional—but that's not always the case." It seems to me that even if it were always the case, that's made up for by the loss of arable land due to unsustainable practices. (I'd like to see a study that takes this into account. I'd also like to see a study that looks at sustainable practices in general, rather than "organic" farming -- whose practices tend strongly to be sustainable, but my understanding is that it is health-oriented rather than sustainability-oriented. There may also be non-organic farming practices which are nonetheless sustainable and healthy.) And even if it weren't made up for by other factors, there's this: <paste> ...as food system reform advocates like Food First's Eric Holt Gimenez have said, there's already more than enough food being produced for the world—low yields are not the root of hunger. "If you look at calorie production per capita we’re producing more than enough food for 7 billion people now, but we waste 30 to 40 percent of it," Reganold said. "It’s not just a matter of producing enough, but making agriculture environmentally friendly and making sure that food gets to those who need it." </paste> (7b was the estimated world population in 2011; this is expected to rise to 9.2b by 2050, if current trends continue.) It would be nice to know how much more we are producing, so we have some idea of how much food waste is sustainable. (0% waste is basically impossible, in any system.) via rms:// (Star Trek connection: enough for everyone; global thinking; humanity as a united entity)
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatismMildly off topic, but, current UN projections (2015 report) are worse than that. Now 7.4b 2024 8b 2038 9b 2050 9.7b 2056 10b 2100 11.2b So it begins to flatten out from mid century but is still growing at the end of the century. If we avoided the food waste and took advantage of 100% of what's grown, we'd still use all that up. Also bearing in mind the fossil fuel input to the fertiliser that powers the production. You'll have to make your own mind up about whether that curve can be sustained and when you think we hit the wall. 2015 report: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/theme/trends/index.shtml — "In terms of productivity, they found that organic yields averaged 10 to 20 percent less than conventional—but that's not always the case." It seems to me that even if it were always the case, that's made up for by the loss of arable land due to unsustainable practices. (I'd like to see a study that takes this into account. I'd also like to see a study that looks at sustainable practices in general, rather than "organic" farming -- whose practices tend strongly to be sustainable, but my understanding is that it is health-oriented rather than sustainability-oriented. There may also be non-organic farming practices which are nonetheless sustainable and healthy.) And even if it weren't made up for by other factors, there's this: <paste> ...as food system reform advocates like Food First's Eric Holt Gimenez have said, there's already more than enough food being produced for the world—low yields are not the root of hunger. "If you look at calorie production per capita we’re producing more than enough food for 7 billion people now, but we waste 30 to 40 percent of it," Reganold said. "It’s not just a matter of producing enough, but making agriculture environmentally friendly and making sure that food gets to those who need it." </paste> (7b was the estimated world population in 2011; this is expected to rise to 9.2b by 2050, if current trends continue.) It would be nice to know how much more we are producing, so we have some idea of how much food waste is sustainable. (0% waste is basically impossible, in any system.) via rms:// (Star Trek connection: enough for everyone; global thinking; humanity as a united entity)
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief Dispatches+Dave Wagner  for there is in London all that life can afford and all that life cannot afford — Images of London.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyI strongly recommend finding a copy of Hot Earth Dreams by Frank Landis. I think its highly likely that homo sapiens will still be around in 10k years. However I'm much less sure there'll be a sustainable technologically based civilisation as an unbroken line from where we are now. — The Future of Fossils: Plastics   “Plastics will continue to be input into the sedimentary cycle over coming millennia as temporary stores — landfill sites — are eroded. Plastics already enable fine time resolution within Anthropocene deposits via the development of their different types and via the artefacts, known as ‘technofossils’, they are moulded into, and many of these may have long-term preservation potential when buried in strata. Once buried, being so hard-wearing, plastics have a good chance to be fossilized — and leave a signal of the ultimate convenience material for many million years into the future. The age of plastic may really last for ages”.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyFun to imagine what a 10,000AD archaeologist might make of a landfill. "We're not sure why the Plastic People made these giant artificial mounds containing all their possessions but we think it might have been some kind of religious ritual to fend off the coming crisis. And also perhaps as a way of storing materials for future generations to use much as squirrels bury nuts in autumn". — The Future of Fossils: Plastics   “Plastics will continue to be input into the sedimentary cycle over coming millennia as temporary stores — landfill sites — are eroded. Plastics already enable fine time resolution within Anthropocene deposits via the development of their different types and via the artefacts, known as ‘technofossils’, they are moulded into, and many of these may have long-term preservation potential when buried in strata. Once buried, being so hard-wearing, plastics have a good chance to be fossilized — and leave a signal of the ultimate convenience material for many million years into the future. The age of plastic may really last for ages”.
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Commented on postWeirdly, there's a parallel thing that happened with solar to the "wind power kills birds" myth. This time it's "Solar thermal kills birds" as evidenced by vast numbers of birds turning into burning streamers as they fly through the solar concentrator at the Ivanpah facility on the Nevada-California border. Sorry, did I say "vast", I meant a couple of hundred per year. And guess who has pushed the story. Yes, it's our old friend Mr S. Brand https://plus.google.com/116951145888391044655/posts/gNQ91hQoMjS https://plus.google.com/116951145888391044655/posts/J4QeuKhc7GF This myth gets pushed elsewhere by pro-nuclear people trying to promote the Diablo reactor and downplay all other renewable technology. It is to wonder. Did the Nuclear lobbying industry give money to the Long Now foundation? I think we should be told.
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Commented on post by Russ George in Climate ChangeI did look but I didn't find any actual technology or strategy to "restore ocean pastures". So it's not clear what it is you're proposing that should get as much help as off shore wind from central government. I'm beginning to really dislike arguments that because a has some advantages over b, we should ignore b completely. For example, the nuclear industry and it's lobbyists pointing out problems with other low carbon generation systems like wind and solar energy to promote nuclear. It's all got negatives as well as positives. And we have to do all of it.  — As we spend billions for windmills we should not forget there are tools better than giant ocean windmills that will help the world for a fraction of the cost http://russgeorge.net/2016/02/11/tilting-at-ocean-windmills/
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Privacy, Security, and TechMarkoff Chaney, aka The Midget, aka The MGT was always one of my fav characters in Illuminatus and RAW's other books. — Dear CafePress, I Googled "hot garbage water," and a page of water bottles (presumably, for hot garbage water) was the first result. This particular model, imploring me to keep calm by focusing on tripe (?), is my favorite. What is your algorithm for automatically generating slogans doing. What is it doing. How can I keep it doing that forever? Thanks, Andy
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate Change+Occupy Climate Change Waitrose. Obviously. — Clean renewable energy investors worldwide foresee Trillions of dollars with a capital T flowing into innovation, development, and expansion http://www.ibtimes.com/climate-change-2016-investors-vow-pour-trillions-dollars-clean-energy-transition-2285080 #TRILLIONS  
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Privacy, Security, and TechKEEP CALM AND WIDEN THE BELL CURVE — Dear CafePress, I Googled "hot garbage water," and a page of water bottles (presumably, for hot garbage water) was the first result. This particular model, imploring me to keep calm by focusing on tripe (?), is my favorite. What is your algorithm for automatically generating slogans doing. What is it doing. How can I keep it doing that forever? Thanks, Andy
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillance(cough) 53. Anyone who's suffered Windows iTunes isn't at all surprised. — Cupertino, we have a problem I've been seeing increasing complaints over Apple's software quality, especially on desktop (laptop and iMac) systems. +Tim O'Reilly​ had made comments some months back about every Apple release getting worse for some time. Now it's Paul Jones, with a well-considered rant, and some very telling citations. I'd like to re-plug my own set of observations made a month or so back, on Ello, from supporting visually- and motor-disabled users on Apple. They can get around, but not easily, and there are numerous things in their way. This is likely to be a growing demographic for Apple, particularly as their oldest and most faithful users age. https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/BS-wilowvB4-dvPFL_VrUQ Great discussion on Jones's article at HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11034071
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceDidn't anyone pay attention to the bit that said to back everything up before updating the OS? 1) Backup 2) Replace touch sensor 3) Wipe everything 4) Re-authenticate 5) Restore 6) Re-encrypt My guess is that a programmer activated the feature the manager had asked for but the previous programming team leader had vetoed. Without thinking through the implications. See here recent comments about Apple code quality. The real problem here is making stage 3) Brick instead of Wipe. — Sounds Legit h/t +Alan Cox​​ Backstory: http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/feb/05/error-53-apple-iphone-software-update-handset-worthless-third-party-repair
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeWhere's the big money to be made in Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation? And for the rest of us, where's the place we can invest our small scale savings?  — Clean renewable energy investors worldwide foresee Trillions of dollars with a capital T flowing into innovation, development, and expansion http://www.ibtimes.com/climate-change-2016-investors-vow-pour-trillions-dollars-clean-energy-transition-2285080 #TRILLIONS  
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Commented on postIs the Ecomodernist group just a front for pro-nuclear interests? I've just come across this documentary with all the usual suspects involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora%27s_Promise And several groups and individuals such as Michael Shellenberger who seem to post nothing but pro-nuclear propaganda. And from the UK launch, you get this, http://www.desmog.uk/2015/09/29/breakthrough-institute-defends-ecomodernism-launch-climate-denier-owen-paterson-despite-warnings-not Oh, look, there's Matt Ridley again in company with various other right wing lukewarm-ists jumping on the bandwagon.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceWhat makes this interesting is that there's no mechanism for curing the problem. Despite Apple having a mechanism for replacing the home button/finger print sensor officially. The claim is that there's a one way trap door in the system. But that there's a maze route that avoids the room with the trap door in it. Given the ID security required, and all the usual problems with ID verification, I wonder what people think ought to happen. — Sounds Legit h/t +Alan Cox​​ Backstory: http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/feb/05/error-53-apple-iphone-software-update-handset-worthless-third-party-repair
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Commented on postOh dear. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/diablo-canyon-nuclear-plant-climate-change Here's a bunch of Ecomodernist authors arguing against shutting the Californian Diablo Canyon nuclear reactor and issuing a signed petition. Which then gets written up in MotherJones with the usual pop-sci hyperbole. Which then gets promoted by the same Ecomodernist authors and signatories across social media. The mention of Stewart Brand was a red rag. Then statements like "nuclear plants have the benefit of producing huge amounts of electricity with zero greenhouse gas emissions" which is just plain wrong. The comments section is as you would expect with the usual idiots but also a surprisingly large number of nuclear industry shills jumping on any dissent. Why does it always have to be like this? There probably is a sensible debate to be had about the role of nuclear power in a de-carbonised technological future. And there is bound to be a debate to be had about this specific power station. But wading through the surrounding bullshit is exhausting! Here's the signatories http://www.savediablocanyon.org/scientists-conservationists/
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Commented on post by Shweta Sharma in Developing with Google+Is there an API? — #Google To #Test #Self- #Driving #Cars In #Kirkland , #Washington
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in EconomicsIf you're playing a world economic stage game of low-grade resource-access warfare and struggle for dominance, incurring large-scale emergetic debt as part of a last-man-standing strategy, then fessing up is probably not a useful strategy. You're much more likely to spread confusion about what you're doing by talking about regime change, spreading freedom/democracy, terrorism, demonising the other and so on. I've occasionally tried to find out the current level of fossil fuel subsidies but failed. Especially when my government talks about removing renewable subsidies because they should compete in the open market place. There were some press releases last year that attempted to say that fossil fuels were heavily subsidised because the external costs of pollution were ignored. They attempted to quantify that but that disguised the direct and immediate subsidies in the form of things like tax breaks and cheap capital. We can't deal with properly charging for the pollution and clean up[1] by-products that are relatively immediate. Charging for the replacement cost is another level removed from the quarterly balance sheet.  [1]Nobody's really had to de-commission nuclear reactors yet. The best we've managed is just to surround them with barbed wire and CCTV. I suspect that we're vastly underestimating the true cost of that and discounting it in current pricing. Just as there's a tendency to discount the sunk and ongoing carbon costs of nuclear. And there's a similar problem to oil timescales, of U-235 taking roughly the lifetime of the universe to create the limited supplies available. — If the true full measure of cost is emergy (with an 'M'), then why are fossil fuel (and other nonrenewables costs) so low? I'm working on a couple of hypotheses. First, that is an assumption in my premisis, and there's always the possibility it's wrong. In which case why it is wrong should be specified. Have at it if you'd like to attack that. That dispatched: why would one accept a cost less than the full replacement cost of a nonrenewable resource? Posit: all costs are opportunity costs. That which you must give up to gain something. (Krugman, Economics). 1. Ignorance of full replacecement costs. This was a valid argument in 1800 or 1860. It's not today. But it does raise the question of the role of perfect information in efficient markets. We now know that creation of fossil fuels takes at least hundreds of thousands, possibly hundreds of millions of years, as compared to present usage. Even replacement through synthesised fuel would require some ~100x greater input costs. 2. The Shutdown Rule. In economics, a firm with savings but operating in a market which won't meet full fixed costs, will continue to operate so long as at least a portion of its marginal costs are offset. It's losing money more slowly in this case. Is the global economy (and/or fossil fuel extractors) operating under the Shutdown Rule? 3. Gresham's Law. I've previously noted that this may be a highly important general rule of economics. In its original formulation, "bad money drives out good". Various restatements note generally that some inferior variant of a good or service whose qualities are either difficult to ascertain or are (by fiat or market action) not fully recognised by the market, will drive out superior versions. Lemon laws for automobiles (Akerloff). Is this the case for fuels? A fuel with low immediate access costs but high long-term, possibly geological-time embedded solar emergy costs, will beat out those with either high present-access costs, or limited present-renewability. So: coal beats out wood, or solar PV/thermal. Petroleum beats out biofuels. Because the current costs are low, and the market (discounts? ignores?) the long-term costs. Perhaps understandably in the case of initial access, but quite inexcusable when full costs are known (or at least ballpark-estimable). Burning coal really makes as little sense as burning diamond. At least to a first approximation. This becomes even more interesting if you're familiar with some of the history of oil extraction and oversupply. In particular, chapter 13 of Daniel Yergin's The Prize. This covers the East Texas oil boom, during which the price of oil on US markets fell as low as two cents per barrel. Government intervention, first by the governors of Oklahoma and Texas, ultimately by the US Department of Interior, sought to stablise prices at $1/bbl, involving seizing wellhead production by force of arms, through the respective states' national guard, and Texas Rangers. Eventually the Texas Railroad Commission was established as the de facto extraction quota regulator from 1932 - 1972, when lack of surplus capacity rendered such management impossible. The post-war period, 1945-1972 saw exceptional stability in global oil prices as a result. The period begining November 21, 1973 to present, not so much. Markets, clearly, weren't establishing reasonable prices, or meeting real physical demand within reason (oversupply or under). Am I on to something or barking up the wrong tree? (Space alien cats don't bark.)
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in PostcardsI think the Long Now Foundation should think seriously about using cathedrals as a means of encoding knowledge for 1-2000 years. There's precedent there. In the 2-5000 year time frame, you need pyramids or standing stones, but they're not as fractal. Cathedrals have a much richer potential for information storage in the interplay between geometry and embellishment. Hmm. Custom DNA in sacred relics as a medium for information storage. — With Gothic art, the devil (or angel) is in the details. Notre-Dame de Paris
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsAnd the war machine keeps turning. There's money to be made. — In other words, "Saudi Arabia offers to send ground troops to Syria to start a region-wide, genocidal, sectarian war with Iran. Because I guess murdering its most prominent Shi'a cleric and bombing Shi'a in Yemen wasn't provocation enough." Every time I think Saudi Arabia can't sink any lower, they just limbo straight under the bar.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaLinkedIn is the Golgafrinchan of social media. Leave them be. — Intruiging suggestion: a G+ professional network -- counter to LinkedIn This proposal has some merits, but I suspect it's also got some fatal flaws and conflicts. Might be worth a bit of internal brainstorming though. Google+ started, at least, with a rather strong professional cachet. Its inaugural user cohort trended very strongly to Googlers, Xooglers, their immediate contacts, techies, and a number of folk with aligned interests. And, unfortunately, SEO and marketing types. A very nearly fatal disease in a content-sharing community. Bill Hicks is right. Google had a number of tremendous mis-steps. Privacy and confidentiality were very large among them, and I've little confidence that Vic Gundotra's G+ of 2012 could have executed on a professional-networking G+ successfully. I think that with many of the very, very hard lessons Google's experienced, and I very sincerely hope has learned from, it could today. Google could offer a G+ professional network which, at the very least, would benefit Google itself as a recruiting device. Possibly paired with other activities (women in STEM outreach, summer of code), and platforms (something Github-esque). Google offering a general interest recruiting platform is probably a non-starter, in that it's a direct conflict of interest (Google would want the best candidates for itself), and in light of the illegal anti-poaching collusion case (still ongoing IIUC). Pity. Google also don't need to directly monetise G+, an could avoid many of LinkedIn's more obnoxious practices, which would be a bonus.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Economicshttp://www.engadget.com/2016/02/04/obama-proposes-10-per-barrel-oil-tax-to-fund-clean-transporatio/ — On why low oil prices might be contributing to economic uncertainty. Paraphrasing +Ray Radlein​: The reason for market and economic turmoil resulting from reductions in the price of oil comes from uncertainties in futures markets, triggering secondary spasms in stocks and bonds. The ultimate cause is the uncertainty in the price of anything dependent on oil (that is, everything) even only a few months from now -- price discovery is effectively broken. So no tenable contracts for future production are possible. From comments to a post of +Karl Auerbach​'s. That's interesting, though I'm not certain I buy it. I'd be hugely interested to see what +Gail Tverberg​ has to say (and she has in fact written on why low oil prices aren't a good thing). There's the fact that futures markets are in fact a specific means to hedge against future uncertainty -- it's their who raison d'etre, as was drilled into me studying this at Uni. In fact the original futures markets were based around inherently unstable commodity prices in agriculture. Farmers, who have a significant cash-flow management problem -- heavy spending as they plant and raise crops, income only at harvest time -- used futures in corn, wheat, pork bellies, etc., to provide themselves a stable financial planning basis. Though this does require others to provide market liquidity by playing counterparty in their futures contracts. Futures have played a strong role in other economic news in the past decade or so. I recall stories of how Southwest Airlines scored major wins by hedging its fuel costs against future rises (which occurred), saving tremendous amounts in the process. And learning that some major gas utilities are proscribed from trading in futures markets at all -- apparently under the theory that they are so large that they would have an undue influence on market prices by themselves. My own explanation for current circumstances leans toward global economic slowdown leading oil prices, with extractors locked in to having to provide oil in order to meet current financial obligations, regardless of the actual market price. In an earlier age, when overextraction lead to an utter price collapse, the governors of Oklahoma and Texas called out the state National Guard, and in Texas, the Rangers, to sieze wellheads by force of arms in order to drive prices up to a sustainable level: $1 per barrel (they'd hit a low of 13 cents). This lead to the extraction quota system established and maintained by the somewhat inaccurately named Texas Railroad Commission, and the US Department of Interior, which remained in effect until US surplus extraction capacity lapsed in 1972. Some may recall events of the following year with come consequence. That's covered in chapter 13 of Daniel Yergin's excellent history of oil, The Prize.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingThe official story is the soft option rear tyre run at dangerously low pressures (but with full knowledge of the Michelin tyre guy) led to overheating and catastrophic destruction. There's a scary picture of the tyre post crash that seems to have split between belts.  Bradley Smith later did a full race simulation (on the hard tyre). Respect. — Loris Baz needs to buy a lottery ticket He might just be the luckiest man alive. Not only did he walk away, he only hurt his elbow. Top work from +Alpinestars Bad work from +MotoRacingLive Michelin Full sequence of the crash by +Cormac Ryan Meenan AKA @ComacGP on Twitter / Website: http://gallery.cormacgp.com/#!/index Via +MCN - Motorcyclenews.com : http://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/motogp/2016/february/mcn-exclusive-see-the-full-sequence-of-loris-bazs-180mph-crash/ +MotoGP #MotoGP #SepangTest Day 2.
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Commented on post by Stewart BrandRevisiting this. An article in which some wind myths are  dispelled just blew through the net. http://www.pembina.org/blog/a-whirlwind-tour-of-wind-energy-myths On Turbine avian genocide:- “Study after study has shown that wind turbines represent a minuscule contributor to bird deaths,” says Hornung. “Much more significant contributors are skyscrapers, transmission lines, automobiles, and house cats.” — Wind power really kills birds This report from a first rate source, the American Bird Conservancy, makes clear that wind power has become a massive killer of birds, joining the three other major threats---outdoor cats, untreated windows, and pesticides.
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Commented on post by Kate Stone in Climate ChangeRocket stoves. You can make a pretty good one out of bricks or adobe. The one piece that really improves it is the metal separator between the unburnt wood and the air channel below it. The problem may be just one of educating people on a new design of stove and getting them to use it.  — A University of Iowa research team presents a $1 metal insert for wood-burning cookstoves that they say can decrease global warming and save lives.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThere were several of his blog posts that deserved a signal boost. The one I found particularly poignant was his story about Space Blankets and the way they get used. http://booktwo.org/notebook/a-flag-for-no-nations/ -- A single technology – the vacuum-deposition of metal vapour onto a thin film substrate – makes its consecutive and multiple appearances at times of stress and trial: at the dawn of the space age, in orbit and on other planets, at the scene of athletic feats of endurance, in defence and offence in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, on the beaches of the European archipelago. These are moments of hope as well as failure; moments when, properly utilised, technological progress enables us to achieve something which was beyond our capabilities before. And yet: we are still pulling bodies from the water wrapped in material which was meant to send us into space. Bonus link mentioned in that post: http://www.dronesurvivalguide.org/ — Data are Liability. This is speculative fiction by James Bridle. For now ...Linz tells me they’ve intercepted a data transmission from one of the blimps over Chamonix, probably headed for Marseille and the Union Corse. Deep packet inspection showed some half a million user profiles, medium-grade material salvaged from the wreck of a minor Brazilian social network and bounced around Europe by data brokers ever since. Nevertheless, damaging enough if it got into the hands of one of the ad-supported South American juntas.... Very nicely done. H/t +Jose Menes​​​ & +Joerg Fliege​​​. https://plus.google.com/105470310631807347739/posts/7F2bRdd8FK7 http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-end-of-big-data
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in SciFi+Edward Morbius And a nod to you for your post prompting me. https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/RBBvx8MAFq5   — Reading James Bridle's SciFi short about a post mass-data world[1]. Recommended by Bruce Sterling[2]. Leading to re-visiting Bridle's blog and a piece about 5-eyes surveillance[3]. And his short film of a CGI walk-through of UK immigrant detention centres[4]. And another piece about the Space Blanket as a A Flag For No Nations (or perhaps a Flag Of No Nation)[5]. All while listening to Fatima Al Qadiri - Brute, a soundtrack for 21st century protest[6].  [1] http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-end-of-big-data [2] http://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2016/01/the-end-of-big-data-a-science-fiction-story-by-james-bridle/ [3] http://booktwo.org/notebook/hyper-stacks-post-enlightenment/ [4] http://booktwo.org/notebook/seamless-transitions/ [5] http://booktwo.org/notebook/a-flag-for-no-nations/ [6] http://www.factmag.com/2016/01/20/fatima-al-qadiri-new-album-brute-battery/ http://thequietus.com/articles/19578-listen-new-fatima-al-qadiri [7] [7] Coincidentally, the image for Brute is a TellyTubby wearing riot police gear. And while it's obviously the purple TinkyWinky famously outed by Jerry Falwell for being a closet gay, It's got Po's circular aerial and not TinkyWinky's triangle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletubbies#Tinky_Winky_controversy. Except that actually it's Joe Kline's Po-Po [8] [8]https://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/event/josh-kline-freedom/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThat was a fun read. James Bridle is an interesting guy well worth following. I especially like his work on drones and his essays on things like CCTV (all cameras belong to the police). To borrow his own terms, it's good to see people exploring what politically active art might be in 2016; A "New Aesthetic".   http://booktwo.org/ Recently went to see Jimmy Cauty's (ex KLF) "Riot in a bottle" or AFTERMATH-DISLOCATION-PRINCIPLE which feels somewhat related. http://l-13.org/acatalog/COMING-SOON--Jimmy-Cauty-s-AFTERMATH-DISLOCATION-PRINCIPLE---America-Street--London.html It was like some glorious train set built for a favourite son by a hyper-active dad. Except that Dad has a wicked sense of humour and an obsession with a dystopian vision of broken Britain. — Data are Liability. This is speculative fiction by James Bridle. For now ...Linz tells me they’ve intercepted a data transmission from one of the blimps over Chamonix, probably headed for Marseille and the Union Corse. Deep packet inspection showed some half a million user profiles, medium-grade material salvaged from the wreck of a minor Brazilian social network and bounced around Europe by data brokers ever since. Nevertheless, damaging enough if it got into the hands of one of the ad-supported South American juntas.... Very nicely done. H/t +Jose Menes​​​ & +Joerg Fliege​​​. https://plus.google.com/105470310631807347739/posts/7F2bRdd8FK7 http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-end-of-big-data
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party PoliticsI've just (skim)read https://berniesanders.com/democratic-socialism-in-the-united-states/ He's really pushing that button hard. — ...but America just isn't ready for it yet. Also, there is no global warming, the Earth is 6000 years old, and there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party PoliticsThe final paragraph about Sanders on the Talk page is interesting. "Whatever he calls himself, Sanders is clearly a social democrat, not a democratic socialist." — ...but America just isn't ready for it yet. Also, there is no global warming, the Earth is 6000 years old, and there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party PoliticsTake that image at the top of the post. Reword the title slightly. So. You don't like Social Democratic Capitalism. Please select all items you wish to give up. Does that change the meaning and impact if you avoid the trigger word? — ...but America just isn't ready for it yet. Also, there is no global warming, the Earth is 6000 years old, and there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party Politicshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime I try, but I'm not very good at it. — ...but America just isn't ready for it yet. Also, there is no global warming, the Earth is 6000 years old, and there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party Politics+Marla Caldwell Yes, and I apologise for being so forthright, stating suppositions as facts as if I know what I'm talking about. Or that they're universal and immutable truths. Of course, some of those things are generalisations. — ...but America just isn't ready for it yet. Also, there is no global warming, the Earth is 6000 years old, and there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party Politics+Woozle Hypertwin I gave the pertinent quotes from wikipedia. Democratic Socialism is "a peaceful, evolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism". It's end goal is Socialism, not Capitalism with "economic and social interventions to promote social justice". Nobody wants to give up Capitalism. We want a kinder, fairer democratic Capitalism that puts limits on the worst capitalist abuses. We don't want to progressively remove Capitalism until only Socialism is left. Because Socialism doesn't work. Calling social democracy "Democratic Socialism" allows the right wing to argue that all social policies are Socialist and hence the enemy. But Social Democracy is NOT Socialist and does not intend to be. I know it's words, but the words matter because they mean different things. If you use them interchangeably it leads to arguments that make no sense.  France, Germany, UK, Sweden, Denmark, etc, etc are Capitalist, not Socialist. And yet even when relatively right wing parties gain power, they remain Social Democracies with substantial social programs. Like single payer health care for all, free at the point of use, with parallel and substantial private health care usually covered by health insurance. Some of these countries have proportional representation but not all. Some of them have first past the post systems of representational government. Ignoring all that experience because it's different in America or calling it something that it isn't like Democratic Socialism, is absurd. — ...but America just isn't ready for it yet. Also, there is no global warming, the Earth is 6000 years old, and there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeWhere will they go?  — Haunting Photos Show Effects Of Climate Change In Bangladesh: The number of climate change refugees in Bangladesh is expected to increase dramatically in the coming decades http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bangladesh-climate-change_us_56aa5cd8e4b0d82286d53900 warming
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party Politics+Marla Caldwell  Very little about American politics is analogous to European politics Ah, right. An appeal to American Exceptionalism. Feel free to continue to argue about the meaning of words in an exceptional America. ;) Meanwhile, nobody wants Democratic Socialism, not even the old Socialist Republics.  But a lot of people, all over the world, and including in the USA want a "political ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a capitalist economy, and a policy regime involving welfare state provisions, collective bargaining arrangements, regulation of the economy in the general interest, measures for income redistribution, and a commitment to representative democracy.". In contrast, "a peaceful, evolutionary transition from capitalism to socialism" is a 19th century idea that was largely discarded everywhere during the 20th century because it became apparent that the end goal doesn't work. So it puzzles me why Sanders should describe himself as and promote Democratic Socialism except for shock value for an American audience. If he described himself as a Social Democrat would that have had the same impact? The words Socialist and Socialism have become such hate words in the USA (Thanks Joseph McCarthy!) that aligning himself with them is guaranteed to generate hate. Maybe he doesn't really expect to win but sees his role as trying to pull the Overton window back again and so is deliberately proposing an extreme position. — ...but America just isn't ready for it yet. Also, there is no global warming, the Earth is 6000 years old, and there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party PoliticsNobody wants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism . We want https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy  — ...but America just isn't ready for it yet. Also, there is no global warming, the Earth is 6000 years old, and there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta+Rob Shinn True. And yet, the keyboard arrow keys scroll/pan the map. And on the trackpad, you can hold down the left button and pan with one finger. But what you can't do is two finger pan, because horizontal does nothing, vertical zooms. And just to confuse things further, on a touch screen, moving a finger doesn't move the cursor, it pans the map. I don't think Google has necessarily done this wrong. And any apparent inconsistency is easy and quick to learn. And yet I can still find myself trying to use the mouse wheel to scroll the map.  — Dear Googles: Would someone clobber the Maps team with a clue-by-four? On OS X: Automatically zooming the Web-based Maps application on desktop when moving a finger up/down the Magic Mouse (itself several kinds of problem) is ... just fucking pathetically moronic. Why? Let me count the ways: 1. The Magic Mouse provides no immediate feedback of scrolling/sliding operations (unlike, say, a mouse wheel or trackball).  Its sensitivity zones (say, if you enable the "right click in some vague region for strange shit to occasionally happen" System Preferences feature), and/or sensitivity thresholds, and other shit, are almost impossible to determine. Somewhat worse if you suffer from either motor control problems, nerve sensitivity issues, occasional bouts of inebriation, or are just an old fucking cussed computer user tired of putting up with this shit.  I hasten to add all of this is manifestly Apple's fucking fault and idiotic fucking design. Unfortunately, you have to deal with it. 2. Squarely in the Google Problem camp: Maps interprets "finger moving along Magic Mouse" as "zoom image".  Now, in a world with infinitely fast networks, infinitely sized buffers, infinitely fast browsers, and infinitely fast computers, this wouldn't be a problem. Put down the crack pipe, because you do not live in this world, or, at the very least, I do not.  (It should also be manifestly evident that I don't live in your world...) 3. In the world I inhabit, merely thinking of breathing on Apple's utterly fucked-up Magic Mouse while using the Google Maps Web interface means that the browser page instantly blanks.  No matter what I do, the fucking page fucking blanks. All. The. Fucking. Time.  Mind that what it wants to do is zoom the image, which means tossing out all presently loaded map tiles and replacing them with what appears to be several terabytes of new, improved, shinier, gluten-free, all-natural, free-range tiles.  Over what is sadly an all-too-common-in-the-wilds residential DSL connection capable of about 1.3Mbps download on a good day with a strong tailwind.  Among my many faults and deficiencies, loss of fine-motor control and gross nerve damage aren't prime among them.  Several of those whom I support in computer interfaces do suffer from such conditions.  Needless to say, for them, Google Maps is even more fucking useless on OS X than it is for me. 4. As a possible solution, consider the Apple Maps behavior.  Mouse scrolling (still a massive complete HCI UI/UX fuckup, mind you), scrolls rather than zooms the image. Fortunately, this at worst leads to incremental map degradation as edge-panels disappear and/or appear, but the overall effect is tolerable.  Zooming is accomplished by an on-screen button, and/or possibly hotkeys (I haven't explored this).  My local movement-and-nerve-limited user can successfully navigate this interface. 5. Recommendation: Procure Apple iMac Retina desktops with Magic Mouse for all Google's executive staff. Remove access to Google Maps on any other hardware.  Follow their resulting recommendations. Alternatively: buy Magic Mice for the Maps team and disable your on-device touchpads.  I believe a Puppet recipe should manage that last. Cheeriolio. +Darren Pauli +Larry Page +Amanda Bishop 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaNote here, if you have a wheel mouse. The mouse wheel scrolls the page in every app and every web page. EXCEPT MAPS! where it zooms. It maybe that the Apple Magic Mouse makes this behaviour even more annoying, but the Google design choice is to over-ride something that should scroll and have it zoom instead, across all platforms. I normally have the mouse active and touchpad disabled. It turns out the touchpad does two finger scrolling as well as pinch zoom. In Maps pinch-zoom does what you would expect. But two finger scroll also does zoom, and not scroll. So this surprising behaviour isn't just about Apple because Maps does it like this everywhere. — Dear Googles: Would someone clobber the Maps team with a clue-by-four? On OS X: Automatically zooming the Web-based Maps application on desktop when moving a finger up/down the Magic Mouse (itself several kinds of problem) is ... just fucking pathetically moronic. Why? Let me count the ways: 1. The Magic Mouse provides no immediate feedback of scrolling/sliding operations (unlike, say, a mouse wheel or trackball).  Its sensitivity zones (say, if you enable the "right click in some vague region for strange shit to occasionally happen" System Preferences feature), and/or sensitivity thresholds, and other shit, are almost impossible to determine. Somewhat worse if you suffer from either motor control problems, nerve sensitivity issues, occasional bouts of inebriation, or are just an old fucking cussed computer user tired of putting up with this shit.  I hasten to add all of this is manifestly Apple's fucking fault and idiotic fucking design. Unfortunately, you have to deal with it. 2. Squarely in the Google Problem camp: Maps interprets "finger moving along Magic Mouse" as "zoom image".  Now, in a world with infinitely fast networks, infinitely sized buffers, infinitely fast browsers, and infinitely fast computers, this wouldn't be a problem. Put down the crack pipe, because you do not live in this world, or, at the very least, I do not.  (It should also be manifestly evident that I don't live in your world...) 3. In the world I inhabit, merely thinking of breathing on Apple's utterly fucked-up Magic Mouse while using the Google Maps Web interface means that the browser page instantly blanks.  No matter what I do, the fucking page fucking blanks. All. The. Fucking. Time.  Mind that what it wants to do is zoom the image, which means tossing out all presently loaded map tiles and replacing them with what appears to be several terabytes of new, improved, shinier, gluten-free, all-natural, free-range tiles.  Over what is sadly an all-too-common-in-the-wilds residential DSL connection capable of about 1.3Mbps download on a good day with a strong tailwind.  Among my many faults and deficiencies, loss of fine-motor control and gross nerve damage aren't prime among them.  Several of those whom I support in computer interfaces do suffer from such conditions.  Needless to say, for them, Google Maps is even more fucking useless on OS X than it is for me. 4. As a possible solution, consider the Apple Maps behavior.  Mouse scrolling (still a massive complete HCI UI/UX fuckup, mind you), scrolls rather than zooms the image. Fortunately, this at worst leads to incremental map degradation as edge-panels disappear and/or appear, but the overall effect is tolerable.  Zooming is accomplished by an on-screen button, and/or possibly hotkeys (I haven't explored this).  My local movement-and-nerve-limited user can successfully navigate this interface. 5. Recommendation: Procure Apple iMac Retina desktops with Magic Mouse for all Google's executive staff. Remove access to Google Maps on any other hardware.  Follow their resulting recommendations. Alternatively: buy Magic Mice for the Maps team and disable your on-device touchpads.  I believe a Puppet recipe should manage that last. Cheeriolio. +Darren Pauli +Larry Page +Amanda Bishop 
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Unconditional IncomeDiscussion here as well. https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/1GBx6SrRFWQ — Oh hey, another "socialist hellhole" joins the party... (h/t to +James Salsman for flagging me on this)
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Unconditional IncomeI think for it to work as intended, it has to have parallel legislation to stop companies abusing it.  This would aim to raise the minimum wage and prevent companies shifting to contract staff on unfair (zero hours) contracts. Rather than UBI, I'm in favour of turning all benefits into guaranteed negative income tax. It feels to me like that makes the whole system more efficient and automatable (ugh, horrible word) using existing systems. Register for income tax and if your income is below minimum wage then the government pays you up to that minimum. Do UBI schemes take any notice of social position? eg single mother, breadwinner for a wife and 10 children, pensioner and so on? Or is it a fixed amount for every person over 16 regardless of need.  details, details,  — Oh hey, another "socialist hellhole" joins the party... (h/t to +James Salsman for flagging me on this)
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:One of our underground agents will contact you shortly. Watch for signs of digging in your back yard. — Benjamin Franklin offered the wisest advice for how to keep a conspiracy secret: three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. In a recent paper, David Grimes has worked out the mathematics of secret conspiracies: how things like actuarial tables and conspirators' propensity towards mutual murder affects the odds of a conspiracy remaining secret over time. The answer, as you may guess, is that complicated conspiracies don't really work. If your nefarious plan requires recruiting every single scientist in the world (or all but a handful, since you've already recruited all the media organizations and they will discredit anyone who escapes you), or requires a steady staff of thousands of people to maintain your alien spacecraft research lab, it's probably going to come out sooner rather than later. But there's great fun to be had along the way.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in PoliticsThat was the 5 minute version. This is the full 2hr documentary.  Bitter Lake - Adam Curtis Full BBC Documentary 2015 https://youtu.be/1pn2z7zp1V0 — The only possible response is "Oh dear". And that's what they want you to say. https://youtu.be/wcy8uLjRHPM
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Lewis Young Fliegende Kinderscheisse! — Benjamin Franklin offered the wisest advice for how to keep a conspiracy secret: three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. In a recent paper, David Grimes has worked out the mathematics of secret conspiracies: how things like actuarial tables and conspirators' propensity towards mutual murder affects the odds of a conspiracy remaining secret over time. The answer, as you may guess, is that complicated conspiracies don't really work. If your nefarious plan requires recruiting every single scientist in the world (or all but a handful, since you've already recruited all the media organizations and they will discredit anyone who escapes you), or requires a steady staff of thousands of people to maintain your alien spacecraft research lab, it's probably going to come out sooner rather than later. But there's great fun to be had along the way.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in Antiscience+Lev Osherovich Dave Cohen at http://www.declineoftheempire.com/ talks a lot about Flatland as a metaphor for business as usual. — "The Earth is Flat, Yo!" declares rapper B.o.B., who also thinks the Holocaust didn't happen. [He] also implores listeners to “Do your research on David Irving,” who is a Holocaust denier, and claims “Stalin was way worse than Hitler.”
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:All organisations should be based on the number 5. Because it maximises the number of potential conspiracies. (RAW). While remaining inside the Dunbar number where each member can just about keep all the potential conspiracies of their immediate surroundings in their head. Base it on the number 6 and * nobody * knows what's going on.  Two's company. Three's multiple conspiracies. And Five's got 120 potential conspiracies. — Benjamin Franklin offered the wisest advice for how to keep a conspiracy secret: three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. In a recent paper, David Grimes has worked out the mathematics of secret conspiracies: how things like actuarial tables and conspirators' propensity towards mutual murder affects the odds of a conspiracy remaining secret over time. The answer, as you may guess, is that complicated conspiracies don't really work. If your nefarious plan requires recruiting every single scientist in the world (or all but a handful, since you've already recruited all the media organizations and they will discredit anyone who escapes you), or requires a steady staff of thousands of people to maintain your alien spacecraft research lab, it's probably going to come out sooner rather than later. But there's great fun to be had along the way.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in AntiscienceIn your heart, you know it's flat (in Flatland). — "The Earth is Flat, Yo!" declares rapper B.o.B., who also thinks the Holocaust didn't happen. [He] also implores listeners to “Do your research on David Irving,” who is a Holocaust denier, and claims “Stalin was way worse than Hitler.”
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPNah. 2016 is Dani's year! And Honda will still drop him in 2017. — Great article and stats and stuff, but my psychic abilities are kicking in..... just not sure if I should ruin it for everyone?? Hrrmm ;))) Marc Marquez Wins The 2016 MotoGP Championship!  Heeeyyy it's like science people....I can't control this stuff. ;-)
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeThere's something strange going on here. http://www.carbonbrief.org/levy-control-framework-unanswered-questions There's a broad mix of opposition politicians, energy companies and green groups asking the same questions.   — One country, the UK, is conspicuous in cutting support for its own clean-tech sector—a country that had hitherto been a leader in the field. #UK #Renewables
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Commented on post by Brighton E-bikes in Electric BikesI'm going to the M/C show across the way on the Friday. A friend (journo, Paul Blezard) is into electric bikes and is trying to get me to go to the bicycle show as well. — Santa Cruz Heckler. Bafang 250W mid drive with 10.4AH of Samsungs. Mavic on Hope pro IIs, XT 1x10 @ 11-42T and 42T Lekkie Bling Ring, Pikes up front and a Fox RP23 kashima for rear. Add some other nice stuff and there it is. Who was it said "Bafang BBS is the commercial E-bike slayer"? #moresmilepermile
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Commented on post by Brighton E-bikes in Electric BikesAre you going to be at the Excel bicycle show next month? — Santa Cruz Heckler. Bafang 250W mid drive with 10.4AH of Samsungs. Mavic on Hope pro IIs, XT 1x10 @ 11-42T and 42T Lekkie Bling Ring, Pikes up front and a Fox RP23 kashima for rear. Add some other nice stuff and there it is. Who was it said "Bafang BBS is the commercial E-bike slayer"? #moresmilepermile
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Commented on postDave Cohen is stunned speechless by one of the more techno-utopian commentators. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2016/01/the-twin-tides-of-change.html I particularly liked one of the comments on this blog. --- How about I deconstruct the entire premise of http://edge.org. It wouldn't be around if not for one of the worst Flatland delusions: Bigger brains and longer CVs give humans a stronger grasp on reality. In edge's case specifically, these wonderful tools of social dominance, sorry I meant intellect, give members a better chance at understanding the big questions and predicting the future. Of course not even Daniel Kahneman would admit that longer CVs (and membership at http://edge.org) also give humans stronger reasons to rationalize away reality, and bigger brains give them a better means to do so.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyI'm curious. Did Davos 2016 get much press in the USA? http://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/a-recap-of-davos-2016 I read the first page of that and immediately thought that we'd destroyed the wage class and were well on the way to destroying the salary class. And the great and good in Davos (almost all from the investment class) were worrying about that and what it meant. seeAlso http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2016/ Davos "Global Risks" survey and report. And Pew Research summary. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/21/top-global-risks-wef/ Top perceived risks 2016. "Large Scale Involuntary Migration." and "failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation"    — Greer talking about Trump's appeal. http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/donald-trump-and-politics-of-resentment.html He starts with dividing US society into four main constituents according to their main source of income. - Investment - Salary - Wage (hourly) - Welfare Then describes how the Wage Class has been gutted by a combination of off-shoring and unofficial immigration while the other three have stayed roughly where they are. And that the destruction of the wage class has been largely by the Salary Class.  He then leads into the way that Trump deliberately appeals to the Wage Class by attacking the Salary Class. eg He’s figured out that the most effective way to get the wage class to rally to his banner is to get himself attacked, with the usual sort of shrill mockery, by the salary class It's an interesting viewpoint but I'm more than usually uncomfortable with Greer's comments and the framing he's doing. Particularly when he's attacking the left for their anti-Trump sneers. ISTM that both sides are just as guilty as each other of playing tribal monkey games of throwing shit at each other.
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Commented on post by Michel BauwensBack in the 20th century, every decade or so, England would create an incredible musical movement that would take over the world. Why is it not happening anymore? Well, all these bands were living on welfare! Take a bunch of working class kids, give them enough money for them to hang around and play together, and you get the Beatles. Where is the next John Lennon? Probably packing boxes in a supermarket somewhere. An argument for guaranteed basic income? Of the people I know who did Music Tech with my kids, several are stacking shelves in Tescos. Or they're losing their benefits because they've broken one of the bureaucrat's rules.  Frequently because the bureaucrats themselves screwed up. So for instance, being sanctioned for 3 months because they didn't turn up to a welfare assessment meeting because they hadn't actually been told the meeting was taking place.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyFor the avoidance of doubt, I was referring to the Well discussion not the lack of response here. :) The Well is really old school, isn't it. Bruce did have some interesting things to say, but I felt the other commentators were somewhat parochial. It certainly wasn't the kind of place I'd expect to find climate denialism! Meanwhile, The Stross blog is not exactly user friendly, but the two streams running at the same time ran to 287 and 671 posts vs 178 with similar amounts of publicity. Which maybe says something about subscriber only forums and their self selecting echo chambers. I don't think The Well really has much relevance any more. — It's that time of year again, when Bruce Sterling spouts various nuggets of wisdom from his lairs in Turin and Belgrade with help from Jon Lebkowsky in Austin. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html If you're not a paid up subscriber to The Well, there's usually a mechanism to post by proxy. But it's mostly about sitting in the peanut gallery and watching the old, great and good converse with their views from Austin or San Francisco. ps. Jon has G+, Facebook pages and so on but has taken an extended sabbatical from the net and social media. Something I find understandable but strangely perverse in 2016.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in EconomicsDo you think they off-shore their tax liabilities?  — Do jihads follow a business cycle? In response to reports that Da'esh have cut salaries and benefits to their fighters, likely due to impacts of allied attacks on oil and revenue-generating operations. (The reports don't contain SEC mandated "foward looking" and "past performance is no guarantee of future returns" language, but otherwise reads remarkably like any business press release.) But trends in the eb and flow of insurgent activity based on economic principles is ... provocative. Asked by +Sth Chn​ elsewhere on The Plus.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyWell, that was mostly disappointing. — It's that time of year again, when Bruce Sterling spouts various nuggets of wisdom from his lairs in Turin and Belgrade with help from Jon Lebkowsky in Austin. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html If you're not a paid up subscriber to The Well, there's usually a mechanism to post by proxy. But it's mostly about sitting in the peanut gallery and watching the old, great and good converse with their views from Austin or San Francisco. ps. Jon has G+, Facebook pages and so on but has taken an extended sabbatical from the net and social media. Something I find understandable but strangely perverse in 2016.
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Commented on postOr, just continue causing chaos in the region because it's good for the long term chess plan.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyI think the sub-text of the article and it's location in The Atlantic should be made more explicit. The question is not what we should do or what the world should do, it's what should the USA do. And I fully expect the USA to continue with business as usual as far as possible while making chess moves to ensure that it's the last country standing still doing that. I'm not trying to make any moral judgement there. It's a perfectly obvious strategy for a government of the people by the people OF THE USA that wants to remain in power. Screw mitigation, It's out of reach anyway. And there are areas of the world that are responsible that can't be persuaded to do anything. It's all about adaptation, baby. --- Obama made a big thing just post-Paris of playing up that agreement was reached as a result of "Strong American Leadership". I understand the reasons for saying that, there's a little truth in that and it's for USA ears. But I bet there were people who had been in the Paris talks rolling there eyes. --- We're back to a serious real-politique question. And it's the same one I had immediately after Paris. What now? What can we realistically do that can make a real difference? We can stop being quite so stupid, and make some small changes like using LED light bulbs, solar/wind power and so on. But it's not actually going to change anything. At best it'll just slow the process down a little. So what now? — Another one. http://www.2052.info/ This is the backgrounder for one of the updates to the Limits to Growth. This should perhaps be renamed "A Global Forecast for the next 36 years"! A cursory glance suggests that only 4 years later, reality is already worse than it appears. For instance, total world population (UN figures) is still growing linearly and possibly slightly faster than linear with a global 2015 figure of 7.349 billion compared with the book's and spreadsheet's prediction of 7.233 billion
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceGoogle could run a service in the cloud that checked a potential password against a google scale blacklist using a jquery friendly javascript front end. There could be a set of libraries in the common dev languages. Then it would be really easy for sites to implement a secure ID system. And with a simple upgrade into oAuth so that the sites don't have to do their own authentication at all. And in return, Google gets to expand their ownership of ID and get more knowledge of what we're all up to. Oh. Wait. — Password insecurity isn't users' fault Ok, now I'm pissed off. The problem isn't users. Users are stupid. Users don't care. Users don't understand. Users don't know how frequently passwords are used. And they shouldn't have to. Blaming the users is professional criminal malfeasance. There are readily downloadable files of millions of passwords. Literally. Millions. Moreoever: it's a trivial matter to test an input password (when set, or when provided for log-in) against known lists. Bad passwords don't follow any rule except this: A bad password is one which is known. That hugely increases the costs for cracking into systems. Which means that any and all password validation systems -- and by this, I mean the underlying libraries and frameworks on which they're based, ALL of them -- must, must incorporate this and do so fucking five fucking years ago. (NB: I made this point. At a prior gig. Five years ago. It was rejected. Yes, I'm fucking pissed.) It's not a user problem. It's a site provider's problem. And it's criminal incompetence, malfeasance, and complicity to not be doing this. Fucking fix it. Fucking yesterday. Oh, and one more thing: the safest password is the one you don't have to use. The whole identity business is a rotten one. If you don't need to be in it, get out. Stop creating useless authentication schemes for users which they don't need to be using. Systems which have no business with personal information shouldn't request it. I'd love to see more systems based on PKI -- users authenticating their own transactions through cryptographic signatures, and securing data via encryption only they can read, though yes, there are problems with such systems too. But a key reason for people having lousy passwords is lousy systems. Including utterly unneccessary ones.
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Commented on post by George Beckingham in Climate ChangeBroken link there. I think you mean http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ — Greenland is green? This morning at 08:00 MST (15:00 GMT), parts of Greenland appear to be above freezing. The attached image was taken from http://earth.nullschool.net. Strong winds from the east have been warming the somewhat inaccurately-named island for most of this winter, but today's temperatures on the west coast are quite irregular. The small green circle in the southwest part of the island is at 66.5° latitude, the Arctic circle. Everywhere north of this point has been in near-darkness since late September. The green patch just north of this mark is as much as 4°C above freezing at surface level. Unfortunately, NSIDC (http://nsidc.org) stopped publishing Greenland surface melt data at the end of December, assuming that the melt season was over. Based on this data, I hope they'll come out of hibernation to post an update. On the organization's Arctic Ice News page (http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/), you can see an ice-free patch on today's daily image that corresponds to the warm area With a strong hurricane in the Pacific and a warm Greenland, 2016 is already shaping up to be a year of interesting weather.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawI'm rather fond of this one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office Hiding in plain sight — This satellite logo has been widely lampooned, and the newly-released approval documents suggest some kind of story involving an "octopus harness" as the origin. However, I've heard from some people that this entire story is a post-facto justification: what actually happened is that the octopus grabbing the planet was picked as a logo because they got a firm "no" to the logo they actually wanted, which was Cthulhu.  Which is to say: the people building these system have a sense of humor too, and they realize exactly how absurdly ominous this logo is. And they somehow got the NRO to approve it. I think that makes this a pretty damned awesome logo. I need to get my hands on one of these patches...
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in WingnutteryIf you're close enough to read this. You're about to meet him. — Scary cartoon guy wants to know if you prayed today, because the LORD can't be everywhere at once. So much for omnipresence... (seen yesterday on I-40 westbound towards Asheville)
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in EconomicsAn enlightened administration (in any developed nation, not just the US/UK) would use this opportunity to impose a substantial carbon tax on fossil fuels that kept prices static. And then use the resulting windfall to fund renewable energy infrastructure and social programmes like single payer health care. But that would make long term sense and we don't do that kind of thing any more. — On why low oil prices might be contributing to economic uncertainty. Paraphrasing +Ray Radlein​: The reason for market and economic turmoil resulting from reductions in the price of oil comes from uncertainties in futures markets, triggering secondary spasms in stocks and bonds. The ultimate cause is the uncertainty in the price of anything dependent on oil (that is, everything) even only a few months from now -- price discovery is effectively broken. So no tenable contracts for future production are possible. From comments to a post of +Karl Auerbach​'s. That's interesting, though I'm not certain I buy it. I'd be hugely interested to see what +Gail Tverberg​ has to say (and she has in fact written on why low oil prices aren't a good thing). There's the fact that futures markets are in fact a specific means to hedge against future uncertainty -- it's their who raison d'etre, as was drilled into me studying this at Uni. In fact the original futures markets were based around inherently unstable commodity prices in agriculture. Farmers, who have a significant cash-flow management problem -- heavy spending as they plant and raise crops, income only at harvest time -- used futures in corn, wheat, pork bellies, etc., to provide themselves a stable financial planning basis. Though this does require others to provide market liquidity by playing counterparty in their futures contracts. Futures have played a strong role in other economic news in the past decade or so. I recall stories of how Southwest Airlines scored major wins by hedging its fuel costs against future rises (which occurred), saving tremendous amounts in the process. And learning that some major gas utilities are proscribed from trading in futures markets at all -- apparently under the theory that they are so large that they would have an undue influence on market prices by themselves. My own explanation for current circumstances leans toward global economic slowdown leading oil prices, with extractors locked in to having to provide oil in order to meet current financial obligations, regardless of the actual market price. In an earlier age, when overextraction lead to an utter price collapse, the governors of Oklahoma and Texas called out the state National Guard, and in Texas, the Rangers, to sieze wellheads by force of arms in order to drive prices up to a sustainable level: $1 per barrel (they'd hit a low of 13 cents). This lead to the extraction quota system established and maintained by the somewhat inaccurately named Texas Railroad Commission, and the US Department of Interior, which remained in effect until US surplus extraction capacity lapsed in 1972. Some may recall events of the following year with come consequence. That's covered in chapter 13 of Daniel Yergin's excellent history of oil, The Prize.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Economics0% interest rates. 0% inflation. Lowest energy prices for a decade. And still the economy won't grow, dammit! — On why low oil prices might be contributing to economic uncertainty. Paraphrasing +Ray Radlein​: The reason for market and economic turmoil resulting from reductions in the price of oil comes from uncertainties in futures markets, triggering secondary spasms in stocks and bonds. The ultimate cause is the uncertainty in the price of anything dependent on oil (that is, everything) even only a few months from now -- price discovery is effectively broken. So no tenable contracts for future production are possible. From comments to a post of +Karl Auerbach​'s. That's interesting, though I'm not certain I buy it. I'd be hugely interested to see what +Gail Tverberg​ has to say (and she has in fact written on why low oil prices aren't a good thing). There's the fact that futures markets are in fact a specific means to hedge against future uncertainty -- it's their who raison d'etre, as was drilled into me studying this at Uni. In fact the original futures markets were based around inherently unstable commodity prices in agriculture. Farmers, who have a significant cash-flow management problem -- heavy spending as they plant and raise crops, income only at harvest time -- used futures in corn, wheat, pork bellies, etc., to provide themselves a stable financial planning basis. Though this does require others to provide market liquidity by playing counterparty in their futures contracts. Futures have played a strong role in other economic news in the past decade or so. I recall stories of how Southwest Airlines scored major wins by hedging its fuel costs against future rises (which occurred), saving tremendous amounts in the process. And learning that some major gas utilities are proscribed from trading in futures markets at all -- apparently under the theory that they are so large that they would have an undue influence on market prices by themselves. My own explanation for current circumstances leans toward global economic slowdown leading oil prices, with extractors locked in to having to provide oil in order to meet current financial obligations, regardless of the actual market price. In an earlier age, when overextraction lead to an utter price collapse, the governors of Oklahoma and Texas called out the state National Guard, and in Texas, the Rangers, to sieze wellheads by force of arms in order to drive prices up to a sustainable level: $1 per barrel (they'd hit a low of 13 cents). This lead to the extraction quota system established and maintained by the somewhat inaccurately named Texas Railroad Commission, and the US Department of Interior, which remained in effect until US surplus extraction capacity lapsed in 1972. Some may recall events of the following year with come consequence. That's covered in chapter 13 of Daniel Yergin's excellent history of oil, The Prize.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Economicshttps://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/iran-sanctions-middle-east-stock-102835505.html Iran sanctions: Middle East stock markets crash as Tehran enters oil war The Islamic Republic has vowed to return its oil production to pre-sanction levels, with estimates suggesting Tehran will add a further 500,000 barrels a day (b/pd) to the world's bloated stockpiles within weeks. Fears that the Islamic Republic could quickly ramp up production sent Brent crude falling by 3.3pc to $29.43 - matching lows last seen in 2004. --- This is going to be interesting. — On why low oil prices might be contributing to economic uncertainty. Paraphrasing +Ray Radlein​: The reason for market and economic turmoil resulting from reductions in the price of oil comes from uncertainties in futures markets, triggering secondary spasms in stocks and bonds. The ultimate cause is the uncertainty in the price of anything dependent on oil (that is, everything) even only a few months from now -- price discovery is effectively broken. So no tenable contracts for future production are possible. From comments to a post of +Karl Auerbach​'s. That's interesting, though I'm not certain I buy it. I'd be hugely interested to see what +Gail Tverberg​ has to say (and she has in fact written on why low oil prices aren't a good thing). There's the fact that futures markets are in fact a specific means to hedge against future uncertainty -- it's their who raison d'etre, as was drilled into me studying this at Uni. In fact the original futures markets were based around inherently unstable commodity prices in agriculture. Farmers, who have a significant cash-flow management problem -- heavy spending as they plant and raise crops, income only at harvest time -- used futures in corn, wheat, pork bellies, etc., to provide themselves a stable financial planning basis. Though this does require others to provide market liquidity by playing counterparty in their futures contracts. Futures have played a strong role in other economic news in the past decade or so. I recall stories of how Southwest Airlines scored major wins by hedging its fuel costs against future rises (which occurred), saving tremendous amounts in the process. And learning that some major gas utilities are proscribed from trading in futures markets at all -- apparently under the theory that they are so large that they would have an undue influence on market prices by themselves. My own explanation for current circumstances leans toward global economic slowdown leading oil prices, with extractors locked in to having to provide oil in order to meet current financial obligations, regardless of the actual market price. In an earlier age, when overextraction lead to an utter price collapse, the governors of Oklahoma and Texas called out the state National Guard, and in Texas, the Rangers, to sieze wellheads by force of arms in order to drive prices up to a sustainable level: $1 per barrel (they'd hit a low of 13 cents). This lead to the extraction quota system established and maintained by the somewhat inaccurately named Texas Railroad Commission, and the US Department of Interior, which remained in effect until US surplus extraction capacity lapsed in 1972. Some may recall events of the following year with come consequence. That's covered in chapter 13 of Daniel Yergin's excellent history of oil, The Prize.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyI'll toss in a comment from Bruce Sterling from a few days ago. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page05.html#post101 *I don't want to engage in false-equivalencies here; I don't claim that the left and right in 2016 are merely Red versus Blue.  The American right has visibly lost its senses and has abandoned contact with objective reality. The American left is conservative: it's reduced to the prosper of Hillary Clinton, an elderly, backward-looking figure whose meager political appeal, such as it is, is 1990s nostalgic. I think that's a pretty fair example of how it looks from Turin or Belgrade. I can certainly understand the view. But it feels simplistic to me.  — Some strange stuff going on here. And some wonderful wordage. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/01/some-american-political-marker.html#more Especially comment #12. the big mystery this go around and the large factor that has thrown off so many conventional expectations - that the establishment hasn't put up a fight against the fools and nuts
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Commented on post by Stewart BrandThe last 50 years (1960-2010) have shown constant linear growth in population of one extra billion people every 12-14 years. The UN forecasts expect this to continue unchanged till at least 2025. The UN has been promoting a story that education and poverty reduction will reduce the fertility rate which will result in this linear growth gradually reducing with a peak population some time in the next century. But at the moment there's no evidence of the linear growth levelling off. They've recently revised their forecasts of when we reach 9b and 10b closer to now recognising that the linear growth is being maintained or even speeding up. I find it hard to square this continuous growth with the story that the potential horrors of indefinite population growth have been avoided. It may be that population growth levels off at some stage in the future, but it seems more likely that this will be due to resource constraints than any happy set of influences. — Ehrlich’s Population Bomb revisited I feature in one of the great Retro Reports at the New York Times.  This one takes a hard look at Paul Ehrlich’s ferocious campaign in the 1970s to get everyone worried about overpopulation--in which he succeeded hugely.  In the video you’ll see me organizing in support of his campaign. But Paul was hugely wrong. In the video I regret it in detail.  Paul still says he wasn’t wrong.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Environmenthttp://www.samefacts.com/2016/01/economics/stuff/ — I wish I could be as optimistic as this. http://blog.longnow.org/02015/02/06/jesse-ausubel-seminar-media/ Why nature is rebounding – a summary by Stewart Brand Over the last 40 years, in nearly every field, human productivity has decoupled from resource use, Ausubel began. Even though our prosperity and population continue to increase, the trends show decreasing use of energy, water, land, material resources, and impact on natural systems (except the ocean). As a result we are seeing the beginnings of a global restoration of nature. Some of the examples are a little bizarre. eg 10,000 foxes in London is an example of nature returning? And it's repeating some of the old canards about increasing CO2 levels and temperate region temperatures is leading to greater plant growth. Mostly it feels like trying to say that if we can just put a few more sticking plasters on, we'll be able to mend the broken leg. So what are we to make of the relentless optimism of the Long Now people? Or the relentless pessimism of the environmental people? As for that bit about decoupling and trends in the first para, "Citation Needed", as the saying goes.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in EnvironmentThey'll grasp onto the quote “This is in principle good news, as ice ages are a great challenge,”. Which is the kind of thing people like Matt Ridley, Bjorn Lomborg, Piers Corbyn specialise in. Not denying climate change but denying that it's a problem. That's the next stage in denial. I strongly recommend having a look at Hot Earth Dreams. There's a free 5 chapter sampler here. https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/hot-earth-dreams-sample/ https://heteromeles.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams-sample1.pdf This idea that blowing 1TtC of easily accessible carbon into the atmosphere in 100 years will take 400k years to leave again is one that's taking hold. At the moment, I think it's all about the time-scales. If we move to a fully sustainable, small population over 200 years, it would be survivable, not particularly unpleasant and there'd be time for plenty of fun. There's a strong chance we'll be able to maintain an advanced technological society. If the systems force us to do it in under 50 years it will unimaginably horrific and post crash/burn, all bets are off. I'll probably feel differently in a few months time. — What we do now will stick around for 400,000 years. Flex your muscles, mankind. Doesn't that give you a sense of ... Power! http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/13/fossil-fuel-burning-postponing-next-ice-age SeeAlso: Hot Earth Dreams - Frank Landis. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeSee Hot Earth Dreams - Frank Landis. The idea that what we do this half century will last 400k years is relatively new but gaining strength. It's all about the #terafart  as we push the last 1TtC of easily accessible carbon into the atmosphere. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452758485&sr=8-1&keywords=hot+earth+dreams
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyGot 5 minutes? Go and read Bruce Sterling's reply to R.U.Sirius. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page05.html and then get back to me. — It's that time of year again, when Bruce Sterling spouts various nuggets of wisdom from his lairs in Turin and Belgrade with help from Jon Lebkowsky in Austin. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html If you're not a paid up subscriber to The Well, there's usually a mechanism to post by proxy. But it's mostly about sitting in the peanut gallery and watching the old, great and good converse with their views from Austin or San Francisco. ps. Jon has G+, Facebook pages and so on but has taken an extended sabbatical from the net and social media. Something I find understandable but strangely perverse in 2016.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyI've just had a reply back from Ulrich Goluke about the spreadsheet. He says to expect an update towards the end of this year. He also points out the uncertainty in the UN global population figures and puts it currently at 7.3Gp +- 0.1Gp And although the UN is stating a 2015 actual figure (I think) this is really much more like a forecast from their models. This kind of thing is fun but deceptive. http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ — Another one. http://www.2052.info/ This is the backgrounder for one of the updates to the Limits to Growth. This should perhaps be renamed "A Global Forecast for the next 36 years"! A cursory glance suggests that only 4 years later, reality is already worse than it appears. For instance, total world population (UN figures) is still growing linearly and possibly slightly faster than linear with a global 2015 figure of 7.349 billion compared with the book's and spreadsheet's prediction of 7.233 billion
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Commented on post by John Murdoch in Climate ChangeBTW. TFA links through to this organisation. https://nextgenclimate.org/ "Join our fight to bring climate change to the forefront of American politics." Try not to be too cynical when reading it! ;) — When I win the $1.3 billion powerball drawing, I'll urge Obama to focus his State of the Union address on Climate Change too!
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Commented on post by John Murdoch in Climate Change+Per Siden Strongly recommend finding a copy of Hot Earth Dreams - Frank Landis. http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392 It's an attempt to understand the implications of mankind burning through most of the available carbon in the next 10 years. Currently, I think the most likely scenario is a kind of middle way. We'll reduce our carbon budget a little. We'll add lots of renewables and we'll use the additional renewable energy to fund the next stage of economic growth. The end result is burning through the #terafart  (1TtC) of easily available carbon in 150 years instead of the 100 years it would have taken without the renewables. And I can't see any technology or change in human nature on the horizon that can realistically mitigate that. So like it or not mankind will be forced to sustainability in the next 200 years and will have to adapt to it. Starting now. — When I win the $1.3 billion powerball drawing, I'll urge Obama to focus his State of the Union address on Climate Change too!
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyMostly Rosling (http://www.gapminder.org/) and Max Roser (http://ourworldindata.org/) . But arguably, the LtoG, 2952, Club of Rome people are playing the same games by showing lovely smooth curve graphs with a very vague time X-Axis. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I had a play with the 2052 spreadsheet at http://www.2052.info/download/ Unfortunately its locked so can't be modified and the built in assumptions look a little questionable in places. What's most annoying is that you can't plug in new figures as they become available. So you're stuck with projections from 2010, even though we've now got data available for 2015. And re the comments about futurists and smooth lines, if you build a spreadsheet with smooth formulas, you get smooth lines. Just ask any VC or person seeking VC! As an aside, the prevailing optimistic narrative about population and poverty is that education and economic optimism lead to a drop in fertility, which leads to a levelling and peak in world population. So the graph is a logistic S-Curve. The problem is that we're still in the middle linear part and the narrative, if true, hasn't really kicked in yet. There's another alternative which is that as the stressors increase, education and optimism fall, and average fertility rate starts to rise again making the population overshoot accelerate rather than decelerate. And there's no real way to know if the rate is rising, dropping or staying the same until it's happened. — Another one. http://www.2052.info/ This is the backgrounder for one of the updates to the Limits to Growth. This should perhaps be renamed "A Global Forecast for the next 36 years"! A cursory glance suggests that only 4 years later, reality is already worse than it appears. For instance, total world population (UN figures) is still growing linearly and possibly slightly faster than linear with a global 2015 figure of 7.349 billion compared with the book's and spreadsheet's prediction of 7.233 billion
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Commented on post by John Murdoch in Climate ChangeLinks through to this paper https://nextgenclimate.global.ssl.fastly.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SOTU-Memo_160110_v4.pdf In the conclusion there's that 100% figure again.   "50 percent clean energy by 2030, putting us on a path to a completely clean energy economy by 2050" So that's 100% CO2 neutral energy by 2050. in 34 years. And 50% in 14 years. And this isn't just electricity. This is all energy. And by rights it should be total footprint, so should include offshore manufacturing and transport from offshore to onshore.  Those are noble goals. But I have absolutely no idea how the USA could achieve that starting from here. Anyone else got a clue how that could be done?  The thing is that it's a good, well written paper that clearly sets out the problem. It's just that the conclusion and solutions are impossible. I'm rapidly reaching the conclusion that focussing on mitigation is fairly pointless. At this stage, I think I'd rather focus papers like this and suggestions for the leaderships focus to be on adaptation. So what should groups like this be asking Obama to say about strategies for the USA to survive +4C ? Or is that too pessimistic rather than realistic?   — When I win the $1.3 billion powerball drawing, I'll urge Obama to focus his State of the Union address on Climate Change too!
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyMention of Hans Rosling prompted another look. And some common lying with stats strategies appear. Once you see them, they start turning up all over the place, not just from Rosling. We should call them TED-Stats or something. - Huge number of pretty but meaningless graphics. - Graphs with confusing scales - Graphs that try to show 4 dimensions at once via spot size, colour and 2 Y scales   - Graphics shown in powerpoints that only appear in videos. So no easy way to extract specific predictions - A drop in % shown as an improvement while the absolute numbers keep rising - Predictions of the future based on theories that haven't actually kicked in yet  - Failure to keep them up to date, so no easy way to revisit the predictions 10 years later Underlying this are groups like the UN or IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) producing real data. I get the impression this data is pretty good but there's a few places where this causes some eyebrow raising. That leads you to question all the rest. - Excessive accuracy, eg global population to 1000 in 7 billion - Surprising bumps in a year on year series you would expect to be smooth. Did the fertility rate, child mortality, death rate really change between 2000 and 2005 and then return to their previous values in 2010? Or is that just a burst of mis-reporting? - Dramatic changes in slope. Are and did the absolute numbers of people in extreme poverty start dropping in 2000? What actually happened in India around that time?  There's several layers of interpretation being done between the researchers and their peer reviewed papers and the Pop-Sci article in Slate. I'm not sure people like Rosling or Roser (or Nature) actually help because their summaries seem designed to push an agenda by drowning you in interpretation. They also tend to have lots of SEO-fu and so dominate the simple google searches. Does anyone know wtf is really going on and can explain it? ;) — Another one. http://www.2052.info/ This is the backgrounder for one of the updates to the Limits to Growth. This should perhaps be renamed "A Global Forecast for the next 36 years"! A cursory glance suggests that only 4 years later, reality is already worse than it appears. For instance, total world population (UN figures) is still growing linearly and possibly slightly faster than linear with a global 2015 figure of 7.349 billion compared with the book's and spreadsheet's prediction of 7.233 billion
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyAnd then R.U.Sirius (for it is he) pops up. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page04.html#post94 _There’s a narrative that’s popular particularly among economic conservatives, but also among mainstream politicos in general, that contrary to popular sentiments, things are going pretty great because the poorest of the worlds’ poor people are doing better there has been a global reduction in poverty. They point to UN statistical reports and so forth. We’re supposed to conclude that neoliberal globalized markets are pretty awesome_ MUST NOT POST! Even if it does play straight into my hand of pointing out the lack of clothes on people confusing absolute numbers with percentage changes in those numbers. And applying that confusion deliberately for fun, profit and general confusion. — It's that time of year again, when Bruce Sterling spouts various nuggets of wisdom from his lairs in Turin and Belgrade with help from Jon Lebkowsky in Austin. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html If you're not a paid up subscriber to The Well, there's usually a mechanism to post by proxy. But it's mostly about sitting in the peanut gallery and watching the old, great and good converse with their views from Austin or San Francisco. ps. Jon has G+, Facebook pages and so on but has taken an extended sabbatical from the net and social media. Something I find understandable but strangely perverse in 2016.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea Society+Edward Morbius Well consider that you might not be the specific target audience. Since you've already done considerably more research than me into the nature of limits to growth. Both generally and capitalised as the specific books and organisations around LtoG.   What I apparently can't let go of at the moment is the way that unpalatable truths are being dressed up and twisted. Is it some kind of optimism delusion? Or is it much more prosaic and is really more like clickbait trolling? Maybe I'm just obsessing about a particular style of bullshit. What is particularly upsetting about the current state of the LtoG group is the way it seems to have become decadent. Which then makes it easy to dismiss the underlying truths for fun and profit. I wasn't really suggesting you go and read all of it, rather to read just enough to get a feel for where this group is now. ps. And yes, idea1 was seriously embarrassing. — Another one. http://www.2052.info/ This is the backgrounder for one of the updates to the Limits to Growth. This should perhaps be renamed "A Global Forecast for the next 36 years"! A cursory glance suggests that only 4 years later, reality is already worse than it appears. For instance, total world population (UN figures) is still growing linearly and possibly slightly faster than linear with a global 2015 figure of 7.349 billion compared with the book's and spreadsheet's prediction of 7.233 billion
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Models & Frames+Steve S There's a hole there. And no matter how much we keep digging, we still can't see where it leads. — This is the essence of Model: a comparison of heliocentric and geocentric representations of the Ptolemaic Solar System[1] It's also the precise discussion on which a revered elder relation and I once came close to blows, and they into a full-on rage. The notion that both models are "correct", in terms of describing observed behavior, but one is markedly simpler in the descriptive complexity proved beyond grasp. This also dives into two areas of some interest and reflection of late. The first is, when does a new arrangement of concepts "generate new meaning", as John Cleese describes it in his presentations on creativity? What's the test? Is this Science? Is writing comedy then scientific? Prediction? Understanding? Insight? Can it be quantified? Is the benefit of the Copernican model, later modified by Kepler, that it gives insight to derive then the notion gravity, by Newton? Which itself gave rise to further insights by Einstein. The second was an observation as I was watching a TV programme on Einstein, discussing his process of first searching for, then conceiving of, and finally communicating his theory of relativity. His initial goad was finding someting out of place, ultimately, contradiction: Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell's equations of light were at odds, and there was an inherent contradiction. That's a first sign in many ways of something being Not Quite Right. To come up with his special theory of relativity (the first -- the general theory came after), he inverted the usual perspective of thinking of simultanaity, and realised that time itself depended on the observer's frame of reference, by realising that time in different locations was defined by when light reached the observer, and that observers in motion relative to one another perceived signals, and hence time, differently. This is an inversion of usual expressions of equivalence or dependence. Here Einstein himself needed to jump from one mental model to a new one, a difficult task. To describe this, he made use of everyday experiences -- a person on a railroad platform vs. standing on a train -- to illustrate the phenomenon. Here Einstein was making use of an existing mental frame or model (railroads, moving and stationary persons) to explain a new concept, hijacking existing mental pathways, as it were. In his follow-on, Einstein further reasoned that gravity wasn't merely like acceleration, but was acceleration. We speak now of "gravitational acceleration", and it's the same as a reaction-mass acceleration... Except, and this is one of those "did Einstein think it all the way through" questions: a reaction-mass, or rope, or linear induction-track acceleration ultimately either has to bend (cyclotron) or end (rocket runs out of fuel). Makes me wonder if gravity isn't then not precisely the same as acceleration.... h/t HN. ______________________________ Notes: 1. That's the one with seven planets, Mercury through Uranus. Neptune and ex-planet Pluto (it's complicated) required telescopes for discovery. And until the past year, the latter was little more than a few blurred pixels under the best of astronomical imaging.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyIf you have time, check out the "future glimpses" section or start here and follow the next page links. http://www.2052.info/idea1/ http://www.2052.info/future-glimpses/ — Another one. http://www.2052.info/ This is the backgrounder for one of the updates to the Limits to Growth. This should perhaps be renamed "A Global Forecast for the next 36 years"! A cursory glance suggests that only 4 years later, reality is already worse than it appears. For instance, total world population (UN figures) is still growing linearly and possibly slightly faster than linear with a global 2015 figure of 7.349 billion compared with the book's and spreadsheet's prediction of 7.233 billion
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea Society+Edward Morbius This, http://2052.info Maybe your extended hosts files are blocking *.info. There's a (anti)pattern here, like Edge and a few others we've looked at recently. It starts with a big over-arching troll. You then get a hotchpotch of experts, commentators and popular names to contribute one page essays on aspects of the troll. Collect the whole lot together and turn it into a book and a set of conferences. The problem is the same as usual that it's broadcast-only media leant credibility by the brand recognition of the names. But the lack of citation and the shallowness of one page essays means there's precious little actual content. And with no feedback from the gallery, there's no conversation available to correct the errors. So what it actually ends up looking like is propaganda for a particular position. So the interesting question is figuring out what the position is that's being promoted. — Another one. http://www.2052.info/ This is the backgrounder for one of the updates to the Limits to Growth. This should perhaps be renamed "A Global Forecast for the next 36 years"! A cursory glance suggests that only 4 years later, reality is already worse than it appears. For instance, total world population (UN figures) is still growing linearly and possibly slightly faster than linear with a global 2015 figure of 7.349 billion compared with the book's and spreadsheet's prediction of 7.233 billion
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaEvery so often we re-discover "tags" as a way of categorising. One of the big out-pourings of this was with http://del.icio.us back in 2003. See also "Everything is Miscellaneous" from David Weinberger, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Everything-Miscellaneous-Power-Digital-Disorder-ebook/dp/B000R7PUW4/ref=sr_1_1   — One of my students organises pdfs of literature in folders named Irrelevant Mostly Harmless Nonsense Relevant
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeFairly sure TFA is talking about electricity generation, not total energy use. — Getting to 100% renewable energy in the US by 2050 is a goal that is gaining traction among the US public. #RenewableEnergy   #USA  
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Commented on post by Joerg Fliege in Academia, SchmacademiaThink I'll tag that comment under "2003"[1]. [1]Birth of http://del.icio.us — One of my students organises pdfs of literature in folders named Irrelevant Mostly Harmless Nonsense Relevant
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyQ: "what can we personally do about climate change" A: The NYT has a listicle http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/03/upshot/what-you-can-do-about-climate-change.html Of course they're ridiculous and won't change a thing, even if we all did them. But _think how much innovation there's been in the last century_ * rolls eyes * — It's that time of year again, when Bruce Sterling spouts various nuggets of wisdom from his lairs in Turin and Belgrade with help from Jon Lebkowsky in Austin. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html If you're not a paid up subscriber to The Well, there's usually a mechanism to post by proxy. But it's mostly about sitting in the peanut gallery and watching the old, great and good converse with their views from Austin or San Francisco. ps. Jon has G+, Facebook pages and so on but has taken an extended sabbatical from the net and social media. Something I find understandable but strangely perverse in 2016.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyIt's funny to watch the Sterling conversation point at the Stross conversation and vice versa. But then this,  http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/01/long-range-forecast.html#comment-1990350 Bruce seems like a really smart guy, but the Neckbeard is thick in that conversation. Maybe he's playing to the crowd. I wanted to get to the end, I really did, but I had to punch the eject handle. And that's why  read it every year. And why every year, I end up getting angry at the blinkered, stupid, parochial, "neckbeards"[1] that join in. And equally angry at the self-congratulatory filter that making the The Well subscription only but public has created. Stross's blog comments are almost universally entertaining (even with CatrinaD and the strange attractors[2]). The Well comments are almost universally woo. So I recommend following Bruce wherever you can find him and reading just his posts in the State of the World. But IMHO you can safely ignore all the rest. [1] Climate Denial, Micro Nuclear power, China-denial, techno-cornucopianism, Coping with social system shocks via self-improvement,  etc, etc. FFS this is 2016! Get a f*cking clue! [2] CatD and the Strange Attractors. Little known 80s electro-pop band.  — It's that time of year again, when Bruce Sterling spouts various nuggets of wisdom from his lairs in Turin and Belgrade with help from Jon Lebkowsky in Austin. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html If you're not a paid up subscriber to The Well, there's usually a mechanism to post by proxy. But it's mostly about sitting in the peanut gallery and watching the old, great and good converse with their views from Austin or San Francisco. ps. Jon has G+, Facebook pages and so on but has taken an extended sabbatical from the net and social media. Something I find understandable but strangely perverse in 2016.
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Commented on post by Richard Turnock in Climate ChangeSubsidized fossil-fuel energy not the answer — Great examples of logical fallacies by Dr. J. Winston Porter. Could be a case study for high school students.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionRemember, if you're sitting in a room, and you can't figure out who the non-player actors are, you're probably one of them. Also, this quote from Rudy Rucker, “For me, the best thing about Cyberpunk is that it taught me how to enjoy shopping malls, which used to terrify me. Now I just imagine the whole thing is two miles below the moon’s surface, and that half the people’s right-brains have been eaten by roboticized steel rats. And suddenly it’s interesting again.” — Remember, if you're sitting in a room, and you can't figure out who the replicant is, you're the replicant.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyThis is an interesting one. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page03.html#post67 Putin = Uber-Troll = Trump. Don't try and win the argument. Smother it with huge quantities of troll bullshit from your army of troll foot soldiers. fill up the airwaves with gaudy noise, lots of meme-style chaff and smoke-bombs.  Just throw troll-spaghetti in all directions, see if anything sticks. You're not seeking tender understanding from Americans, it's not a charm-offensive.  It's the new "Troll-State" approach   — It's that time of year again, when Bruce Sterling spouts various nuggets of wisdom from his lairs in Turin and Belgrade with help from Jon Lebkowsky in Austin. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html If you're not a paid up subscriber to The Well, there's usually a mechanism to post by proxy. But it's mostly about sitting in the peanut gallery and watching the old, great and good converse with their views from Austin or San Francisco. ps. Jon has G+, Facebook pages and so on but has taken an extended sabbatical from the net and social media. Something I find understandable but strangely perverse in 2016.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Google Updates+M Sinclair Stevens Search is another thing where the settings (bestof/recent, my posts etc) really should be reflected in the URL so they can be bookmarked. — A useful new feature of G+ launched today. It's particularly handy for finding your own comments on other people's posts, but also for things like people you've blocked, things you've +1'ed, and other things which were previously hard to locate. NB that you can delete things from this interface, and that deletes the actual thing (the post, the comment, etc), so do it with care. (It'll prompt you to confirm before actually deleting anything, don't worry) You can access this through the settings menu, or directly at http://plus.google.com/apps/activities .
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Commented on post by Lev OsherovichBitcoin is unsustainable, given climate change. Discuss! http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-is-unsustainable   So while I'm all in favour of P2P commerce, trading and auctions, I've fallen out of love with bitcoin and the blockchain. — OpenBazaar, an open source Bitcoin commerce platform, seems like a mashup of Craigslist, Silk Road and Islamic finance. Governments will not be happy if this gets traction.
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Commented on post by Luke Wroblewski in Google+ UpdatesGlad to see some function from Buzz is finally making it into G+ ;) Perhaps we'll get some RSS/Atom soon as well? This is very hidden away in settings. Perhaps it should be on your view of your profile. Beware that this is also the short cut to get to the new beta desktop interface. If you really don't like that, you'll have to switch back to Classic after each visit. Maybe. This doesn't always seem to make the switch. This badly needs a search facility (like the one Facebook has). Especially for us prolific users. REST People! Why doesn't the URL reflect a change in filter from comments to +1 ? Did we forget all the lessons we learnt back in 2002? I want to be able to bookmark "Apps/Activities/Comments" — Google+ Activity Log Google+ now features a list of all your actions including posts, comments, +1s, votes, blocks, and much more. You can access your Activity Log on Android, iOS, and the Web from the Settings menu. Filter the list to find recent comments or other actions you've made (I personally find this very useful when I want to re-find conversations I've participated in) or easily remove any action you've taken on Google+ using the X on each list item. Don't worry, you'll be asked to confirm before we actually delete anything. As usual, you can tell us what you think about this new feature using the Send Feedback menu item. Thanks~
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Google UpdatesGlad to see some function from Buzz is finally making it into G+ ;) Perhaps we'll get some RSS/Atom soon as well? This is very hidden away in settings. Perhaps it should be on your view of your profile. Beware that this is also the short cut to get to the new beta desktop interface. If you really don't like that, you'll have to switch back to Classic after each visit. Maybe. This doesn't always seem to make the switch. This badly needs a search facility (like the one Facebook has). Especially for us prolific users. REST People! Why doesn't the URL reflect a change in filter from comments to +1 ? Did we forget all the lessons we learnt back in 2002? I want to be able to bookmark "Apps/Activities/Comments" — A useful new feature of G+ launched today. It's particularly handy for finding your own comments on other people's posts, but also for things like people you've blocked, things you've +1'ed, and other things which were previously hard to locate. NB that you can delete things from this interface, and that deletes the actual thing (the post, the comment, etc), so do it with care. (It'll prompt you to confirm before actually deleting anything, don't worry) You can access this through the settings menu, or directly at http://plus.google.com/apps/activities .
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate Change+G Kochanski It's worth noting that all the model runs that result in less than 2C rise by 2100 involve dropping net carbon emissions to zero per year by 2050 and then going substantially negative after that. Which means global scale CCS. Which frankly we haven't  a clue how to do. 
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Commented on postAnd then this. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2016/jan/07/era-of-climate-science-denial-is-not-over-study-finds "Era of climate science denial is not over, study finds Conservative thinktanks in the US engaging in climate change have increased their attacks on science in recent years, a study of 16,000 documents finds."  Which points at this http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378015300728
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeThis is interesting technology and may well be commercially viable. However it has pretty much nothing to do with climate change and especially with climate change mitigation due to a small matter of scale. The biggest imaginable deployment of this tech is still several orders of magnitude below the CO2 emissions rate. 30 Gigatonnes of CO2 per year or 10 Gt of C per year is a bit bigger than 100 or even 1000 tonnes of CO2 per year!  http://www.climeworks.com/co2-capture-plants/articles/capture-plants.html
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Commented on postIn the middle of that article is a discussion of the economic effects of various temperature rises. I have this sneaking suspicion that there's a fundamental error in the analysis. But unfortunately it's not immediately obvious where the truth is because it's been obscured by people like Lomborg and Tol. When the IPCC says some studies show that +2C results in a 3% drop in GDP, do they mean a one off total drop of 3% or a drop equivalent to 3% per year. The first is insignificant over 20 years or so of constant GDP growth. The second means a dramatic global recession (in conventional economic terms). The article reads as though the IPCC figures show just the one off drop. So what we probably have here is a WP opinion piece that tries to say that Conservatives (by which they mean Republicans) are not in so much denial. Which references an article that says Climate change is not that bad really. Which relies on discredited half truths spread by Lomborg and Tol. That were paid for by Conservative lobby groups. Which were paid for by US big business and in particular fossil fuel companies. Nothing new to see here. Please move along.  
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyI was thinking much less global and more straightforwardly capitalist. And next 20 years rather than 200. So for instance, A/C, homestead scale wind, solar and hydro power, relocation specialists, homestead scale de-salination. Even something that came up in the last couple of days; mobile phone apps for refugees. Maybe this is all like gold rush economics. The people who really did well out of that were selling shovels. So where's the shovels in climate change mitigation and adaptation. And further, if you have kids who are now 15-25, what kind of economic niche would you suggest they pursue (beyond the usual lawyering and doctoring)? — For Humans to cope with Climate Change relatively painlessly for the greatest number, we have to :- 1) Get to zero GHG emissions as fast as possible 2) Get to sustainability as fast as possible 3) Mitigate the likely effects as far as we can 4) Adapt controllably before the Earth's systems force us to adapt catastrophically This raises some interesting questions :- - What's the maximum global population for a technological society that is sustainable indefinitely? - What's the minimum viable population size? One that can still build a sufficiently large hierarchy to support things like silicon chip foundaries or an electric grid. - How do we get from where we are now with 7.4B people to somewhere between these two limits?  - How do we spread the process out over a long enough timescale that it doesn't involve mass excess deaths and is a soft landing rather than the full crash and burn. - In the relatively short term, where would you tell your children and grandchildren to move to, to have the best hope of riding out the changes and with a reasonably happy and productive life? That's not just physical location, but social and skills locations as well. I've seen suggestions of each continent's Great Lakes plus a few outliers like Chile. But I suspect something naturally defensible might also be a factor.  - What does "mitigate the likely effects" actually mean? More trees or solar sunshades in low earth orbit? Or perhaps more flood defences. - What does "adapt to global warming" actually mean? Does it just mean migrating away from the Persian Gulf and Florida? There's a LOT of detail wrapped up in that. Not least because we're starting from where we are now in late 2015. And because the questions imply we're talking about trying to direct a hive mind of >7B individual nodes. And come up with answers from first principles. Neither of which may actually be possible. Much more likely is "Humans will strive to expand their global civilization until it becomes physically impossible to do so." and "Since we can't fix it as individuals and we can't get off the planet we might as well point out the interesting bits to each other as the ship sinks." If >4C rise and >12B people by 2100 is a given, then what?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyAnd then http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page02.html#post32 32 to 46. Bruce nails it again. — It's that time of year again, when Bruce Sterling spouts various nuggets of wisdom from his lairs in Turin and Belgrade with help from Jon Lebkowsky in Austin. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html If you're not a paid up subscriber to The Well, there's usually a mechanism to post by proxy. But it's mostly about sitting in the peanut gallery and watching the old, great and good converse with their views from Austin or San Francisco. ps. Jon has G+, Facebook pages and so on but has taken an extended sabbatical from the net and social media. Something I find understandable but strangely perverse in 2016.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle Roadracinghttp://www.crash.net/bsb/comments/226002/1/a/0/byrne-hopkins-rispoli-voice-support-for-transatlantic-trophy.html How about a mix of WSB-BSB-AMA. Let's have Rea, Davis, Hayden in there as well as Beaubier-Hayes and Byrne-Ellison. How would you pick the circuits? Perhaps alternate years USA and UK. I also think it would be good to have this as an end of season thing like Macau. Then it removes some of the worries about people getting silly minor injuries just before championships. What would be really fun would be to get a manufacturer to sponsor it and have identical machines available with keys handed out on Friday. R1s? or KM390s?  — http://www.roadracingworld.com/news/motoamerica-bsb-officials-considering-reviving-trans-atlantic-match-races/ Yes, please. Do it, Do it! It would be good to get a few of the old stagers to do a demonstration as well. I'm sure Schwantz and Spencer (Haslam?) would be up for that. But absolutely key is to have hardware that is more or less equal. 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in PoliticsIt makes me sad that overland routes from London to Bangkok via interesting places like Mt Kailash contain numerous borders that are impassable. Northern India, Chinese Tibet, Northern Pakistan and the old Silk route cities like Kashgar, Samarkand, Meshed, Herat are magical places but really hard to get to now. — A question for the #lazyweb . Is there a site online that gives a good summary of the state of borders round the world? I imagine this on several dimensions. It's a directed graph or matrix for each major country pair with sub-divisions for specific border crossings. But then with detail depending one one's home country, transport mechanism and a bunch of notes. So for instance, USA->Canada, Blaine-I5, for a German, by bus. Or AzerBaijan->Turkmenistan, Baku-Turkmenbashi, Ferry, Motorcycle. This was prompted by watching the excellent "Walking the Himalayas" series on Channel 4 where Levison Wood attempts to walk from Afghanistan to Bhutan. http://www.channel4.com/programmes/walking-the-himalayas The first couple of episodes involved walking the Wakhan corridor to the Afghan-Pakistan border. Then helicoptering out, Kabul-Islamabad, Gilgit to continue walking from the Pakistan side of the same border post. Then repeating the exercise at the Burzil pass between Pakistan and Kashmir-India having to go Lahore-Amritsar-Srinigar-Dawar to continue the walk only a kilometre or two from where he got stuck and had to bug out. Both were 1500Km detours. The second event was the beginning of the end of the Schengen agreement in the EU where Germany->Denmark and then Denmark->Sweden are turning into check points. This is forced by the influx of middle eastern migrants but it's forcing everyone to carry ID and explain themselves. This is all symptomatic of a world where borders are not opening up. Increasingly they're closing down. And places where you used to be able to cross easily, are now blocked by armed guards. Where you used to be able to just cross, you now need a visa; or a paid guide. Talking of Refugees. Just came across this,  http://www.techfugees.com/ A bunch of UK tech journalists and commentators brainstorming apps for refugees. That sounds horrendous and easy to criticise but they're actually producing some useful stuff.
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Commented on post by Anna Zakrisson in Climate ChangeDon't sip your Martini, drink it quickly while it's still laughing at you. (c)Harry Craddock. Count your Martinis. And then punt. Because, One is just right, Two's too many, Three's not enough. And enjoy it while you can. — Here is an utterly sarcastic article about climate change and it actually seem to do its job in reaching people who otherwise shut down just by the mention of climate change. The psychological research that I have read seem to support the notion that to reach people with such serious matters, facts alone will not bring much. The situation is so absurd that it is hard not to laugh about it. Still, it is no laughing matter. A request: Would it be possible to open a category dealing with the best ways to reach people with these matters?  I am currently reading: "Don't Even Think About it - why our brains are wired to ignore climate change" by George Marshall and I can warmly recommend it.  We need change fast. How is this achieved? Right now, one thing is for sure: we progress way to slowly. I hope that I have not overstepped any community rules by bringing up this matter. If so, my apologies. with kind regards Anna Zakrisson (Ph.D. Marine Ecology)
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyHere at CliMax Associates (llc) we specialise in Climate Change adaptation advice and consultancy to high net worth individuals. [60s later] wow. That kicked off a storm of free association. Asylum seeker refugees as a source of cheap household labour. The best deep water harbours for luxury yachts during a time of extreme weather and rising sea levels. How to offload property investment in flood prone areas.   — For Humans to cope with Climate Change relatively painlessly for the greatest number, we have to :- 1) Get to zero GHG emissions as fast as possible 2) Get to sustainability as fast as possible 3) Mitigate the likely effects as far as we can 4) Adapt controllably before the Earth's systems force us to adapt catastrophically This raises some interesting questions :- - What's the maximum global population for a technological society that is sustainable indefinitely? - What's the minimum viable population size? One that can still build a sufficiently large hierarchy to support things like silicon chip foundaries or an electric grid. - How do we get from where we are now with 7.4B people to somewhere between these two limits?  - How do we spread the process out over a long enough timescale that it doesn't involve mass excess deaths and is a soft landing rather than the full crash and burn. - In the relatively short term, where would you tell your children and grandchildren to move to, to have the best hope of riding out the changes and with a reasonably happy and productive life? That's not just physical location, but social and skills locations as well. I've seen suggestions of each continent's Great Lakes plus a few outliers like Chile. But I suspect something naturally defensible might also be a factor.  - What does "mitigate the likely effects" actually mean? More trees or solar sunshades in low earth orbit? Or perhaps more flood defences. - What does "adapt to global warming" actually mean? Does it just mean migrating away from the Persian Gulf and Florida? There's a LOT of detail wrapped up in that. Not least because we're starting from where we are now in late 2015. And because the questions imply we're talking about trying to direct a hive mind of >7B individual nodes. And come up with answers from first principles. Neither of which may actually be possible. Much more likely is "Humans will strive to expand their global civilization until it becomes physically impossible to do so." and "Since we can't fix it as individuals and we can't get off the planet we might as well point out the interesting bits to each other as the ship sinks." If >4C rise and >12B people by 2100 is a given, then what?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyIf fairly extreme climate change is inevitable now, there's another question to go with the ones in the OP. Where's the money? There must be large quantities of money to be made out of mitigation and adaptation. And that's the upside. There's probably also huge quantities of money to be made from rationing out dwindling resources. So who's going to get rich and how? — For Humans to cope with Climate Change relatively painlessly for the greatest number, we have to :- 1) Get to zero GHG emissions as fast as possible 2) Get to sustainability as fast as possible 3) Mitigate the likely effects as far as we can 4) Adapt controllably before the Earth's systems force us to adapt catastrophically This raises some interesting questions :- - What's the maximum global population for a technological society that is sustainable indefinitely? - What's the minimum viable population size? One that can still build a sufficiently large hierarchy to support things like silicon chip foundaries or an electric grid. - How do we get from where we are now with 7.4B people to somewhere between these two limits?  - How do we spread the process out over a long enough timescale that it doesn't involve mass excess deaths and is a soft landing rather than the full crash and burn. - In the relatively short term, where would you tell your children and grandchildren to move to, to have the best hope of riding out the changes and with a reasonably happy and productive life? That's not just physical location, but social and skills locations as well. I've seen suggestions of each continent's Great Lakes plus a few outliers like Chile. But I suspect something naturally defensible might also be a factor.  - What does "mitigate the likely effects" actually mean? More trees or solar sunshades in low earth orbit? Or perhaps more flood defences. - What does "adapt to global warming" actually mean? Does it just mean migrating away from the Persian Gulf and Florida? There's a LOT of detail wrapped up in that. Not least because we're starting from where we are now in late 2015. And because the questions imply we're talking about trying to direct a hive mind of >7B individual nodes. And come up with answers from first principles. Neither of which may actually be possible. Much more likely is "Humans will strive to expand their global civilization until it becomes physically impossible to do so." and "Since we can't fix it as individuals and we can't get off the planet we might as well point out the interesting bits to each other as the ship sinks." If >4C rise and >12B people by 2100 is a given, then what?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea Society+Edward Morbius I went back and checked that I'm still following ello@bruces and hadn't seen that content elsewhere. He's posting on Wired, a couple of tumblrs and doubtless other places as well. So why hasn't ello got RSS/Atom yet, damn them? Write the damn code, already! The State Of The World conversation winds me up every year. Bruce's contributions are almost always welcome but (IMHO) the peanut gallery is pretty flaky. And this year's 1st page is not going well at all, at all.  — It's that time of year again, when Bruce Sterling spouts various nuggets of wisdom from his lairs in Turin and Belgrade with help from Jon Lebkowsky in Austin. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html If you're not a paid up subscriber to The Well, there's usually a mechanism to post by proxy. But it's mostly about sitting in the peanut gallery and watching the old, great and good converse with their views from Austin or San Francisco. ps. Jon has G+, Facebook pages and so on but has taken an extended sabbatical from the net and social media. Something I find understandable but strangely perverse in 2016.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyI'm fond of "Phablet" as well. And I've noticed more and more "Everyday Robots" holding up tablets to take photos.  — It's that time of year again, when Bruce Sterling spouts various nuggets of wisdom from his lairs in Turin and Belgrade with help from Jon Lebkowsky in Austin. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/487/Bruce-Sterling-Jon-Lebkowsky-Sta-page01.html If you're not a paid up subscriber to The Well, there's usually a mechanism to post by proxy. But it's mostly about sitting in the peanut gallery and watching the old, great and good converse with their views from Austin or San Francisco. ps. Jon has G+, Facebook pages and so on but has taken an extended sabbatical from the net and social media. Something I find understandable but strangely perverse in 2016.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in Antiscience+D. Luria I've seen "Graffiti Against Racism". Apparently  we need "Graffiti Against Ignorance" as well. Just add the words "Say Idiots" below the message. — Antifluoridation propaganda found on a street sign in Glen Park, San Francisco. Designed to plant seeds of doubt in the unwary, ill-informed and/or those unable to distinguish disinformation from official notices. Note the effaced infowars URL. Is this scratched out to render the sign even more believable? Either way, this seems like an effective scaremongering tactic. Evil stuff.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillance+Rob Shinn I would love to have a close to real time, group-chat system, with persistence and the ability to catch up with discussions that took place while you were off line. I think the lack of persistence is a real downside of IRC. — John's looking for intelligent conversation, as am I I don't have a good answer, though I pointed him to my "Tracking the Conversation" post; https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/ Upshot: 1. Reddit generally has conversation volume. 2. Metafilter was a standout for quality (as measured), though with very small volume. 3. Blogs (particularly Wordpress) have much quality content, though engagement is poor. I sense opportunity.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceRe The Well; Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2016 should be popping up here in the next few days. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/ — John's looking for intelligent conversation, as am I I don't have a good answer, though I pointed him to my "Tracking the Conversation" post; https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/ Upshot: 1. Reddit generally has conversation volume. 2. Metafilter was a standout for quality (as measured), though with very small volume. 3. Blogs (particularly Wordpress) have much quality content, though engagement is poor. I sense opportunity.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceAnd as for looking for intelligent conversation, yes. There's certainly been times when I wanted a mailing list for people like me (plus some randomness). It's that same need that resulted in things like The Well. — John's looking for intelligent conversation, as am I I don't have a good answer, though I pointed him to my "Tracking the Conversation" post; https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/ Upshot: 1. Reddit generally has conversation volume. 2. Metafilter was a standout for quality (as measured), though with very small volume. 3. Blogs (particularly Wordpress) have much quality content, though engagement is poor. I sense opportunity.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceI started with Usenet and email mailing lists and so threading seemed important. But then I went to Rheingold's community and realised threading didn't matter just as long as starting a new thread is lightweight. And that's a common problem. For instance, a new top post in G+ feels a lot more heavyweight than just adding another comment. This discourages new posts and encourages thread drift. Which then leads to a demand for threaded comments. But doing the UI for threaded comments is really hard. And especially I don't want to have to do endless clicks with the danger of losing context. I just want to read. And skim-read really fast. Usenet-Mailing lists is interesting from a UI perspective. I had an email-usenet client I used for nearly 20 years. But that was 10 years after the code was frozen and the developer disappeared. I finally had to stop when it wouldn't run on 64bit Windows10. It's the only one I've ever found that made it easy to read large volumes with just the space key, handled quoting, follow-up properly and which understood about bringing threads you contributed to to the top. As far as I can tell this area is too boring for much innovation any more since GMail owns the space. — John's looking for intelligent conversation, as am I I don't have a good answer, though I pointed him to my "Tracking the Conversation" post; https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/ Upshot: 1. Reddit generally has conversation volume. 2. Metafilter was a standout for quality (as measured), though with very small volume. 3. Blogs (particularly Wordpress) have much quality content, though engagement is poor. I sense opportunity.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyThe UN quote figures accurate to 1000 for total global population for a year. Given the change year on year is of the order of 80m and the sheer scale, I have to ask "how do they do that!?!" These are estimates and lots of work from lots of people with lots of statistical analysis must go into arriving at those final figures. You'd expect a blip over 5 years to be the result of some black swan event like bad weather or a war. But it might just as easily be the result of a change in reporting method. I don't think you should pay too much attention to it. In some ways the argument of "no change in rate" is easier if you just smooth the graph and look at the time to add another 1b which is hovering around 12 years for the last 4 instances. I'm wondering how many other myths are being built on an inaccurate interpretation of the figures. For a long time, the climate denialists pushed the "Pause" myth based on a small blip in the temperature record. They even had important climate scientists trying to cover themselves and explain it away. Until it turned out there was no pause. The "De-Carbonisation", "Uncoupling of GDP from resource" myth may well have been based on China mis-reporting carbon generation and GDP figures. So how about "Global inequality is dropping" and "Global Poverty is dropping". Is it possible these too are based on a selective reading of stats? So the percentage of the total in absolute poverty is going down, but only because the big total is going up. I was a bit shocked to find one set of figures that showed the same total number of people in poverty in 1820 as in 2000 That throws a different light on what progress achieved in that time. We didn't cure poverty or lift people out of poverty. But we did add 6b or so to the list of non-poor. So what else is being peddled as a simple interpretation of the world that is based on a fundamental mis-statement of the numbers? — I need some help with terminology as short hand to describe some common internet states of mind, argumentative strategies and their associated problems. And also to get some stuff off my chest. 1. Pacing the cage. When a particular piece of perceived bullshit starts acting as a brain worm. You get drawn into online arguments. Which prompts deeper and deeper research. That leads to rabbit holes full of partially summarised misinformation. As you try and build arguments in your head that are unassailable. Until you start dreaming about the problem. And talking about it to your family across the dinner table. Along the way you find yourself looking for the evidence that the research papers and the articles summarising them all belong to some shadowy echo chamber of conspiracy with an agenda. And you start behaving like a crazy person. Until finally something snaps you out of it or the next brain worm comes along.  2. Wilful misinterpretation of statistics to justify a standpoint. A classic example is interpreting straight line growth as a drop in percentage growth which is then seen as a good thing - "growth has been dropping for decades" - as if this implies that it will drop to zero. When in fact the linear growth is absolutely constant and showing no signs of changing. Then there's interpreting a drop in the rate of increase in growth as "Flatlining" when yearly output is already the highest its ever been and even if the rate of increase was linear or even dropped to zero from now on, we'd be in a world of hurt. Another is denial of a model that shows a future discontinuity because we haven't got there yet and right now we're still on the up slope of the model. That goes both ways. Business as Usual is fine because there's no evidence of a wall. vs Business as Usual is disastrous because the wall is coming up fast, we just haven't hit it yet.   3. False equivalence and false balance. eg this kind of mythbusting: "Exponential growth is happening and we're all doomed." The article claims that because growth isn't exponential today therefore we're not all doomed. Even though the linear growth is huge and the limit still exists. This gets used to explain why it's all gravy and the future is all fine. But then the false balance comes in and it goes on to say that "Some people say we shouldn't be complacent because there are still problems.". There's an appeal to realism but it's buried at the end where the skim readers will miss it. This kind of thing is common in pop-sci articles with names like "The science myths that will not die". The trouble is that once you notice the double think in one entry, it casts doubt on all the others.  The particular one that's winding me up at the moment is straight line growth in global population that is described as a falling rate. It's only falling because the percentage growth rate is used as a shorthand and under linear growth that inevitably drops. See for example this graph. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/466546a/box/3.html Straight line growth with wishful thinking that the linear growth will drop at some stage in the 30-100 year future. And this line is marked up with the falling exponential growth rate. So in the time that the population doubled it's percentage growth rate halved. But I shouldn't have to tell you that the population still doubled. And it's still adding another billion every 12 years. And this is not good. Now there is a story here about how population followed a sigma shaped "Logistic" curve with a first phase that is exponential. A mid phase that is linear (were we are now) and a possible future drop off leading to a peak plateau. And there are justifications (used by studies like those from the UN) for why it might gently fall back after reaching the plateau with arguments as to if this is 50 or 150 years in the future. Then there are arguments about the validity of the model and whether resource constraints imply a LtoG, Seneca-cliff style overshoot, crash and burn or if it can be a nice smooth soft landing curve. But that complexity gets reduced to "If it's published in Nature then it must be right", and the kind of simple, boiled-down message pushed by people like the Eco-modernists and various other techno-optimists. What might have been a sensible debate just ended up with "Growth is falling. Doom is cancelled. Business as usual is OK. If you disagree you're a pessimistic idiot". Then there's the aftermath of the Paris talks. I have to be glad that the world and it's politicians may finally be paying attention to climate change. For a week or so anyway. The UK Nasty party couldn't even wait a week before cancelling renewable subsidies, approving fracking under national parks, putting a hold on on-shore wind farms and promoting Gas Powered power stations, giving France+China ridiculously favourable terms on long term nuclear and on, and on. But what's really scary is not so much the capitalists because they're behaving true to form. It's the double think of the people claiming a historic agreement on Climate Change. They're hoping (in public anyway) for rapid drops in CO2 emissions, global scale implementation of carbon capture systems in the future and keeping temp rise below 1.5C or 2C by 2100. Except that right now we're still following the worst possible RCP 8.5 prediction. That's the one where we burn through all the fossil fuels as fast as possible in a #Terafart of atmospheric carbon emissions. So when do we admit to ourselves in public that the goals are noble but actually pipe dreams and impossible. It's the intellectual dishonesty that is getting to me. We know this but we're saying something different for political expediency. Why even talk about 1.5C if it's a physical impossibility? Which comes back to point (2) above. Whenever we're currently on a simple path of linear or exponential growth, and have been for years, but someone is arguing that it will all change in the near future, we should be cautious. Whether that change is positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic. They or we better have a good argument and good justification for why it's different this time and things will inevitably change. Because it's a future prediction based on a model, please explain to me why the model makes more sense than any other. And don't dismiss a whole model just because you don't like a couple of the assumptions it's built on. Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song. 
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Commented on postNice reddit. I especially liked this. After the talk the sponsor said to him, “you know what, I’m gonna pass because I just don’t feel inspired… you should be more like Malcolm Gladwell .”
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Commented on post by EcomodernismJudging by the UN's population figures, the total population changed from exponential growth to linear growth some time in the 60s  and we've been adding ~80m per year, ~800m per decade ever since with no real sign of this linear growth slowing. In mid 2015, they revised their predictions upwards to hit 10B 6 years earlier in 2056 and to hit 11.2b in 2100. If the demographic transition to lower birth rates and eventually to zero growth and a peak population is going to happen, when should we start to see it? Because right now we seem to be on the linear part of the sigmoid logistic curve. The transition to slower growth simply isn't happening yet.  http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/ http://www.worldometers.info/news/ — Great +NYTimes documentary on the unrealized horrors of population explosion, featuring Manifesto coauthor +Stewart Brand: “How many years do you have to not have the world end” to reach a conclusion that “maybe it didn’t end because that reason was wrong?”
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyStill pacing this cage. Have some numbers! 5 year growth in world population in millions using data from the UN here http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/ 1955  233.17 1960  260.03 1965  304.15 1970  359.99 1975  378.91 1980  378.23 1985  412.91 1990  457.13 1995  425.46 2000  391.50 2005  393.01 2010  410.09 2015  419.75 So for the last 30 years and possibly the last 40, world population growth has been pretty close to linear at around 400m per 5 year and 800m per decade. I'm not sure where the wobble comes from around that figure. Just errors in the estimation and reporting, especially from 3rd world countries? What about that apparent dip around 2005 Is that more statistical inaccuracy from China to go with their GDP and coal use figures? Going back further it does look like growth was accelerating and exponential up to the peak in 1980-1990 or so when the upward curve flattens out and become linear growth. What I really can't see is any convincing drop off in that growth that would be evidence of total population peaking any time soon (assuming business as usual continues for the next 30 years, say). Mid 2015, the UN revised their future growth figures. They think the total will hit 10B 6 years earlier than previously thought.  http://www.worldometers.info/news/ Their view is that the previous estimates all the way out to 2100 were under-estimated and actual growth is now expected to be faster reaching 11.2b in 2100. So again, I just can't see evidence for the techno-optimist view that "progress" will result in a peak and gentle fall back in total population. If that will happen, it hasn't started happening yet. Sadly a Black Swan crash still feels more likely some time before 2100. What's interesting here is to watch the opinion makers continue to promote ideas based on a blip in the figures in the first few years of this century. At what point do they admit that they might have been mistaken? — I need some help with terminology as short hand to describe some common internet states of mind, argumentative strategies and their associated problems. And also to get some stuff off my chest. 1. Pacing the cage. When a particular piece of perceived bullshit starts acting as a brain worm. You get drawn into online arguments. Which prompts deeper and deeper research. That leads to rabbit holes full of partially summarised misinformation. As you try and build arguments in your head that are unassailable. Until you start dreaming about the problem. And talking about it to your family across the dinner table. Along the way you find yourself looking for the evidence that the research papers and the articles summarising them all belong to some shadowy echo chamber of conspiracy with an agenda. And you start behaving like a crazy person. Until finally something snaps you out of it or the next brain worm comes along.  2. Wilful misinterpretation of statistics to justify a standpoint. A classic example is interpreting straight line growth as a drop in percentage growth which is then seen as a good thing - "growth has been dropping for decades" - as if this implies that it will drop to zero. When in fact the linear growth is absolutely constant and showing no signs of changing. Then there's interpreting a drop in the rate of increase in growth as "Flatlining" when yearly output is already the highest its ever been and even if the rate of increase was linear or even dropped to zero from now on, we'd be in a world of hurt. Another is denial of a model that shows a future discontinuity because we haven't got there yet and right now we're still on the up slope of the model. That goes both ways. Business as Usual is fine because there's no evidence of a wall. vs Business as Usual is disastrous because the wall is coming up fast, we just haven't hit it yet.   3. False equivalence and false balance. eg this kind of mythbusting: "Exponential growth is happening and we're all doomed." The article claims that because growth isn't exponential today therefore we're not all doomed. Even though the linear growth is huge and the limit still exists. This gets used to explain why it's all gravy and the future is all fine. But then the false balance comes in and it goes on to say that "Some people say we shouldn't be complacent because there are still problems.". There's an appeal to realism but it's buried at the end where the skim readers will miss it. This kind of thing is common in pop-sci articles with names like "The science myths that will not die". The trouble is that once you notice the double think in one entry, it casts doubt on all the others.  The particular one that's winding me up at the moment is straight line growth in global population that is described as a falling rate. It's only falling because the percentage growth rate is used as a shorthand and under linear growth that inevitably drops. See for example this graph. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/466546a/box/3.html Straight line growth with wishful thinking that the linear growth will drop at some stage in the 30-100 year future. And this line is marked up with the falling exponential growth rate. So in the time that the population doubled it's percentage growth rate halved. But I shouldn't have to tell you that the population still doubled. And it's still adding another billion every 12 years. And this is not good. Now there is a story here about how population followed a sigma shaped "Logistic" curve with a first phase that is exponential. A mid phase that is linear (were we are now) and a possible future drop off leading to a peak plateau. And there are justifications (used by studies like those from the UN) for why it might gently fall back after reaching the plateau with arguments as to if this is 50 or 150 years in the future. Then there are arguments about the validity of the model and whether resource constraints imply a LtoG, Seneca-cliff style overshoot, crash and burn or if it can be a nice smooth soft landing curve. But that complexity gets reduced to "If it's published in Nature then it must be right", and the kind of simple, boiled-down message pushed by people like the Eco-modernists and various other techno-optimists. What might have been a sensible debate just ended up with "Growth is falling. Doom is cancelled. Business as usual is OK. If you disagree you're a pessimistic idiot". Then there's the aftermath of the Paris talks. I have to be glad that the world and it's politicians may finally be paying attention to climate change. For a week or so anyway. The UK Nasty party couldn't even wait a week before cancelling renewable subsidies, approving fracking under national parks, putting a hold on on-shore wind farms and promoting Gas Powered power stations, giving France+China ridiculously favourable terms on long term nuclear and on, and on. But what's really scary is not so much the capitalists because they're behaving true to form. It's the double think of the people claiming a historic agreement on Climate Change. They're hoping (in public anyway) for rapid drops in CO2 emissions, global scale implementation of carbon capture systems in the future and keeping temp rise below 1.5C or 2C by 2100. Except that right now we're still following the worst possible RCP 8.5 prediction. That's the one where we burn through all the fossil fuels as fast as possible in a #Terafart of atmospheric carbon emissions. So when do we admit to ourselves in public that the goals are noble but actually pipe dreams and impossible. It's the intellectual dishonesty that is getting to me. We know this but we're saying something different for political expediency. Why even talk about 1.5C if it's a physical impossibility? Which comes back to point (2) above. Whenever we're currently on a simple path of linear or exponential growth, and have been for years, but someone is arguing that it will all change in the near future, we should be cautious. Whether that change is positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic. They or we better have a good argument and good justification for why it's different this time and things will inevitably change. Because it's a future prediction based on a model, please explain to me why the model makes more sense than any other. And don't dismiss a whole model just because you don't like a couple of the assumptions it's built on. Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song. 
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Commented on postApologies for de-railing this thread somewhat. Dig into The Edge a bit deeper and I'm struggling to understand the intended audience and the worth of the exercise. It's actually beginning to feel a bit strange to have these important talking heads push their personal messages but with no way for the reader to talk back. There also seems to be no attempt to go back and correct previous responses in the light of new information. So the essays are frozen in time complete with both their accuracies and inaccuracies. And as in my previous rants, the lack of citations and links in a web based publication also grates when a lot of the essays contain statements of fact. Especially when those statements of fact don't look quite right.  The choice of writer is curious but also feels familiar. This isn't the first time, Martin Rees, Brian Eno, Richard Dawkins and Kevin Kelly have shared a platform! And yet there's a substantial number of relatively unknown topic specialists surrounding the people who are primarily famous for having an opinion. The problem is that if you cherry pick reading the people you know will annoy you, sure enough you get annoyed.
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Commented on post by Brighton E-bikes in Electric BikesBafang <> Cute. This particular bike has the Bafang mid-drive which is pretty much unique. They also make geared hub motors for both front and back and so do Cute. However the Cute and Bafang hubs are completely different designs even though more or less similar. — Bafanged up Santa Cruz Superlight. Cheap thrills. #moresmilepermile  
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyCreepy, how? I suspect you're not talking about the USA or about NSA/GCHQ style surveillance. And time scale. Time scale is everything. Which of the 1-10-100-1k-10k-100k year futures are we talking about? — I had an epiphany today: The actual future will look borderline creepy to the present.
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Commented on postNote that India and most of China are largely vegetarian with dairy and eggs already. In fact this is true of most of South/East Asia and Oceania, even the muslim parts. That's half the world's population.
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Commented on postI wonder if you can turn the story on it's head. To a first approximation, there's the same number of poor (1b or so) in the same position (subsistence agriculture) as before. But what recent civilisation has done is to create 5b new people or so, and given them jobs in cities where they don't get counted as poor as such. So people haven't been lifted out of poverty. They've moved away from it or were never in it. The one's who stayed behind are still poor. The question then is whether the earth can support the 5b or so in cities indefinitely and for those cities to keep on growing. Cities are efficient wealth generators but they also consume large amounts of resources that have to be brought into them. And arguably they are much less resilient.
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Commented on postThe whole exercise is just a bit of fun and really not that important. Except that the people quoted are also "thought leaders" who make a living out of expressing their opinions. And just as the short essays make you want to scream "Citation Needed", so do their books and lectures. One of the things that is really beginning to irritate me is the use of percentages without also talking about total numbers. So for instance, the number of people in absolute poverty has dropped from 52% to 21% between 1980 and 2010. This IS an amazing achievement. Except of course that the total population has also grown from 4.5B to 7B in the same time. So the total numbers in absolute poverty haven't dropped nearly as much. You can cherry pick the numbers quite differently and show that the same number of people (about 1b) were in absolute poverty in 1820 as in 2010. So despite nearly 2 centuries of unbelievable progress the bottom 1b people are still just as fucked. But that doesn't fit the techno-optimist narrative quite so well. It's also equally intellectually dishonest. Because it does look like the total number of people in absolute poverty is also trending down. Things are getting better even for the most disadvantaged. Just not as well as we'd like to think. Numbers taken from here. They may or may not be accurate. http://ourworldindata.org/VisualHistoryOf/Hunger.html#/title-slide
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Commented on postI came across "declinist" here. http://edge.org/response-detail/26669 It seems to be a term of abuse somewhat similar to "Warmist" or "Leftist" denigrating not just pessimism, or that things are worse than they appear but that any suggestion that indefinite growth is bad should be sneered at.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in EnvironmentOh good grief. — Instead of using humans to colonise and terraform Mars into Planet B, I think we should use Tardigrade water bears. They can go on the generation ships to the nearest star system with a goldilocks planet as well. With some mushroom spores. It shouldn't take more than half a billion years or so to result in some intelligent life that can talk back.  http://www.sciencealert.com/the-tardigrade-genome-has-been-sequenced-and-it-has-the-most-foreign-dna-of-any-animal
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in EnvironmentAmusement? — Instead of using humans to colonise and terraform Mars into Planet B, I think we should use Tardigrade water bears. They can go on the generation ships to the nearest star system with a goldilocks planet as well. With some mushroom spores. It shouldn't take more than half a billion years or so to result in some intelligent life that can talk back.  http://www.sciencealert.com/the-tardigrade-genome-has-been-sequenced-and-it-has-the-most-foreign-dna-of-any-animal
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Commented on postThe good news is that there's loads of money to be made out of Climate Change mitigation and adaptation.
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Commented on post by Jason Humm in ChromecastIt would be nice if the desktop Web version did Cast as well as the apps. Why doesn't it? I've left them feedback which they've acknowledged so they do know it's needed. — Feedback on my free trial of Premium +TuneIn 
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeLook at the Indian Sub-Continent as a whole. It appears to contain a perfect storm of factors. - 1.6b people growing at 20m/year. Maybe 2b by 2030. - Nowhere to go since the land routes out all involve 15,000ft passes that are easily defensible and that already have military presence. The exceptions are into Myanmar which is dense jungle. Or into Iran and that route's harsh and lawless. The sea routes are difficult, long and the likely destinations uninviting. All of which makes any mass migration out very unlikely.  - Pollution problems (see Delhi) - Rising sea water problems. - One country (India) that controls water flow to two others (Pakistan, Bangla Desh) - Dysfunctional governments - Religion - Nuclear weapons - Severe and increasing danger of Black Flag weather every year. That's a combination of heat and humidity that kills humans without air conditioning. - Mass exposure to Black Swan weather. Bangla Desh in particular is densely populated and prone to flooding. But so are the poorest states in India. - Very rich anarcho-capitalists, in control of technological industry, powered by very large reserves of coal but with little oil. That's quite a pressure cooker. — The worst effects of global warming in Pakistan so far http://nation.com.pk/national/01-Jan-2016/worst-effects-of-global-warming pakistani climate january 2016
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Just for FunThis is a re-run of Hunter Thompson meets Richard Nixon, amirite? — “Just Tell Him You’re the President” Seinfeld interviews the President, proving once and for all that Barack Obama is far and away our coolest Commander in Chief yet. This is not just funny and endearing, but it's actually quite interesting - particularly the parts about politics as American football and dealing with the corruption that comes with privilege and power. Worth the 18 minutes to watch.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea Society+Alex Schleber If we are indeed on a 4C+ trajectory, I don't see how population growth will continue at currently projected rates Therein lies the problem with simplistic models that only look at one aspect of the whole problem. If business as usual carries on till 2100, we'll hit 12B people at least. But we'll also burn though all the easily accessible carbon making >4C a certainty, which means current structures can't support 12B people. Each graph in isolation looks like a smooth curve on an indefinite upward slope. We just argue about how steep and for how long. Reality promises to be considerably more complex than that. And yet, right now, all the curves are still steadily rising if not accelerating. We really haven't started with any adaptation or mitigation. Never mind. Tomorrow morning is a new year. — For Humans to cope with Climate Change relatively painlessly for the greatest number, we have to :- 1) Get to zero GHG emissions as fast as possible 2) Get to sustainability as fast as possible 3) Mitigate the likely effects as far as we can 4) Adapt controllably before the Earth's systems force us to adapt catastrophically This raises some interesting questions :- - What's the maximum global population for a technological society that is sustainable indefinitely? - What's the minimum viable population size? One that can still build a sufficiently large hierarchy to support things like silicon chip foundaries or an electric grid. - How do we get from where we are now with 7.4B people to somewhere between these two limits?  - How do we spread the process out over a long enough timescale that it doesn't involve mass excess deaths and is a soft landing rather than the full crash and burn. - In the relatively short term, where would you tell your children and grandchildren to move to, to have the best hope of riding out the changes and with a reasonably happy and productive life? That's not just physical location, but social and skills locations as well. I've seen suggestions of each continent's Great Lakes plus a few outliers like Chile. But I suspect something naturally defensible might also be a factor.  - What does "mitigate the likely effects" actually mean? More trees or solar sunshades in low earth orbit? Or perhaps more flood defences. - What does "adapt to global warming" actually mean? Does it just mean migrating away from the Persian Gulf and Florida? There's a LOT of detail wrapped up in that. Not least because we're starting from where we are now in late 2015. And because the questions imply we're talking about trying to direct a hive mind of >7B individual nodes. And come up with answers from first principles. Neither of which may actually be possible. Much more likely is "Humans will strive to expand their global civilization until it becomes physically impossible to do so." and "Since we can't fix it as individuals and we can't get off the planet we might as well point out the interesting bits to each other as the ship sinks." If >4C rise and >12B people by 2100 is a given, then what?
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Unconditional IncomeThe problem with payday loans is not the loan as such. It's the lack of regulation and the 1750% APR (and upwards). Both of these are things that can and should be fixed by the state. And I find it astonishing that the potential for abuse of this aspect of the economy is used as a reason against social programs. But then I don't live in the USA. Such arguments seem to be common there.  If the basic income or negative income tax was set around the minimum poverty wage, then employers would have to pay a higher living wage to compete. That is no bad thing. That's why I'm in favour of the negative tax approach, because it retains the incentive to work to do better than minimum and provides an incentive to employers to pay a realistic and better wage. And the biggest reason for the state to do it, is to make social security more efficient, less costly to run. And to turn more people into actively consuming members of society that are no longer stuck in a poverty trap. — This experiment is being crowdfunded. That's not the way it should/would be done in the long run; universal income should be funded by profits from the core economy rather than by workers in that economy making personal sacrifices -- but it makes sense to do this just to prove the principle again and again in different contexts, and to promote awareness of the idea and the fact that it works.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesAnd then there's Portia. http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=208 That's likely to just sit there until it works out where the red dot is coming from and plans a route to drop onto your head 3 hours later when you've forgotten what you were doing.   — It's fuzzy, it chases laser pointers, and it has eight legs – it's like having two cats! Via +Andres Soolo 
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Unconditional IncomeHaving the income tax threshold below the poverty line seems like craziness. And having the statutory minimum wage also below the poverty line is stupid but common. Presumably both of these then need to be shored up with social security programmes.  I was more interested in the mechanics and side effects rather than the basic principle. It seems self-evident to me that social support for the people without enough is a good and necessary thing. But then I come from a society that was notionally left of centre and Social-Democratic for a while. If you accept that then, you can drip feed them benefits, give them a guaranteed basic income. Or you could include them in the income tax system, but pay them negative income tax below a poverty threshold. All of these have advantages and disadvantages. Where all these schemes go wrong is when they turn into subsidies for business because they allow businesses to cut their wage bill by relying on the state to top it up. To paraphrase; If you were given $1000pm (and could just about live on that) but could earn $2000pm by working, would you amount to anything? — This experiment is being crowdfunded. That's not the way it should/would be done in the long run; universal income should be funded by profits from the core economy rather than by workers in that economy making personal sacrifices -- but it makes sense to do this just to prove the principle again and again in different contexts, and to promote awareness of the idea and the fact that it works.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Unconditional Income #lazyweb  Is there any analysis out there of the differences between basic income (paid automatically to everyone) vs guaranteed minimum income (negative income tax up to a minimum). And further, analysis of the relationship between both and minimum wage controls to prevent corporations paying less than a living wage while relying on the government to make up the difference. In theory, there's a whole raft of social security, benefits schemes, payments and their administration that could be automated away by replacing them with either basic income or negative income tax. Those savings might well pay for the whole scheme.  — This experiment is being crowdfunded. That's not the way it should/would be done in the long run; universal income should be funded by profits from the core economy rather than by workers in that economy making personal sacrifices -- but it makes sense to do this just to prove the principle again and again in different contexts, and to promote awareness of the idea and the fact that it works.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in History+Elaine Jenkins What makes you think it's different this time around? — "Things are not getting worse; things have always been this bad. Nothing is more consoling than the long perspective of history. It will perk you up no end to go back and read the works of progressives past. You will learn therein that things back then were also terrible, and what’s more, they were always getting worse. This is most inspiriting." -- Molly Ivins
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Commented on post by Alex Schleber in Climate ChangeMoney to be made out of Mitigation and Adaptation. Why yes, of course there is. — ...
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Models & FramesVery roughly, - Copenhagen. The maths is our subjective attempt to understand, not the objective reality. So philosophical interpretations of the maths don't necessarily get us any closer to objective truth.  - Many worlds. It all happens, somewhere. We only see one of all possible outcomes. - Hidden Variable. There's another dimension we can't access where the paradoxes are resolved. All three feel like cheats to me. But the Copenhagen interpretation is perhaps less of a cheat than the other two. I discovered Brown via RA Wilson, of course. The Laws of Form is a particularly elegant attempt to derive all maths from logic in the style of Russell-Whitehead but much, much smaller. 5 pages instead of 500! — Maths is hard => Modeling is hard. Maths is an artifact of civilisation => Our models are an artifact of civilisation What is the essence of mathematics?... Is the mathematics that we practic today the only possible mathematics? Or is it a mathematics that is a great artifact of our civilisation -- sort of an accidental artifact? The conclusion I've resoundingly come to is that the mathematics we have today is in fact really a historical artifact. -- Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica, on maths. He continues to note that even relatively simple mathematical axiom systems, such as formal logic, exist within a conceptual space. Our formal logic is about the 50,000th possible system that could exist, all equally valid. And that since maths are used to describe other models of the universe, the models we have of the universe, being dependent on an artifact of civilisation, are therefore also artifacts. Useful at describing reality, but not reality itself. See also: territory-map confusion.
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate Change- Exxon - Revision of estimates that all the models and policy are based on. eg. China's coal use up, Global GDP down, Global Emissions up, UN Population graphs up. - Late December weather — The EIGHT biggest climate stories of 2015 1 -- The globe has been crazy hot all year. 2 -- Our days of a world below 400 parts per million of CO2 are behind us. 3 -- Climate action on the international level looks more realistic than ever. 4 -- El Niño has set records and piqued public interest.  5 -- Sea level rise projections are, well, on the rise. 6 -- Religious leaders, including Pope Francis lend some climate hope. 7 -- Attributing extreme weather events to climate change, especially heat, is easier than ever. 8 -- NASA’s amazing visuals and science are making climate change clearer and clearer. http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-storylines-of-the-year-19842 warming change extreme weather
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Models & FramesI'm sure you've all read Godel, Escher, Bach. And you're familiar with the 3 main interpretations of Quantum physics, especially the Copenhagen interpretation. Certainly aware of Russell and Whitehead and maybe even General Semantics. But not many people seem to have come across G Spencer Brown and The Laws of Form. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_Form http://www.manuelugarte.org/modulos/biblioteca/b/G-Spencer-Brown-Laws-of-Form.pdf Every morning I wake up and I'm reminded that there does at least appear to be an objective reality. And that objective reality does appear to contain the number line. But I still don't really understand who it is that makes the grass green or created non-Euclidean geometry. — Maths is hard => Modeling is hard. Maths is an artifact of civilisation => Our models are an artifact of civilisation What is the essence of mathematics?... Is the mathematics that we practic today the only possible mathematics? Or is it a mathematics that is a great artifact of our civilisation -- sort of an accidental artifact? The conclusion I've resoundingly come to is that the mathematics we have today is in fact really a historical artifact. -- Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica, on maths. He continues to note that even relatively simple mathematical axiom systems, such as formal logic, exist within a conceptual space. Our formal logic is about the 50,000th possible system that could exist, all equally valid. And that since maths are used to describe other models of the universe, the models we have of the universe, being dependent on an artifact of civilisation, are therefore also artifacts. Useful at describing reality, but not reality itself. See also: territory-map confusion.
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Commented on post by Alex Diaz Eco in Climate ChangeI know what the words mean. I don't know what actions they are supposed to represent or what the hell we're actually going to do. 1) Plant trees. Install solar and wind power. Invent stuff. 2) Migrate away from Black Flag weather locations like Florida or the Persian Gulf. But what else. And what do we think the people of the Indian Sub-continent should do. — The ultimate test COP21 is behind us, and lucky for us, the holiday season followed and has given us a few days to reflect on what it means. One of the meanings is, in fact, our very search for meaning. Given that Paris did not come close to solving the problem, this is a good place to start, and here's a great opinion piece with plenty to chew on, including the imperative to love the fate we have -- amor fati -- as we move aggressively to improve it.
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Commented on post by Benjamin Craft-Rendon in Climate ChangeWhisky Tango Foxtrot! — So the North Pole may go above freezing during winter this week: "By early Wednesday, temperatures at the North Pole are expected to exceed 1 degree Celsius readings. Such temperatures are in the range of more than 40 degrees Celsius (72 degrees Fahrenheit) above average." #climatechaos
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & Diversion+steve taylor Think you missed out the wget, gzip, tar steps — apt-get install lightbulb h/t reddit, which offers some additions https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3ydqfa/how_many_gnulinux_users_are_needed_to_change_a/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyAs near as I can tell the UN is not expecting a peak in population this century under most of the models. Growth may slow down but not peak. http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/ Here's some quotes from middle of this year. --- http://www.worldometers.info/news/ On July 29, 2015, the United Nations Population Division released its World Population Prospects: 2015 Revision. According to these latest projections, which are released every two years, the world population will reach 8.5 billion people in 2030 (the previous estimate was 8.4 billion), 9.7 billion people in 2050 (up from the previously estimated 9.55 billion), and 11.2 billion people in 2100 (up from the previously estimated 10.8 billion). All these figures refer to the medium fertility hypothesis. After the 7 billion mark reached in 2011, the next milestone of 8 billion is now projected to be passed in the year 2024 (unchanged from the previous estimate), 9 billion in 2038 (two years earlier than previously estimated), and 10 billion people is now the estimated world population of 2056 (the previously estimated year for the 10 billion milestone was 2062). --- So it looks like the UN is revising their figures to show faster growth than previously expected. I'm not sure about Hans Rosling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling He's clearly intelligent. And for a while there was making a living from peddling a fairly utopian view of the future. But I don't think his background automatically qualifies him as a truth sayer. — For Humans to cope with Climate Change relatively painlessly for the greatest number, we have to :- 1) Get to zero GHG emissions as fast as possible 2) Get to sustainability as fast as possible 3) Mitigate the likely effects as far as we can 4) Adapt controllably before the Earth's systems force us to adapt catastrophically This raises some interesting questions :- - What's the maximum global population for a technological society that is sustainable indefinitely? - What's the minimum viable population size? One that can still build a sufficiently large hierarchy to support things like silicon chip foundaries or an electric grid. - How do we get from where we are now with 7.4B people to somewhere between these two limits?  - How do we spread the process out over a long enough timescale that it doesn't involve mass excess deaths and is a soft landing rather than the full crash and burn. - In the relatively short term, where would you tell your children and grandchildren to move to, to have the best hope of riding out the changes and with a reasonably happy and productive life? That's not just physical location, but social and skills locations as well. I've seen suggestions of each continent's Great Lakes plus a few outliers like Chile. But I suspect something naturally defensible might also be a factor.  - What does "mitigate the likely effects" actually mean? More trees or solar sunshades in low earth orbit? Or perhaps more flood defences. - What does "adapt to global warming" actually mean? Does it just mean migrating away from the Persian Gulf and Florida? There's a LOT of detail wrapped up in that. Not least because we're starting from where we are now in late 2015. And because the questions imply we're talking about trying to direct a hive mind of >7B individual nodes. And come up with answers from first principles. Neither of which may actually be possible. Much more likely is "Humans will strive to expand their global civilization until it becomes physically impossible to do so." and "Since we can't fix it as individuals and we can't get off the planet we might as well point out the interesting bits to each other as the ship sinks." If >4C rise and >12B people by 2100 is a given, then what?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea Society+Bob Calder Maximum for indefinite sustainability? Or peak population? Because I reckon Rosling would be wrong on both counts there with 9b. I think the peak will be well over 9b short of some existential crisis. While I can't imagine how 9b is sustainable without fossil fuels. In a warming planet. With all the other resource constraints   +Steve S  The one figure I'm most curious about is the minimum population and structures to support a technological future. Work backwards from a mobile phone and think about just how much infrastructure and activity is required to be able to support a global society that can keep making them. With GPS. — For Humans to cope with Climate Change relatively painlessly for the greatest number, we have to :- 1) Get to zero GHG emissions as fast as possible 2) Get to sustainability as fast as possible 3) Mitigate the likely effects as far as we can 4) Adapt controllably before the Earth's systems force us to adapt catastrophically This raises some interesting questions :- - What's the maximum global population for a technological society that is sustainable indefinitely? - What's the minimum viable population size? One that can still build a sufficiently large hierarchy to support things like silicon chip foundaries or an electric grid. - How do we get from where we are now with 7.4B people to somewhere between these two limits?  - How do we spread the process out over a long enough timescale that it doesn't involve mass excess deaths and is a soft landing rather than the full crash and burn. - In the relatively short term, where would you tell your children and grandchildren to move to, to have the best hope of riding out the changes and with a reasonably happy and productive life? That's not just physical location, but social and skills locations as well. I've seen suggestions of each continent's Great Lakes plus a few outliers like Chile. But I suspect something naturally defensible might also be a factor.  - What does "mitigate the likely effects" actually mean? More trees or solar sunshades in low earth orbit? Or perhaps more flood defences. - What does "adapt to global warming" actually mean? Does it just mean migrating away from the Persian Gulf and Florida? There's a LOT of detail wrapped up in that. Not least because we're starting from where we are now in late 2015. And because the questions imply we're talking about trying to direct a hive mind of >7B individual nodes. And come up with answers from first principles. Neither of which may actually be possible. Much more likely is "Humans will strive to expand their global civilization until it becomes physically impossible to do so." and "Since we can't fix it as individuals and we can't get off the planet we might as well point out the interesting bits to each other as the ship sinks." If >4C rise and >12B people by 2100 is a given, then what?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in LimitsGrrr. Copy text disabled via javascript. The biggest effects so far have come from fracking, which has ended fears about peak oil and could, if properly regulated, be some help on climate change: Fracked gas is still fossil fuel, but burning it generates a lot less greenhouse emissions than burning coal those of us asserting that protecting the environment was consistent with growth used to be somewhat vague about the details, simply asserting that given the right incentives the private sector would find a way. But we have made enough progress in the technology of things that saving the world has suddenly become much more plausible. Where to begin? Krugman still seems to be peddling delusions. And the article isn't really about the headline or the first para. Those are just hooks to hang another of his quasi-optimistic opinion pieces on. As someone who woke up in about 1970 and graduated the same year as Krugman got his PhD, I'm fond of the feeling that nothing much has changed socially, politically or in economics since 1970. But it's a failure of memory as much as anything. It just feels like we're fighting the same battles over and over again. — The Great Stagnation: Technology ...I got my Ph.D. in 1977, the year of the first Star Wars movie, which means that I have basically spent my whole professional life in an era of technological disappointment. Until the 1970s, almost everyone believed that advancing technology would do in the future what it had done in the past: produce rapid, unmistakable improvement in just about every aspect of life. But it didn’t. And while social factors — above all, soaring inequality — have played an important role in that disappointment, it’s also true that in most respects technology has fallen short of expectations.... Dr. Krugman does point to some areas of promise, most especially in renewable energy. There's some cause for optimism, but progress remains frustratingly limited, particularly compared to the techno-optimism of the 1950s and 1960s -- "power too cheap to meter". http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/25/opinion/things-to-celebrate-like-dreams-of-flying-cars.html
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Commented on post by Alex Diaz Eco in Climate Change- What does mitigate the worst effects of global warming actually mean? - What does adapt to global warming actually mean? — The ultimate test COP21 is behind us, and lucky for us, the holiday season followed and has given us a few days to reflect on what it means. One of the meanings is, in fact, our very search for meaning. Given that Paris did not come close to solving the problem, this is a good place to start, and here's a great opinion piece with plenty to chew on, including the imperative to love the fate we have -- amor fati -- as we move aggressively to improve it.
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Commented on post by Thomas Morffew in Digital (Old Collection)Indian sub-continent. 1.66b growing at 20m/y. Nowhere to go or expand into. At risk from several climate change/pollution problems. Effectively unlimited coal but no oil. Dysfunctional governments. Religious. Nuclear weapons. Major inequality from a super-rich super-class, substantial technologically-aware middle class and a huge underclass. That's quite a pressure cooker. So where are they on the net? Because from the English speaking West they're invisible. — Digital stats for India.
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Commented on postThe previous left wing government did the same thing. As did the right wing government before that. I could say I didn't vote for any of that, but I live in a boring middle class, relatively wealthy, predominantly right wing area that is a safe Tory seat. The incumbent is a boring back bencher who doesn't vote often but always votes to the whip. His greatest claim to fame is that he saved the post office in the county town from closure. So any petitions, emails, letters or whatever are just water off a duck's back. For too many people it's a nasty, grim, meathook existence that is nasty, grim and contains meathooks. We can do better than that.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyLots of chickens, just like everywhere. Not many pigs, for religious reasons. Malaria, Polio (thanks, CIA), plenty of other parasites. Antibiotic resistance could hurt but not necessarily much more than elsewhere. At least there's plenty of diversity in the agriculture and it's largely vegetarian while accepting of dairy. — I need some help with terminology as short hand to describe some common internet states of mind, argumentative strategies and their associated problems. And also to get some stuff off my chest. 1. Pacing the cage. When a particular piece of perceived bullshit starts acting as a brain worm. You get drawn into online arguments. Which prompts deeper and deeper research. That leads to rabbit holes full of partially summarised misinformation. As you try and build arguments in your head that are unassailable. Until you start dreaming about the problem. And talking about it to your family across the dinner table. Along the way you find yourself looking for the evidence that the research papers and the articles summarising them all belong to some shadowy echo chamber of conspiracy with an agenda. And you start behaving like a crazy person. Until finally something snaps you out of it or the next brain worm comes along.  2. Wilful misinterpretation of statistics to justify a standpoint. A classic example is interpreting straight line growth as a drop in percentage growth which is then seen as a good thing - "growth has been dropping for decades" - as if this implies that it will drop to zero. When in fact the linear growth is absolutely constant and showing no signs of changing. Then there's interpreting a drop in the rate of increase in growth as "Flatlining" when yearly output is already the highest its ever been and even if the rate of increase was linear or even dropped to zero from now on, we'd be in a world of hurt. Another is denial of a model that shows a future discontinuity because we haven't got there yet and right now we're still on the up slope of the model. That goes both ways. Business as Usual is fine because there's no evidence of a wall. vs Business as Usual is disastrous because the wall is coming up fast, we just haven't hit it yet.   3. False equivalence and false balance. eg this kind of mythbusting: "Exponential growth is happening and we're all doomed." The article claims that because growth isn't exponential today therefore we're not all doomed. Even though the linear growth is huge and the limit still exists. This gets used to explain why it's all gravy and the future is all fine. But then the false balance comes in and it goes on to say that "Some people say we shouldn't be complacent because there are still problems.". There's an appeal to realism but it's buried at the end where the skim readers will miss it. This kind of thing is common in pop-sci articles with names like "The science myths that will not die". The trouble is that once you notice the double think in one entry, it casts doubt on all the others.  The particular one that's winding me up at the moment is straight line growth in global population that is described as a falling rate. It's only falling because the percentage growth rate is used as a shorthand and under linear growth that inevitably drops. See for example this graph. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/466546a/box/3.html Straight line growth with wishful thinking that the linear growth will drop at some stage in the 30-100 year future. And this line is marked up with the falling exponential growth rate. So in the time that the population doubled it's percentage growth rate halved. But I shouldn't have to tell you that the population still doubled. And it's still adding another billion every 12 years. And this is not good. Now there is a story here about how population followed a sigma shaped "Logistic" curve with a first phase that is exponential. A mid phase that is linear (were we are now) and a possible future drop off leading to a peak plateau. And there are justifications (used by studies like those from the UN) for why it might gently fall back after reaching the plateau with arguments as to if this is 50 or 150 years in the future. Then there are arguments about the validity of the model and whether resource constraints imply a LtoG, Seneca-cliff style overshoot, crash and burn or if it can be a nice smooth soft landing curve. But that complexity gets reduced to "If it's published in Nature then it must be right", and the kind of simple, boiled-down message pushed by people like the Eco-modernists and various other techno-optimists. What might have been a sensible debate just ended up with "Growth is falling. Doom is cancelled. Business as usual is OK. If you disagree you're a pessimistic idiot". Then there's the aftermath of the Paris talks. I have to be glad that the world and it's politicians may finally be paying attention to climate change. For a week or so anyway. The UK Nasty party couldn't even wait a week before cancelling renewable subsidies, approving fracking under national parks, putting a hold on on-shore wind farms and promoting Gas Powered power stations, giving France+China ridiculously favourable terms on long term nuclear and on, and on. But what's really scary is not so much the capitalists because they're behaving true to form. It's the double think of the people claiming a historic agreement on Climate Change. They're hoping (in public anyway) for rapid drops in CO2 emissions, global scale implementation of carbon capture systems in the future and keeping temp rise below 1.5C or 2C by 2100. Except that right now we're still following the worst possible RCP 8.5 prediction. That's the one where we burn through all the fossil fuels as fast as possible in a #Terafart of atmospheric carbon emissions. So when do we admit to ourselves in public that the goals are noble but actually pipe dreams and impossible. It's the intellectual dishonesty that is getting to me. We know this but we're saying something different for political expediency. Why even talk about 1.5C if it's a physical impossibility? Which comes back to point (2) above. Whenever we're currently on a simple path of linear or exponential growth, and have been for years, but someone is arguing that it will all change in the near future, we should be cautious. Whether that change is positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic. They or we better have a good argument and good justification for why it's different this time and things will inevitably change. Because it's a future prediction based on a model, please explain to me why the model makes more sense than any other. And don't dismiss a whole model just because you don't like a couple of the assumptions it's built on. Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song. 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyThis exercise did throw up some scary thoughts. One key one was looking at the Indian Sub-continent. It looks like this contains a perfect storm of factors. - 1.6b people growing at 20m/year. Maybe 2b by 2030. - Nowhere to go since the land routes out all involve 15,000ft passes that are easily defensible and that already have military presence. The exceptions are into Myanmar which is dense jungle. Or into Iran and that route's harsh and lawless. The sea routes are difficult, long and the likely destinations uninviting. All of which makes any mass migration out very unlikely.  - Pollution problems (see Delhi) - Rising sea water problems. - One country (India) that controls water flow to two others (Pakistan, Bangla Desh) - Dysfunctional governments - Religion - Nuclear weapons - Severe and increasing danger of Black Flag weather every year. That's a combination of heat and humidity that kills humans without air conditioning. - Mass exposure to Black Swan weather. Bangla Desh in particular is densely populated and prone to flooding. But so are the poorest states in India. - Very rich anarcho-capitalists, in control of technological industry, powered by very large reserves of coal but with little oil. That's quite a pressure cooker. — I need some help with terminology as short hand to describe some common internet states of mind, argumentative strategies and their associated problems. And also to get some stuff off my chest. 1. Pacing the cage. When a particular piece of perceived bullshit starts acting as a brain worm. You get drawn into online arguments. Which prompts deeper and deeper research. That leads to rabbit holes full of partially summarised misinformation. As you try and build arguments in your head that are unassailable. Until you start dreaming about the problem. And talking about it to your family across the dinner table. Along the way you find yourself looking for the evidence that the research papers and the articles summarising them all belong to some shadowy echo chamber of conspiracy with an agenda. And you start behaving like a crazy person. Until finally something snaps you out of it or the next brain worm comes along.  2. Wilful misinterpretation of statistics to justify a standpoint. A classic example is interpreting straight line growth as a drop in percentage growth which is then seen as a good thing - "growth has been dropping for decades" - as if this implies that it will drop to zero. When in fact the linear growth is absolutely constant and showing no signs of changing. Then there's interpreting a drop in the rate of increase in growth as "Flatlining" when yearly output is already the highest its ever been and even if the rate of increase was linear or even dropped to zero from now on, we'd be in a world of hurt. Another is denial of a model that shows a future discontinuity because we haven't got there yet and right now we're still on the up slope of the model. That goes both ways. Business as Usual is fine because there's no evidence of a wall. vs Business as Usual is disastrous because the wall is coming up fast, we just haven't hit it yet.   3. False equivalence and false balance. eg this kind of mythbusting: "Exponential growth is happening and we're all doomed." The article claims that because growth isn't exponential today therefore we're not all doomed. Even though the linear growth is huge and the limit still exists. This gets used to explain why it's all gravy and the future is all fine. But then the false balance comes in and it goes on to say that "Some people say we shouldn't be complacent because there are still problems.". There's an appeal to realism but it's buried at the end where the skim readers will miss it. This kind of thing is common in pop-sci articles with names like "The science myths that will not die". The trouble is that once you notice the double think in one entry, it casts doubt on all the others.  The particular one that's winding me up at the moment is straight line growth in global population that is described as a falling rate. It's only falling because the percentage growth rate is used as a shorthand and under linear growth that inevitably drops. See for example this graph. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/466546a/box/3.html Straight line growth with wishful thinking that the linear growth will drop at some stage in the 30-100 year future. And this line is marked up with the falling exponential growth rate. So in the time that the population doubled it's percentage growth rate halved. But I shouldn't have to tell you that the population still doubled. And it's still adding another billion every 12 years. And this is not good. Now there is a story here about how population followed a sigma shaped "Logistic" curve with a first phase that is exponential. A mid phase that is linear (were we are now) and a possible future drop off leading to a peak plateau. And there are justifications (used by studies like those from the UN) for why it might gently fall back after reaching the plateau with arguments as to if this is 50 or 150 years in the future. Then there are arguments about the validity of the model and whether resource constraints imply a LtoG, Seneca-cliff style overshoot, crash and burn or if it can be a nice smooth soft landing curve. But that complexity gets reduced to "If it's published in Nature then it must be right", and the kind of simple, boiled-down message pushed by people like the Eco-modernists and various other techno-optimists. What might have been a sensible debate just ended up with "Growth is falling. Doom is cancelled. Business as usual is OK. If you disagree you're a pessimistic idiot". Then there's the aftermath of the Paris talks. I have to be glad that the world and it's politicians may finally be paying attention to climate change. For a week or so anyway. The UK Nasty party couldn't even wait a week before cancelling renewable subsidies, approving fracking under national parks, putting a hold on on-shore wind farms and promoting Gas Powered power stations, giving France+China ridiculously favourable terms on long term nuclear and on, and on. But what's really scary is not so much the capitalists because they're behaving true to form. It's the double think of the people claiming a historic agreement on Climate Change. They're hoping (in public anyway) for rapid drops in CO2 emissions, global scale implementation of carbon capture systems in the future and keeping temp rise below 1.5C or 2C by 2100. Except that right now we're still following the worst possible RCP 8.5 prediction. That's the one where we burn through all the fossil fuels as fast as possible in a #Terafart of atmospheric carbon emissions. So when do we admit to ourselves in public that the goals are noble but actually pipe dreams and impossible. It's the intellectual dishonesty that is getting to me. We know this but we're saying something different for political expediency. Why even talk about 1.5C if it's a physical impossibility? Which comes back to point (2) above. Whenever we're currently on a simple path of linear or exponential growth, and have been for years, but someone is arguing that it will all change in the near future, we should be cautious. Whether that change is positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic. They or we better have a good argument and good justification for why it's different this time and things will inevitably change. Because it's a future prediction based on a model, please explain to me why the model makes more sense than any other. And don't dismiss a whole model just because you don't like a couple of the assumptions it's built on. Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song. 
Image
Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyBut, but, we'll all move to Mars, or Venus, or Zeta Reticuli when this planet is used up. Even if there's only 7 of us left. The idea that mankind will just ... stop ... is too horrible to contemplate. /s My money's on Tardigrades and 'Shroom spores to spread DNA throughout the galaxy (and beyond). Bonus link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest_(novella) — I need some help with terminology as short hand to describe some common internet states of mind, argumentative strategies and their associated problems. And also to get some stuff off my chest. 1. Pacing the cage. When a particular piece of perceived bullshit starts acting as a brain worm. You get drawn into online arguments. Which prompts deeper and deeper research. That leads to rabbit holes full of partially summarised misinformation. As you try and build arguments in your head that are unassailable. Until you start dreaming about the problem. And talking about it to your family across the dinner table. Along the way you find yourself looking for the evidence that the research papers and the articles summarising them all belong to some shadowy echo chamber of conspiracy with an agenda. And you start behaving like a crazy person. Until finally something snaps you out of it or the next brain worm comes along.  2. Wilful misinterpretation of statistics to justify a standpoint. A classic example is interpreting straight line growth as a drop in percentage growth which is then seen as a good thing - "growth has been dropping for decades" - as if this implies that it will drop to zero. When in fact the linear growth is absolutely constant and showing no signs of changing. Then there's interpreting a drop in the rate of increase in growth as "Flatlining" when yearly output is already the highest its ever been and even if the rate of increase was linear or even dropped to zero from now on, we'd be in a world of hurt. Another is denial of a model that shows a future discontinuity because we haven't got there yet and right now we're still on the up slope of the model. That goes both ways. Business as Usual is fine because there's no evidence of a wall. vs Business as Usual is disastrous because the wall is coming up fast, we just haven't hit it yet.   3. False equivalence and false balance. eg this kind of mythbusting: "Exponential growth is happening and we're all doomed." The article claims that because growth isn't exponential today therefore we're not all doomed. Even though the linear growth is huge and the limit still exists. This gets used to explain why it's all gravy and the future is all fine. But then the false balance comes in and it goes on to say that "Some people say we shouldn't be complacent because there are still problems.". There's an appeal to realism but it's buried at the end where the skim readers will miss it. This kind of thing is common in pop-sci articles with names like "The science myths that will not die". The trouble is that once you notice the double think in one entry, it casts doubt on all the others.  The particular one that's winding me up at the moment is straight line growth in global population that is described as a falling rate. It's only falling because the percentage growth rate is used as a shorthand and under linear growth that inevitably drops. See for example this graph. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/466546a/box/3.html Straight line growth with wishful thinking that the linear growth will drop at some stage in the 30-100 year future. And this line is marked up with the falling exponential growth rate. So in the time that the population doubled it's percentage growth rate halved. But I shouldn't have to tell you that the population still doubled. And it's still adding another billion every 12 years. And this is not good. Now there is a story here about how population followed a sigma shaped "Logistic" curve with a first phase that is exponential. A mid phase that is linear (were we are now) and a possible future drop off leading to a peak plateau. And there are justifications (used by studies like those from the UN) for why it might gently fall back after reaching the plateau with arguments as to if this is 50 or 150 years in the future. Then there are arguments about the validity of the model and whether resource constraints imply a LtoG, Seneca-cliff style overshoot, crash and burn or if it can be a nice smooth soft landing curve. But that complexity gets reduced to "If it's published in Nature then it must be right", and the kind of simple, boiled-down message pushed by people like the Eco-modernists and various other techno-optimists. What might have been a sensible debate just ended up with "Growth is falling. Doom is cancelled. Business as usual is OK. If you disagree you're a pessimistic idiot". Then there's the aftermath of the Paris talks. I have to be glad that the world and it's politicians may finally be paying attention to climate change. For a week or so anyway. The UK Nasty party couldn't even wait a week before cancelling renewable subsidies, approving fracking under national parks, putting a hold on on-shore wind farms and promoting Gas Powered power stations, giving France+China ridiculously favourable terms on long term nuclear and on, and on. But what's really scary is not so much the capitalists because they're behaving true to form. It's the double think of the people claiming a historic agreement on Climate Change. They're hoping (in public anyway) for rapid drops in CO2 emissions, global scale implementation of carbon capture systems in the future and keeping temp rise below 1.5C or 2C by 2100. Except that right now we're still following the worst possible RCP 8.5 prediction. That's the one where we burn through all the fossil fuels as fast as possible in a #Terafart of atmospheric carbon emissions. So when do we admit to ourselves in public that the goals are noble but actually pipe dreams and impossible. It's the intellectual dishonesty that is getting to me. We know this but we're saying something different for political expediency. Why even talk about 1.5C if it's a physical impossibility? Which comes back to point (2) above. Whenever we're currently on a simple path of linear or exponential growth, and have been for years, but someone is arguing that it will all change in the near future, we should be cautious. Whether that change is positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic. They or we better have a good argument and good justification for why it's different this time and things will inevitably change. Because it's a future prediction based on a model, please explain to me why the model makes more sense than any other. And don't dismiss a whole model just because you don't like a couple of the assumptions it's built on. Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song. 
Image
Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea Society+Steve S Timescale is everything. Are we talking 5 years, 50 or the remaining life of the universe?  — I need some help with terminology as short hand to describe some common internet states of mind, argumentative strategies and their associated problems. And also to get some stuff off my chest. 1. Pacing the cage. When a particular piece of perceived bullshit starts acting as a brain worm. You get drawn into online arguments. Which prompts deeper and deeper research. That leads to rabbit holes full of partially summarised misinformation. As you try and build arguments in your head that are unassailable. Until you start dreaming about the problem. And talking about it to your family across the dinner table. Along the way you find yourself looking for the evidence that the research papers and the articles summarising them all belong to some shadowy echo chamber of conspiracy with an agenda. And you start behaving like a crazy person. Until finally something snaps you out of it or the next brain worm comes along.  2. Wilful misinterpretation of statistics to justify a standpoint. A classic example is interpreting straight line growth as a drop in percentage growth which is then seen as a good thing - "growth has been dropping for decades" - as if this implies that it will drop to zero. When in fact the linear growth is absolutely constant and showing no signs of changing. Then there's interpreting a drop in the rate of increase in growth as "Flatlining" when yearly output is already the highest its ever been and even if the rate of increase was linear or even dropped to zero from now on, we'd be in a world of hurt. Another is denial of a model that shows a future discontinuity because we haven't got there yet and right now we're still on the up slope of the model. That goes both ways. Business as Usual is fine because there's no evidence of a wall. vs Business as Usual is disastrous because the wall is coming up fast, we just haven't hit it yet.   3. False equivalence and false balance. eg this kind of mythbusting: "Exponential growth is happening and we're all doomed." The article claims that because growth isn't exponential today therefore we're not all doomed. Even though the linear growth is huge and the limit still exists. This gets used to explain why it's all gravy and the future is all fine. But then the false balance comes in and it goes on to say that "Some people say we shouldn't be complacent because there are still problems.". There's an appeal to realism but it's buried at the end where the skim readers will miss it. This kind of thing is common in pop-sci articles with names like "The science myths that will not die". The trouble is that once you notice the double think in one entry, it casts doubt on all the others.  The particular one that's winding me up at the moment is straight line growth in global population that is described as a falling rate. It's only falling because the percentage growth rate is used as a shorthand and under linear growth that inevitably drops. See for example this graph. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/466546a/box/3.html Straight line growth with wishful thinking that the linear growth will drop at some stage in the 30-100 year future. And this line is marked up with the falling exponential growth rate. So in the time that the population doubled it's percentage growth rate halved. But I shouldn't have to tell you that the population still doubled. And it's still adding another billion every 12 years. And this is not good. Now there is a story here about how population followed a sigma shaped "Logistic" curve with a first phase that is exponential. A mid phase that is linear (were we are now) and a possible future drop off leading to a peak plateau. And there are justifications (used by studies like those from the UN) for why it might gently fall back after reaching the plateau with arguments as to if this is 50 or 150 years in the future. Then there are arguments about the validity of the model and whether resource constraints imply a LtoG, Seneca-cliff style overshoot, crash and burn or if it can be a nice smooth soft landing curve. But that complexity gets reduced to "If it's published in Nature then it must be right", and the kind of simple, boiled-down message pushed by people like the Eco-modernists and various other techno-optimists. What might have been a sensible debate just ended up with "Growth is falling. Doom is cancelled. Business as usual is OK. If you disagree you're a pessimistic idiot". Then there's the aftermath of the Paris talks. I have to be glad that the world and it's politicians may finally be paying attention to climate change. For a week or so anyway. The UK Nasty party couldn't even wait a week before cancelling renewable subsidies, approving fracking under national parks, putting a hold on on-shore wind farms and promoting Gas Powered power stations, giving France+China ridiculously favourable terms on long term nuclear and on, and on. But what's really scary is not so much the capitalists because they're behaving true to form. It's the double think of the people claiming a historic agreement on Climate Change. They're hoping (in public anyway) for rapid drops in CO2 emissions, global scale implementation of carbon capture systems in the future and keeping temp rise below 1.5C or 2C by 2100. Except that right now we're still following the worst possible RCP 8.5 prediction. That's the one where we burn through all the fossil fuels as fast as possible in a #Terafart of atmospheric carbon emissions. So when do we admit to ourselves in public that the goals are noble but actually pipe dreams and impossible. It's the intellectual dishonesty that is getting to me. We know this but we're saying something different for political expediency. Why even talk about 1.5C if it's a physical impossibility? Which comes back to point (2) above. Whenever we're currently on a simple path of linear or exponential growth, and have been for years, but someone is arguing that it will all change in the near future, we should be cautious. Whether that change is positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic. They or we better have a good argument and good justification for why it's different this time and things will inevitably change. Because it's a future prediction based on a model, please explain to me why the model makes more sense than any other. And don't dismiss a whole model just because you don't like a couple of the assumptions it's built on. Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song. 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea Society+Edward Morbius  I'm not sure of the bigger context of the Nature piece you link, but generally, it's a fairly accurate mainstream view: population growth trends are decreasing, and, if the rest of this rusty bucket we're floating in holds together, population should stop growing by mid-century. Assuming nothing horribly awry happens. Which it very well might Except that the growth trends really aren't decreasing. It's constant linear growth of 80m/y, has been for decades, and is not slowing down. Any argument that this ought to decrease in the near future and drop to zero in the next 30-40 years needs some hefty justification. The UN is probably the most trustworthy here. http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/ The choose world. They're taking individual countries and then making a guess on likely growth based on economic, fertility and other factors. Even this shows growth (a little slower) still happening up till 2100 on the median and 95% predictions. And all the likely future graphs hardly show a drop in slope at all by mid century. As you say, the hidden assumption is that nothing awry happens. And there's just too many known unknowns in the form of climate change, and resource limits to expect business as usual to continue till 2100 with out some Black Swan shocks. --- I absolutely agree about the need to imagine, picture, describe and predict post fossil fuel, sustainable futures in the next century. It can give us a hefty dose of realism now and pull us towards them in a kind of retro-causality. Let's have some realistic goals that acknowledge reality rather than just focussing on 5 year GDP, Debt, etc, etc. Same for Climate Change. I do think it's important that we talk now about Mitigation and Adaptation because it's not going to go away. --- The specific trigger for all this was Cory Doctorow pointing at the Nature article. Then having it happen again in the middle of a Charles Stross blog comments stream. Then recognising the style from a Stewart Brand post that pointed at almost exactly the same "mythbusting" article with the same flawed population myth. (https://plus.google.com/u/0/116951145888391044655/posts/XYnpKvLX54X http://www.environment.ucla.edu/peter-kareiva/blog/back-to-school-unlearning-nine-environmental-myths) This tied in with the Eco-modernist manifesto at about the same time. Both had previously been discussed on Miranda. Then we've got Cory contributing to Stephenson's call for near future optimistic SciFi in the Hieroglyph project. And that all led to posts by Kevin Kelly and Stewart with Long Now bets that population will stabilise and fall. (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/466546a/box/3.html http://www.nature.com/news/the-science-myths-that-will-not-die-1.19022) Then we have Rosling doing high profile TED talks that population growth is slowing, poverty is dropping, food production is rising and so on. Before you know it, you're into Lomberg territory. Can you see a pattern here? Highly intelligent, high profile, commentators promoting a false sense of optimism by cherry picking high profile academics that take a falsely optimistic view of basic research. With all of it amplified by an echo chamber of Pop-Sci blogs. With a lot of this located in SF-LA California. I begin to ask, Why does the world look like this from California, because I'm pretty sure it doesn't look like that from Mumbai or Beijing. So then what? Do we just let it go, because we know that most of these people are trying to make a living from the lecture circuit and it's just what they do? Or do you stand up like http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/13/john-kerry-james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud and actually say "you do know all this is a fraud, right? Limiting temp rise to 1.5C is impossible so why are we still talking about it". — I need some help with terminology as short hand to describe some common internet states of mind, argumentative strategies and their associated problems. And also to get some stuff off my chest. 1. Pacing the cage. When a particular piece of perceived bullshit starts acting as a brain worm. You get drawn into online arguments. Which prompts deeper and deeper research. That leads to rabbit holes full of partially summarised misinformation. As you try and build arguments in your head that are unassailable. Until you start dreaming about the problem. And talking about it to your family across the dinner table. Along the way you find yourself looking for the evidence that the research papers and the articles summarising them all belong to some shadowy echo chamber of conspiracy with an agenda. And you start behaving like a crazy person. Until finally something snaps you out of it or the next brain worm comes along.  2. Wilful misinterpretation of statistics to justify a standpoint. A classic example is interpreting straight line growth as a drop in percentage growth which is then seen as a good thing - "growth has been dropping for decades" - as if this implies that it will drop to zero. When in fact the linear growth is absolutely constant and showing no signs of changing. Then there's interpreting a drop in the rate of increase in growth as "Flatlining" when yearly output is already the highest its ever been and even if the rate of increase was linear or even dropped to zero from now on, we'd be in a world of hurt. Another is denial of a model that shows a future discontinuity because we haven't got there yet and right now we're still on the up slope of the model. That goes both ways. Business as Usual is fine because there's no evidence of a wall. vs Business as Usual is disastrous because the wall is coming up fast, we just haven't hit it yet.   3. False equivalence and false balance. eg this kind of mythbusting: "Exponential growth is happening and we're all doomed." The article claims that because growth isn't exponential today therefore we're not all doomed. Even though the linear growth is huge and the limit still exists. This gets used to explain why it's all gravy and the future is all fine. But then the false balance comes in and it goes on to say that "Some people say we shouldn't be complacent because there are still problems.". There's an appeal to realism but it's buried at the end where the skim readers will miss it. This kind of thing is common in pop-sci articles with names like "The science myths that will not die". The trouble is that once you notice the double think in one entry, it casts doubt on all the others.  The particular one that's winding me up at the moment is straight line growth in global population that is described as a falling rate. It's only falling because the percentage growth rate is used as a shorthand and under linear growth that inevitably drops. See for example this graph. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/466546a/box/3.html Straight line growth with wishful thinking that the linear growth will drop at some stage in the 30-100 year future. And this line is marked up with the falling exponential growth rate. So in the time that the population doubled it's percentage growth rate halved. But I shouldn't have to tell you that the population still doubled. And it's still adding another billion every 12 years. And this is not good. Now there is a story here about how population followed a sigma shaped "Logistic" curve with a first phase that is exponential. A mid phase that is linear (were we are now) and a possible future drop off leading to a peak plateau. And there are justifications (used by studies like those from the UN) for why it might gently fall back after reaching the plateau with arguments as to if this is 50 or 150 years in the future. Then there are arguments about the validity of the model and whether resource constraints imply a LtoG, Seneca-cliff style overshoot, crash and burn or if it can be a nice smooth soft landing curve. But that complexity gets reduced to "If it's published in Nature then it must be right", and the kind of simple, boiled-down message pushed by people like the Eco-modernists and various other techno-optimists. What might have been a sensible debate just ended up with "Growth is falling. Doom is cancelled. Business as usual is OK. If you disagree you're a pessimistic idiot". Then there's the aftermath of the Paris talks. I have to be glad that the world and it's politicians may finally be paying attention to climate change. For a week or so anyway. The UK Nasty party couldn't even wait a week before cancelling renewable subsidies, approving fracking under national parks, putting a hold on on-shore wind farms and promoting Gas Powered power stations, giving France+China ridiculously favourable terms on long term nuclear and on, and on. But what's really scary is not so much the capitalists because they're behaving true to form. It's the double think of the people claiming a historic agreement on Climate Change. They're hoping (in public anyway) for rapid drops in CO2 emissions, global scale implementation of carbon capture systems in the future and keeping temp rise below 1.5C or 2C by 2100. Except that right now we're still following the worst possible RCP 8.5 prediction. That's the one where we burn through all the fossil fuels as fast as possible in a #Terafart of atmospheric carbon emissions. So when do we admit to ourselves in public that the goals are noble but actually pipe dreams and impossible. It's the intellectual dishonesty that is getting to me. We know this but we're saying something different for political expediency. Why even talk about 1.5C if it's a physical impossibility? Which comes back to point (2) above. Whenever we're currently on a simple path of linear or exponential growth, and have been for years, but someone is arguing that it will all change in the near future, we should be cautious. Whether that change is positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic. They or we better have a good argument and good justification for why it's different this time and things will inevitably change. Because it's a future prediction based on a model, please explain to me why the model makes more sense than any other. And don't dismiss a whole model just because you don't like a couple of the assumptions it's built on. Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song. 
Image
Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea Society+Steve S In principle, yes. But not if the deal to build it is so bad it sabotages all the other methods. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/29/hinkley-point-c-nuclear-power-station-cost-customers-4bn — I need some help with terminology as short hand to describe some common internet states of mind, argumentative strategies and their associated problems. And also to get some stuff off my chest. 1. Pacing the cage. When a particular piece of perceived bullshit starts acting as a brain worm. You get drawn into online arguments. Which prompts deeper and deeper research. That leads to rabbit holes full of partially summarised misinformation. As you try and build arguments in your head that are unassailable. Until you start dreaming about the problem. And talking about it to your family across the dinner table. Along the way you find yourself looking for the evidence that the research papers and the articles summarising them all belong to some shadowy echo chamber of conspiracy with an agenda. And you start behaving like a crazy person. Until finally something snaps you out of it or the next brain worm comes along.  2. Wilful misinterpretation of statistics to justify a standpoint. A classic example is interpreting straight line growth as a drop in percentage growth which is then seen as a good thing - "growth has been dropping for decades" - as if this implies that it will drop to zero. When in fact the linear growth is absolutely constant and showing no signs of changing. Then there's interpreting a drop in the rate of increase in growth as "Flatlining" when yearly output is already the highest its ever been and even if the rate of increase was linear or even dropped to zero from now on, we'd be in a world of hurt. Another is denial of a model that shows a future discontinuity because we haven't got there yet and right now we're still on the up slope of the model. That goes both ways. Business as Usual is fine because there's no evidence of a wall. vs Business as Usual is disastrous because the wall is coming up fast, we just haven't hit it yet.   3. False equivalence and false balance. eg this kind of mythbusting: "Exponential growth is happening and we're all doomed." The article claims that because growth isn't exponential today therefore we're not all doomed. Even though the linear growth is huge and the limit still exists. This gets used to explain why it's all gravy and the future is all fine. But then the false balance comes in and it goes on to say that "Some people say we shouldn't be complacent because there are still problems.". There's an appeal to realism but it's buried at the end where the skim readers will miss it. This kind of thing is common in pop-sci articles with names like "The science myths that will not die". The trouble is that once you notice the double think in one entry, it casts doubt on all the others.  The particular one that's winding me up at the moment is straight line growth in global population that is described as a falling rate. It's only falling because the percentage growth rate is used as a shorthand and under linear growth that inevitably drops. See for example this graph. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/466546a/box/3.html Straight line growth with wishful thinking that the linear growth will drop at some stage in the 30-100 year future. And this line is marked up with the falling exponential growth rate. So in the time that the population doubled it's percentage growth rate halved. But I shouldn't have to tell you that the population still doubled. And it's still adding another billion every 12 years. And this is not good. Now there is a story here about how population followed a sigma shaped "Logistic" curve with a first phase that is exponential. A mid phase that is linear (were we are now) and a possible future drop off leading to a peak plateau. And there are justifications (used by studies like those from the UN) for why it might gently fall back after reaching the plateau with arguments as to if this is 50 or 150 years in the future. Then there are arguments about the validity of the model and whether resource constraints imply a LtoG, Seneca-cliff style overshoot, crash and burn or if it can be a nice smooth soft landing curve. But that complexity gets reduced to "If it's published in Nature then it must be right", and the kind of simple, boiled-down message pushed by people like the Eco-modernists and various other techno-optimists. What might have been a sensible debate just ended up with "Growth is falling. Doom is cancelled. Business as usual is OK. If you disagree you're a pessimistic idiot". Then there's the aftermath of the Paris talks. I have to be glad that the world and it's politicians may finally be paying attention to climate change. For a week or so anyway. The UK Nasty party couldn't even wait a week before cancelling renewable subsidies, approving fracking under national parks, putting a hold on on-shore wind farms and promoting Gas Powered power stations, giving France+China ridiculously favourable terms on long term nuclear and on, and on. But what's really scary is not so much the capitalists because they're behaving true to form. It's the double think of the people claiming a historic agreement on Climate Change. They're hoping (in public anyway) for rapid drops in CO2 emissions, global scale implementation of carbon capture systems in the future and keeping temp rise below 1.5C or 2C by 2100. Except that right now we're still following the worst possible RCP 8.5 prediction. That's the one where we burn through all the fossil fuels as fast as possible in a #Terafart of atmospheric carbon emissions. So when do we admit to ourselves in public that the goals are noble but actually pipe dreams and impossible. It's the intellectual dishonesty that is getting to me. We know this but we're saying something different for political expediency. Why even talk about 1.5C if it's a physical impossibility? Which comes back to point (2) above. Whenever we're currently on a simple path of linear or exponential growth, and have been for years, but someone is arguing that it will all change in the near future, we should be cautious. Whether that change is positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic. They or we better have a good argument and good justification for why it's different this time and things will inevitably change. Because it's a future prediction based on a model, please explain to me why the model makes more sense than any other. And don't dismiss a whole model just because you don't like a couple of the assumptions it's built on. Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song. 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea Society+Cindy Brown Dave Cohen again: Let me tell you what's going to happen, no matter what anybody says. Humans will strive to expand their global civilization until it becomes physically impossible to do so http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/05/make-it-so.html That's Lemming behaviour. But what about the behaviour of the people that argue that it's the best way forward to the best of all possible worlds. And are standing at the back encouraging the rest of us to run towards the cliff edge? And are knowingly constructing arguments that are intellectually dishonest to try and get us to run faster. One of the rabbit holes I went down was to wonder what population growth might look like from SE Asia rather than from the American left coast. Using figures for 2014 from here, http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/ I got these. - Indian Sub-Continent 1.66B - East Asia (East of Russia, eg China, Vietnam, Korea et al) 1.7B - Oceania 0.545B For a grand total of 3.9B people or well over half the global total. Do you think it looks and feels like population growth is slowing if you find yourself living in the middle of that? — I need some help with terminology as short hand to describe some common internet states of mind, argumentative strategies and their associated problems. And also to get some stuff off my chest. 1. Pacing the cage. When a particular piece of perceived bullshit starts acting as a brain worm. You get drawn into online arguments. Which prompts deeper and deeper research. That leads to rabbit holes full of partially summarised misinformation. As you try and build arguments in your head that are unassailable. Until you start dreaming about the problem. And talking about it to your family across the dinner table. Along the way you find yourself looking for the evidence that the research papers and the articles summarising them all belong to some shadowy echo chamber of conspiracy with an agenda. And you start behaving like a crazy person. Until finally something snaps you out of it or the next brain worm comes along.  2. Wilful misinterpretation of statistics to justify a standpoint. A classic example is interpreting straight line growth as a drop in percentage growth which is then seen as a good thing - "growth has been dropping for decades" - as if this implies that it will drop to zero. When in fact the linear growth is absolutely constant and showing no signs of changing. Then there's interpreting a drop in the rate of increase in growth as "Flatlining" when yearly output is already the highest its ever been and even if the rate of increase was linear or even dropped to zero from now on, we'd be in a world of hurt. Another is denial of a model that shows a future discontinuity because we haven't got there yet and right now we're still on the up slope of the model. That goes both ways. Business as Usual is fine because there's no evidence of a wall. vs Business as Usual is disastrous because the wall is coming up fast, we just haven't hit it yet.   3. False equivalence and false balance. eg this kind of mythbusting: "Exponential growth is happening and we're all doomed." The article claims that because growth isn't exponential today therefore we're not all doomed. Even though the linear growth is huge and the limit still exists. This gets used to explain why it's all gravy and the future is all fine. But then the false balance comes in and it goes on to say that "Some people say we shouldn't be complacent because there are still problems.". There's an appeal to realism but it's buried at the end where the skim readers will miss it. This kind of thing is common in pop-sci articles with names like "The science myths that will not die". The trouble is that once you notice the double think in one entry, it casts doubt on all the others.  The particular one that's winding me up at the moment is straight line growth in global population that is described as a falling rate. It's only falling because the percentage growth rate is used as a shorthand and under linear growth that inevitably drops. See for example this graph. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/466546a/box/3.html Straight line growth with wishful thinking that the linear growth will drop at some stage in the 30-100 year future. And this line is marked up with the falling exponential growth rate. So in the time that the population doubled it's percentage growth rate halved. But I shouldn't have to tell you that the population still doubled. And it's still adding another billion every 12 years. And this is not good. Now there is a story here about how population followed a sigma shaped "Logistic" curve with a first phase that is exponential. A mid phase that is linear (were we are now) and a possible future drop off leading to a peak plateau. And there are justifications (used by studies like those from the UN) for why it might gently fall back after reaching the plateau with arguments as to if this is 50 or 150 years in the future. Then there are arguments about the validity of the model and whether resource constraints imply a LtoG, Seneca-cliff style overshoot, crash and burn or if it can be a nice smooth soft landing curve. But that complexity gets reduced to "If it's published in Nature then it must be right", and the kind of simple, boiled-down message pushed by people like the Eco-modernists and various other techno-optimists. What might have been a sensible debate just ended up with "Growth is falling. Doom is cancelled. Business as usual is OK. If you disagree you're a pessimistic idiot". Then there's the aftermath of the Paris talks. I have to be glad that the world and it's politicians may finally be paying attention to climate change. For a week or so anyway. The UK Nasty party couldn't even wait a week before cancelling renewable subsidies, approving fracking under national parks, putting a hold on on-shore wind farms and promoting Gas Powered power stations, giving France+China ridiculously favourable terms on long term nuclear and on, and on. But what's really scary is not so much the capitalists because they're behaving true to form. It's the double think of the people claiming a historic agreement on Climate Change. They're hoping (in public anyway) for rapid drops in CO2 emissions, global scale implementation of carbon capture systems in the future and keeping temp rise below 1.5C or 2C by 2100. Except that right now we're still following the worst possible RCP 8.5 prediction. That's the one where we burn through all the fossil fuels as fast as possible in a #Terafart of atmospheric carbon emissions. So when do we admit to ourselves in public that the goals are noble but actually pipe dreams and impossible. It's the intellectual dishonesty that is getting to me. We know this but we're saying something different for political expediency. Why even talk about 1.5C if it's a physical impossibility? Which comes back to point (2) above. Whenever we're currently on a simple path of linear or exponential growth, and have been for years, but someone is arguing that it will all change in the near future, we should be cautious. Whether that change is positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic. They or we better have a good argument and good justification for why it's different this time and things will inevitably change. Because it's a future prediction based on a model, please explain to me why the model makes more sense than any other. And don't dismiss a whole model just because you don't like a couple of the assumptions it's built on. Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song. 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyRe those conspiracy theories, what's up with the UCLA Institute of Environment and Sustainability? Is that doublethink because their manifesto reads like computer generated management speak. And they include people like Peter Kareiva and his ecological myth busting that got picked up by the Ecomodernists. http://www.environment.ucla.edu/peter-kareiva/blog/back-to-school-unlearning-nine-environmental-myths It's really hard to tell if he (and they) is for real or if it's all half truths in the style of Lomberg designed to deliberately queer the pitch.   — I need some help with terminology as short hand to describe some common internet states of mind, argumentative strategies and their associated problems. And also to get some stuff off my chest. 1. Pacing the cage. When a particular piece of perceived bullshit starts acting as a brain worm. You get drawn into online arguments. Which prompts deeper and deeper research. That leads to rabbit holes full of partially summarised misinformation. As you try and build arguments in your head that are unassailable. Until you start dreaming about the problem. And talking about it to your family across the dinner table. Along the way you find yourself looking for the evidence that the research papers and the articles summarising them all belong to some shadowy echo chamber of conspiracy with an agenda. And you start behaving like a crazy person. Until finally something snaps you out of it or the next brain worm comes along.  2. Wilful misinterpretation of statistics to justify a standpoint. A classic example is interpreting straight line growth as a drop in percentage growth which is then seen as a good thing - "growth has been dropping for decades" - as if this implies that it will drop to zero. When in fact the linear growth is absolutely constant and showing no signs of changing. Then there's interpreting a drop in the rate of increase in growth as "Flatlining" when yearly output is already the highest its ever been and even if the rate of increase was linear or even dropped to zero from now on, we'd be in a world of hurt. Another is denial of a model that shows a future discontinuity because we haven't got there yet and right now we're still on the up slope of the model. That goes both ways. Business as Usual is fine because there's no evidence of a wall. vs Business as Usual is disastrous because the wall is coming up fast, we just haven't hit it yet.   3. False equivalence and false balance. eg this kind of mythbusting: "Exponential growth is happening and we're all doomed." The article claims that because growth isn't exponential today therefore we're not all doomed. Even though the linear growth is huge and the limit still exists. This gets used to explain why it's all gravy and the future is all fine. But then the false balance comes in and it goes on to say that "Some people say we shouldn't be complacent because there are still problems.". There's an appeal to realism but it's buried at the end where the skim readers will miss it. This kind of thing is common in pop-sci articles with names like "The science myths that will not die". The trouble is that once you notice the double think in one entry, it casts doubt on all the others.  The particular one that's winding me up at the moment is straight line growth in global population that is described as a falling rate. It's only falling because the percentage growth rate is used as a shorthand and under linear growth that inevitably drops. See for example this graph. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/466546a/box/3.html Straight line growth with wishful thinking that the linear growth will drop at some stage in the 30-100 year future. And this line is marked up with the falling exponential growth rate. So in the time that the population doubled it's percentage growth rate halved. But I shouldn't have to tell you that the population still doubled. And it's still adding another billion every 12 years. And this is not good. Now there is a story here about how population followed a sigma shaped "Logistic" curve with a first phase that is exponential. A mid phase that is linear (were we are now) and a possible future drop off leading to a peak plateau. And there are justifications (used by studies like those from the UN) for why it might gently fall back after reaching the plateau with arguments as to if this is 50 or 150 years in the future. Then there are arguments about the validity of the model and whether resource constraints imply a LtoG, Seneca-cliff style overshoot, crash and burn or if it can be a nice smooth soft landing curve. But that complexity gets reduced to "If it's published in Nature then it must be right", and the kind of simple, boiled-down message pushed by people like the Eco-modernists and various other techno-optimists. What might have been a sensible debate just ended up with "Growth is falling. Doom is cancelled. Business as usual is OK. If you disagree you're a pessimistic idiot". Then there's the aftermath of the Paris talks. I have to be glad that the world and it's politicians may finally be paying attention to climate change. For a week or so anyway. The UK Nasty party couldn't even wait a week before cancelling renewable subsidies, approving fracking under national parks, putting a hold on on-shore wind farms and promoting Gas Powered power stations, giving France+China ridiculously favourable terms on long term nuclear and on, and on. But what's really scary is not so much the capitalists because they're behaving true to form. It's the double think of the people claiming a historic agreement on Climate Change. They're hoping (in public anyway) for rapid drops in CO2 emissions, global scale implementation of carbon capture systems in the future and keeping temp rise below 1.5C or 2C by 2100. Except that right now we're still following the worst possible RCP 8.5 prediction. That's the one where we burn through all the fossil fuels as fast as possible in a #Terafart of atmospheric carbon emissions. So when do we admit to ourselves in public that the goals are noble but actually pipe dreams and impossible. It's the intellectual dishonesty that is getting to me. We know this but we're saying something different for political expediency. Why even talk about 1.5C if it's a physical impossibility? Which comes back to point (2) above. Whenever we're currently on a simple path of linear or exponential growth, and have been for years, but someone is arguing that it will all change in the near future, we should be cautious. Whether that change is positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic. They or we better have a good argument and good justification for why it's different this time and things will inevitably change. Because it's a future prediction based on a model, please explain to me why the model makes more sense than any other. And don't dismiss a whole model just because you don't like a couple of the assumptions it's built on. Ramble On, And now's the time, the time is now, to sing my song. 
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeIs there any potential for the forest regions to simply move north? And if so over what timescale? — Washington Post December 2015 -- Scientists say climate change could cause a ‘massive’ tree die-off in the Southwest US https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/12/21/scientists-say-climate-change-could-cause-a-massive-tree-die-off-in-the-southwest/ usa united states america forests warming
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Commented on postHollywood should be banned for giving the terrorists ideas. There's a reason McCarthy was so fascinated with it. And it wasn't just the parties. +1 for the Monkeywrench Gang. Haven't thought about that book for a long time. For some reason I associate it mentally with Emmett Grogan, The Diggers and Ringolevio.
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyWhile we're at it, can we make Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn start on Dec 1 , Mar 1, June 1, Sept 1 (to reflect temps) and make winter daylight savings 30 days either side of Dec 21.   — By any logic, today, the winter solstice, should be New Year's day. Why was January 1 moved to ten days after the solstice? Serious question. The history is not obvious. Links and pointers welcomed.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea Society+Alex Schleber Undoubtedly true. But just a little off topic, no?  — Not sure if the world as we know it will last 10,000 years or even till 2020 and wish you could do something about it? Don't worry, get drunk. http://blog.longnow.org/02015/12/16/cocktail-mechanics1-12-16/
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Commented on post by Stewart BrandRe that first myth. Perhaps it should be restated and then re-examined. "Human population is growing linearly and it’s ruining the planet." Since the early 60s population has been growing by about 80m per year with only small statistical movement either side. The net result being a doubling of the total with no signs of any drop off. So the growth is linear and constant. So far. Which raises two questions. 1) Is there any evidence or justification for why this should change in the next 50 years? 2) Is it ruining the planet? This came up again recently in http://www.nature.com/news/the-science-myths-that-will-not-die-1.19022 Perhaps part of the problem is the tendency to state growth in percentage terms. On that basis, linear growth looks like a drop in the percentage growth rate. Since the 60s, we've doubled the population but halved the percentage growth rate. Which is exactly consistent with constant linear growth. And finally, two comments from that post. The first with irony. "Scientists need to be effective at communicating ideas and get away from simple, boiled-down messages." That applies to myth debunking just as much as the source of the myths. And the second with humour. What about the most common of myths? If it is published in Nature then it must be right!!     — 9 environmentalist myths worth questioning Peter Kareiva, new Director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, examines nine Green exaggerations: Myth 1: Human population is growing exponentially and it’s ruining the planet. Myth 2: Biodiversity is declining everywhere. Myth 3: Set up free markets with the right incentives for environmental innovation and we will “business” our way to sustainability. Myth 4: In the end, corporations are always enemies of the environment. Myth 5: If you question an environmental regulation, you’re automatically anti-environment. Myth 6: We have already used up 1.5 Earths and exceeded our planet’s carrying capacity. Myth 7: People who don’t think we should act strongly to stop climate change are just stupid/ill-informed/ignorant. Myth 8: Sustainability means eating locally. Myth 9: If we keep on our current path, Mother Earth will be destroyed and it will be the end of life on the planet.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in FoodFWIW, Dom and friends reviewing Mast. http://www.chocablog.com/tag/mast-brothers/ — Quartz has a brutal exposé of an alleged labeling scam by Mast Brothers chocolate company. Drawing on interviews with chocolate industry insiders and competitors, the author builds a case that the hipster-styled Masts got their start in high end chocolate by melting and recasting chocolate from Valrhona, a large French manufacturer. Their own chocolate is apparently awful. “But [chocolate makers] should also be angry with the media as it is the fault and responsibility of the media that Mast Brothers became so famous (with a mediocre and sometimes also bad quality). Only because they wore clothes like Amish people with long beards.”
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeWhat's the wet bulb temperature? Or Humidity. Is this getting close to Black Flag weather?
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in FoodValrhona is not so bad. It supplies pretty much the entire French chocolatier industry. But it is pretty undistinguished. For the last few years, London has been chocolate capital of the world along with the appearance of Fairtrade single estate brands. People like Paul A Young, William Curley, Willies, Madacasse are changing the game. And it's being amplified by some chains like Hotel Chocolat. See http://www.chocablog.com/ run by a friend of mine who's recently got into the game as a producer as well with Damson Chocolate. — Quartz has a brutal exposé of an alleged labeling scam by Mast Brothers chocolate company. Drawing on interviews with chocolate industry insiders and competitors, the author builds a case that the hipster-styled Masts got their start in high end chocolate by melting and recasting chocolate from Valrhona, a large French manufacturer. Their own chocolate is apparently awful. “But [chocolate makers] should also be angry with the media as it is the fault and responsibility of the media that Mast Brothers became so famous (with a mediocre and sometimes also bad quality). Only because they wore clothes like Amish people with long beards.”
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Commented on post by Francis Sealey in Climate ChangeThe question of what is a subsidy is so confused that it's easy to spin. - Exploration subsidies vs tax on petrol/diesel - Guaranteed revenue/KWHr - Feed in tarrifs - Nuclear decommissioning - Nuclear Insurance - Easing planning restrictions (see fracking, onshore wind) - Capital investment from the public purse If public money for Gas powered power stations is justified to secure energy security, then so is public money for renewables. If there's wind/solar capacity that the market hasn't yet implemented, then there's justification for helping them along.     — Following the Paris agreement on climate change, former Conservative environment minister Richard Benyon said there would now be a "race for green technologies". "Countries are going to be competing with themselves for a growing economic market place for green technologies. And you're going to see the innovation that exists in human nature really come alive because of this." But Friends of the Earth chief executive Craig Bennett said there was still no "adequate global plan" to reduce temperatures. These two comments are important as they represent two planks of change that must take place in the coming years. First there has to be a green "new deal," a revolution in thinking. And if that happens and there is a race for green technologies then that will be hugely significant. But Craig Bennett is right as well. There does need to be a global strategic plan to monitor and facilitate development, help industrialising counties and provide some sort of global accountability. And there also needs to be contingency planning if as some think climate change has gone too far already and to alleviate the negative impact of climate change. But Paris seems to be a major breakthrough and the task of civil society now is not to bemoan what has happened as that will get us nowhere but to be active to ensure our respective Governments deliver. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35087059
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle Roadracing+gerry marks And you'd get the occasional Sunday when all the races aligned but on different continents. The one that puzzles me is Dorna worrying about overlap with F1. I never met any motorcyclist who paid any attention to F1 except to watch half a race occasionally when there was no motorcycling on. +Andrew Cook Too right. BSB manages to have a full day's racing from 12 to 6pm with 10-15 minute breaks so you can go to the loo and grab a burger and beer. WSB used to be almost ok with STK1000, SBK, SSP, minor , SBK, minor. From about 11am to 4.30pm. It was MotoGP that looked weak with only 3 races on the big day but they made up for it because they were BIG races. All this messing about with sequences and 2 race days dilutes the entertainment and leaves people with a bad taste. Either because they spent so much on not enough,  And/Or they didn't want to camp or pay for a hotel and so missed Sat's races. Even in BSB, I'm not entirely happy with the triple headers and Sat SSP sprint. — WSB 2016 New Schedule Hmmm, not sure about this. #WSB are wanting more people to attend the races however they now only have 1 main race on Sunday rather then 2. The #WSB races are now split to one each on Saturday & Sunday. Thoughts? ___________________________________ +WorldSBK #WSB #WSS #WSB2016
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyI can certainly think of worse places to discuss post-fossil fuel industrial agriculture in a warming world[1] than in a comfortable bar in SF with a well made Manhattan in front of me to take the edge off. But this still feels a little ... off, somehow. [1]Somewhere around comment 1200, this discussion headed off into exactly this subject and threw up quite a lot of fun speculation about Russian nuclear powered combine harvesters[2], Solar powered Ammonia generation plants and Milpa/3 sisters systems of agriculture among other things. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/12/science-fictional-shibboleths.html [2] There's a disaster movie in there somewhere about a Nuclear Combine that has gone rogue, is headed towards a population centre and CAN'T BE STOPPED. — Not sure if the world as we know it will last 10,000 years or even till 2020 and wish you could do something about it? Don't worry, get drunk. http://blog.longnow.org/02015/12/16/cocktail-mechanics1-12-16/
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingWhy are Dorna trying so hard to kill WSB? — WSB 2016 New Schedule Hmmm, not sure about this. #WSB are wanting more people to attend the races however they now only have 1 main race on Sunday rather then 2. The #WSB races are now split to one each on Saturday & Sunday. Thoughts? ___________________________________ +WorldSBK #WSB #WSS #WSB2016
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in HistoryI'd be an optimist, but it wouldn't work. — "Things are not getting worse; things have always been this bad. Nothing is more consoling than the long perspective of history. It will perk you up no end to go back and read the works of progressives past. You will learn therein that things back then were also terrible, and what’s more, they were always getting worse. This is most inspiriting." -- Molly Ivins
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Good NewsIt always puzzles me in these articles why personal private vehicles like SUVs and flat beds get lumped in with "trucks" in the USA. A Lexus NX 300h really isn't a truck. It's a luxury vehicle for successful people who want to feel safe and dominate the landscape. And comes with a mammoth portion of entitlement. Same as a BMW X5 or a Range Rover. And that's the point where we all end up driving too far in vehicles that are too big and too inefficient both to run and to build. Even though we are getting a bit better at building things that are bigger but not quite as much worse as they should be. Meanwhile, are the real 18-wheeler transportation trucks getting better? How about the mid sized vans used for Amazon deliveries and small businesses?
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Commented on post by Sebastian H. Strumann in Climate ChangeStory gives 3 explanations. - Technological. Substitution by renewables - Economic. Fossil fuels are getting more expensive to produce  - Political. Action on climate change    http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/12/does-reality-count-for-nothing.html Here's two other possibilities, - China is misrepresenting it's figures. Not necessarily deliberately. - World GDP is in recession not in growth. It's not +3.1% it's -4%  — It seems like every day we read a new story with dire news about climate change. Experts now warn that it will be impossible to hold global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, even with the carbon-emissions limits required by the recent Paris round of climate talks. Some environmentalists warn darkly that we must choose between saving the planet or capitalism.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Law+Chris Greene War With Eurasia is just so last decade. — Here's a good heuristic for legal academics: if a threat does not exceed that of the Cold War, which includes "the possible nuclear annihilation of all life on Earth," then the threat is not unprecedented, and you should kindly shut up about restrictions on speech.
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Commented on post by Sebastian H. Strumann in Climate ChangeNote this is about pollution in the form of sulphur, nitrogen oxide and dioxide, as well as smoke and dust. Not about CO2.  — Violations of environmental regulations for scrubbing coal emissions have cost Chinese power producers 635 million yuan ($98.33 million) in lost subsidies and fines under new regulations that came into effect in 2014, the country's central planning commission said.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsThere are examples of distributed businesses with whole groups of people working from home or on the road. But I think they're rare and have special requirements. 1) I worked for 10 years in a business where we were all in the UK, mostly around London but had no office. We had an all company meeting once a month and secondary meetings once a week or so. We were all self motivated and had frequent, daily or 2-daily skype and phone calls. But there were only 10 of us. One of our key suppliers (rack space and servers) was split between a home office at the end of the garden and a house in the south of France. Their internal VPN covered both sites plus the racks and his family decamped to France for the whole of each summer. He and his wife got occasional EasyJet flights back and forth to touch base with their interns stuck in London. 2) There are western travellers making enough pocket money from Etsy to live on the road in SE Asia!   All of this is small business, I think the only way it might scale is for it to be applied to small teams in larger businesses. There's no longer any real reason for a team to be in head office provided the leader can get there once a month, and then the remote team could work from home as long as they in turn can meet once a month.    — What are the fundamental problems of housing? How do present housing systems fail? Whom are they failing?
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Commented on postThere are 3B people in SE Asia who don't give a damn whether the USA has an extraordinary leader or not. Which is a trite truism that doesn't help much. What would you have that leader do?
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Commented on postIt does kind of raise the question of what we expect politicians to actually do. They do have control over spending on big infrastructure projects. And on subsidies, tax breaks and so on. And they do have a measure of social control via both policy and propaganda. So now what?
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Commented on post by Kirk McRae in ChromecastBack in Oct when C-A launched there was an entry in the FAQ that said C-A didn't accept casting from Youtube but it's not there any more. Has that changed? Is it now possible? — Does YouTube support chromecast audio or it's just not working on my end
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Commented on posthttp://kevinanderson.info/blog/the-paris-agreement-1010-for-presentation-410-for-content-shows-promise/ Read the whole thing. It's short. However, whilst the 2°C and 1.5°C aspirations of the Paris Agreement are to be wholeheartedly welcomed, the thirty-one page edifice is premised on future technologies removing huge quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere many decades from today. If such highly speculative ‘negative emission technologies’ prove to be unsuccessful then the 1.5°C target is simply not achievable. Moreover, there is only a slim chance of maintaining the global temperature rise to below 2°C. 
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Commented on postA post and some comments from before Paris predicting exactly what we got. So now what ?  http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/11/the-unforgivable-sin.html It's politically unpalatable for most nations to see complete failure in Paris. We will get some sort of agreement. The governmental leaders and the media will then tout the "success" of the event. The story will be that it's not enough, but it's a start. Now, here's the "success" of Paris put another way. Instead of "it wasn't enough, but it's a great start", it's "we couldn't currently treat the issue seriously enough, so we made a bunch of non-binding promises towards reducing only a percentage of emissions by going after the easiest sources to reduce with the assumption that most nations would keep these promises in faltering economies and shifting national governments, and then we hoped that we'd improve them further".
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Commented on postIt's a fraud because it holds out the hope that it's still possible to limit climate change to 1.5, 2 or even 3C rises by 2100. And possible if we promise to do things in 5-10-15 years time while not actually doing any of them now. But at least the world's governments and negotiators are publicly recognising that there is a problem. So there is that.
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Commented on post by Francis Sealey in Climate ChangeSay one thing, do another. Amber Rudd and the Tories will tell you "The UK will deliver" while cutting subsidies to and blocking renewables, subsidising fossil fuels and wasteing huge amounts of money on unrealistic nuclear projects. Low structural inflation, low oil prices make this a perfect time to introduce aggressive carbon taxes. So do it now. — Following the Paris agreement on climate change, former Conservative environment minister Richard Benyon said there would now be a "race for green technologies". "Countries are going to be competing with themselves for a growing economic market place for green technologies. And you're going to see the innovation that exists in human nature really come alive because of this." But Friends of the Earth chief executive Craig Bennett said there was still no "adequate global plan" to reduce temperatures. These two comments are important as they represent two planks of change that must take place in the coming years. First there has to be a green "new deal," a revolution in thinking. And if that happens and there is a race for green technologies then that will be hugely significant. But Craig Bennett is right as well. There does need to be a global strategic plan to monitor and facilitate development, help industrialising counties and provide some sort of global accountability. And there also needs to be contingency planning if as some think climate change has gone too far already and to alleviate the negative impact of climate change. But Paris seems to be a major breakthrough and the task of civil society now is not to bemoan what has happened as that will get us nowhere but to be active to ensure our respective Governments deliver. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35087059
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Commented on postLow structural inflation along with continuing low oil prices makes it a perfect time to introduce aggressive carbon taxes. All those promises from Paris COP21. Do them now.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Institutions- Timescale mismatch. Built for 100 years to deal with 10 year plans. - Location mismatch. The houses aren't where the jobs and livelihood are. - Climate mismatch. Housing built on land that is going to be unsustainable. Heat, Flooding (too much water), Desert (too little water), Prone to earthquakes, etc, etc,  - Transportation mismatch. Planning that assumes cheap personal and commercial transport by road. - Amenity mismatch. Dormitory areas built with no public space, no doctors, no schools, no leisure centres, no small shops, no bars, no community. - Zoning mismatch. Huge tracts of properties built for a notional middle class, middle income family with no property for all the other types eg singles, retirement, low income, high income, first time housing, etc, etc. — What are the fundamental problems of housing? How do present housing systems fail? Whom are they failing?
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawThe entire series is propaganda for US exceptionalism and their military-industrial complex, isn't it? — The story of Star Wars is a familiar one from an unfamiliar angle. It follows the life of a young jihadi, from his socially isolated teenage years on a hardscrabble farm, through his encounters with local radical elements, through the death of his parents as "collateral damage" in a military operation, through his move to a remote location where he studies under a hard-line mullah, to his involvement in a series of terrorist acts, leaving thousands of soldiers dead in his wake. What's unfamiliar about this story (from a Western perspective) is that we see this story not from the point of view of civil society, the police, or the victims of radical Jedi terror, but from the point of view of the terrorists themselves. That is, this is a chance to see the logic of violent terrorism from the perspective of those participating in it. This unconventional angle may make the film politically highly sensitive in these security-conscious times, but with a new installment coming shortly (about the consequences of living in the aftermath of the destabilization of the government by terror and insurrection), I think it may be worth the risk of being placed on watchlists to watch this film and seriously consider its lessons for our day. After all, nobody is a villain in their own eyes. h/t +A.V. Flox​
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta+God Emperor Lionel Lauer Heh. The obvious answer is to stop using a toy OS designed for a phone and use a real computer. Except the desktop YT UI isn't much better. Maybe Microsoft has a point. How small can you make a laptop and it still be usable? Can a laptop work with just a touch interface and no keyboard? And ask the same questions of Google about Chrome-OS. Now where's my netbook with the 10" Retina screen and the 10 hour battery life? — Dear YouTubes, what I'd like: (Android client) 1. A fucking backgroundable fucking player. Not onscreen. Just playing fucking audio for me to fucking listen to. Because if I can't fucking do that, I'm not even fucking listening. 2. Fucking "block channel". Because there are fuckwits on YouTube, and Blocking Fuckwits is the One Weird Trick that totally awesomifies your online fucking experience. https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/drLZV8sm7Tq 3. A one-click "dismiss" on any recommendation. Because many of your recommendations just fucking suck. Not all do, and you've been getting impressively better, after a long, long, long time. But my tastes are, well, really fucking specific. And I'm a fucking pain in the ass. And a lot of shit you'd think I like I don't. 4. A fucking play queue. To go with the fucking backgroundable fucking player. Because I want to listen to fucking genius Ronald Wright's Massey Lectures, which are split into 20 (count'em) separate videos, four for each of his 5 lectures. And queuing that shit up doesn't work. The CBC player won't fucking let me fucking download on Android, and VLC can't stream it, so ... But generally: of the stuff I've indicated "watch later" or whatever, what I usually want to do is then set up a "just for here-and-now" play queue to which I can: a) Append material to the end (usually). b) Play immediately after the current item (often). c) Interrupt the current item immediately (rarely). Oh: Podcast Republic, the best Android Podcast app (well, of the ones that isn't obsessively anally-intrusive with privacy violations) utterly falls down on this regard. I've emailed the dev, who agrees. But ... well, as I've pointed out, the Android marketplace needs some help, and Google fixing an utterly fucked-up Podcast tool space by providing some helping-hand resources here would be slick. Love & kisses & shit. +Susan Wojcicki​​ +Shimrit Ben-Yair​​
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta+God Emperor Lionel Lauer desktop web. https://plus.google.com/notifications/all still exists so it needs bookmarking. But the sort order is somewhat weird. — Android G+ Client: "Notifications" is now a standard mode, on equal footing with "Home", "Collections", and "Communities" This is a very good and welcomed change. Mind, it's the fourth standard mode, not the first, as it ought be. But after years and years and years of telling G+ that yes, as a matter of fucking fact, Notifications and Search are the secret fucking sauce for G+, and what make it compelling, they're half listening to me (or somebody). For those not familiar, on Android: 1. There's a black footer bar which has icons and text (yay, text, no Mystery Meat) for "Home", "Collections", "Communities", and "Notifications" 2. When clicking on that last, Notifications now appears _full-page, front-and-center, with no background "stream" showing through". It is, in other words, a full-attention, first-order, primary focus. It's been a long, long, long time coming, but this is a Good Thing. 3. When individual items are clicked, the post appears superimposed over the Notifications pane. Sure, I've got beefs, though not with any of these changes, all good. Rather: 1. (Minor): I'd put Notifications first in this list. Perhaps even open to it. Because this is the first fucking thing I go to when opening G+. 2. (Major) Items disappear off the Notifications list as they're opened. Given Android's absolutely unforgivable and notorious action-misattribution problem, where clicks are routinely misinterpreted by the interface, this is inexcusable. Rather, as items are read the should be visually distinguished (say, greyed out) in the Notifications list, but not removed (unless specifically flicked off). So when I do tell Android to click or open something and it utterly fucks up as it seems to have decided its first and primary job is, I can recover the current post of interest and re-fucking open it. Of course, G+ fixing their app to make sensible determinations of actions would also help. 3. (Major, feature request) Give Notifications what it's always needed: its own fucking search context. Google, for all it's supposed to be the FSM's Gift to Tomato Sauce, seems to have utterly failed to grasp that a really fucking awesome indicator of relevance is to return to something someone's already selected, viewed, or interacted with.* Being able to search Notifications posts specifically is a non-fucking brainer. Granted: perhaps technically hard, but an inclusion filter on a global result set shouldn't be that hard. Oh, and while we're tweaking, move the fucking annoying and always wrong "Recommendations" for Communities and Collections to the back of the fucking bus. Because The Algorithm is an Idiot, and I'm tired of it proving this. Every. Fucking. Time. And we're also not going to end this post without noting that Android G+ has completely broken Search, half the Magic Sauce. Fix that. Yesterday. +Danielle Buckley​​ #DearGoogles #Android 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate ChangeAnd it's this kind of thing that really doesn't help. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/13/conservatives-energy-green-cuts-policies-paris-deal Conservatives’ attacks on wind, solar and other ‘clean’ technologies has undermined ability to meet CO2 targets, experts say The government has been warned that a major U-turn in energy policy is required if it is to avoid charges of blatant hypocrisy following the commitments it made in the Paris climate deal this weekend. — We got the deal, now we actually have to do something. Starting on Monday.  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/13/paris-climate-talks-15c-marathon-negotiating-physics --- you don’t get to go drilling or mining in new areas, even if you think it might make you lots of money. The Arctic will have to be completely off limits, as will the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming. The pre-salt formations off Brazil, and the oil off the coasts of north America too. You’ve got to stop fracking right away (in fact, that may be the greatest imperative of all, since methane gas does its climate damage so fast). You have to start installing solar panels and windmills at a breakneck pace – and all over the world. The huge subsidies doled out to fossil fuel have to end yesterday, and the huge subsidies to renewable energy had better begin tomorrow. You have to raise the price of carbon steeply and quickly, so everyone gets a clear signal to get off of it. At the moment the world has no real plan to do any of those things. It continues to pretend that merely setting the goal has been work enough for the last two decades.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate ChangeSmall personal efficiencies all help but they won't solve the problem. Which does raise the question of what we expected to happen in Paris, and what we expect politicians (or anyone really) to do next. Politicians (in all countries worldwide) can do some big macro things by setting rules, regulations and putting processes in place. And by investing public money in big infrastructure. So as a start this should be penalising fossil fuels instead of subsidising them. Taxing fossil fuel use and using the funds generated to change the game and to push the market. And subsidising renewables to encourage deployment. Now. Not in 2020 or 2030 or 2050. Now. — We got the deal, now we actually have to do something. Starting on Monday.  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/13/paris-climate-talks-15c-marathon-negotiating-physics --- you don’t get to go drilling or mining in new areas, even if you think it might make you lots of money. The Arctic will have to be completely off limits, as will the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming. The pre-salt formations off Brazil, and the oil off the coasts of north America too. You’ve got to stop fracking right away (in fact, that may be the greatest imperative of all, since methane gas does its climate damage so fast). You have to start installing solar panels and windmills at a breakneck pace – and all over the world. The huge subsidies doled out to fossil fuel have to end yesterday, and the huge subsidies to renewable energy had better begin tomorrow. You have to raise the price of carbon steeply and quickly, so everyone gets a clear signal to get off of it. At the moment the world has no real plan to do any of those things. It continues to pretend that merely setting the goal has been work enough for the last two decades.
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Commented on post by Sfera Dev in ChromecastI have an Pod Classic 160, too bad I can't put Chromecast on that.... Oh, wait. no wifi. Also got an old iPod Touch v2. too bad I can't put Chromecast on that.... but it won't accept a recent enough version of iOS. Makes a nice paperweight.  — Okay Google, cast everywhere This change is a big deal, in fact it's the big deal. Until now the Cast API had the limitation of sharing content to one device at once. Before switching between cast devices you had to disconnect from one and stop the receiver (Note: With a custom receiver app you can override that). But now you should be able to link cast enabled (audio) devices to seamlessly control them together. But what if I don't have two chromecast audio? What happens if I do have one but I want to link it with a first gen chromecast? Do I need to implement anything new in my custom receiver to avoid possible weird scenarios? I usually watch a TV Series episode while dinner with my family, when we finish some of us move to the main TV while the rest are cleaning the kitchen. Why I can't link both TV's as if they were Chromecast Audio? Are there any plans to enable that kind of feature? 
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Commented on postIn reality, of course I would never do that. But that elephant is in the room.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeAfter Paris, I wish I could add something intelligent but on Saturday evening, I can't find the words. So here's a comment from 19 November 2015. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/11/the-unforgivable-sin.html It's politically unpalatable for most nations to see complete failure in Paris. We will get some sort of agreement. The governmental leaders and the media will then tout the "success" of the event. The story will be that it's not enough, but it's a start. Assuming there isn't a crippling economic crash of some sort in the next few decades, it's pretty likely that we'll see quite a lot of renewables deployment in that time. I'd also say it's likely that coal use will peak globally, and more quickly than we considered even 5 years ago. However, it's also likely that all of our efforts, as global growth continues, will keep us on a track of 3-4 degrees C warming - and that's without many positive feedbacks factored in or surprises like what's going on in Indonesia being considered. Now, here's the "success" of Paris put another way. Instead of "it wasn't enough, but it's a great start", it's "we couldn't currently treat the issue seriously enough, so we made a bunch of non-binding promises towards reducing only a percentage of emissions by going after the easiest sources to reduce with the assumption that most nations would keep these promises in faltering economies and shifting national governments, and then we hoped that we'd improve them further". And from today,   http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud “It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.” “I think we will get there because China is rational,” Hansen says. “Their leaders are mostly trained in engineering and such things, they don’t deny climate change and they have a huge incentive, which is air pollution. It’s so bad in their cities they need to move to clean energies. They realise it’s not a hoax. But they will need co-operation.” — By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle. By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster. #Paris #2015 #COP21
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Commented on post by John Walkup in Climate ChangeTry this. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/08/greenpeace-exposes-sceptics-cast-doubt-climate-science — " A loose network of 4,556 individuals with overlapping ties to 164 organizations do the most to dispute climate change in the U.S....  ExxonMobil and the family foundations controlled by Charles and David Koch emerge as the most significant sources of funding for these skeptics.   He examined Internal Revenue Service data showing which groups in the network of climate contrarians accepted funding from ExxonMobil or Koch foundations between 1993 and 2013. Recipients from those two sources tend to occupy central nodes in what he calls a "contrarian network." Groups funded by ExxonMobil or the Kochs "have greater influence over flows of resources, communication, and the production of contrarian information," Farrell wrote. The research was neither easy nor glamorous. One particular element of tedium was making sure that individuals were not represented more than once. Farrell analyzed the individuals, eliminated all middle initials, corrected misspellings, and deleted courtesy titles. "This was completed by hand," he noted, "on all 4,556 names." A supplement to the paper lists all 164 of the organizations he identified as promoting climate-change skepticism, a roster that includes the CATO Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Heartland Institute.  Once he understood the network, Farrell investigated which organizations were most successful in pushing their view. He found that groups with ties to the two big donors were more likely to see their viewpoints make it into media than those without such ties.  Farrell's research took him through 40,785 documents from contrarian groups; 14,943 from the New York Times, Washington Times, and USA Today; 1,930 from U.S. presidents; and 7,786 from Congress. For Robert Brulle, a sociology professor at Drexel University who has conducted research on the topic, Farrell's research helps define how climate denial works. "Corporate funders create and support conservative think tanks," which then pass off climate misinformation as valid. The mainstream media pick up on it, which helps shape public opinion. "This brings up the following question," Brulle said. "Why is the media picking up and promulgating the central themes of climate misinformation?" "
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Commented on post by John Walkup in Climate ChangeGiven the recent stings against denial groups, perhaps he could give them to Greenpeace. Good to see Nigel Lawson's "think tank" getting investigated by the UK charity commission because of it.  http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/lord-lawson-climate-think-tank-under-review-after-adviser-offers-to-write-paper-for-sham-oil-company-a6767261.html — " A loose network of 4,556 individuals with overlapping ties to 164 organizations do the most to dispute climate change in the U.S....  ExxonMobil and the family foundations controlled by Charles and David Koch emerge as the most significant sources of funding for these skeptics.   He examined Internal Revenue Service data showing which groups in the network of climate contrarians accepted funding from ExxonMobil or Koch foundations between 1993 and 2013. Recipients from those two sources tend to occupy central nodes in what he calls a "contrarian network." Groups funded by ExxonMobil or the Kochs "have greater influence over flows of resources, communication, and the production of contrarian information," Farrell wrote. The research was neither easy nor glamorous. One particular element of tedium was making sure that individuals were not represented more than once. Farrell analyzed the individuals, eliminated all middle initials, corrected misspellings, and deleted courtesy titles. "This was completed by hand," he noted, "on all 4,556 names." A supplement to the paper lists all 164 of the organizations he identified as promoting climate-change skepticism, a roster that includes the CATO Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Heartland Institute.  Once he understood the network, Farrell investigated which organizations were most successful in pushing their view. He found that groups with ties to the two big donors were more likely to see their viewpoints make it into media than those without such ties.  Farrell's research took him through 40,785 documents from contrarian groups; 14,943 from the New York Times, Washington Times, and USA Today; 1,930 from U.S. presidents; and 7,786 from Congress. For Robert Brulle, a sociology professor at Drexel University who has conducted research on the topic, Farrell's research helps define how climate denial works. "Corporate funders create and support conservative think tanks," which then pass off climate misinformation as valid. The mainstream media pick up on it, which helps shape public opinion. "This brings up the following question," Brulle said. "Why is the media picking up and promulgating the central themes of climate misinformation?" "
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Commented on postI said to my daughter, who was 11 at the time, “Just tell me you won’t have children, and we’ll just have a grand ol’ time with what’s left of our world.” What about your grandchildren? What grandchildren? I've already told my children not to have any.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in WingnutteryIs "Drone Wars" a thing yet in the style of "Robot Wars" ?  — It takes a good guy with a drone to catch a bad guy with a drone.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in WingnutteryKeeping all the pre-school kids under continuous surveillance by an armed policeman isn't a solution either. — It takes a good kid with a rock to stop a bad kid with a rock.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionAre you hoping to gather students under your olive tree? That can be dangerous. Remember the hemlock. — Asking (or answering) questions is no end of trouble. I was wondering what made a good University town the other day. A week later, I'm realising that the trivium is actually an early form of an input-process-output system, or an OODA loop, and pondering planting an olive grove a short ways out of town. I won't even start with what happens when I start asking for the meaning and purpose of everything.
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPShame they didn't dig out the last 2000 NSR500. Or perhaps Doohan's transition one when they were still ultra light, allowed the crazy fuel but he'd gone back to the screamer engine. I'm still kind of fascinated if you could take the last 2 strokes and add current suspension and tyre technology and see just how fast they'd be at somewhere like Philip Island. Sadly it's impossible because no tyre company is going to take the time to optimise tyres for that kind of bike.   — MmmHmm Fun!!!!! 
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Commented on post by Kevin Kelly... — My upcoming book, The Inevitable, has just been posted on pre-order. It's about the next 20 years. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0525428089/kkorg-20
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Commented on post by Lev OsherovichDoes a leader of the opposition count? Jeremy Corbyn. — A few years ago I proposed a test to determine whether a new Bearded Age has arrived: does a national political figure sport a full beard? I am pleased to report a positive result today! House Speaker Paul Ryan is looking surprisingly hip by Republican standards.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovichhttp://cdn.meme.am/instances2/500x/3316097.jpg Not sure if I'm a Bigot Or a Republican you'll find a use for it. ;) — The numbers are in-- 25% of Americans are bigots, 18% are unsure whether they are.
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Commented on post by Richard Turnock in Climate ChangeIf it wasn't for a bit of flat land thinking in the middle that might have been unbearably depressing in it's realism.  the group of economists is much more convinced than the general American public that immediate and bold action on climate change is necessary—and essential—to secure continued economic growth — "Trillions of dollars are on the line in the Paris negotiations as the world debates encouraging a shift of government and business funds from subsidizing fossil fuels toward subsidizing renewable energy." Follow the money. Contrary to Schwarzenegger's analogy of two rooms, one with an ICE car running and one with an electric car turned on, pick one, walk in and close the door. It doesn't matter wether you believe the weather report or not. People are in Paris for COP21 because of the money.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Technology Meets HumanityStop using ? Just imagine every sentence ends with a rising tone as if it might be a question White space encoding considered harmful   Should we use a double space after each imaginary full stop — I'm always interested in cases where the medium begins to shape the message.. So if you text youll want to read this lest you be considered a jerk HT +David Amerland (P.S. - Wow, it actually causes me psychological dissonance not to use punctuation.)
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in GMO News+rare avis Note, I'm in the UK so US labels are not necessarily familiar. For a while we had a bit of a certification bubble here that led to things like the "Red Tractor" label, that actually just meant "Legal". I don't necessarily dislike self certification, as long as there are feedback mechanisms to correct the inevitable abuse. — The Wall Street Journal reports on growing competition between various Organic and Non-GMO food marketing schemes. The federal government doesn’t regulate non-GMO labeling. Instead, certification is done by private groups, mainly the Non-GMO Project. The Bellingham, Wash., nonprofit doesn’t prohibit the use of synthetic pesticides on crops used as ingredients, or ensure animal-welfare standards. But it says it tests more stringently to ensure GMOs aren’t inadvertently mixed into ingredients during transportation or production. The distinctions might seem like hairsplitting, but they matter for companies. Earning the Non-GMO Project’s imprimatur or the USDA’s organic certification can take months or years, depending on the item and the applicant backlog. Each can cost thousands of dollars initially, and must be renewed annually—a significant expense for smaller producers. Prices for organic and non-GMO ingredients also are significantly higher than regular ones.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in GMO NewsI'd buy into a label who's primary USP was "Ethical" in the same style as Ethical Investment Fund. It would be more like Fairtrade than Organic. Never mind, whether it contains GMO or pesticides were used. It would be more about "this product was produced without the undue help or influence of BigAg, using sensible, sustainable farming practices and with due consideration to both animal and farmer welfare and the environment." Goddess only knows how you would quantify and test for that. — The Wall Street Journal reports on growing competition between various Organic and Non-GMO food marketing schemes. The federal government doesn’t regulate non-GMO labeling. Instead, certification is done by private groups, mainly the Non-GMO Project. The Bellingham, Wash., nonprofit doesn’t prohibit the use of synthetic pesticides on crops used as ingredients, or ensure animal-welfare standards. But it says it tests more stringently to ensure GMOs aren’t inadvertently mixed into ingredients during transportation or production. The distinctions might seem like hairsplitting, but they matter for companies. Earning the Non-GMO Project’s imprimatur or the USDA’s organic certification can take months or years, depending on the item and the applicant backlog. Each can cost thousands of dollars initially, and must be renewed annually—a significant expense for smaller producers. Prices for organic and non-GMO ingredients also are significantly higher than regular ones.
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Commented on post by Thomas Morffew in MobileAnother bete noir is products where the Android version has Chromecast support but the desktop web version doesn't. Like, say, Tunein. — Good advice, but will they listen? h/t +Mark Traphagen
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Law+Mișu Moldovan And how Brittany and the Basques stand out. Are they France's "Scotland"? — These two images from FranceTVInfo haven't circulated nearly as much as they need to have – they show the results of the French regional elections in 2010 (left) and last week (right). These are the elections for the leadership of the 27 regions of the country, and are generally seen as a bellwether for the presidential elections, scheduled to be held in April and May of 2017. The color-coding is: Red for the PCF (Communist); pink for the PS (Center-Left); light blue for the LR (Center-Right); and dark blue for the FN, the far-right party of Marine le Pen. Yellow and green represent various smaller local parties. To give some calibration to readers more familiar with US politics, the PS and LR (pink and light blue) are roughly similar to the Democrats and the Republicans back in the later 1990's. The National Front is precisely the sort of party you would imagine would walk around with a name like "The National Front;" their leader spends a lot of time trying to explain that their party isn't about racism, but gets frequently subverted when her father (the party founder) shows up at rallies and cheerfully explains to the crowd that yes, it's all about racism! Which is to say, she's somewhat to the right of the bulk of the US Republican party today (but ask me again in a few weeks), but still to the left of both Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. There was a time when I didn't need to use actual Nazis as reference points for calibrating major political parties, I'm pretty sure. In the overall poll (which doesn't really affect much since these are regional elections, but again, which is a good metric of opinion) the FN got 28% of the vote, the LR 27%, and the PS 23%. However, this is a multi-party system, and the actual way regional governments turn out will be considerably more complex. These plots are mostly of interest to see the shift in political sentiment over time.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeIt's not a case of either-or, it's a call for realism. 1.5C is unrealistic because its now impossible to avoid without a time machine or magical geo-engineering. 2C is unrealistic because we're going to hit it before 2100 because there's no way we can get to zero emissions in time to prevent it. It's highly likely that we'll hit 3-4C rise by 2100. So we have to 1) Get to zero emissions as fast as possible 2) Get to sustainability as fast as possible 3) Mitigate the likely effects as far as we can 4) Adapt controllably before the Earth's systems force us to adapt  Because the alternative is to overshoot, crash and burn in the worst and most unpleasant way. If these goals and targets of 2C or 1.5C have any use it's as a way to focus minds but they're not in themselves terribly real. And maybe they're now counter productive because they're obscuring the reality. — “Although the caveats and uncertainties are all spelled out in the scientific literature, there is concern that the two degree Celsius modeling effort has distorted the political debate by obscuring the scale of the challenge.” If Paris isn't going to meet its goals, then the questions becomes whether countries should mitigate or adapt. Opinion is divided on that. #Paris2015 #COP21 #Mitigation #Adaptation
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Commented on post by Thomas Morffew in MobileHello again! Laptops are mobile too. So are Chromebooks. Now why don't laptops/chromebooks have GPS built in? — Good advice, but will they listen? h/t +Mark Traphagen
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Commented on post by Pierre FarLaptops are mobile too. So are Chromebooks. Now why don't laptops/chromebooks have GPS built in? — With mobile soon to be dominant for every site, the advice will be a site should also be desktop-friendly.
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Commented on post by Declan McCullaghNo desktop web version? Oh, well. — If you're reviewing a toaster, it won't get better or worse at making toast a month later. But with sufficiently complex systems, a review is a snapshot in time--and our recommendation engine powering Recent News has read many more articles and is smarter than it was when we launched a few months ago. Netted by the Webbys (published by the Webby Awards folks) alludes to this in their review of Recent News published today. They loved how our increasingly smart app "learns your tastes, adjusts your recommendations, and suggests other categories you might like." Here's their review: http://netted.net/recent-news-personalized-news-app/ Thanks, Netted!
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate ChangeNow in the NY Times with some reaction from some of the climate criminals. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/climate/2015-paris-climate-talks/a-stunt-by-environmental-activists-targets-climate-skeptics — This turned up today. Nice high impact page listing major denier lobbyists at the Paris talks. https://secure.avaaz.org/en/climate_criminals/ Note Bjorn Lomborg described as "delayer in chief" Facebook image of the posters on the streets. https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/12342526_10153490401528884_1526941012926529087_n.jpg
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyThis turned up today. Nice high impact page listing major denier lobbyists at the Paris talks. https://secure.avaaz.org/en/climate_criminals/ Note Bjorn Lomborg described as "delayer in chief" facebook image. https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/12342526_10153490401528884_1526941012926529087_n.jpg   — http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-30/unearthing-america-s-deep-network-of-climate-change-deniers A loose network of 4,556 individuals with overlapping ties to 164 organizations do the most to dispute climate change in the U.S., according to a paper published today in Nature Climate Change. ExxonMobil and the family foundations controlled by Charles and David Koch emerge as the most significant sources of funding for these skeptics. The source paper is here http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2875.html This paper along with its data really needs to be liberated from Nature and released into the wild. Name and shame. It looks like the author might be  https://plus.google.com/117392663651261765213/about
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Commented on post by John Englart in Climate Changehttp://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/12/why-the-world-is-now-set-on-two-degrees-of-warming/418968/?utm_source=SFTwitter This is pointless. 1C is now. <1.5C in the future is now impossible. <2C is probably impossible. Reality is more like a minimum of 3C by 2100. So why are we arguing about the inclusion of a miraculous goal that will stay miraculous whether it's included or not. — The 1.5C climate target remains alive with some 109 countries, at present, supporting it's inclusion in the draft Paris climate agreement.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Limits+John Poteet One of the messages I got from Limits to Growth is that population is just one of several interdependent variables. So the traditional Malthus focus on population and food is a special case. For a slightly more general simplification, "If the resource constraints don't get you, the pollution will." without saying which particular parameter will hit first. Or perhaps just, "exponential growth leads to overshoot, crash and burn". The point being that even if we get population growth under control, top out at 9B (say) and work out how to feed them all, the finite carbon available and the CO2 pollution will still make that unsustainable. And if we transition to zero carbon, 100% renewable energy, it'll be some other constraint and some other pollution.  What's scary is that no matter where you look, the resource constraint is now on the horizon and at most only a few doubling periods away. Even something as apparently limitless as total solar energy striking the Earth is now within mankind's reach in forecast-able human timescales. Though obviously there's plenty of other constraints that are closer at hand and likely to get us first. Apologies for the 4-to-the-floor tribal drumbeat to the choir. Bartlett's Laws of Sustainability were new to me and I thought they might add something. — Solar "Power the World" graphic -- corrected for actual performance You've likely seen a graphic showing that a small portion of the Sahara desert would provide all the world's demand for electricity. Turns out that that graphic omits some realities. Such as the net attained productivity of actual power plants, and the fact that electricity represents only a small portion of total human energy use (about 1/3). I believe this representation leaves off other factors, including net of storage or synthetic fuel creation, both of which greatly increase energy requirements. The upshot is that when you hear that the Sun delivers to Earth in an hour the energy used by humans in a year, you're talking a total surplus of slightly less than 9,000x. Call it 10^4 for arguments' sake. That starts getting cut by multiple factors quite quickly: land vs. total surface area, PV efficiency, spacing factors, capacity factor, etc. Not to mention that literally paving the surface of the planet with PV is somewhat unlikely. Also note that this map likely also includes projection scaling distortion -- latitudes closer to poles on many maps appear larger than those closer the equator. Still, it's pretty telling. Based on: http://www.dlr.de/tt/Portaldata/41/Resources/dokumente/institut/system/projects/Ecobalance_of_a_Solar_Electricity_Transmission.pdf
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in LimitsI was thinking that Bartlett's famous aphorism is appropriate here. "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." and that it ought to be wrapped up in some kind of law. And then saw this post from Gail Tverberg about Bartlett's laws of sustainability. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5925 Note Law 12: When large efforts are made to improve the efficiency with which resources are used, the resulting savings are easily and completely wiped out by the added resources that are consumed as a consequence of modest increases in population. Efficiency gains don't get you another order of magnitude. Which is why moving PV from 20% to 25% or switching to LED lighting feels like sticking plasters in the face of 3% PA compound growth. Perhaps doing all of it buys you another doubling period. But that's only another 30 years. -- There's a Techno-Optimism fairy tale about geo-engineering our way out of global warming by putting sun shades into space so cutting the power reaching the earth. There's another fairy tale about putting PV into space and beaming the energy down via microwaves. There's a certain conflict of interest there! It does allow us to start thinking though of the planetary Matrioshka brain where all the solar energy crossing near Earth space is captured, used and reused. With all the lower and lower grade waste heat re-absorbed and used for lower grade activity. I wonder how many centuries of 3% compound growth it will take before we would need to have done that. I'm pretty sure it's inside the Long Now's goal of 10k years. This is one of the intermediate stages to building the stellar Matrioshka sphere to capture and use the entire solar output. So there's still some upside available. rambling again. — Solar "Power the World" graphic -- corrected for actual performance You've likely seen a graphic showing that a small portion of the Sahara desert would provide all the world's demand for electricity. Turns out that that graphic omits some realities. Such as the net attained productivity of actual power plants, and the fact that electricity represents only a small portion of total human energy use (about 1/3). I believe this representation leaves off other factors, including net of storage or synthetic fuel creation, both of which greatly increase energy requirements. The upshot is that when you hear that the Sun delivers to Earth in an hour the energy used by humans in a year, you're talking a total surplus of slightly less than 9,000x. Call it 10^4 for arguments' sake. That starts getting cut by multiple factors quite quickly: land vs. total surface area, PV efficiency, spacing factors, capacity factor, etc. Not to mention that literally paving the surface of the planet with PV is somewhat unlikely. Also note that this map likely also includes projection scaling distortion -- latitudes closer to poles on many maps appear larger than those closer the equator. Still, it's pretty telling. Based on: http://www.dlr.de/tt/Portaldata/41/Resources/dokumente/institut/system/projects/Ecobalance_of_a_Solar_Electricity_Transmission.pdf
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeWhere would you tell your children and grandchildren to move to, to have the best hope of surviving the changes? And with a reasonably happy and productive life.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeSource paper from Thomas Piketty. http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/ChancelPiketty2015.pdf Well worth reading the summaries on page 2 and page 9 — The evidence is clear: the rich are destroying the planet. A new study released Wednesday by Oxfam highlights how extreme inequality is fueling climate change. The report, released earlier today in Paris at the COP21 UN climate summit, found that “the richest 1 per cent of the world’s population produces 175 times as much CO2 per person as the bottom 10 per cent” and the richest 10 per cent produce fully half of all carbon emissions. #Inequality #ClimateChange
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Limits+Tadeusz Szewczyk I hope you're enjoying your stay in the SciFi book you appear to be inhabiting. Can I recommend searching back through Charles Stross's blog for the discussions on interstellar travel. This seems like a good place to start,  http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high-frontier-redux.html  
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Limits+Tadeusz Szewczyk  There are many exoplanets out there we will be able to reach one day I'm not sure you understand how big space is, how deep the gravity well and how hostile it is to meat puppets. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding your use of "we".
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Limits+Paul Gray Hang on, so Mars is Planet A and Earth is Planet B? I'm not saying we're aliens, but ... So you're saying Humans, or at least life, developed on Mars first and destroyed the ecosphere there? There's a cod-science story that may or may not be true that goes something like this. We've got several logically possible routes to go from simple chemicals to simple molecules to amino acids. And amino acids can be seen in other places in the universe. What we don't have is a good explanation for how you get from amino acids to DNA. So maybe DNA only appears very occasionally by chance and then seeds goldilocks planets from outer space. So perhaps Earth isn't the first and the seed of life appeared from elsewhere. Fred Hoyle was fond of this idea. So was Tim Leary. But Leary's take was that even if it didn't happen as the start of life on Earth, we'd be the ones to spread the "Star Seed".
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Commented on post by Li Lightfoot in Climate ChangeGoogle's green credentials. https://www.google.co.uk/green/bigpicture/ "Google uses very little of the world's electricity (less than 0.01%)." I'm not sure whether to be pleased or scared by this. Analysis of datacentre electricity usage 2005-2010 http://www.analyticspress.com/datacenters.html "In summary, the rapid rates of growth in data center electricity use that prevailed from 2000 to 2005 slowed significantly from 2005 to 2010, yielding total electricity use by data centers in 2010 of about 1.3% of all electricity use for the world, and 2% of all electricity use for the US." As above. Are you scared yet? Then there's this. http://www.nrdc.org/energy/data-center-efficiency-assessment.asp America's Data Centers Consuming and Wasting Growing Amounts of Energy "In 2013, U.S. data centers consumed an estimated 91 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, equivalent to the annual output of 34 large (500-megawatt) coal-fired power plants. Data center electricity consumption is projected to increase to roughly 140 billion kilowatt-hours annually by 2020, the equivalent annual output of 50 power plants, costing American businesses $13 billion annually in electricity bills and emitting nearly 100 million metric tons of carbon pollution per year." Ok. Now I'm beginning to get a bit concerned. And finally, this,  http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2755977 A discussion of the energy use of information technology generally. — "Google today announced it will purchase 842 megawatts (MW) of clean energy, nearly a doubling of the power it's purchased to date and taking the company to 2 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy."
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in LimitsThere's a Sirius B. And it's only 8.6 light years away. The Tardigrade-Mushroom generation ship should be able to get there in a 1000 years or so. Just as long as the ship's Windows XP OS keeps getting updates.
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Commented on postI can't think of any good reason why handguns, automatic and semi-automatic weapons should be legal at all, at all. I can understand (just about) why shotguns and single shot hunting rifles should be legal but with a license and various restrictions. But then that's what we have in the UK so I'm probably just arguing from familiarity. And also because I come from a hunting-shooting-fishing family and was pretty damn good at prone target shooting when I was a kid.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaOnce upon a time, Buzz had some quite useful keywords like author: and commenter: They've gone and pretty much all we had left in G+ was -inurl: but even that doesn't work any more. And what happened to REST and putting the parameters in the URL so it could be bookmarked? I never want "best of" and always want "Most recent" so why is that in the javascript and not in the url? And yes, not implementing community search in the beta is ridiculous. As is rolling out the beta as an update for the app versions.  — On G+ Android App Search I don't send feedback. It's a fucking black hole, useless, and annoying. But G+'s bastardised search is just fucking idiotic. I'm searching for information on some Mac OS X tools. I'd really like to be able to limit this to specific Circles (oh: what happened to being able to manage those?), or specific Communities (I suspect there's a Mac community somewhere), or by dates and such, or from or to me. You've lost all that in the Android app, and on desktop. G+ search has always sucked for its capabilities and syntax. You've made it worse. It has beeen useful for its comprehensiveness (yes, everything's indexed) and performance (Google knows from back-end engineering). But back at the dawn of time, a small scrappy search startup realised that simply dumping everything they had on the users' laps wasn't productive. They figured out how to subset and rank results, per the user's direction (no, your AI CANNOT fucking figure it all out, trust me, the AI is a fucking idiot). Might want to call those guys up. (Submitted as feedback -- yes, I'll do it if the pain's sufficently bad. This is excruciating.) Ping +Danielle Buckley​.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in AntiscienceSo why the selective trust? Because this is not uncommon. — +Mommy, PhD​ has an excellent long summary of common fallacious arguments advanced by anti-scientists. The specific examples concern vaccines but the general principles are equally relevant to climate change denial, anti-GMOery and other forms of antiscience.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Change1.5 is impossible without a time machine plus immediate zero emissions plus globally scaled, short term, geo-engineering. It's done. — A coalition of vulnerable countries is pushing the global community to adopt a new 1.5 degree global warming target at the ongoing climate talks in Paris. The group of countries, known as the Climate Vulnerability Forum, argues current efforts to limit global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius is insufficient to protect many nations from the dangers of climate change. The group came to this conclusion, which was announced on the first day of the climate talks, after two years of expert review and diplomatic consultations #1.5°C #ClimateVulnerability
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in AntiscienceWhat I didn't see was the Anti-Business and Pro-Business Models that accept science selectively to justify what is basically a political position. So you get people who, 1) Accept the science of climate change but reject the science of GMOs. Perhaps what they're really doing is using science selectively to justify their distrust of BigOil and BigAg. I find this quite common among socially aware, left of centre intellectuals. 2) Reject the science of climate change but accept the science of GMOs. Using science selectively to justify their beliefs in the market or something. This is the one that looks most like following the money or some kind of pro business as usual conspiracy. Pro-BigOil and BigAg. Not at all uncommon for a certain kind of right of centre person to enjoy all the benefits of science and technology but to deny one specific area because it might be saying they can't keep it all. These are obviously simplifications and there's loads of maybe out there and mixing and matching of beliefs. And plenty of apparently educated, informed people who even hold scientific positions and careers, cherry picking which science they accept and which they don't. Or cherry picking science papers to justify their beliefs.  — +Mommy, PhD​ has an excellent long summary of common fallacious arguments advanced by anti-scientists. The specific examples concern vaccines but the general principles are equally relevant to climate change denial, anti-GMOery and other forms of antiscience.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeEasy. Just redefine the goal as 3C instead of 2C. “The trajectory of emissions we’re on now is so steep, it’s too late,” he said. “There’s no scenario under which this could be contained below two degrees—it’s game over.” 2C is only possible with a time machine to go back and start reducing emissions 20 years ago. Combined with global scale roll out of magical carbon removal tech that is currently just imaginary. It's even worse than it appears. — OVER the last few years, the concept of a global carbon budget has established itself as a key element of the international climate policy debate. The budget defines the total amount of carbon dioxide we can emit into the atmosphere and still keep warming below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, the goal set by the United Nations.. But as delegates meet in Paris this week, we are already in danger of busting the budget. Staying within the original budget outlined by the I.P.C.C. no longer seems realistic. So what do we do? This is where magical thinking, questionable accounting and dubious expectations about future technology come into play. It is called negative emissions. #NegativeEmissions
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Commented on post by John Walkup in Climate ChangeThe original research paper is behind a paywall. Is there any way of getting hold of it along with the data?  — " A loose network of 4,556 individuals with overlapping ties to 164 organizations do the most to dispute climate change in the U.S....  ExxonMobil and the family foundations controlled by Charles and David Koch emerge as the most significant sources of funding for these skeptics.   He examined Internal Revenue Service data showing which groups in the network of climate contrarians accepted funding from ExxonMobil or Koch foundations between 1993 and 2013. Recipients from those two sources tend to occupy central nodes in what he calls a "contrarian network." Groups funded by ExxonMobil or the Kochs "have greater influence over flows of resources, communication, and the production of contrarian information," Farrell wrote. The research was neither easy nor glamorous. One particular element of tedium was making sure that individuals were not represented more than once. Farrell analyzed the individuals, eliminated all middle initials, corrected misspellings, and deleted courtesy titles. "This was completed by hand," he noted, "on all 4,556 names." A supplement to the paper lists all 164 of the organizations he identified as promoting climate-change skepticism, a roster that includes the CATO Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Heartland Institute.  Once he understood the network, Farrell investigated which organizations were most successful in pushing their view. He found that groups with ties to the two big donors were more likely to see their viewpoints make it into media than those without such ties.  Farrell's research took him through 40,785 documents from contrarian groups; 14,943 from the New York Times, Washington Times, and USA Today; 1,930 from U.S. presidents; and 7,786 from Congress. For Robert Brulle, a sociology professor at Drexel University who has conducted research on the topic, Farrell's research helps define how climate denial works. "Corporate funders create and support conservative think tanks," which then pass off climate misinformation as valid. The mainstream media pick up on it, which helps shape public opinion. "This brings up the following question," Brulle said. "Why is the media picking up and promulgating the central themes of climate misinformation?" "
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Commented on postThere was a piece on climate change on BBC news last night about goat/sheep herdsmen on the Tibetan Plain. For a long time they've lived up there grazing in the summer and then moving to lower areas in the winter. Except that the glaciers are receding, there's less water, the grass doesn't grow and then the top soil gets blown away so the grass won't come back. A family that used to be able to herd 500 goats now cannot manage 80 on the same land. They're nomadic, so move. Except that the niche has disappeared and you can't move the central Tibetan plain. And land they might move to and continue their way of life is on the other side of a border (and a desert). And it's got its own nomadic herders with their own problems. Not especially relevant except as another data-point. But it's the kind of lifestyle I had in mind when I talked about herding as opposed to farming. On the basis that "farming" includes the kind of pastoral farming of animals as practised in the West. The language is a bit awkward here because you can have a herd of cows or pigs that hardly see the outside of a building but that's not herding as a lifestyle. That's industrial agriculture.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Limits/unsub — +Steven Flaeck​ can hit high points. This isn't one. Ad hominem. Appeal to consequences. No true Scottsman. Poisoning the well. Wishful thinking. That's quite a collection of logical fallacies and tropes he's gathered here. But I'd like to know what makes him think unlimited growth is possible.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Limits+Steven Flaeck I note that you've refused to answer my question. Do you dislike the idea in general of using models to predict the future or is it this specific set of models you object to? You apparently like models  in that you're modelling the future global economy as a bank account that has income as well as outgoings. So I'll take it that it's the specific models you dislike rather than modelling in general. So can you point me at some long term economic modelling that you like better? I think all you've done here so far is to restate you're inaccurate descriptions of the Limits to Growth models and then criticise those inaccurate descriptions. I'm sure there's a name for that kind of argument. 1) The Limits to Growth models don't assume no future discoveries of resources. That's just one of the scenarios and assumptions fed into the World3 model. Hence the column "5 times reserves" in the table you referred to earlier. 2) I'm curious to know where you think fossil fuels are going to come from once the easily accessible ones are used up. There is no paycheck magically putting more fossil fuels into the Earth's current account. What are these new paychecks you're hoping to get. — +Steven Flaeck​ can hit high points. This isn't one. Ad hominem. Appeal to consequences. No true Scottsman. Poisoning the well. Wishful thinking. That's quite a collection of logical fallacies and tropes he's gathered here. But I'd like to know what makes him think unlimited growth is possible.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in LimitsWhen one comes across people who take a violent dislike to Limits to Growth, it always raises a question for me. Do they dislike the idea in general of using models to predict the future or is it this specific set of models they object to. And depending on the reply that leads to some obvious follow on questions. Not least to ask them to propose or point at some alternate models that they prefer. And again, what happens in that alternate model when finite resources meet exponential growth. Not forgetting Bartlett's "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." — +Steven Flaeck​ can hit high points. This isn't one. Ad hominem. Appeal to consequences. No true Scottsman. Poisoning the well. Wishful thinking. That's quite a collection of logical fallacies and tropes he's gathered here. But I'd like to know what makes him think unlimited growth is possible.
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Commented on post by Gilles Bourdin in Climate Change“The trajectory of emissions we’re on now is so steep, it’s too late,” he said. “There’s no scenario under which this could be contained below two degrees—it’s game over.” It's even worse than it appears.
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Commented on post by Bob Payne in Climate ChangeAnarcho-capitalism got us here. What makes you think Anarcho-capitalism will get us out of here? — Governments keep failing to tackle climate change. Maybe they should stop trying http://flip.it/eDp0v
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Commented on post“The trajectory of emissions we’re on now is so steep, it’s too late,” he said. “There’s no scenario under which this could be contained below two degrees—it’s game over.” The only way to stay under 2C is with a time machine to change the past and imaginary carbon sequestration tech implemented on a global scale in the near future. "It's even worse than it appears."
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Commented on post by Joshua Robbin Marks in Climate ChangeThanks. Be careful of GtC vs GtCO2. GtCO2 is about 3 times bigger. So 2,795 GtCO2 is roughly the same as my 1TtC. To an order of magnitude anyway. See https://heteromeles.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams-sample1.pdf for a sample of the book that is my source for the idea of #terafart  where we blow all the 1TtC of accessible carbon into the atmosphere over the next 100 years or so.  565 GtCO2 /3 is 188 GtC. Current run rate is 10 GtC/y so that's 19 years, call it 20. So we have to completely stop blowing carbon into the atmosphere by 2035. It's not going to happen is it. Which is why the models that keep us below 2C need a time machine to go back and start reducing the emissions 20 years ago. And the global scale implementation of atmospheric CO2 removal schemes starting real soon now. When we haven't really got any idea what those are. "It's even worse than it appears." — Why is the Paris climate conference kicking off tomorrow so important? Scientists say we must limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change. To meet this goal, we can burn only 565 gigatons more carbon dioxide. But the fossil fuel industry has 2,765 gigatons of carbon in their reserves -- nearly five times the safe amount. Only a quick transition to 100% clean energy while keeping carbon in the ground will give us a chance to stabilize the climate and prevent runaway global warming.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyThe better shelter has made it to bOingbOing http://boingboing.net/2015/11/29/un-places-order-for-1000-next.html — Migrant refugee camps seen as a city-building, architecture problem. Every so often Bruce Sterling finds this stuff and this is one of those things that spins off ideas.   In several places around the world, but especially in the Middle East and Europe we've got an ongoing migration problem as war or water or climate change or food shortages force people to move to say alive. Traditionally we treat this as a temporary crisis and set up temporary camps with tight controls. But these camps aren't really temporary with it being common for people to be stuck in them for 15 years or more. The people inside them start doing city building and building a camp society regardless of how we attempt to control it. So the big idea is to place the camps in places that need repopulation and encourage the refugees to use free enterprise to build a new city there. Examples might be the empty southern central Italy, and especially the empty new towns and building projects in Spain. But this also applies to places in Central Germany as well. The question is how much infrastructure, law and order and control we have to provide to kick start the process. The infrastructure is not just food/water/housing. Modern migrants have cellphones so electricity/cellphone coverage/internet is important as well. Perhaps the Migrant City should be a temporary autonomous zone or free port. Does that mean an "Escape from New York" compound with high walls? There's the possibility of experiments in new forms of social organisation here. Then there's the jobs problem. The ideal locations for re-population are often empty because there's no work. That's certainly true of Italy/Spain but less so for Eastern Europe. If this is a permanent rather than temporary city then the occupants need to fairly quickly move to generating wealth not just consuming it. What happens to guaranteed basic income or benefits for the migrants? How quickly do they get citizenship of the regional, national and super-national sructures where it's located?  It's good to see architects being interested in this as part of a long tradition from Wren to Corbusier. Both on the macro and micro scale from city layout planning to IKEA flat pack housing. The camps may start as rigid lines of tents but the residents quickly start modifying it. Which then leads to Favela Chic and the kind of (semi)functional chaos of Sao Paolo or the townships of S Africa. Should this be encouraged or discouraged? ather than try and control it, perhaps it would be better to have an orientation point that hands out the essentials but then to let the city self organise.   Finally there's the problem of land ownership. The whole of the western world is now owned. To make this work a space has to be cleared, presumably by government, for the Migrant City to be placed in. Does that mean compensating the current owners of the land in some way? Or do they get to charge rent? How does this vary round the world? From S to N America. Europe compared with Africa. China compared with Siberia. And all that starts with a simple idea. Refugee Camps aren't temporary and they shouldn't be. http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/23/refugee-camps-cities-of-tomorrow-killian-kleinschmidt-interview-humanitarian-aid-expert/ Via one of Bruce Sterling's tumblrs http://wolfliving.tumblr.com/post/134010524861/old-people-in-big-refugee-camps-afraid-of-the-sky btw. That photo really reminds me of the really big festivals like Glastonbury or Burning Man. Camps should include entertainment, art and music. And no, Glastonbury and Burning Man are not preparation for finding yourself as a refugee!
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Commented on post by Joshua Robbin Marks in Climate ChangeCan you point me at a cite for those 2 figures of 565 GtCO2 and 2,765 GtC I've been working on 1.0~1.4 TtC as the remaining easily accessible carbon with 1TtC being the easily memorable sound bite. — Why is the Paris climate conference kicking off tomorrow so important? Scientists say we must limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change. To meet this goal, we can burn only 565 gigatons more carbon dioxide. But the fossil fuel industry has 2,765 gigatons of carbon in their reserves -- nearly five times the safe amount. Only a quick transition to 100% clean energy while keeping carbon in the ground will give us a chance to stabilize the climate and prevent runaway global warming.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeJust got back from a claimed 50,000 march in London. Nice and peaceful. Meanwhile it's kicking off in Paris.  The usual small amounts of tear gas and kettling. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2015/nov/29/global-peoples-climate-change-march-2015-day-of-action-live — Over 10,000 pairs of shoes on the Place de la Republique replace marchers who were set to take part in a climate cancelled protest as activists take to the streets around the globe. The Paris march was expected to bring 200,000 people onto the city’s streets but was forbidden by French authorities in light of security concerns. Elsewhere, thousands marched in Hong Kong, Seoul and Sydney ahead of the Paris climate summit on Monday #Paris2015 #COP21
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeDamn I'm going to have to read the original paper and this one as well now.! ;) At a first glance there's some predictions of the near term future (5-10 years) given as fact in the management summaries that don't seem to be entirely justified. I guess they're more fully explained in the main text. But there, they seem to be much more circumspect and hedged around with uncertainty. An alternate view. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/11/note-on-chinese-coal-consumption.html All this suggests that China has consistently under-reported emissions while overstating economic performance. These trends make a mockery of happy talk about the "decoupling" of growth and emissions at the global level. What's scary is the way we're grabbing at straws or any sign that we might be moving in the right direction. So news that the total emissions rate only grew by 1% (say) is a triumph and described as flatlining. Except that the optimistic models for staying below 2C from the IPCC reports need short term drops of 30% leading to zero emissions 85 years out AND major implementation of CO2 sequestration tech. — This is decent news. Global Carbon emissions are barely increasing even though the Global Economy is growing. Part of the reason is the rush towards renewable power by the EU and China. In 2014, TWO THIRDS of all new power plants were renewable - solar, wind, hyrdo, biomas. That is very significant. The bad news is that Global Carbon emissions must decline rapidly if we are going to "Stop Runaway Global Warming." The hard work has only just begun. 
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Commented on post by Anders Lorenzen in Climate ChangeTry and ignore the weather and dress for wind and rain. — The London climate march set to be the biggest one during COP21:
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyThe IKEA refugee shelter is an inspiring story. http://inhabitat.com/ikeas-solar-powered-flat-pack-refugee-shelters-offer-easily-deployable-emergency-housing/ikea-refugee-shelter2/ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ikeas-flat-pack-refugee-shelters-housing-thousands-of-desperate-families-across-europe-as-winter-a6752576.html  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3012591/What-good-IKEA-Swedish-furniture-giant-set-produce-10-000-flat-pack-refugee-shelters-replace-tented-cities-globe.html (apologies fr the daily mail link. ;) It's there for the 10,000 figure. ) — Migrant refugee camps seen as a city-building, architecture problem. Every so often Bruce Sterling finds this stuff and this is one of those things that spins off ideas.   In several places around the world, but especially in the Middle East and Europe we've got an ongoing migration problem as war or water or climate change or food shortages force people to move to say alive. Traditionally we treat this as a temporary crisis and set up temporary camps with tight controls. But these camps aren't really temporary with it being common for people to be stuck in them for 15 years or more. The people inside them start doing city building and building a camp society regardless of how we attempt to control it. So the big idea is to place the camps in places that need repopulation and encourage the refugees to use free enterprise to build a new city there. Examples might be the empty southern central Italy, and especially the empty new towns and building projects in Spain. But this also applies to places in Central Germany as well. The question is how much infrastructure, law and order and control we have to provide to kick start the process. The infrastructure is not just food/water/housing. Modern migrants have cellphones so electricity/cellphone coverage/internet is important as well. Perhaps the Migrant City should be a temporary autonomous zone or free port. Does that mean an "Escape from New York" compound with high walls? There's the possibility of experiments in new forms of social organisation here. Then there's the jobs problem. The ideal locations for re-population are often empty because there's no work. That's certainly true of Italy/Spain but less so for Eastern Europe. If this is a permanent rather than temporary city then the occupants need to fairly quickly move to generating wealth not just consuming it. What happens to guaranteed basic income or benefits for the migrants? How quickly do they get citizenship of the regional, national and super-national sructures where it's located?  It's good to see architects being interested in this as part of a long tradition from Wren to Corbusier. Both on the macro and micro scale from city layout planning to IKEA flat pack housing. The camps may start as rigid lines of tents but the residents quickly start modifying it. Which then leads to Favela Chic and the kind of (semi)functional chaos of Sao Paolo or the townships of S Africa. Should this be encouraged or discouraged? ather than try and control it, perhaps it would be better to have an orientation point that hands out the essentials but then to let the city self organise.   Finally there's the problem of land ownership. The whole of the western world is now owned. To make this work a space has to be cleared, presumably by government, for the Migrant City to be placed in. Does that mean compensating the current owners of the land in some way? Or do they get to charge rent? How does this vary round the world? From S to N America. Europe compared with Africa. China compared with Siberia. And all that starts with a simple idea. Refugee Camps aren't temporary and they shouldn't be. http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/23/refugee-camps-cities-of-tomorrow-killian-kleinschmidt-interview-humanitarian-aid-expert/ Via one of Bruce Sterling's tumblrs http://wolfliving.tumblr.com/post/134010524861/old-people-in-big-refugee-camps-afraid-of-the-sky btw. That photo really reminds me of the really big festivals like Glastonbury or Burning Man. Camps should include entertainment, art and music. And no, Glastonbury and Burning Man are not preparation for finding yourself as a refugee!
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyIs there any kind of N American analogy to the African-Middle Eastern camps? Perhaps the Indian Reservations? — Migrant refugee camps seen as a city-building, architecture problem. Every so often Bruce Sterling finds this stuff and this is one of those things that spins off ideas.   In several places around the world, but especially in the Middle East and Europe we've got an ongoing migration problem as war or water or climate change or food shortages force people to move to say alive. Traditionally we treat this as a temporary crisis and set up temporary camps with tight controls. But these camps aren't really temporary with it being common for people to be stuck in them for 15 years or more. The people inside them start doing city building and building a camp society regardless of how we attempt to control it. So the big idea is to place the camps in places that need repopulation and encourage the refugees to use free enterprise to build a new city there. Examples might be the empty southern central Italy, and especially the empty new towns and building projects in Spain. But this also applies to places in Central Germany as well. The question is how much infrastructure, law and order and control we have to provide to kick start the process. The infrastructure is not just food/water/housing. Modern migrants have cellphones so electricity/cellphone coverage/internet is important as well. Perhaps the Migrant City should be a temporary autonomous zone or free port. Does that mean an "Escape from New York" compound with high walls? There's the possibility of experiments in new forms of social organisation here. Then there's the jobs problem. The ideal locations for re-population are often empty because there's no work. That's certainly true of Italy/Spain but less so for Eastern Europe. If this is a permanent rather than temporary city then the occupants need to fairly quickly move to generating wealth not just consuming it. What happens to guaranteed basic income or benefits for the migrants? How quickly do they get citizenship of the regional, national and super-national sructures where it's located?  It's good to see architects being interested in this as part of a long tradition from Wren to Corbusier. Both on the macro and micro scale from city layout planning to IKEA flat pack housing. The camps may start as rigid lines of tents but the residents quickly start modifying it. Which then leads to Favela Chic and the kind of (semi)functional chaos of Sao Paolo or the townships of S Africa. Should this be encouraged or discouraged? ather than try and control it, perhaps it would be better to have an orientation point that hands out the essentials but then to let the city self organise.   Finally there's the problem of land ownership. The whole of the western world is now owned. To make this work a space has to be cleared, presumably by government, for the Migrant City to be placed in. Does that mean compensating the current owners of the land in some way? Or do they get to charge rent? How does this vary round the world? From S to N America. Europe compared with Africa. China compared with Siberia. And all that starts with a simple idea. Refugee Camps aren't temporary and they shouldn't be. http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/23/refugee-camps-cities-of-tomorrow-killian-kleinschmidt-interview-humanitarian-aid-expert/ Via one of Bruce Sterling's tumblrs http://wolfliving.tumblr.com/post/134010524861/old-people-in-big-refugee-camps-afraid-of-the-sky btw. That photo really reminds me of the really big festivals like Glastonbury or Burning Man. Camps should include entertainment, art and music. And no, Glastonbury and Burning Man are not preparation for finding yourself as a refugee!
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietySo when is Detroit going to take 10,000 Syrians? And yes, Escape from New York comes to mind. In fact I wonder the USA Prison Industry isn't already doing that. — Migrant refugee camps seen as a city-building, architecture problem. Every so often Bruce Sterling finds this stuff and this is one of those things that spins off ideas.   In several places around the world, but especially in the Middle East and Europe we've got an ongoing migration problem as war or water or climate change or food shortages force people to move to say alive. Traditionally we treat this as a temporary crisis and set up temporary camps with tight controls. But these camps aren't really temporary with it being common for people to be stuck in them for 15 years or more. The people inside them start doing city building and building a camp society regardless of how we attempt to control it. So the big idea is to place the camps in places that need repopulation and encourage the refugees to use free enterprise to build a new city there. Examples might be the empty southern central Italy, and especially the empty new towns and building projects in Spain. But this also applies to places in Central Germany as well. The question is how much infrastructure, law and order and control we have to provide to kick start the process. The infrastructure is not just food/water/housing. Modern migrants have cellphones so electricity/cellphone coverage/internet is important as well. Perhaps the Migrant City should be a temporary autonomous zone or free port. Does that mean an "Escape from New York" compound with high walls? There's the possibility of experiments in new forms of social organisation here. Then there's the jobs problem. The ideal locations for re-population are often empty because there's no work. That's certainly true of Italy/Spain but less so for Eastern Europe. If this is a permanent rather than temporary city then the occupants need to fairly quickly move to generating wealth not just consuming it. What happens to guaranteed basic income or benefits for the migrants? How quickly do they get citizenship of the regional, national and super-national sructures where it's located?  It's good to see architects being interested in this as part of a long tradition from Wren to Corbusier. Both on the macro and micro scale from city layout planning to IKEA flat pack housing. The camps may start as rigid lines of tents but the residents quickly start modifying it. Which then leads to Favela Chic and the kind of (semi)functional chaos of Sao Paolo or the townships of S Africa. Should this be encouraged or discouraged? ather than try and control it, perhaps it would be better to have an orientation point that hands out the essentials but then to let the city self organise.   Finally there's the problem of land ownership. The whole of the western world is now owned. To make this work a space has to be cleared, presumably by government, for the Migrant City to be placed in. Does that mean compensating the current owners of the land in some way? Or do they get to charge rent? How does this vary round the world? From S to N America. Europe compared with Africa. China compared with Siberia. And all that starts with a simple idea. Refugee Camps aren't temporary and they shouldn't be. http://www.dezeen.com/2015/11/23/refugee-camps-cities-of-tomorrow-killian-kleinschmidt-interview-humanitarian-aid-expert/ Via one of Bruce Sterling's tumblrs http://wolfliving.tumblr.com/post/134010524861/old-people-in-big-refugee-camps-afraid-of-the-sky btw. That photo really reminds me of the really big festivals like Glastonbury or Burning Man. Camps should include entertainment, art and music. And no, Glastonbury and Burning Man are not preparation for finding yourself as a refugee!
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Commented on postIn the sense that nomadic herdsmen need quite large areas of land although that land can be low quality. This is rather different from the kind of intensive dairy farming of England. And also eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastoral_farming#Extensive_farming
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate ChangeSous les pavés, la plage!  — I can't say I'm surprised but it's French politics and business as usual.  http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/27/paris-climate-activists-put-under-house-arrest-using-emergency-laws
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Commented on postThe comments on the original got hung up on foraging vs modern life as some kind of either-or. I've recently come across the idea that the 4 major subsistence modes are Foraging, Farming, Herding and Mooching. Where most people and societies through history and now do a combination of these things. It's both-and, not either-or. Mooching is the bit where your society allows at least some if not most of it's members to do non-subsistence stuff. Herding is a good one in that it tends to allow a lot of mooching, uses cattle to do your pre-digestion of raw plant material for you. And allows you to just walk away when things start going wrong. It's not very land intensive though.
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeAs most of the commentators on the article pointed out, it's that the growth in emissions has slowed to only 1% a year. Total emissions are still 10GtC pa and still growing. So it's hard to see where any "decoupling" is actually happening. Given China has restated it's coal use by 17% and also GDP growth for 2000-2012, it's hard to have much faith in any of this. Those error bars and uncertainty probably should be bigger. Meanwhile atmospheric CO2 keeps growing. Fossil fuels keep being blown into the atmosphere. And global temperatures keep rising. Maybe the acceleration has slowed, but the none of those rates have fallen. Which derivative of the curves do you want to focus on?  — This is decent news. Global Carbon emissions are barely increasing even though the Global Economy is growing. Part of the reason is the rush towards renewable power by the EU and China. In 2014, TWO THIRDS of all new power plants were renewable - solar, wind, hyrdo, biomas. That is very significant. The bad news is that Global Carbon emissions must decline rapidly if we are going to "Stop Runaway Global Warming." The hard work has only just begun. 
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Commented on postThe fly in the ointment. The flaw in the engraving. The flaw in the ointment is probably the Arsenic.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeAnderson’s case, in summary, is that most of us, whether scientists, policy makers or citizens, are suffering from cognitive dissonance. We acknowledge the mathematics of carbon budgets compatible with the 2°C target, yet are unable to face the revolutionary implications of what we need to do to get there. Put simply, our entire way of life for most of us in rich countries—and for an increasing number of rich people in poor countries—has to change radically, starting now. There's that 1000Gt figure again, except this time it's 1000GtCO2 to stay under 2C of which 300GtCO2 is probably already gone. That's 0.3TtC. Much more likely is that mankind blows the full 1TtC #terafart  of accessible fossil fuels over the next 100 years. It's borked.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in EnvironmentAnd now. In comic form. http://www.nature.com/news/the-fragile-framework-1.18861 — What are these Paris Climate Change talks anyway?  Here's one of those fast talking youtube guys telling it like it is with the aid of plenty of nouns in a large font face. It's only 4 minutes. You can find 4 minutes, right.  https://youtu.be/oo5ca1dMbEc As one commentator says, "And the better news is that even if Paris totally flops, and everyone is just hurling brie and baguette at one another, cities and private companies can take action to cut emissions and make a difference. In fact, they're the real key players here, because diplomacy isn't real climate action. How does any treaty matter if no one does what is says?"  Holy pea-huck, hipster man! That's the better news? Via one of those essays about Uncharted Territory in FlatLand (where be dragon kings, and black swans). http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/11/uncharted-territory.html - This year will undoubtedly be the hottest year on record - Before the start of the Paris climate talks, negotiators working to craft an international agreement that will curb rising global greenhouse gas emissions are staring into a wide gulf between what countries are willing to do and what they need to do. - Not only are we humans unable to verify INDC emissions pledges after the Paris talks conclude, but we are also unable to take into account all of the GHG emissions our global civilization creates and has already created. But we can measure the resulting CO2. And that's at an all time high. Another facebook commentator said: "Are you people. For. Real. We're. On. The verge. Of ww3 and your On about. This. BOLLOX."  Hey ho. What's below the emergent behaviour? Oh, it's emergent behaviour all the way down. Thing is, we're all doing our best. Just because one aspect of modern life is rubbish doesn't mean we can't put effort into trying to deal with some other aspect that's rubbish. http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2015/11/05/ive-changed-my-mind/ so http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2015/11/20/know-yourself-heal-self-liberate-experiment-build-community/
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in Science!Love that gif. Squeee! It's so cute! — A study in PNAS suggests that tardigrades -- a phylum of primitive, extremely hardy microanimals -- stole most of their DNA from other species. Amazing critter, the Borg water bear.
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Commented on post by 路Yuan in Electric Vehicles (UK)13s or 14s? https://www.electricbike.com/52v-battery-3077-fet/ — E bike battery 48V 18Ah lithium 
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawI bet Horselover Fat is loving this.  — So to give a bit of context to this: Amazon has just released a TV adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel The Man in the High Castle, about what the world would be like if the Nazis won WWII. And somebody in their marketing department decided that a good way to advertise this would be to cover New York's subways with hybrid Nazi / Imperial Japanese / American imagery. Now, if you happen to be a serious Philip K. Dick fan and walk onto the subway, you might recognize this. But I'm going to take a wild guess and estimate that most people in New York City are not going to step aboard a train and think "Oh! Mid-20th-century New Wave science fiction!" when they see this. But that's not what's really alarming here. That's just stupid marketing. What's really alarming is that, when +Steve S shared an article about this, I responded in a comment (without much thinking about it) that "there's something a bit alarming about getting onto the subway and seeing Parteiadlers all over the place. Especially when leading politicians are advocating Nazism, and black protesters are getting shot and beaten at rallies." What's alarming is that this is a pretty straightforward summary of the past few days' domestic news. If you missed people being shot and beaten, the gunfire was at a Minneapolis rally, where protesters were demanding the release of camera footage in the Nov. 15th killing of Jamar Clark by police. The attack was apparently planned and executed by three men, two of which are still at large; whether they are affiliated with any larger terrorist organization remains unknown. Five people were shot, and all remain hospitalized, but (fortunately) with noncritical injuries.  The beating was at a Trump rally in Birmingham, where Mercutio Southall, Jr., yelled that "Black lives matter." He was immediately grabbed and beaten by a mob, yelling "shut up, nigger," "monkey," and "all lives matter;" Trump later said on Fox & Friends that Southall "should have been roughed up... it was disgusting what he was doing." Robert Kiger, founder of one of his SuperPACs, told CNN that it was only to be expected, since he himself would expect to get beaten if he visited a black church. So given all of this context, I would say that this is not the best time for a marketing department to put Nazi imagery all over the subways. Also, I can't believe I just had to put that sentence together.
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Commented on post by doug rogers in Climate ChangeThe main  argument is correct. However, VW were trying to cheat NOx emissions in diesel cars. When diesel was promoted by governments in the EU to help reduce carbon emissions (and oil imports). So the cheat wasn't (mainly) about mis-stating carbon emissions. However, a smaller factor was that the tests would show a much better fuel consumption than was possible in reality. And in that aspect of it, they were also cheating tax breaks and license cost breaks by cheating on fuel consumption. But the main reason was still to meet the unattainable NOx emission targets.  — How climate cheaters make the rest of us pay http://flip.it/Ce0vi
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Commented on post by Climate Vulnerable Forum in Climate ChangeStrongly recommend you go back and re-read the first 4 paragraphs of that wikipedia page. And perhaps the paper at reference 35. — Survive Thrive Paris 1.5°C Keeping global warming to the minimum at below 1.5 degrees Celsius is an ambitious alternative to the current international goal for holding the increase in temperatures to below 2 degrees. Already 106 nations and hundreds of civil society groups support a strengthened 1.5°C climate goal. Use the map at 1o5C.org to tweet to celebrate or encourage state decisions on 1.5°C. Make yourself heard. #1o5C #COP21 #ClimateChange #Ethiopia 
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Commented on post by Climate Vulnerable Forum in Climate ChangeNice use of the word "simply". If you want to imagine you live in a Scifi world, be my guest. ps. I like the way that wikipedia section is marked "[dubious – discuss]". Makes a change from [citation needed]. — Survive Thrive Paris 1.5°C Keeping global warming to the minimum at below 1.5 degrees Celsius is an ambitious alternative to the current international goal for holding the increase in temperatures to below 2 degrees. Already 106 nations and hundreds of civil society groups support a strengthened 1.5°C climate goal. Use the map at 1o5C.org to tweet to celebrate or encourage state decisions on 1.5°C. Make yourself heard. #1o5C #COP21 #ClimateChange #Ethiopia 
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Commented on post by Stewart BrandMy optimism is about time scales. It feels completely inevitable to me that we will have to transition to a sustainable global economy built completely on renewables and recycling. Now this might be 200 years to 0.5B people and a technological post-fossil-fuel society. In which case the transition might be relatively painless. That's the optimistic future. Or it might be forced on us in 75 years and involve at least some events that are truly horrific. And that's my reason for asking if the Long Now group is exploring these ideas. Are they looking at ways of helping that optimistic transition take place? — 9 environmentalist myths worth questioning Peter Kareiva, new Director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, examines nine Green exaggerations: Myth 1: Human population is growing exponentially and it’s ruining the planet. Myth 2: Biodiversity is declining everywhere. Myth 3: Set up free markets with the right incentives for environmental innovation and we will “business” our way to sustainability. Myth 4: In the end, corporations are always enemies of the environment. Myth 5: If you question an environmental regulation, you’re automatically anti-environment. Myth 6: We have already used up 1.5 Earths and exceeded our planet’s carrying capacity. Myth 7: People who don’t think we should act strongly to stop climate change are just stupid/ill-informed/ignorant. Myth 8: Sustainability means eating locally. Myth 9: If we keep on our current path, Mother Earth will be destroyed and it will be the end of life on the planet.
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Commented on post by Climate Vulnerable Forum in Climate Change+Captain Obvious When you say "It is possible to quickly cool the planet" I do take issue with that statement as a bald statement of fact. Yes, there are people exploring a number of ideas, but no, currently it is not possible to quickly cool the planet. What we do know how to do is to warm the planet. And all that takes is for us (all 7B of us) to just continue what we're doing. Which I'm sure you'll agree is highly likely. But that's all just sophistry. My real issue is with people saying "if we do this, we can keep the rise below 1.5C". Sorry guys, that target's gone. You're too late. — Survive Thrive Paris 1.5°C Keeping global warming to the minimum at below 1.5 degrees Celsius is an ambitious alternative to the current international goal for holding the increase in temperatures to below 2 degrees. Already 106 nations and hundreds of civil society groups support a strengthened 1.5°C climate goal. Use the map at 1o5C.org to tweet to celebrate or encourage state decisions on 1.5°C. Make yourself heard. #1o5C #COP21 #ClimateChange #Ethiopia 
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Commented on post by Scott in Google+ UpdatesIt really isn't a non-issue though because each little niggle like this is a barrier to engagement. And they add up to platform failure. — Communities is much better in the old version. The list is sorted by recently visited, not alphabetic. Other than that the new G+ looks good.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingDo you think he's as fast as Pirro now? I think not. — HRC Confirms they have parted company with Casey Stoner Remember this : https://plus.google.com/u/0/+WiggysanWiggysan/posts/WZgmHNzS1in .... well +Honda Pro Racing / +Box Repsol will release Stoner at the end of 2015. The Ducati Press site already has " Casey Stoner Announcement " up. No details yet. More Details from +Motorsport.com France : http://www.motorsport.com/motogp/news/honda-confirms-stoner-departure-at-end-of-2015/ LATE EDIT : Casey now confirmed at Ducati at "Ambassador & Test Rider" : http://www.motogp.com/en/news/2015/11/23/stoner-to-return-to-ducati-as-ambassador-and-test-rider/190381 ________________________________ +MotoGP #MotoGP #Stoner #Ducati 
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Commented on post by Scott in Google+ Updates- The "unread" number is almost invisible in white on green overlaid on the community backdrop. - What we actually need is a most unread or most recently updated sort order, not alpha or recently visited. - The tiles are way too big. In desktop Classic I could quickly scan >30 communities. Now I have to scroll down after 8. ps +Jason Falter, that's what he said.    — Communities is much better in the old version. The list is sorted by recently visited, not alphabetic. Other than that the new G+ looks good.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionThere seems to be a lot of non-player actors in The Game. ps. Long time fan of eXistenZ. Is it really 15 years? — You've just lost The Game
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaThe direct URLs for notifications don't seem to change the desktop UI displayed regardless of if you're in classic or New Beta mode. So I guess they'll probably go away. Not really sure what's going to happen with the mobile web version. Does anyone actually use it? — It's just occurred to me: the fact that Google rolled out the new G+ look as a reversible trial is fucking huge. Remember the disasterous "Vic's been Zorbing" May 2013 rollout? (That's the one which gave us much of the present "Cards" look, though with about 1,872 scrollbars and 10^100 "view more" links.) IIRC that dominated discussion for a month or two while issues were shaken out. Followed by the very brief tweek to Notifications in December 2014 which was rolled back inside of 24 hours. I've long criticised Google (along with many other online services) for: 1. Rolling out massive site revamps blind to users. Yes, a key feature of SAAS is the ability to roll out changes and not having to support legacy. But it also makes for a very rocky and uncertain user experience. 2. Not working with its users to develop changes. 3. Sticking to its guns in the face of disaterous roll-outs. The December 2014 Notifications change was an absolute shocker in that Google reversed it. I was absolutely speechless and shocked, favourably, and said so at the time. This time through, we've got: 1. An optional change. 2. The ability to roll back (remember the Monster Sized Coverphotos that weren't reversible?) 3. And some effort to work with users. From a procedures and philosophy viewpoint, this is actually a huge step forward for G+. It's the last thing I'd have expected under +Vic Gundotra​, and the most telling sign of a massive shift -- in a positive direction -- under +Bradley Horowitz​ (there've been other large shifts, though I'd not classify those as positive). Still haven't tried out the new look, but the shadings are positive. Ping +Yonatan Zunger​ +Andreas Schou​
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Commented on postSometimes seems like there's a lunatic fringe in the Christians and Muslims (and probably others) that want to Immanentize the Eschaton via an apocalypse in the Middle East as well. I blame St John The Divine.
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Commented on post by Climate Vulnerable Forum in Climate ChangeRead these and follow the links. http://cleantechnica.com/2015/11/23/not-good-enough-meta-analysis-climate-indc-studies/ http://www.wri.org/blog/2015/11/insider-why-are-indc-studies-reaching-different-temperature-estimates http://climateactiontracker.org/ EVEN IF we implemented all the pledges by nations to cut their CO2 emissions, it's still likely we'll get 2.5-3.5C increase over pre-industrial by 2100. Now tell me how likely it is that those pledges mean anything and will actually get implemented. — Survive Thrive Paris 1.5°C Keeping global warming to the minimum at below 1.5 degrees Celsius is an ambitious alternative to the current international goal for holding the increase in temperatures to below 2 degrees. Already 106 nations and hundreds of civil society groups support a strengthened 1.5°C climate goal. Use the map at 1o5C.org to tweet to celebrate or encourage state decisions on 1.5°C. Make yourself heard. #1o5C #COP21 #ClimateChange #Ethiopia 
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Commented on post by Electric Cars Guide in Electric Vehicles (UK)To answer my own question, this might be a road test, http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/132960-toyota-i-road-the-electronic-boris-bike-of-the-future And it's very much a city car in the style of the old G-Wiz. So that's 45kph top speed and 50km range. So fun, probably, but quick, no. It's possible that there's a home built version if you based it off the Piaggio MP3. But you have to solve the problem of feet up stops with some kind of righting mechanism. It is possible to ride an MP3 completely feet up, but it's awkward and can end in falling over. — The #Toyota i-Road is an electric vehicle combining the best aspects of #cars and #motorbikes into one futuristic (and fun) model.
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Commented on post by Aaron Wolf in Chromecast AudioYou don't say what platform. It's an irritation that Android Play kind of understands local files and can play them, but that it has trouble with files on a memory card and can't understand files on a NAS at all. And then if Android Play is playing a local file, can you Cast it? I take it the answer is no. — I'm quite disappointed in the Chromecast Audio for 2 reasons. 1) It cannot play side loaded media, even from within Google Play Music. I have several FLAC (lossless) audio files that I'd like to play, but the CC won't play them unless they are streamed. 2) You need an internet connection for it to work. Why? As related to my first point, I should need to go "out" to the internet to play something that's right on my device! I've got a little bit of buyers remorse, but here's hoping updates fix these problems.
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Commented on post by Electric Cars Guide in Electric Vehicles (UK)It's really hard to tell if these are real or still just CGI. Do any exist and has anyone outside Toyota driven (ridden) one? — The #Toyota i-Road is an electric vehicle combining the best aspects of #cars and #motorbikes into one futuristic (and fun) model.
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Commented on post by Climate Vulnerable Forum in Climate ChangeThe only way we'll keep the temp rise below 1.5C is by redefining the base line to be whatever the temperature is in 50 years time. We've probably locked in +2 and maybe even +3, even if we completely stopped blowing more carbon into the atmosphere today. I'm all for applying pressure on the politicians and negotiators. But it's way past time for some realism. — Survive Thrive Paris 1.5°C Keeping global warming to the minimum at below 1.5 degrees Celsius is an ambitious alternative to the current international goal for holding the increase in temperatures to below 2 degrees. Already 106 nations and hundreds of civil society groups support a strengthened 1.5°C climate goal. Use the map at 1o5C.org to tweet to celebrate or encourage state decisions on 1.5°C. Make yourself heard. #1o5C #COP21 #ClimateChange #Ethiopia 
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Commented on post by Aaron Wolf in Chromecast Audiohttps://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6279416?hl=en-GB See,  Does Chromecast support playing audio from local media servers? Does Chromecast support local content playback? And yes, it irritates me that the CA doesn't just understand music and media stored on a home NAS. Or alternatively that there isn't an official  Google app that understands a home NAS. — I'm quite disappointed in the Chromecast Audio for 2 reasons. 1) It cannot play side loaded media, even from within Google Play Music. I have several FLAC (lossless) audio files that I'd like to play, but the CC won't play them unless they are streamed. 2) You need an internet connection for it to work. Why? As related to my first point, I should need to go "out" to the internet to play something that's right on my device! I've got a little bit of buyers remorse, but here's hoping updates fix these problems.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and Ecologyhttp://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/11/this-is-the-way-the-world-ends.html --- On November 3, 2015, Scripps Oceanography put out a press release about fish populations off the California coast. The California Current is home to many marine animals, including marine fishes, which are the most diverse vertebrates on Earth and critical to marine ecology. Two independent long-term time series now reveal strikingly similar trends of wide-ranging declines in fish populations in the California Current. — “This is likely related. It was a very unusual year in the ocean, and along the Pacific Coast, lots of things that were unprecedented happened, including this algal bloom, and the fact that it has gotten into the food web,” Mantua said. “There is nothing good about it.” Ocean conditions could begin cooling as soon as this year, Mantua said, but there is no way to know. Long term, however, the ocean is absorbing most of the heat of climate warming. And species such as toxic algae that can compete and thrive in warmer, nutrient-poor waters are the winners. “This is diagnostic of what we can expect more of in the future,” Trainer said. “And it’s a mess.” Lefebvre was troubled by the link between warm water off the coast and an algal bloom that was unprecedented in both its size and toxicity. “It’s a very cautionary tale, to have this warm water and bigger blooms, and more animals affected,” Lefebvre said. “What does the future hold?”
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionThe Game is the Game, right? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/I_lost_the_game.jpg/400px-I_lost_the_game.jpg — You've just lost The Game
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta+Edward Morbius Not sure what "this" referred to but try these. http://voidstar.com/images/G+ActivityLog.png http://voidstar.com/images/G+DesktopWebNotifications.png http://voidstar.com/images/G+MobileWebNotifications.png I think I scaled it a bit much but it's readable. — It's just occurred to me: the fact that Google rolled out the new G+ look as a reversible trial is fucking huge. Remember the disasterous "Vic's been Zorbing" May 2013 rollout? (That's the one which gave us much of the present "Cards" look, though with about 1,872 scrollbars and 10^100 "view more" links.) IIRC that dominated discussion for a month or two while issues were shaken out. Followed by the very brief tweek to Notifications in December 2014 which was rolled back inside of 24 hours. I've long criticised Google (along with many other online services) for: 1. Rolling out massive site revamps blind to users. Yes, a key feature of SAAS is the ability to roll out changes and not having to support legacy. But it also makes for a very rocky and uncertain user experience. 2. Not working with its users to develop changes. 3. Sticking to its guns in the face of disaterous roll-outs. The December 2014 Notifications change was an absolute shocker in that Google reversed it. I was absolutely speechless and shocked, favourably, and said so at the time. This time through, we've got: 1. An optional change. 2. The ability to roll back (remember the Monster Sized Coverphotos that weren't reversible?) 3. And some effort to work with users. From a procedures and philosophy viewpoint, this is actually a huge step forward for G+. It's the last thing I'd have expected under +Vic Gundotra​, and the most telling sign of a massive shift -- in a positive direction -- under +Bradley Horowitz​ (there've been other large shifts, though I'd not classify those as positive). Still haven't tried out the new look, but the shadings are positive. Ping +Yonatan Zunger​ +Andreas Schou​
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Commented on post by Stewart BrandI'm pretty much convinced now that mankind will burn through the remaining fossil fuels in one last #terafart that adds another ~1TtC (Teratonne of carbon ) to the atmosphere. After that we'll be in an era of renewable sustainability whether we like it or not. In the process we'll be locked into 400,000 years or so of increased global temperature with a big slice of that being >5C over pre-industrial temps. This is likely to happen well inside the Long Now Foundation's timescale of 10k years. Realistically, the #terafart  is likely to last more like 200 years than 10k. Now, maybe the Long Now group is exploring ways of dealing with this, but I'm damned if I can find it. Can anyone point me at some LNF papers that acknowledge this? In the mean time, you might find this interesting.  https://heteromeles.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams-sample1.pdf It's an attempt to turn the IPCC-4 reports into a story about the next 400k years. — 9 environmentalist myths worth questioning Peter Kareiva, new Director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, examines nine Green exaggerations: Myth 1: Human population is growing exponentially and it’s ruining the planet. Myth 2: Biodiversity is declining everywhere. Myth 3: Set up free markets with the right incentives for environmental innovation and we will “business” our way to sustainability. Myth 4: In the end, corporations are always enemies of the environment. Myth 5: If you question an environmental regulation, you’re automatically anti-environment. Myth 6: We have already used up 1.5 Earths and exceeded our planet’s carrying capacity. Myth 7: People who don’t think we should act strongly to stop climate change are just stupid/ill-informed/ignorant. Myth 8: Sustainability means eating locally. Myth 9: If we keep on our current path, Mother Earth will be destroyed and it will be the end of life on the planet.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in EnvironmentSome more figures for you. 10GtC pa as of 2010. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/outreach/behind_the_scenes/gases.html "600 billion tonnes (GtC) of fossil carbon that we've already puffed into the air in just 250 years." Found via this article from a guy who did research into global geo-engineering schemes.  http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/blocking-out-sun-won-t-fix-climate-change-it-could-buy-us-time This stuff is nuts. http://www.spice.ac.uk/ Pumping a slurry of titanium dioxide particles up a pipe 20km into the air to a tethered helium balloon in order to reflect sunlight back into space with super-white clouds. — The #terafart What mankind does when we dump 1 Tera-Tonne of Carbon (1 TtC) into the atmosphere by burning all the accessible fossil fuel, mixed in with some methane liberated from the melting tundra. It isn't completed yet but we're well on the way with business as usual. We're currently blowing 8 Giga-tonnes of Carbon (8GtC) into the atmosphere per year. And it's still accelerating no matter what gets pledged for the Paris Climate talks. Deep human history to 1970 =~ 185GtC, 1970 to 2010 =~ 185GtC. 2010 to 2100 is predicted to be 700-1400GtC. That's one hell of a "Whale Fall". Unlike a real whale fall, there won't be another one. We get just one shot at this and when the whale's gone, it's gone. After that, it's all renewable sustainability. Hat tip to https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/ for coming up with the idea, described in http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1 
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeAnd I have to keep asking. What do we hope to achieve from the Paris talks? And what do we hope to achieve from the associated activism?   — Parallel “civil society” events are not an addendum to, or distractions from, the main event. They are integral to the process. Which is why the French government should never have been allowed to decide which parts of the climate summit it would cancel and which it would still hold. #Paris2015 #COP21 
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Changehttps://secure.avaaz.org/fr/paris_march_next_steps_/ If we can't march, we'll fill the Place de la République with shoes.  — Parallel “civil society” events are not an addendum to, or distractions from, the main event. They are integral to the process. Which is why the French government should never have been allowed to decide which parts of the climate summit it would cancel and which it would still hold. #Paris2015 #COP21 
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Commented on postWhen does a Libertarian group buy an empty oil tanker and convert it into a floating nation, or does that only happen in SciFi? I guess the big problem is getting enough internet bandwidth. I wonder if there are any empty cruise ships going cheap. Turning an old container ship into a self-contained, sustainable eco system feels like a good project for Elon Musk.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyAnd then this. https://secure.avaaz.org/fr/paris_march_next_steps_/ If we can't march, we'll fill the Place de la République with shoes.  And breathe. — OGH, +Edward Morbius introduced us to the idea of "Whale Fall" to refer to the happy situation mankind finds itself in with large quantities of relatively easily accessible fossil fuel energy. I've recently come across a similar metaphor that Mirandans might like. This came from Frank Landis, aka Heteromeles, a prolific commentator on the Charles Stross blog. He's recently released a book that does some factual world building for possible SciFi futures, named "Hot Earth Deams". The short summary is "What if Severe Climate  Change happens, and humans survive", viewed over the next 10 -> 400k years. So here's the metaphor, Mankind's #Terafart So called because if we burn all the fossil fuels, we'll release something like 1 Teratonne of carbon into the atmosphere. Or 1 TtC for Tera tonnes of Carbon. Now it may be anywhere between 0.8 and 1.4 TtC depending on your optimism about easily accessible reserves but 1 TtC is good enough for government work within an order of magnitude or so. And just to give some sense of where we are, we're currently putting around 8 GtC into the atmosphere. Completing the full TtC might take us another 75-100 years. So there you have it. #terafart  Blog: https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/ Book: http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1 Sample: https://heteromeles.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams-sample1.pdf
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Commented on post by John Englart in Climate ChangeWhat do they and we hope to achieve from the Paris talks and the activism? — The type of protest may alter, but activists vow to keep up the pressure on climate negotiators in Paris
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyI wanted to go and find some detail about how far along we were in terms of cumulative Carbon released. I couldn't immediately see it in the sample chapters or the paper book. But that led me to the management summary of the IPCC report from 2014. Or as they call it, "Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers" http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf It's one of those moments when you realise that it's not worse than it appears. Actually it's as bad as we thought it might be. What Frank Landis has done is not to create a fiction. What's he done is to turn the reports from the scientists into a story. And it doesn't take much imagination to read that management summary and realise that beneath all the dry talk about error bars and alternate models, and the safe language signed off by all the vested interests, are some unpleasant truths. We're right on track for the most unpleasant of the scenarios. The scientists know this. They just don't want to admit in public. It's easy to be very, very pessimistic about all this when the most optimistic realism is to talk about soft landings and a multi-century transition to 0.5b people in a technological but sustainable post-industrial society  world at +5C. The problem is that we know that a combination of personal ignorance and selfishness with the stupidity of crowds means crash and burn is far more likely. With all the chaos that implies. We're blowing through +1C right now. +2C is probably already locked in. +4C is highly likely because we're showing no signs at all of slowing down. So listening to the Greens and activists talking about Paris as "If we change now, we can halt climate change" is a bad joke. I think it's time to start facing up to the problems of transition because the twin brick walls of resource constraints and pollution (both traditional and climate) aren't going away. We can't just wish on a star that we can continue business as usual with a few sticking plasters in the form of some LED lights, wind power and solar power, or pledging to reduce CO2 output by 20%. Because it doesn't work. And, breathe. — OGH, +Edward Morbius introduced us to the idea of "Whale Fall" to refer to the happy situation mankind finds itself in with large quantities of relatively easily accessible fossil fuel energy. I've recently come across a similar metaphor that Mirandans might like. This came from Frank Landis, aka Heteromeles, a prolific commentator on the Charles Stross blog. He's recently released a book that does some factual world building for possible SciFi futures, named "Hot Earth Deams". The short summary is "What if Severe Climate  Change happens, and humans survive", viewed over the next 10 -> 400k years. So here's the metaphor, Mankind's #Terafart So called because if we burn all the fossil fuels, we'll release something like 1 Teratonne of carbon into the atmosphere. Or 1 TtC for Tera tonnes of Carbon. Now it may be anywhere between 0.8 and 1.4 TtC depending on your optimism about easily accessible reserves but 1 TtC is good enough for government work within an order of magnitude or so. And just to give some sense of where we are, we're currently putting around 8 GtC into the atmosphere. Completing the full TtC might take us another 75-100 years. So there you have it. #terafart  Blog: https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/ Book: http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1 Sample: https://heteromeles.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams-sample1.pdf
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyOur Glorious Host ;) — OGH, +Edward Morbius introduced us to the idea of "Whale Fall" to refer to the happy situation mankind finds itself in with large quantities of relatively easily accessible fossil fuel energy. I've recently come across a similar metaphor that Mirandans might like. This came from Frank Landis, aka Heteromeles, a prolific commentator on the Charles Stross blog. He's recently released a book that does some factual world building for possible SciFi futures, named "Hot Earth Deams". The short summary is "What if Severe Climate  Change happens, and humans survive", viewed over the next 10 -> 400k years. So here's the metaphor, Mankind's #Terafart So called because if we burn all the fossil fuels, we'll release something like 1 Teratonne of carbon into the atmosphere. Or 1 TtC for Tera tonnes of Carbon. Now it may be anywhere between 0.8 and 1.4 TtC depending on your optimism about easily accessible reserves but 1 TtC is good enough for government work within an order of magnitude or so. And just to give some sense of where we are, we're currently putting around 8 GtC into the atmosphere. Completing the full TtC might take us another 75-100 years. So there you have it. #terafart  Blog: https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/ Book: http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1 Sample: https://heteromeles.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams-sample1.pdf
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Commented on postChat is fascinating because it's a need that won't go away but its remained proprietary. Open standards never really got enough traction the way email did. So we seem to be doomed to re-create it over and over again. The other problem is that while it starts a more or less synchronous 1-1 text it quickly expands into 1-1 audio, 1-1 video and then into few-to-few groups at which point few is never enough and we're into 1-many and few-to-many broadcasting. Then there's the need to build archives, search, APIs, social graphs, async comms, and on and on. So in those articles, where's ICQ, MSN, AIM, YM, Jabber, GChat, Skype, QQ, Tencent, etc, etc? We've been here before.
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Commented on post by Piotr Wajner in Chromecast AudioIt's one of those things where you wish they would just explain it straight forwardly. - HDR Off = Compressed volume, loudness equalisation. - HDR On = No compression, no equalisation. Right? — is anybody tried TOSlink witch Chromecast Audio yet ?  what the impressions ? 
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Commented on post by Andrew ReidThat was a fairly epic comments thread. But not the record.  Try this if you have a few hours to kill. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/09/the-present-in-deep-history.html — I have also noticed this about the 21st century. The thing about reality is, unlike fiction, it has no obligation to actually make any sense...
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in HistoryDid you both buy something from Amazon, made in China? Did you take a bus? Did you buy fine green beans from Kenya? Then you're using oil. — The Arabian peninsula contains several historically stable state configurations. "Arabia on its own, without the Levant or South Arabia," is not one of them, primarily because the settled-peoples-to-nomads ratio is extremely unfavorable.  Both the settled and Bedouin populations in the Arabian peninsula share a religion and a culture. But, sometimes, external trade and water dry up, which makes nomads restive. Normally, restive nomads raid or overthrow their settled neighbors. The problem is that Muslims are prohibited from doing that. The solution is to define your settled neighbors as not really Muslim. Takfiri nomads have a huge political advantage. The House of Saud's relationship with the most recent takfiri-nomad movement has always been tense: the arrangement which made Wahhabism the state religion of Saudi Arabia was essentially religious validation of the idea that the rich, settled parts of Arabia would pay protection money to the poor, nomadic parts of Arabia. Then Saudi Arabia got rich.  When you're paying a fraction of your small GDP to religious lunatics, that's one thing. They can't cause huge problems. When you're paying a fraction of a huge GDP to religious lunatics, they start spreading religious lunacy in places where you don't expect. Which means that Saudi, by attempting to pay off an existential threat under one set of economic and political circumstances, ended up riding a tiger they can't climb off of. It's horrifying, but this may be the most stable noncolonial equilibrium in Saudi Arabia.  Just pray that we get off of oil soon: as long as we still need the stuff that's buried under Saudi, they're going to keep exporting their lunacy. 
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Commented on post by Piotr Wajner in Chromecast AudioHmm. Couldn't see anything in those about HDR. Did I miss something? — is anybody tried TOSlink witch Chromecast Audio yet ?  what the impressions ? 
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Commented on post by Sebastian H. Strumann in Climate Change"This switch from coal to gas is like trying to go dry by switching from vodka to super-strength cider". - Caroline Lucas, Member of Parliament for the Green Party  http://www.treehugger.com/energy-policy/uk-phase-out-coal-slash-solar-support-too.html — Britain aims to close its coal-fired power plants by 2025 under plans announced on Wednesday, becoming the first major economy to put a date on shutting coal plants to curb carbon emissions.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in HistoryThe solution to this problem is simple. Simply wait until the oil runs out. Of course that introduces new problems. Stop buying oil Ok. You first. — The Arabian peninsula contains several historically stable state configurations. "Arabia on its own, without the Levant or South Arabia," is not one of them, primarily because the settled-peoples-to-nomads ratio is extremely unfavorable.  Both the settled and Bedouin populations in the Arabian peninsula share a religion and a culture. But, sometimes, external trade and water dry up, which makes nomads restive. Normally, restive nomads raid or overthrow their settled neighbors. The problem is that Muslims are prohibited from doing that. The solution is to define your settled neighbors as not really Muslim. Takfiri nomads have a huge political advantage. The House of Saud's relationship with the most recent takfiri-nomad movement has always been tense: the arrangement which made Wahhabism the state religion of Saudi Arabia was essentially religious validation of the idea that the rich, settled parts of Arabia would pay protection money to the poor, nomadic parts of Arabia. Then Saudi Arabia got rich.  When you're paying a fraction of your small GDP to religious lunatics, that's one thing. They can't cause huge problems. When you're paying a fraction of a huge GDP to religious lunatics, they start spreading religious lunacy in places where you don't expect. Which means that Saudi, by attempting to pay off an existential threat under one set of economic and political circumstances, ended up riding a tiger they can't climb off of. It's horrifying, but this may be the most stable noncolonial equilibrium in Saudi Arabia.  Just pray that we get off of oil soon: as long as we still need the stuff that's buried under Saudi, they're going to keep exporting their lunacy. 
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Commented on post by Piotr Wajner in Chromecast Audio+Alex Reusch Are you sure about that? There's some people saying the CA compresses by default and this turns off the compression. So you might have a source that was 96kHz/24bit but still had audio volume compression applied.  And people not even clear which way the switch works. Is HDR On like a loudness button on. Or is HDR Off like a "Direct" button that disables bass-treble controls.  — is anybody tried TOSlink witch Chromecast Audio yet ?  what the impressions ? 
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Commented on post by Sebastian H. Strumann in Climate Change1.5 is gone. What we've done already pretty much guarantees we'll break that. But we haven't actually started doing anything. Atmospheric CO2 concentration is still accelerating meaning all the pledges and all the renewables being deployed aren't actually doing anything.  — While much of the attention on a historic Paris climate meeting in the coming weeks will focus on the confounding task of trying to keep global warming below 2°C, or 3.6°F, a battle over another goal — one that has been forgotten by many — will be playing out in the negotiating halls.
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Commented on post by Sebastian H. Strumann in Climate Change30 years out. Close enough to look achievable, far enough out that we don't have to start this year but can wait till next. — n a few decades, the world could be powered by nothing but wind, water, and sunlight. That's the conclusion of a new study released just before world leaders head to Paris to strike a climate deal.
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Commented on post by Sebastian H. Strumann in Climate ChangeAnd replace them with Gas powered which are somewhat more efficient but still fossil fuels that produce carbon emissions and Nuclear that is hugely expensive and won't come on stream for decades. Despite the huge strides forward in renewables, especially off shore wind power, we still need base power from conventional power stations. — Britain aims to close its coal-fired power plants by 2025 under plans announced on Wednesday, becoming the first major economy to put a date on shutting coal plants to curb carbon emissions.
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Commented on post by Sebastian H. Strumann in Climate ChangePart of mankind's #terafart  as we put 1 Tera-tonne of carbon back into the atmosphere. — Really good article!
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Commented on post by Craig Turner in Chromecast Audio+Henry Neugass There's a couple of approaches to this. 1) An audio device driver in Windows. This would provide an alternate playback device that could be made default in the same way that you would direct audio to the TV when plugging in an HDMI cable. Windows device drivers don't have to come from MS but they generally have to be signed. 2) Support standards like DLNA so that the C-A looks like a DLNA end point. Some apps like Windows Media Player now how to route audio out to one of these, even when they don't know how to route to a C-A directly. There may be others where for instance Google (or 3rd party) produces an output plugin for VLC or Winamp or whatever. However there's no wire protocol API available from Google. So it pretty much has to be Google. People like Plex have a vested interest in supporting as many routes as possible. Google is so big now that it only as to support routes it finds commercially useful. Hence the FAQ answer to "How do I play itunes media" becomes "Upload it all to Google Play". — Chromecast Audio app needs a lot and I mean a lot of work. For the product of a software house this is seriously lacking connectivity and operative functions. Compare it to Sonos and you begin to realise the gulf in effort and attention. Let's start with that fiddly bit - setup. It something we all have to do and it should be a one-off event within the app. In Sonos it's all in the app with a bit of tiny hardware prep. Google have you flipping between browser, a personal network to the device before you even connect to your wireless network. For me it also meant waiting in a setup loop and eventually a hard reset. But it was up and connected. The whole point of a wireless system is you can play music from any source. So the expectation is you can link to media libraries on your own network in addition to Internet stations such as Spotify. On the Sonos app setup allows a network media library to be identified and used. Chromecast doesn't and I mean de nada internals. No servers, drives or options to play on the device with the install. There is a possibility of using 2nd party apps which we will look at later. Sonos allows you to choose some streaming services from your options. This include Spotify, Amazon, Google Play as part of the list. Chromecast you get just the Spotify app. Then you realise that Google really haven't bothered with app integration. Click on Spotify and it opens the Spotify app on your device. Then, if you have a premium account, you have to start the playlist and "cast" it to Chromecast and then into the device. But hang on in Sonos I select the streaming service to which I'm subscribed and we play. What Google clearly were aiming for is a bit of flexibility. Many apps can be linked to "cast" but they all run as separate apps and this makes a lengthy chain of software handshakes. I have managed to get Allcast to play media from my iPhone. It does have a capacity for linking to media servers. But that won't locate a USB linked hard drives library. Even here though some music files are not recognised and won't play. Taken as a whole we are talking about retrofitting amps and speakers at a cut price rate. Really I'm not interested in playing just Internet streamed music on a speaker. There are plenty of Bluetooth enabled speakers for this anywhere sharing idea. I do want to remote control my networked music simply at home. I can currently do that by plugging my iPhone into the line in. Does the Chromecast app make it easier? Bluntly, no. Not working as a simple one stop app means swapping and flipping. Some media on the phone won't play. But it did only cost £30 compared to £300 for the hardware. I'll live with it. But I doubt my amp will get a lot of use through it.
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Commented on post by Piotr Wajner in Chromecast AudioWhat does HDR mean? What happens when you turn it on? — is anybody tried TOSlink witch Chromecast Audio yet ?  what the impressions ? 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta+T. Pascal    hints or hover information Yes, this occurred to me as well. There's a lot of different things that happen as you click around the place. And some of them don't even have a cursor change let alone a hover line or alt text hints. This gets especially confusing with posts that have an attachment. Am I going to get the attachment in a new tab or have the article expand and display more of it's comments?  — Misc thoughts on the New G+ Yep, it utterly borks my old CSS. Not completely, but enough that reconstructing it in place is probably a lost cause. Prolly time to refresh a lot of that regardless -- I've learned some things about CSS in the meantime. This is strongly similar to the Android app I've been principally using for the past couple of months, so large bits are similar and familiar. This also means that all the Android annoyances I was hoping would be behind me going back to Desktop are instead haunting me here.... Everything's too fucking small. Fonts are two zoom stops smaller than they should be. Notifications window is too fucking small (more on that). Comments text is too greyed out. I tried the Cards view, multi-column (it now maxes at two rather than three cols) for about 5 seconds and instantly reverted (the configuration's under 'Settings'). My first CSS edit was to boom the fucking main posts display width to 'calc(80%)' with a max width of 40 em. Why are you not using em and rem units fucking everywhere, and flipping the fucking bird at MSIE, Google? px sizing is so 2009. Notifications Let's get this straight, because it's important, and Google really doesn't seem to get this, though last December's roll-back makes me think it might. Ello stumbled into the truth but then stumbled right out of it again. And I've yet to see another site anywhere which Does The Right Thing. First: no, I'm not going to interact with G+ out of Gmail. So get your fucking devs to dogfood G+ in G+. Yeah, +Yonatan Zunger, you too, at least occasionally. The G+ Notifications experience is the center of the user experience. Notifications draw the user back to previous engagements. That is: 1.Content the user's already selected as significant, or 2. If Notifications are enabed (I keep mine really capped), stuff other people think might be of interest (they're usually wrong, hence keeping it capped). 3. In case #1: stuff someone else has come along and engaged with also. If you're lucky, that person isn't some total fuckwit troll or "hello" or "love me" or "amazing" mouth-breather (I block all on site -- though Yonatan annoys me constantly by deleting their comments just as I'm about to block them ;-) This means that Notifications content is, get this: HIGHLY RELEVANT. Or, in the alternative, highly annoying, but, well, that's why Yonny gave us 'Block user'. This means that users live in Notifications. Because the Algorithm is an Ass. The Algorithm is an Idiot. Streams are a mess. And Google's thoughts of relevance are wrong. Build Notifications as a space to live in. Give it the appurtenances of home. Space. Solid construction. Don't want that shit falling down on you. Don't want to be losing my shit. I do that well enough on my own, thanks. There are two options for Notifications. One is worse but serviceable: a popover window which requires either addressing content within the Notifications pane, or in a newly opened tab. The former means that the Notifications Pane Can Never Crash. And content must not be lost. That's a four-and-a-half year gripe of G+, and one that should have been fixed four years ago. It got better than it was for a while, but it still fucking sucks. Fix that. Or avoid the problem altogether. Ello's first round of Notifications implementation was as a side-pane, one of the few instances of HTML frame-like design I've seen that actually worked. Here, its Notifications served as an index of posts, a workflow. It was possible to scroll up and down through this. The posts themselves opened in the main frame of the current window, allowing each to be focused fully, one at a time. I found this profoundly useful. Told Ello that. Loved it. What'd they do? Replaced it with a tiny tinny cheesy popover widget that's too small to see anything in. I cried that night. Think of Notifications as workflow and as central to G+. It's not a Google tool, generally, at least not _within the context of G+. Exit, Notifications, stage right. Composition editor It's bigger than it was. Congrats. It's still too small. I've got height and width cranked to 85% and positioning as percentage offsets. Better. Though the scrollbar's wonky. I'll sort that later. Fonts They're uniformly too small. I've got mine set to browser "small" in CSS -- that's a bit small for long-article reading, but acceptable generally on +G. Use browser-specific sizes. Comment text contrast Again with the grey text on grey background, and greying the currently-highlighted comment div. Comments are key content on G+, and the current comment should be easier, not harder to read. I'd used a very pale blue to highlight via pointer focus earlier. Link text should be uniformly blue If I can click it, and it's text within a normal context, it should be blue. End discussion. Circles / Circle-Stream Just put a bullet in it already. I figure you're going to do that eventually. As +Alex Schleber has noted (hrm: no username autofill on + mentioning, as with the Android app -- is that more memory optimisation? If so, it's ... kinda annoying, I can live without it, but if there is a fix, that'd be nice), seems there wasn't some massive Silent Circle activity going on. Profile / About You killed one of the more useful features of G+: a place for people to write an extended biographical text. Yes, some asshat users will put long Big Brotherish rants there. So what. Seeing what people have to say about themselves is a useful bit in the "should I add them or not" calculus. Also helpful for user disambiguation. Controls elements generally are too big and too spaced out Padding around the G+ menu, the Collections selector dialogs, and other menu items is excessive. Oh, you killed User Cards Probably another memory optimisation. I can understand, though they were useful after extensive presentation modification as the one place I could rapidly change Circle assignments. I use Circles, but not as Circles. Instead they: 1. Control how much crap from any one person shows in my Stream. Fix other relevance metrics and that won't matter so much, but it's been useful. 2. Allow/disallow actions. Mostly comments and Notifications behavior. Provide robust ACL controls and that's something that goes away. 3. Flag undesired (or occasionally desired) behavior. Trolls, asshats, AGW denialists, Libertardians, religious nutters, general idiots, etc. Yeah, I've got circles for 'em all. Also "strikes" -- block or comment strikes. Helps manage who I allow in or out of stuff, keeps a handle on noise. I'd also identify people with specific affiliations, generally Google and Press. Provide a general tagging feature and this need goes away. The formatting and default information on userCards was pretty useless, but they could be connived into providing useful data. Another weakness: they didn't exist where they were most useful: in Notifications, in Post Action summaries, and when trying to disambiguate names while adding users to a post or comment (a really kludgy part of G+ still). On which: User add dialogs: organise by context Some split lines with "active in post", "in your circles", "other G+ users" would help clarify just who/what specific users are in the autofill dialogs. If that's possible. Red Rage Bar Lauren Weinstein's absolutely correct. That's far too obtrusive an element to have at the top of the fucking page ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Make it white. Also: I haet haet haet fixed headers. Lose that too. I've made it a powder blue.... Comments animation in Stream view Kill that. I kill anything that moves. And I'll leave commentary here for now, though may add to this with time. Oh, one more word: criticisms aside, this isn't godawful. At least not so long as I've a CSS editor handy. It's just typically Google UI bad. /cc +Danielle Buckley
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyThere's a lesson here about scale and estimation. I recently came across one of those companies working on devices to extract CO2 from the atmosphere for industrial use. The tech blogs describe this breathessly as "Carbon Capture is the World's Latest Tool to Combat Climate Change". Except that the device might extract 300 tons of CO2 per year. Which is rather less than 8GtC. Only 7 orders of magnitude difference, right? — OGH, +Edward Morbius introduced us to the idea of "Whale Fall" to refer to the happy situation mankind finds itself in with large quantities of relatively easily accessible fossil fuel energy. I've recently come across a similar metaphor that Mirandans might like. This came from Frank Landis, aka Heteromeles, a prolific commentator on the Charles Stross blog. He's recently released a book that does some factual world building for possible SciFi futures, named "Hot Earth Deams". The short summary is "What if Severe Climate  Change happens, and humans survive", viewed over the next 10 -> 400k years. So here's the metaphor, Mankind's #Terafart So called because if we burn all the fossil fuels, we'll release something like 1 Teratonne of carbon into the atmosphere. Or 1 TtC for Tera tonnes of Carbon. Now it may be anywhere between 0.8 and 1.4 TtC depending on your optimism about easily accessible reserves but 1 TtC is good enough for government work within an order of magnitude or so. And just to give some sense of where we are, we're currently putting around 8 GtC into the atmosphere. Completing the full TtC might take us another 75-100 years. So there you have it. #terafart  Blog: https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/ Book: http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392/ref=sr_1_1 Sample: https://heteromeles.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams-sample1.pdf
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Commented on postI think I recognise this (anti-)pattern. - We're losing users and engagement is dropping. - Let's do a redesign - Hey, after the new design, engagement is back up. - Oh. Wait. Everybody's just talking about the new design. It's all meta. - We're losing users and engagement is dropping. Maybe the old design was better. We weren't losing users so fast then. I hope it's not quite as bad as that. 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta+Edward Morbius Talk about content creation made me think. What is the target audience; the 90, the 9 or the 1? And if comment engagement is critical (the 9), why are comments being hidden by default? This also becomes a question about platform. The world+dog may well be consuming web stuff via tablets and phones. But all that content is being created on real PCs and a big slice of the comments are created on real PCs.  — Misc thoughts on the New G+ Yep, it utterly borks my old CSS. Not completely, but enough that reconstructing it in place is probably a lost cause. Prolly time to refresh a lot of that regardless -- I've learned some things about CSS in the meantime. This is strongly similar to the Android app I've been principally using for the past couple of months, so large bits are similar and familiar. This also means that all the Android annoyances I was hoping would be behind me going back to Desktop are instead haunting me here.... Everything's too fucking small. Fonts are two zoom stops smaller than they should be. Notifications window is too fucking small (more on that). Comments text is too greyed out. I tried the Cards view, multi-column (it now maxes at two rather than three cols) for about 5 seconds and instantly reverted (the configuration's under 'Settings'). My first CSS edit was to boom the fucking main posts display width to 'calc(80%)' with a max width of 40 em. Why are you not using em and rem units fucking everywhere, and flipping the fucking bird at MSIE, Google? px sizing is so 2009. Notifications Let's get this straight, because it's important, and Google really doesn't seem to get this, though last December's roll-back makes me think it might. Ello stumbled into the truth but then stumbled right out of it again. And I've yet to see another site anywhere which Does The Right Thing. First: no, I'm not going to interact with G+ out of Gmail. So get your fucking devs to dogfood G+ in G+. Yeah, +Yonatan Zunger, you too, at least occasionally. The G+ Notifications experience is the center of the user experience. Notifications draw the user back to previous engagements. That is: 1.Content the user's already selected as significant, or 2. If Notifications are enabed (I keep mine really capped), stuff other people think might be of interest (they're usually wrong, hence keeping it capped). 3. In case #1: stuff someone else has come along and engaged with also. If you're lucky, that person isn't some total fuckwit troll or "hello" or "love me" or "amazing" mouth-breather (I block all on site -- though Yonatan annoys me constantly by deleting their comments just as I'm about to block them ;-) This means that Notifications content is, get this: HIGHLY RELEVANT. Or, in the alternative, highly annoying, but, well, that's why Yonny gave us 'Block user'. This means that users live in Notifications. Because the Algorithm is an Ass. The Algorithm is an Idiot. Streams are a mess. And Google's thoughts of relevance are wrong. Build Notifications as a space to live in. Give it the appurtenances of home. Space. Solid construction. Don't want that shit falling down on you. Don't want to be losing my shit. I do that well enough on my own, thanks. There are two options for Notifications. One is worse but serviceable: a popover window which requires either addressing content within the Notifications pane, or in a newly opened tab. The former means that the Notifications Pane Can Never Crash. And content must not be lost. That's a four-and-a-half year gripe of G+, and one that should have been fixed four years ago. It got better than it was for a while, but it still fucking sucks. Fix that. Or avoid the problem altogether. Ello's first round of Notifications implementation was as a side-pane, one of the few instances of HTML frame-like design I've seen that actually worked. Here, its Notifications served as an index of posts, a workflow. It was possible to scroll up and down through this. The posts themselves opened in the main frame of the current window, allowing each to be focused fully, one at a time. I found this profoundly useful. Told Ello that. Loved it. What'd they do? Replaced it with a tiny tinny cheesy popover widget that's too small to see anything in. I cried that night. Think of Notifications as workflow and as central to G+. It's not a Google tool, generally, at least not _within the context of G+. Exit, Notifications, stage right. Composition editor It's bigger than it was. Congrats. It's still too small. I've got height and width cranked to 85% and positioning as percentage offsets. Better. Though the scrollbar's wonky. I'll sort that later. Fonts They're uniformly too small. I've got mine set to browser "small" in CSS -- that's a bit small for long-article reading, but acceptable generally on +G. Use browser-specific sizes. Comment text contrast Again with the grey text on grey background, and greying the currently-highlighted comment div. Comments are key content on G+, and the current comment should be easier, not harder to read. I'd used a very pale blue to highlight via pointer focus earlier. Link text should be uniformly blue If I can click it, and it's text within a normal context, it should be blue. End discussion. Circles / Circle-Stream Just put a bullet in it already. I figure you're going to do that eventually. As +Alex Schleber has noted (hrm: no username autofill on + mentioning, as with the Android app -- is that more memory optimisation? If so, it's ... kinda annoying, I can live without it, but if there is a fix, that'd be nice), seems there wasn't some massive Silent Circle activity going on. Profile / About You killed one of the more useful features of G+: a place for people to write an extended biographical text. Yes, some asshat users will put long Big Brotherish rants there. So what. Seeing what people have to say about themselves is a useful bit in the "should I add them or not" calculus. Also helpful for user disambiguation. Controls elements generally are too big and too spaced out Padding around the G+ menu, the Collections selector dialogs, and other menu items is excessive. Oh, you killed User Cards Probably another memory optimisation. I can understand, though they were useful after extensive presentation modification as the one place I could rapidly change Circle assignments. I use Circles, but not as Circles. Instead they: 1. Control how much crap from any one person shows in my Stream. Fix other relevance metrics and that won't matter so much, but it's been useful. 2. Allow/disallow actions. Mostly comments and Notifications behavior. Provide robust ACL controls and that's something that goes away. 3. Flag undesired (or occasionally desired) behavior. Trolls, asshats, AGW denialists, Libertardians, religious nutters, general idiots, etc. Yeah, I've got circles for 'em all. Also "strikes" -- block or comment strikes. Helps manage who I allow in or out of stuff, keeps a handle on noise. I'd also identify people with specific affiliations, generally Google and Press. Provide a general tagging feature and this need goes away. The formatting and default information on userCards was pretty useless, but they could be connived into providing useful data. Another weakness: they didn't exist where they were most useful: in Notifications, in Post Action summaries, and when trying to disambiguate names while adding users to a post or comment (a really kludgy part of G+ still). On which: User add dialogs: organise by context Some split lines with "active in post", "in your circles", "other G+ users" would help clarify just who/what specific users are in the autofill dialogs. If that's possible. Red Rage Bar Lauren Weinstein's absolutely correct. That's far too obtrusive an element to have at the top of the fucking page ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Make it white. Also: I haet haet haet fixed headers. Lose that too. I've made it a powder blue.... Comments animation in Stream view Kill that. I kill anything that moves. And I'll leave commentary here for now, though may add to this with time. Oh, one more word: criticisms aside, this isn't godawful. At least not so long as I've a CSS editor handy. It's just typically Google UI bad. /cc +Danielle Buckley
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaJust switched back. It looks to me like the old design had a basic font-size of 13px and the new one is 14px. Seems like a deliberate decision to make all the fonts one pixel bigger. I could be mis-reading the CSS though. — Misc thoughts on the New G+ Yep, it utterly borks my old CSS. Not completely, but enough that reconstructing it in place is probably a lost cause. Prolly time to refresh a lot of that regardless -- I've learned some things about CSS in the meantime. This is strongly similar to the Android app I've been principally using for the past couple of months, so large bits are similar and familiar. This also means that all the Android annoyances I was hoping would be behind me going back to Desktop are instead haunting me here.... Everything's too fucking small. Fonts are two zoom stops smaller than they should be. Notifications window is too fucking small (more on that). Comments text is too greyed out. I tried the Cards view, multi-column (it now maxes at two rather than three cols) for about 5 seconds and instantly reverted (the configuration's under 'Settings'). My first CSS edit was to boom the fucking main posts display width to 'calc(80%)' with a max width of 40 em. Why are you not using em and rem units fucking everywhere, and flipping the fucking bird at MSIE, Google? px sizing is so 2009. Notifications Let's get this straight, because it's important, and Google really doesn't seem to get this, though last December's roll-back makes me think it might. Ello stumbled into the truth but then stumbled right out of it again. And I've yet to see another site anywhere which Does The Right Thing. First: no, I'm not going to interact with G+ out of Gmail. So get your fucking devs to dogfood G+ in G+. Yeah, +Yonatan Zunger, you too, at least occasionally. The G+ Notifications experience is the center of the user experience. Notifications draw the user back to previous engagements. That is: 1.Content the user's already selected as significant, or 2. If Notifications are enabed (I keep mine really capped), stuff other people think might be of interest (they're usually wrong, hence keeping it capped). 3. In case #1: stuff someone else has come along and engaged with also. If you're lucky, that person isn't some total fuckwit troll or "hello" or "love me" or "amazing" mouth-breather (I block all on site -- though Yonatan annoys me constantly by deleting their comments just as I'm about to block them ;-) This means that Notifications content is, get this: HIGHLY RELEVANT. Or, in the alternative, highly annoying, but, well, that's why Yonny gave us 'Block user'. This means that users live in Notifications. Because the Algorithm is an Ass. The Algorithm is an Idiot. Streams are a mess. And Google's thoughts of relevance are wrong. Build Notifications as a space to live in. Give it the appurtenances of home. Space. Solid construction. Don't want that shit falling down on you. Don't want to be losing my shit. I do that well enough on my own, thanks. There are two options for Notifications. One is worse but serviceable: a popover window which requires either addressing content within the Notifications pane, or in a newly opened tab. The former means that the Notifications Pane Can Never Crash. And content must not be lost. That's a four-and-a-half year gripe of G+, and one that should have been fixed four years ago. It got better than it was for a while, but it still fucking sucks. Fix that. Or avoid the problem altogether. Ello's first round of Notifications implementation was as a side-pane, one of the few instances of HTML frame-like design I've seen that actually worked. Here, its Notifications served as an index of posts, a workflow. It was possible to scroll up and down through this. The posts themselves opened in the main frame of the current window, allowing each to be focused fully, one at a time. I found this profoundly useful. Told Ello that. Loved it. What'd they do? Replaced it with a tiny tinny cheesy popover widget that's too small to see anything in. I cried that night. Think of Notifications as workflow and as central to G+. It's not a Google tool, generally, at least not _within the context of G+. Exit, Notifications, stage right. Composition editor It's bigger than it was. Congrats. It's still too small. I've got height and width cranked to 85% and positioning as percentage offsets. Better. Though the scrollbar's wonky. I'll sort that later. Fonts They're uniformly too small. I've got mine set to browser "small" in CSS -- that's a bit small for long-article reading, but acceptable generally on +G. Use browser-specific sizes. Comment text contrast Again with the grey text on grey background, and greying the currently-highlighted comment div. Comments are key content on G+, and the current comment should be easier, not harder to read. I'd used a very pale blue to highlight via pointer focus earlier. Link text should be uniformly blue If I can click it, and it's text within a normal context, it should be blue. End discussion. Circles / Circle-Stream Just put a bullet in it already. I figure you're going to do that eventually. As +Alex Schleber has noted (hrm: no username autofill on + mentioning, as with the Android app -- is that more memory optimisation? If so, it's ... kinda annoying, I can live without it, but if there is a fix, that'd be nice), seems there wasn't some massive Silent Circle activity going on. Profile / About You killed one of the more useful features of G+: a place for people to write an extended biographical text. Yes, some asshat users will put long Big Brotherish rants there. So what. Seeing what people have to say about themselves is a useful bit in the "should I add them or not" calculus. Also helpful for user disambiguation. Controls elements generally are too big and too spaced out Padding around the G+ menu, the Collections selector dialogs, and other menu items is excessive. Oh, you killed User Cards Probably another memory optimisation. I can understand, though they were useful after extensive presentation modification as the one place I could rapidly change Circle assignments. I use Circles, but not as Circles. Instead they: 1. Control how much crap from any one person shows in my Stream. Fix other relevance metrics and that won't matter so much, but it's been useful. 2. Allow/disallow actions. Mostly comments and Notifications behavior. Provide robust ACL controls and that's something that goes away. 3. Flag undesired (or occasionally desired) behavior. Trolls, asshats, AGW denialists, Libertardians, religious nutters, general idiots, etc. Yeah, I've got circles for 'em all. Also "strikes" -- block or comment strikes. Helps manage who I allow in or out of stuff, keeps a handle on noise. I'd also identify people with specific affiliations, generally Google and Press. Provide a general tagging feature and this need goes away. The formatting and default information on userCards was pretty useless, but they could be connived into providing useful data. Another weakness: they didn't exist where they were most useful: in Notifications, in Post Action summaries, and when trying to disambiguate names while adding users to a post or comment (a really kludgy part of G+ still). On which: User add dialogs: organise by context Some split lines with "active in post", "in your circles", "other G+ users" would help clarify just who/what specific users are in the autofill dialogs. If that's possible. Red Rage Bar Lauren Weinstein's absolutely correct. That's far too obtrusive an element to have at the top of the fucking page ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Make it white. Also: I haet haet haet fixed headers. Lose that too. I've made it a powder blue.... Comments animation in Stream view Kill that. I kill anything that moves. And I'll leave commentary here for now, though may add to this with time. Oh, one more word: criticisms aside, this isn't godawful. At least not so long as I've a CSS editor handy. It's just typically Google UI bad. /cc +Danielle Buckley
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsGah. What happened to "reply". +Edward Morbius Sorry, was getting sarcastic again. Seems like all I ever read about US Immigration rules is how some Valley tech company is abusing H1Bs and doing good Americans out of a job by employing highly skilled, hard working Asians. Which is all a bit close to home because quite recently I was working with a highly skilled, hard working Syrian who was deeply worried about how his family and friends that were still in Syria were going to survive. The grand-standing makes me weep. — The only way to stop a bad refugee with a gun is a good refugee with a gun
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta+Edward Morbius Similar problem but coming from the opposite end. Nice new laptop with a 4k screen and win10. I've got the fonts just about sorted now and modern apps are't too bad about scaling. Chrome's default sizing works fine where I used to use a 14pt default instead of 16pt. But for some reason, the new design has bigger fonts than the old one and everything just takes up too much space. And yes, fonts spec-ed in px is just wrong in 2015. This seems to be a common theme though. I used to be able to get all my communities on one page. But the bigger tiles now means it's 3. I've potentially got a huge screen, but I'm being forced to view G+ as if I've got a 9" tablet.  — Misc thoughts on the New G+ Yep, it utterly borks my old CSS. Not completely, but enough that reconstructing it in place is probably a lost cause. Prolly time to refresh a lot of that regardless -- I've learned some things about CSS in the meantime. This is strongly similar to the Android app I've been principally using for the past couple of months, so large bits are similar and familiar. This also means that all the Android annoyances I was hoping would be behind me going back to Desktop are instead haunting me here.... Everything's too fucking small. Fonts are two zoom stops smaller than they should be. Notifications window is too fucking small (more on that). Comments text is too greyed out. I tried the Cards view, multi-column (it now maxes at two rather than three cols) for about 5 seconds and instantly reverted (the configuration's under 'Settings'). My first CSS edit was to boom the fucking main posts display width to 'calc(80%)' with a max width of 40 em. Why are you not using em and rem units fucking everywhere, and flipping the fucking bird at MSIE, Google? px sizing is so 2009. Notifications Let's get this straight, because it's important, and Google really doesn't seem to get this, though last December's roll-back makes me think it might. Ello stumbled into the truth but then stumbled right out of it again. And I've yet to see another site anywhere which Does The Right Thing. First: no, I'm not going to interact with G+ out of Gmail. So get your fucking devs to dogfood G+ in G+. Yeah, +Yonatan Zunger, you too, at least occasionally. The G+ Notifications experience is the center of the user experience. Notifications draw the user back to previous engagements. That is: 1.Content the user's already selected as significant, or 2. If Notifications are enabed (I keep mine really capped), stuff other people think might be of interest (they're usually wrong, hence keeping it capped). 3. In case #1: stuff someone else has come along and engaged with also. If you're lucky, that person isn't some total fuckwit troll or "hello" or "love me" or "amazing" mouth-breather (I block all on site -- though Yonatan annoys me constantly by deleting their comments just as I'm about to block them ;-) This means that Notifications content is, get this: HIGHLY RELEVANT. Or, in the alternative, highly annoying, but, well, that's why Yonny gave us 'Block user'. This means that users live in Notifications. Because the Algorithm is an Ass. The Algorithm is an Idiot. Streams are a mess. And Google's thoughts of relevance are wrong. Build Notifications as a space to live in. Give it the appurtenances of home. Space. Solid construction. Don't want that shit falling down on you. Don't want to be losing my shit. I do that well enough on my own, thanks. There are two options for Notifications. One is worse but serviceable: a popover window which requires either addressing content within the Notifications pane, or in a newly opened tab. The former means that the Notifications Pane Can Never Crash. And content must not be lost. That's a four-and-a-half year gripe of G+, and one that should have been fixed four years ago. It got better than it was for a while, but it still fucking sucks. Fix that. Or avoid the problem altogether. Ello's first round of Notifications implementation was as a side-pane, one of the few instances of HTML frame-like design I've seen that actually worked. Here, its Notifications served as an index of posts, a workflow. It was possible to scroll up and down through this. The posts themselves opened in the main frame of the current window, allowing each to be focused fully, one at a time. I found this profoundly useful. Told Ello that. Loved it. What'd they do? Replaced it with a tiny tinny cheesy popover widget that's too small to see anything in. I cried that night. Think of Notifications as workflow and as central to G+. It's not a Google tool, generally, at least not _within the context of G+. Exit, Notifications, stage right. Composition editor It's bigger than it was. Congrats. It's still too small. I've got height and width cranked to 85% and positioning as percentage offsets. Better. Though the scrollbar's wonky. I'll sort that later. Fonts They're uniformly too small. I've got mine set to browser "small" in CSS -- that's a bit small for long-article reading, but acceptable generally on +G. Use browser-specific sizes. Comment text contrast Again with the grey text on grey background, and greying the currently-highlighted comment div. Comments are key content on G+, and the current comment should be easier, not harder to read. I'd used a very pale blue to highlight via pointer focus earlier. Link text should be uniformly blue If I can click it, and it's text within a normal context, it should be blue. End discussion. Circles / Circle-Stream Just put a bullet in it already. I figure you're going to do that eventually. As +Alex Schleber has noted (hrm: no username autofill on + mentioning, as with the Android app -- is that more memory optimisation? If so, it's ... kinda annoying, I can live without it, but if there is a fix, that'd be nice), seems there wasn't some massive Silent Circle activity going on. Profile / About You killed one of the more useful features of G+: a place for people to write an extended biographical text. Yes, some asshat users will put long Big Brotherish rants there. So what. Seeing what people have to say about themselves is a useful bit in the "should I add them or not" calculus. Also helpful for user disambiguation. Controls elements generally are too big and too spaced out Padding around the G+ menu, the Collections selector dialogs, and other menu items is excessive. Oh, you killed User Cards Probably another memory optimisation. I can understand, though they were useful after extensive presentation modification as the one place I could rapidly change Circle assignments. I use Circles, but not as Circles. Instead they: 1. Control how much crap from any one person shows in my Stream. Fix other relevance metrics and that won't matter so much, but it's been useful. 2. Allow/disallow actions. Mostly comments and Notifications behavior. Provide robust ACL controls and that's something that goes away. 3. Flag undesired (or occasionally desired) behavior. Trolls, asshats, AGW denialists, Libertardians, religious nutters, general idiots, etc. Yeah, I've got circles for 'em all. Also "strikes" -- block or comment strikes. Helps manage who I allow in or out of stuff, keeps a handle on noise. I'd also identify people with specific affiliations, generally Google and Press. Provide a general tagging feature and this need goes away. The formatting and default information on userCards was pretty useless, but they could be connived into providing useful data. Another weakness: they didn't exist where they were most useful: in Notifications, in Post Action summaries, and when trying to disambiguate names while adding users to a post or comment (a really kludgy part of G+ still). On which: User add dialogs: organise by context Some split lines with "active in post", "in your circles", "other G+ users" would help clarify just who/what specific users are in the autofill dialogs. If that's possible. Red Rage Bar Lauren Weinstein's absolutely correct. That's far too obtrusive an element to have at the top of the fucking page ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Make it white. Also: I haet haet haet fixed headers. Lose that too. I've made it a powder blue.... Comments animation in Stream view Kill that. I kill anything that moves. And I'll leave commentary here for now, though may add to this with time. Oh, one more word: criticisms aside, this isn't godawful. At least not so long as I've a CSS editor handy. It's just typically Google UI bad. /cc +Danielle Buckley
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Commented on post by Government for the people in Climate Changehttps://heteromeles.wordpress.com/2015/11/03/hot-earth-dreams-sample/ It's the subject of this bit of science fact world building.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Analysis and News About GoogleBizarrely when you go down the cul de sacs to communities or collections there's no way back except the browser back button. WTF? — New Update: Followed Collections - Missed Potential I'm still playing around with the preview version of the new look, so I'll wait until I have the full thing before talking about why I think it is what it is. What I will say is that with Collections, we just lost a major opportunity. I am a huge believer in Collections. I follow a lot of them. This update does nothing for me. When you're like me, and you add lots of Collections to try to shape your experience here on Google+, what happens with the new design is that you simply add a whole bunch of pretty tiles to your "Followed Collections." If you want to see the goodies inside any of those collections, you need to dive into each-and-every-single-one-of-them. Like little cul de sacs - little dead ends that you have to pop out of for each one. That is a horrible design. Let me repeat that: horrible. Oh yea, and once you jump into one of those little cul de sacs and look around, it might start showing up in your Home stream, along with the friends you interact with, the featured and suggested posts, and some community posts. If you're lucky. What we could have had would have been much, much more useful. When you click on your "Followed Collections," it could have taken you to a stream comprised entirely of just the collections that you've followed. Click on Communities, same thing: a consolidated stream of all the posts from all the communities you follow. Click on Circles (which is still possible w/ some tweaks in Settings) and a consolidated stream of your circles. Click on Home and it's a consolidated stream of everything (plus more secret sauce from Google). So why, Gideon, do you care so much about this? Because I really love this place and I want it to succeed. But what's going to happen now is that people will be adding Collections and then forgetting about them. The posts from the people and Collections that they really wanted to see will be buried in the little cul de sacs of this cumbersome aspect of the design. Yes, Collections are awesome, but right now, their success is entirely contingent upon their showing up in the stream, which is fairly unlikely unless you visit a Collection, and that means getting people into the habit of visiting each of their Collections regularly. Not. Going. To. Happen. We need a consolidated stream for Collections. We need a consolidated Stream for Communities (it has the same cul de sac problem). Fix that, and this service really does become a powerful place for sharing passions.
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Commented on post by Government for the people in Climate ChangeReversing climate change is probably impossible. Slowing and stopping climate change is probably impossible. Look at the graphs for things like CO2 concentrations and they show absolutely no evidence of us slowing them down. Quite the reverse. They're speeding up. So what if extreme climate change happens (eg +6C) and humans survive?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsI'm somewhat amazed that the USA is taking any refugees. Did they all get an H1B or something? — The only way to stop a bad refugee with a gun is a good refugee with a gun
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaAgree with most of that. I'm surprised you find the text too small. I have exactly the reverse problem that the text AND EVERYTHING else is too big. Can I please have a compact view so I can more easily speed skim more articles and comments. Communities. The sort used to be most recently visited. Now it's alpha. Can I please have "Most New" and make the new number more visible. Because a key art of the daily workflow is "anything new in my communities?" Way, way too many places where the previous UI was hover click, and now its click, click (click). — Misc thoughts on the New G+ Yep, it utterly borks my old CSS. Not completely, but enough that reconstructing it in place is probably a lost cause. Prolly time to refresh a lot of that regardless -- I've learned some things about CSS in the meantime. This is strongly similar to the Android app I've been principally using for the past couple of months, so large bits are similar and familiar. This also means that all the Android annoyances I was hoping would be behind me going back to Desktop are instead haunting me here.... Everything's too fucking small. Fonts are two zoom stops smaller than they should be. Notifications window is too fucking small (more on that). Comments text is too greyed out. I tried the Cards view, multi-column (it now maxes at two rather than three cols) for about 5 seconds and instantly reverted (the configuration's under 'Settings'). My first CSS edit was to boom the fucking main posts display width to 'calc(80%)' with a max width of 40 em. Why are you not using em and rem units fucking everywhere, and flipping the fucking bird at MSIE, Google? px sizing is so 2009. Notifications Let's get this straight, because it's important, and Google really doesn't seem to get this, though last December's roll-back makes me think it might. Ello stumbled into the truth but then stumbled right out of it again. And I've yet to see another site anywhere which Does The Right Thing. First: no, I'm not going to interact with G+ out of Gmail. So get your fucking devs to dogfood G+ in G+. Yeah, +Yonatan Zunger, you too, at least occasionally. The G+ Notifications experience is the center of the user experience. Notifications draw the user back to previous engagements. That is: 1.Content the user's already selected as significant, or 2. If Notifications are enabed (I keep mine really capped), stuff other people think might be of interest (they're usually wrong, hence keeping it capped). 3. In case #1: stuff someone else has come along and engaged with also. If you're lucky, that person isn't some total fuckwit troll or "hello" or "love me" or "amazing" mouth-breather (I block all on site -- though Yonatan annoys me constantly by deleting their comments just as I'm about to block them ;-) This means that Notifications content is, get this: HIGHLY RELEVANT. Or, in the alternative, highly annoying, but, well, that's why Yonny gave us 'Block user'. This means that users live in Notifications. Because the Algorithm is an Ass. The Algorithm is an Idiot. Streams are a mess. And Google's thoughts of relevance are wrong. Build Notifications as a space to live in. Give it the appurtenances of home. Space. Solid construction. Don't want that shit falling down on you. Don't want to be losing my shit. I do that well enough on my own, thanks. There are two options for Notifications. One is worse but serviceable: a popover window which requires either addressing content within the Notifications pane, or in a newly opened tab. The former means that the Notifications Pane Can Never Crash. And content must not be lost. That's a four-and-a-half year gripe of G+, and one that should have been fixed four years ago. It got better than it was for a while, but it still fucking sucks. Fix that. Or avoid the problem altogether. Ello's first round of Notifications implementation was as a side-pane, one of the few instances of HTML frame-like design I've seen that actually worked. Here, its Notifications served as an index of posts, a workflow. It was possible to scroll up and down through this. The posts themselves opened in the main frame of the current window, allowing each to be focused fully, one at a time. I found this profoundly useful. Told Ello that. Loved it. What'd they do? Replaced it with a tiny tinny cheesy popover widget that's too small to see anything in. I cried that night. Think of Notifications as workflow and as central to G+. It's not a Google tool, generally, at least not _within the context of G+. Exit, Notifications, stage right. Composition editor It's bigger than it was. Congrats. It's still too small. I've got height and width cranked to 85% and positioning as percentage offsets. Better. Though the scrollbar's wonky. I'll sort that later. Fonts They're uniformly too small. I've got mine set to browser "small" in CSS -- that's a bit small for long-article reading, but acceptable generally on +G. Use browser-specific sizes. Comment text contrast Again with the grey text on grey background, and greying the currently-highlighted comment div. Comments are key content on G+, and the current comment should be easier, not harder to read. I'd used a very pale blue to highlight via pointer focus earlier. Link text should be uniformly blue If I can click it, and it's text within a normal context, it should be blue. End discussion. Circles / Circle-Stream Just put a bullet in it already. I figure you're going to do that eventually. As +Alex Schleber has noted (hrm: no username autofill on + mentioning, as with the Android app -- is that more memory optimisation? If so, it's ... kinda annoying, I can live without it, but if there is a fix, that'd be nice), seems there wasn't some massive Silent Circle activity going on. Profile / About You killed one of the more useful features of G+: a place for people to write an extended biographical text. Yes, some asshat users will put long Big Brotherish rants there. So what. Seeing what people have to say about themselves is a useful bit in the "should I add them or not" calculus. Also helpful for user disambiguation. Controls elements generally are too big and too spaced out Padding around the G+ menu, the Collections selector dialogs, and other menu items is excessive. Oh, you killed User Cards Probably another memory optimisation. I can understand, though they were useful after extensive presentation modification as the one place I could rapidly change Circle assignments. I use Circles, but not as Circles. Instead they: 1. Control how much crap from any one person shows in my Stream. Fix other relevance metrics and that won't matter so much, but it's been useful. 2. Allow/disallow actions. Mostly comments and Notifications behavior. Provide robust ACL controls and that's something that goes away. 3. Flag undesired (or occasionally desired) behavior. Trolls, asshats, AGW denialists, Libertardians, religious nutters, general idiots, etc. Yeah, I've got circles for 'em all. Also "strikes" -- block or comment strikes. Helps manage who I allow in or out of stuff, keeps a handle on noise. I'd also identify people with specific affiliations, generally Google and Press. Provide a general tagging feature and this need goes away. The formatting and default information on userCards was pretty useless, but they could be connived into providing useful data. Another weakness: they didn't exist where they were most useful: in Notifications, in Post Action summaries, and when trying to disambiguate names while adding users to a post or comment (a really kludgy part of G+ still). On which: User add dialogs: organise by context Some split lines with "active in post", "in your circles", "other G+ users" would help clarify just who/what specific users are in the autofill dialogs. If that's possible. Red Rage Bar Lauren Weinstein's absolutely correct. That's far too obtrusive an element to have at the top of the fucking page ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Make it white. Also: I haet haet haet fixed headers. Lose that too. I've made it a powder blue.... Comments animation in Stream view Kill that. I kill anything that moves. And I'll leave commentary here for now, though may add to this with time. Oh, one more word: criticisms aside, this isn't godawful. At least not so long as I've a CSS editor handy. It's just typically Google UI bad. /cc +Danielle Buckley
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaHere's another one. This time it's mobile web. Note that the list is similarly broken and seems to match the data on the Notificaton page above. https://plus.google.com/app/basic/notifications  — It's just occurred to me: the fact that Google rolled out the new G+ look as a reversible trial is fucking huge. Remember the disasterous "Vic's been Zorbing" May 2013 rollout? (That's the one which gave us much of the present "Cards" look, though with about 1,872 scrollbars and 10^100 "view more" links.) IIRC that dominated discussion for a month or two while issues were shaken out. Followed by the very brief tweek to Notifications in December 2014 which was rolled back inside of 24 hours. I've long criticised Google (along with many other online services) for: 1. Rolling out massive site revamps blind to users. Yes, a key feature of SAAS is the ability to roll out changes and not having to support legacy. But it also makes for a very rocky and uncertain user experience. 2. Not working with its users to develop changes. 3. Sticking to its guns in the face of disaterous roll-outs. The December 2014 Notifications change was an absolute shocker in that Google reversed it. I was absolutely speechless and shocked, favourably, and said so at the time. This time through, we've got: 1. An optional change. 2. The ability to roll back (remember the Monster Sized Coverphotos that weren't reversible?) 3. And some effort to work with users. From a procedures and philosophy viewpoint, this is actually a huge step forward for G+. It's the last thing I'd have expected under +Vic Gundotra​, and the most telling sign of a massive shift -- in a positive direction -- under +Bradley Horowitz​ (there've been other large shifts, though I'd not classify those as positive). Still haven't tried out the new look, but the shadings are positive. Ping +Yonatan Zunger​ +Andreas Schou​
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Metahttps://plus.google.com/notifications/all still exists. But while it corresponds to the mobile web notifications page, it doesn't sync and match the desktop notifications drop down. — It's just occurred to me: the fact that Google rolled out the new G+ look as a reversible trial is fucking huge. Remember the disasterous "Vic's been Zorbing" May 2013 rollout? (That's the one which gave us much of the present "Cards" look, though with about 1,872 scrollbars and 10^100 "view more" links.) IIRC that dominated discussion for a month or two while issues were shaken out. Followed by the very brief tweek to Notifications in December 2014 which was rolled back inside of 24 hours. I've long criticised Google (along with many other online services) for: 1. Rolling out massive site revamps blind to users. Yes, a key feature of SAAS is the ability to roll out changes and not having to support legacy. But it also makes for a very rocky and uncertain user experience. 2. Not working with its users to develop changes. 3. Sticking to its guns in the face of disaterous roll-outs. The December 2014 Notifications change was an absolute shocker in that Google reversed it. I was absolutely speechless and shocked, favourably, and said so at the time. This time through, we've got: 1. An optional change. 2. The ability to roll back (remember the Monster Sized Coverphotos that weren't reversible?) 3. And some effort to work with users. From a procedures and philosophy viewpoint, this is actually a huge step forward for G+. It's the last thing I'd have expected under +Vic Gundotra​, and the most telling sign of a massive shift -- in a positive direction -- under +Bradley Horowitz​ (there've been other large shifts, though I'd not classify those as positive). Still haven't tried out the new look, but the shadings are positive. Ping +Yonatan Zunger​ +Andreas Schou​
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaIf you try the new UI, and then lose it you can get it back via https://plus.google.com/u/0/apps/activities and then click on the search bar — It's just occurred to me: the fact that Google rolled out the new G+ look as a reversible trial is fucking huge. Remember the disasterous "Vic's been Zorbing" May 2013 rollout? (That's the one which gave us much of the present "Cards" look, though with about 1,872 scrollbars and 10^100 "view more" links.) IIRC that dominated discussion for a month or two while issues were shaken out. Followed by the very brief tweek to Notifications in December 2014 which was rolled back inside of 24 hours. I've long criticised Google (along with many other online services) for: 1. Rolling out massive site revamps blind to users. Yes, a key feature of SAAS is the ability to roll out changes and not having to support legacy. But it also makes for a very rocky and uncertain user experience. 2. Not working with its users to develop changes. 3. Sticking to its guns in the face of disaterous roll-outs. The December 2014 Notifications change was an absolute shocker in that Google reversed it. I was absolutely speechless and shocked, favourably, and said so at the time. This time through, we've got: 1. An optional change. 2. The ability to roll back (remember the Monster Sized Coverphotos that weren't reversible?) 3. And some effort to work with users. From a procedures and philosophy viewpoint, this is actually a huge step forward for G+. It's the last thing I'd have expected under +Vic Gundotra​, and the most telling sign of a massive shift -- in a positive direction -- under +Bradley Horowitz​ (there've been other large shifts, though I'd not classify those as positive). Still haven't tried out the new look, but the shadings are positive. Ping +Yonatan Zunger​ +Andreas Schou​
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Commented on post by Alex Reusch in Google+ UpdatesTo get back to the new UI, Click here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/apps/activities and then on search bar I see communities are now in alphabetical order, not last visited. Or most new entries. — New Google+ = useless design for the Desktop Do I have to say more? All interactions might make sense on your mobile device, but definitely NOT on the desktop. 1.) Most navigation has to be done using the "back" button, no direct access 2.) Only two column layout 3.) Access to comments is cumbersome 4.) Ever tried to post a photo from a specific album in G+? 5.) Overall design is optimized for small (mobile) screens Summary: The current design might help to reduce the G+ development team, as there is only one development stream for all platforms. I bet the new G+ mobile apps are nothing more than a HTML browser...
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Commented on post by Alex Reusch in Google+ UpdatesUsing the desktop version, the new UI appeared for a while, I used it for an hour or two and now it's disappeared again with no action on my part. I was having real trouble with it though and it seemed a considerable backward step. Less content, more difficult to view and harder to engage with. Half way through I checked Facebook and it was a real surprise just how responsive it was in comparison. So while I do want to give it time to bed in and not to just complain about change for complaining's sake I'm not impressed so far.  — New Google+ = useless design for the Desktop Do I have to say more? All interactions might make sense on your mobile device, but definitely NOT on the desktop. 1.) Most navigation has to be done using the "back" button, no direct access 2.) Only two column layout 3.) Access to comments is cumbersome 4.) Ever tried to post a photo from a specific album in G+? 5.) Overall design is optimized for small (mobile) screens Summary: The current design might help to reduce the G+ development team, as there is only one development stream for all platforms. I bet the new G+ mobile apps are nothing more than a HTML browser...
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaUsing the desktop version, the new UI appeared for a while, I used it for an hour or two and now it's disappeared again with no action on my part. I was having real trouble with it though and it seemed a considerable backward step. Less content, more difficult to view and harder to engage with. Half way through I checked Facebook and it was a real surprise just how responsive it was in comparison. So while I do want to give it time to bed in and not to just complain about change for complaining's sake I'm not impressed so far.  — Apparently there've been some substantial changes to the G+ Web / Desktop client I've yet to see these as I'm principally on Android and the Android app these days (its own set of headaches), may need to revert to desktop to compare. The buzz around this strikes me at least as initially promising on a number of points: 1. It shows that there's continued active development on the core G+ product. Given the, ahem, stream of bad news and departures over the past 2 years or so, that's somewhat reassuring. I've been following the tragectory of activity on G+ both personally and through third-party monitoring, and it seems to be in a steady and marked decline. 2. The focus appears to be fairly deeply architectural. Communities and Collections strike me as far more sensible focii of G+ activity than Circles -- I've been critical of the former from the very start, and have frequently referred to the slew of "you're doing it wrong" accusations hurled at both followers and posters from the first months of G+ as a sign that this was a deeply flawed basis for the system. 3. There seems to have been actual end-user research involved. About damned time. No, I wasn't contacted nor solicited for this, though I've been somewhat forthcoming with feedback previously (I generally seek not to provide free product design services to Google these days though, in large part out of frustration with past experiences). More at the Official Google Blog: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/introducing-new-google.html The accompanying animated preview makes clear that in selling this, Google continue to emphasise image-heavy, text-lite content. Those of use who have an interest in words, words, words are nonplussed. (Ahem.) From Andreas's re-share, it seems that Lauren Weinstein's even less charitable toward G+ these days than I am: https://plus.google.com/+AndreasSchou/posts/XGQoLLjLA5d "When I read drastic simplification -- I see dumbing down. Any significant amount of that, and I'm outta here. Seriously" Oh dear. I've just realised that any significant Web revamp may well mean my CSS mods are entirely shot to hell. It's not so much that fixing up CSS is inherently difficult (I can largely do it in my sleep), but that Google's use of its in-house Cloture CSS minification engine means that entity names are almost entirely nonsemantic, and change arbitrarily. This makes porting changes a massive headache. Using the stock site has been unbearably headache inducing. I'm not willing to invest that effort yet again on non-semantic CSS. +Issac Kou​​​​ notes that the Notifications drop-down remains too small to be useful. Notifications (buggy as it's been) has been one of G+'s significant strengths -- far less the interface (which is abysmally bad), but the mechanism, and in particular, the "default subscribe to all post activity" element. That itself is somewhat overkill, and tedious discussions in some threads really destroy value as it becomes necessary to mute the thread (and hence kill future conversation) to get away from the noise. But it's the lack of this mechanism on sites such as Reddit which, despite many other useful features, make them abysmally poor for long-lived, slow-moving conversations. It's a mechanism the old-school Mailing List actually provides quite beautifully. Similar recent tweaks at Ello have hugely weakened the value of its own Notifications stream (the all-but-useless "follow" notifications, the tiny size of the dialog, the lost ability to open posts in the main window). Apparently small changes can have a huge impact on site interactions. Lauren also makes solid points with the need for more advanced tools for managing large communities, whether followers or Communities. Where Reddit does shine is in its advanced and heavily automated moderation mechanisms, which are programmable. The problem with compressing out domain-space complexity from interfaces is that the complexity simply re-emerges elsewhere, likely on the onus of users and moderators. For a community I moderate, how this trends may well have an impact on where we (collectively or individually) choose to spend our time. Items on which I see no discussion though they're long-lived pain points: Curation. Presentation. Multiple images per post. Post-publishing editing / addition of images. Advanced formatting (Markdown): bullets, lists, headings, tables, links. Web client memory footprint. Integrated Wiki. I cannot comment further with any intelligence until I've seen the new release. And, I'm sure some of my readers might feel, not then either. Ping +Yonatan Zunger​​​​​ h/t +Andreas Schou​​​​​
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Commented on postChristians prefer to spread terror via remote controlled drone.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Public PolicyThe Sea Lion is strong in this one. — If you want to challenge the claims Tyson makes here, that's fine -- but I will expect non-denialist sources. (I have yet to run into a pro-gun organization that wasn't about gun-violence denialism, so those are out.)
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovichfrom among the 1,900 Syrians accepted by the United States in the last four years I'm quite surprised the US has accepted any Syrian refugees. Did they get an H1B or something? — GOP demagogues, in a show of Christian charity, vowed to keep all Syrian refugees out of their states because one of the Paris attackers used a fake Syrian passport. The New York Times reports: A growing number of governors, presidential candidates and members of Congress rushed to oppose or even defy President Obama’s plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees. Twenty-five Republican governors vowed to block the entry of Syrian refugees into their states, arguing that the safety of Americans was at stake after the Paris attacks by terrorists including a man who entered Europe with a Syrian passport and posed as a migrant. Among the governors were those from Illinois, Massachusetts, Texas and other states that have already resettled relatively large numbers of refugees from among the 1,900 Syrians accepted by the United States in the last four years. By pandering to the Asshole wing of their party, GOP leaders are playing straight into the hands of Da'esh, which aims to harden Western views against Syrian refugees and make Muslim suffering a self-fulfilling prophecy. 
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Commented on postMeanwhile in the UK. http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/11/16/2336228/uk-pm-wants-to-speed-up-controversial-internet-bill-after-paris-attacks With support from Lord Carlisle using the same Snowden argument.
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Commented on postI think we should blame Diffie, Hellman, Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman. And Phil Zimmermann. And Turing; especially Turing, seeing as he was a homosexual. Now why can't we all just use Julius Caesar's ROT-13 and get along.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Public Policy+Kee Hinckley  "protect against some fantasy of a presidential dictatorship" I always thought it was to protect against some fantasy of a royal invader. But maybe I misunderstood. Damn, there's a lot of sea lions on the beach today. — If you want to challenge the claims Tyson makes here, that's fine -- but I will expect non-denialist sources. (I have yet to run into a pro-gun organization that wasn't about gun-violence denialism, so those are out.)
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Politics"obligatory faith-based reference to climate change" Uh-huh. — Signal Bump. Please read the comments as well. Not just for the quality ones but also for the occasional crazies to remind yourself about the general state of commentary elsewhere and especially in the mainstream media.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyI've only recently become aware of  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarpunk Hot Earth Dreams feels like a world building exercise or manifesto for this. — Nobody wants to talk much about what I might call mid-term futures. That's the 100 to 1000 year time scale. A couple of Sci-Fi authors have reacted to this by encouraging us to explore ideas in this area. Making the future understandable by speaking it. So for instance we have Bruce Sterling calling for #22C - thoughts and writing set in the 22nd Century. And Neal Stephenson's Hieroglyph project looking for non-dystopian fiction to counter the relentless dystopianism of this decade's popular (zombie) culture.  One of Charles Stross' commentators has just published a book called Hot Earth Dreams. This is a set of essays exploring the factual basis for potential mid-term futures in the 100->400,000 year range to be used as the basis for SciFi fiction. It tries to answer the question, what does the future look like when severe Climate Change happens but humans survive? As he points out, this is one of those questions that tends to silence people. It's the one we really don't want to think about. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams.html Hot Earth Dreams is now on sale at Createspace (https://www.createspace.com/5799140) on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392)  and on Kindle on November 13 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017S5NDK8) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392 The first 5 chapters can be read here. I recommend Page 8 for a summary. https://heteromeles.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams-sample1.pdf Meanwhile, the CO2, CH4, NOx atmospheric concentration graphs are still rising as fast or faster than they have been for the last 50 years. https://www.wmo.int/media/content/greenhouse-gas-concentrations-hit-yet-another-record The real test of the Paris talks and the country pledges to de-carbonise the global economy is if these graphs start to level out. It should be apparent by now that so far all the talk has been ineffective because the graphs are all still accelerating. And we're trying to sell a story about all this on the basis of global figures that are wildly inaccurate. When China can restate their coal use up by 17% we have to admit that we have no idea what the real values are. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/11/note-on-chinese-coal-consumption.html We can't really measure things like global energy consumption, but we can measure CO2. And that shows that we're not even beginning to try and deal with the source of Climate Change. On the contrary, we're still growing our fossil fuel use rate rather than capping it or reducing it.    It's worse than it appears.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in PoliticsMeanwhile, Paris 13/11 is obviously all Edward Snowden's and Julian Assange's fault. https://theintercept.com/2015/11/15/exploiting-emotions-about-paris-to-blame-snowden-distract-from-actual-culprits-who-empowered-isis/ — Signal Bump. Please read the comments as well. Not just for the quality ones but also for the occasional crazies to remind yourself about the general state of commentary elsewhere and especially in the mainstream media.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in PoliticsOn the Facebook version I've run into this kind of comment as well. But Paris is not London. And France is not the UK. And I also wondered about racial integration and immigrants in the UK. There are bits of the East End where you can clearly see successive waves of Huegenots, Jews, Bangla Deshis, Shikhs, West Indians. Hipsters layered onto the same geographical space. With Churches, Synagogues, Temples, Mosques side by side by side. Every new wave is initially shunned but after a couple of generations, they're as British anyone else. But that's the East End and not Bradford, or Luton, or whatever. it's not all good in the UK and we've got our own troubles. And that raises the question. Why France? And why 7/7? I don't have easy answers or even a clear opinion. I'm very aware of how little I know living in this provincial home counties town. Which is why I defer to people like Yonatan Zunger to try and make sense of all this. And why I don't trust the quick answers the politicians and media try to give us. — Signal Bump. Please read the comments as well. Not just for the quality ones but also for the occasional crazies to remind yourself about the general state of commentary elsewhere and especially in the mainstream media.
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Commented on post/me is reflecting on an entire life spent watching military involvement in regime change by "our" side. It started slow with proxy (cold) wars in places like Afghanistan destroying places I'd walked through. And Iran deposing "our" friend just after I'd driven through. But it seems to have been accelerating lately with Hussein, Gaddafi, Assad and so on. Why France and not somewhere else? And does nobody want to mention France's heavy involvement in bombing Libya. Genuinely surprised there's no appearance of the word "Libya" in Yonatan's article or the comments.
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeOh well, I am 60 with no grand-children. — Grist -- November 14, 2015: The Earth is on track to end 2015 with an average 1 degree Celsius warming http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-earth-is-on-track-to-end-2015-with-an-average-1-degree-c-warming/  climate change global extreme weird weather science
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyFaintly amused by people subbing to an article with no comments. ;) — Nobody wants to talk much about what I might call mid-term futures. That's the 100 to 1000 year time scale. A couple of Sci-Fi authors have reacted to this by encouraging us to explore ideas in this area. Making the future understandable by speaking it. So for instance we have Bruce Sterling calling for #22C - thoughts and writing set in the 22nd Century. And Neal Stephenson's Hieroglyph project looking for non-dystopian fiction to counter the relentless dystopianism of this decade's popular (zombie) culture.  One of Charles Stross' commentators has just published a book called Hot Earth Dreams. This is a set of essays exploring the factual basis for potential mid-term futures in the 100->400,000 year range to be used as the basis for SciFi fiction. It tries to answer the question, what does the future look like when severe Climate Change happens but humans survive? As he points out, this is one of those questions that tends to silence people. It's the one we really don't want to think about. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams.html Hot Earth Dreams is now on sale at Createspace (https://www.createspace.com/5799140) on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392)  and on Kindle on November 13 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017S5NDK8) http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Earth-Dreams-climate-happens/dp/1517799392 The first 5 chapters can be read here. I recommend Page 8 for a summary. https://heteromeles.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/hot-earth-dreams-sample1.pdf Meanwhile, the CO2, CH4, NOx atmospheric concentration graphs are still rising as fast or faster than they have been for the last 50 years. https://www.wmo.int/media/content/greenhouse-gas-concentrations-hit-yet-another-record The real test of the Paris talks and the country pledges to de-carbonise the global economy is if these graphs start to level out. It should be apparent by now that so far all the talk has been ineffective because the graphs are all still accelerating. And we're trying to sell a story about all this on the basis of global figures that are wildly inaccurate. When China can restate their coal use up by 17% we have to admit that we have no idea what the real values are. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/11/note-on-chinese-coal-consumption.html We can't really measure things like global energy consumption, but we can measure CO2. And that shows that we're not even beginning to try and deal with the source of Climate Change. On the contrary, we're still growing our fossil fuel use rate rather than capping it or reducing it.    It's worse than it appears.
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Commented on post by Michel-Pierre COLIN in Climate ChangeDupe — UK increses fossil fuel subsides, despite an earlier pledge to phase them out. At the same time, UK has been cutting back support for solar power and energy efficiency, arguing that the burden was too high.
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Commented on post by Tuttomotorsport in MotoGPThe rider deliberately ran his machine and front wheel into the leg and arm of his competitor, causing that competitor to crash off the course. With no penalty because it was the final corner and that's motorcycle racing.
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeThe real test of the Paris talks and the country pledges to de-carbonise the global economy is if these graphs start to level out. It should be apparent that so far all the talk has been ineffective because the graphs are all still accelerating. — November 9, 2015: WMO World Meteorological Organization -- Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Hit Yet Another Record in 2015 Interaction between CO2 and water vapor amplifies climate change effect. https://www.wmo.int/media/content/greenhouse-gas-concentrations-hit-yet-another-record #WMO  
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsDoes the USA not have a Land Registry? Why aren't these people being prosecuted for RICO? — What happens to the institution of property when property loss is a fraudulent or forged signature away?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chromecasthttp://www.theverge.com/2015/11/12/9723496/youtube-music-app-offline-background Youtube music app. So does it support CA? —  Well worth reading the Chromecast audio FAQs. https://support.google.com/chromecast/?hl=en-GB#topic=6279362 Especially, https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6279416?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=6279411&vid=1-635795409214628433-1838887243 This one amazed me. I’m trying to cast audio from YouTube but it isn’t working. I thought this was a Google Cast-enabled app? Chromecast Audio only supports audio apps and this currently does not include YouTube. WTF? Youtube is a major source of music. Not being able to cast YouTube to a C-A is a bit of an oversight, isn't it?
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Authoritarian RuleThead drift: #WeLoveTheNHS  don't let the nasty party destroy it. Theresa May and the Security state apparatchics are deeply scary. But their ambition to "keep us safe" via ever more intrusive surveillance is tempered by a general incompetence. They think they're James Bond, but really they're Austin Powers. So there's CCTV everywhere but nobody's watching. It gets used after the fact for justification, but not before the fact for crime prevention. That's what I believe and it keeps me sane, anyway. — Sometimes I'm glad I'm not in the UK. While a lot of things are better there (coughcoughUniversalHealthcarecough), the security state seems to be significantly more advanced in many ways. Apparently this latest bill would apply even to overseas operators -- and I bet the TPP has a provision that would let them enforce it in the US.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Mixology 🍸Increasing amounts of "Lounge-Core" around in 2015. — Inspired by a recent post, What music should a cocktail bar play? What music would you like to hear while sipping cocktails, either at home or out on the town? I've contributed to a tag on http://last.fm called "Cocktails at Sunset" http://www.last.fm/tag/cocktails%20at%20sunset Imagine a bamboo shack on the beach somewhere warm and anarchic watching the sun sink into the sea. It used to be Cafe Del Mar, Trip Hop and NuJazz like K&D. Downtempo and lush. More recently there's a rash of ambient techno and IDM that also fits but might be called loungestep or suavestep. Author, Smallpeople, Jessie Ware or Lianne de Havas remixes, Submotion Orchestra, Swarms. But then cocktails are also about getting fairly drunk. It doesn't all have to be downtempo and what about later in the evening? And mostly, does there even have to be music at all, at all? And that leads on to the sound architecture of the room. Velvet and drapes to deaden the sounds so people can actually talk in reasonable privacy or lots of hard live surfaces so that the noise level rises and rises for the buzz of it all?
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Commented on post by Julian Bondhttp://www.musicroamer.com/ Works ok. Just been confirmed that the http://last.fm V1 API is not coming back. So that means tuneglue is dead. — I hate it when good services on the internet go dark and disappear. There used to be a wonderful tool for exploring music space at http://audiomap.tuneglue.net/ It gathered data from http://last.fm and Discogs about related artists and presented it in a Java applet spider diagram. Now it redirects to an EMI Hosting holding page and that sucks. There's analternative one here http://www.liveplasma.com/ that's not bad but it's not the same.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in TechThat V1 API is almost certainly dead and buried according to an insider. So that's it then. https://getsatisfaction.com/lastfm/topics/will-v1-0-of-the-api-come-back-online?topic-reply-list%5Bsettings%5D%5Bfilter_by%5D=all&topic-reply-list%5Bsettings%5D%5Breply_id%5D=16310568#reply_16310568 — Editing old and long abandoned Flash SWF code. TL;DR. I need a lazyweb recipe or help for swf->decompile->edit->recompile->swf Today's trip down the computing rabbit hole is all about Flash and old code. I was a user of a bit of clever code called Tuneglue that allowed you to wander round and visualise the links between music artists. You put in one artist, hit expand and it would query http://last.fm for similar artists and then build a rubber band mesh of the links. It was a great way of exploring musical artist space. The people who wrote it disappeared, leaving a ghost web site behind[1]. The people who hosted it[2] were bought by EMI who then killed the web server. We found the page on the internet archive[3] and amazingly the Flash code still worked. So I grabbed a copy and put it on my website[4]. All went well till about 10 days ago. Then http://last.fm[5] went live with their beta and killed the V1 of their API used by the flash code[7]. The example data[8] and V1 is really not that different from V2[9]. So I thought, maybe I can decompile the flash .swf file, make a few changes to support v2 or the http://last.fm API and then recompile it. I found an online site that will decompile swf[10] Deep in the code, the call to http://last.fm and the xml parsing looks pretty simple.   Xml.load(("http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/artist/" + UrlEncode(this.Artist)) + "/similar.xml");   while (E < EMIArtists.length) {     EMIArray.push(Xml.childNodes[0].childNodes[E].childNodes[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue);     etc This doesn't look hard. There's only half a dozen lines that need changing to support http://last.fm API v2 and I think I can puzzle out the syntax and make it work. So then I started looking for tools to do the swf->decompile->recompile->swf round trip. And that's when I fell down the rabbit hole into other decompilers[11], IDEs, numerous support environments (Java! Ugh!), confusion about what language I was looking at, missing project files, huge downloads that wouldn't install, install files that the anti-virus took 10 minutes to decide were ok, support forums populated by idiots, trial versions of software, abandoned open source projects, and so on and so on. Right now, I've just given up in disgust. So, dearest Lazyweb. Is there anyone out there who's ever successfully done swf->decompile->recompile->swf and can provide a recipe? Or even better is there another music obsessive who wants to take a stab at doing it? Always assuming that http://last.fm don't just resurrect the API V1. They're looking hugely incompetent at the moment so I'm not holding out a lot of hope.  http://voidstar.com/tuneglue/ [1]http://www.onyro.com/ [2]http://audiomap.tuneglue.net [3]https://web.archive.org/web/20140328020033/http://audiomap.tuneglue.net/ [4]http://voidstar.com/tuneglue/ [5]http://www.last.fm/ [6]https://getsatisfaction.com/lastfm/topics/will-v1-0-of-the-api-come-back-online [7]https://web.archive.org/web/20060911141306/http://www.audioscrobbler.net/data/webservices/#Artist Data [8]https://web.archive.org/web/20061231223630/http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/artist/Metallica/similar.xml [9]http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/2.0/?method=artist.getsimilar&artist=metallica&api_key=d50ed5584be64a1564a5d1a12e3fef7f [10]http://www.showmycode.com/ [11]https://www.free-decompiler.com/flash/
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Authoritarian RuleIt's the TTIP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership And yes, it's every bit as bad as the TPP. And it's also being negotiated in secret by the usual suspects. — Sometimes I'm glad I'm not in the UK. While a lot of things are better there (coughcoughUniversalHealthcarecough), the security state seems to be significantly more advanced in many ways. Apparently this latest bill would apply even to overseas operators -- and I bet the TPP has a provision that would let them enforce it in the US.
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Commented on post by Sugiyama in Climate ChangeIf the resource constraints don't get you, the pollution will. One huge elephant in the room. CO2 pollution is invisible. — China's potential "pitfall" would be the environment. “Environmental pollution is the great challenge that China must face during its next stage of development.”
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingWhat we're left with is a personal knife fight between two of the aliens (Vale and Marc). And one alien (Jorge) who thinks they're both dangerous dirty riders. This feels like the late 80s and early 90s all over again. The one thing that worries me about this is the thing they print on every ticket. "Motorcycle Racing is Dangerous". Both Vale and Marc have shown they're capable of bumping and boring that is right on the edge of acceptability. Bring it on. When's the next race? —   #VamosJorge    Another world title for +Jorge Lorenzo​ & the +yamahamotogp​ team. Full report to follow soon Full Report via +David Emmett​'s top writer +Jared Earle​ C/O MotoMatters dot com https://motomatters.com/results/2015/11/08/2015_valencia_motogp_race_results_edge_o.html _______________________________________ +MotoGP​  #MotoGP   #TheGrandFinale   #ValenciaGP   #LorenzoChamp  +Yamaha Racing​ +yamahamotogp​  +Alpinestars​ +Yamaha Racing​ +Jorge Lorenzo​ 
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Commented on post by Chris F in Climate Change- New York will be abandoned - The UK will keep building up the flood defences. - China will simply tell everybody to move. To a city that's already built, empty and waiting    — So what will the politicians do then?
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeAs long as it's at least 30 years out, we can ignore it. /s
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate Change15 years.
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Commented on post by Chris F in Climate ChangeMove to Birmingham — So what will the politicians do then?
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Commented on post by Motorcyclist Magazine in MotoGPMy best visual memories of Hayden are of him surfing left hand corners back in the days of the 990 Honda with limited traction control. Firstly Lukey Heights at Philip Island. But also Sachsenring. There's a left hand corner over the brow of a hill and the TV cameras used to show a head on shot just as the bike goes light and sideways. Nicky would get that bike sideways every single lap.   — 2006 World Champion Nicky Hayden becomes the 22nd member the MotoGP Hall of Fame. Can you name some of the other 21 HoF Legends? +MotoGP +MotoGP Fans  #nickyhayden  +Nicky Hayden +Aspar Team  #halloffame   #roadracing   #honda  +HondaRacingHRC 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea Society+Steve S It's not that they don't matter. They matter very much to successive layers of the administration. Which is why there's pressure to exaggerate. And so we'll end up with figures that inflate GDP. And now there'll be pressure to under-report CO2 and pollution. RA Wilson used to say that all pyramid structured organisations are terminally broken. Because employees lie to their managers to tell them what they think they want to hear in the hope of receiving favour. And managers lie to their employees to attempt to control them and to bolster their own position. While some aspects of China look like capitalist anarchy, at other times it looks like the biggest pyramid structured organisation of humans the earth has ever seen. Hence all the lying. — http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/11/note-on-chinese-coal-consumption.html It seems that China's coal consumption figures for this century are probably under-reported. By 17%. It would also seem that China's GDP growth for the same period is probably over-reported. But nobody really knows by how much. Given the sheer scale of all this it's going to cause quite a few problems. Not just for forecasting generally, but for the upcoming climate talks. And for those claiming some kind of technology driven de-coupling of global GDP from energy usage rates. If we can't measure this stuff accurately, then how can we expect to manage it or draw conclusions from it? It's enough to make you think we really have no idea what's going on. 17% !
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Commented on post by Roy Gripper in MotoGPSo what if he did? — THE GOAT...
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingShould of got up earlier then. —   #VamosJorge    Another world title for +Jorge Lorenzo​ & the +yamahamotogp​ team. Full report to follow soon Full Report via +David Emmett​'s top writer +Jared Earle​ C/O MotoMatters dot com https://motomatters.com/results/2015/11/08/2015_valencia_motogp_race_results_edge_o.html _______________________________________ +MotoGP​  #MotoGP   #TheGrandFinale   #ValenciaGP   #LorenzoChamp  +Yamaha Racing​ +yamahamotogp​  +Alpinestars​ +Yamaha Racing​ +Jorge Lorenzo​ 
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingCan I just say "Never count out Valentino Rossi". ;) —   #VamosJorge    Another world title for +Jorge Lorenzo​ & the +yamahamotogp​ team. Full report to follow soon Full Report via +David Emmett​'s top writer +Jared Earle​ C/O MotoMatters dot com https://motomatters.com/results/2015/11/08/2015_valencia_motogp_race_results_edge_o.html _______________________________________ +MotoGP​  #MotoGP   #TheGrandFinale   #ValenciaGP   #LorenzoChamp  +Yamaha Racing​ +yamahamotogp​  +Alpinestars​ +Yamaha Racing​ +Jorge Lorenzo​ 
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Commented on post by Ciscu Design in MotoGPWell that was emotional. But big up to Lorenzo for doing exactly what he had to do. — ¡Felicidades Jorge! 2015 MotoGP Champion! ‪#‎Jorgechamp‬ ‪#‎MotoGp‬ ‪#‎MotoGPValencia‬ ‪#‎lorenzo‬ ‪#‎jorgelorenzo‬ ‪#‎thegrandfinale‬ +Jorge Lorenzo 
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyAnother thought in this area occurred recently. At what scale point does the network benefits of urbanisation kick in. And do the network benefits continue to rise with increasing size. Leading to thoughts of an optimum city size. Do 10 cities of 1m (and all their support infrastructure) out or under perform 1 city of 10m? Do the network effects really kick in at 100k, 1m or 10m? — “Across countries and over time, higher income is correlated with higher urbanization.” —Paul Romer  http://paulromer.net/economic-growth/
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in InspirationThere's Adverts. And then there's Waitrose, Duchy, Organic, Heritage Adverts. — Man in the Moon Ad from John Lewis Sharing this again, because I inadvertently shared the wrong video earlier. Thanks to +Terry Simmonds for catching that.  ============ I guess this is the second ad I've shared this week, which is very unusual for me. But I'll do it when I see a company, especially one like John Lewis Partnership in the UK, using its advertising to help us elevate our emotions and state of consciousness, even just a bit. 
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyWhat you seemed to be suggesting was a combination of techno-optimism with decentralised homesteading. Hence my crack about small-holdings. My response was to ask how this applies to SE Asia where half the world's population lives. How does this improve the lot of somebody who is currently strip burning equatorial rain forest to plant oil palms? And your response is to claim to occupy "a unique position in that I get to see tons of new tech that's still under the radar". So that's all right then. There's tech that I can't tell you about that will so change the game that we'll be able to pursue business as usual for another 85 years with no downside. m'kay?! And then what? The problem is that there are several models that show that technological fixes don't result in sustainability. What they actually do is produce a bigger over-shoot and a steeper collapse. Mankind individually uses technology advances for personal short term gain. The emergent long term global behaviour is to accelerate faster and faster towards the brick wall. So I'm not hopeful at all, at all, and haven't been since the early 70s when I first came across these ideas. What I still don't know is when the axe falls and if it will fall on my kids or their grand-kids. At the moment, I'm not at all confident that mankind can maintain business as usual until 2100. Not at all. But maybe we don't hit the wall till 2200. And perhaps there is a sustainable future that results in 1B people or so maintaining a technological society N of latitude 60 deg. And a soft landing between here and there that's not too painful. That's about the best I can hope for. — Looking Back from a Sustainable 22nd Century World This is from a piece by +Alex Steffen called A talk given at a conservation meeting a hundred years from now… Our prosperity has found its rightful role within that living planetary fabric. Our great cities, our global industries, our science and our inventiveness have all grown past their destructive adolescence. They’ve matured within the boundaries of our single, small world. We’ve discovered, of course, that living within our limits has made us more inventive than we were when we believed there were no limits. Science, engineering, design, technology: all have grown more creative when faced with constraints. We are richer now than we were then, in every sense of wealth. Read it here:  https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/a-talk-given-at-a-conservation-meeting-a-hundred-years-from-now-29716eded7fa
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyIf you want to play the small holding card, can I recommend this for some alternative approaches. http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2014/11/29/see-no-evil-the-morality-of-collapse/ If the resource limits don't get you, the pollution will. Have you seen what's happening in Indonesia lately? — Looking Back from a Sustainable 22nd Century World This is from a piece by +Alex Steffen called A talk given at a conservation meeting a hundred years from now… Our prosperity has found its rightful role within that living planetary fabric. Our great cities, our global industries, our science and our inventiveness have all grown past their destructive adolescence. They’ve matured within the boundaries of our single, small world. We’ve discovered, of course, that living within our limits has made us more inventive than we were when we believed there were no limits. Science, engineering, design, technology: all have grown more creative when faced with constraints. We are richer now than we were then, in every sense of wealth. Read it here:  https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/a-talk-given-at-a-conservation-meeting-a-hundred-years-from-now-29716eded7fa
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyRape seed oil, or Palm oil? — Looking Back from a Sustainable 22nd Century World This is from a piece by +Alex Steffen called A talk given at a conservation meeting a hundred years from now… Our prosperity has found its rightful role within that living planetary fabric. Our great cities, our global industries, our science and our inventiveness have all grown past their destructive adolescence. They’ve matured within the boundaries of our single, small world. We’ve discovered, of course, that living within our limits has made us more inventive than we were when we believed there were no limits. Science, engineering, design, technology: all have grown more creative when faced with constraints. We are richer now than we were then, in every sense of wealth. Read it here:  https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/a-talk-given-at-a-conservation-meeting-a-hundred-years-from-now-29716eded7fa
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologySo it applies in, oh, I don't know, Indonesia? Fish in a barrel. You are so fucked. — Looking Back from a Sustainable 22nd Century World This is from a piece by +Alex Steffen called A talk given at a conservation meeting a hundred years from now… Our prosperity has found its rightful role within that living planetary fabric. Our great cities, our global industries, our science and our inventiveness have all grown past their destructive adolescence. They’ve matured within the boundaries of our single, small world. We’ve discovered, of course, that living within our limits has made us more inventive than we were when we believed there were no limits. Science, engineering, design, technology: all have grown more creative when faced with constraints. We are richer now than we were then, in every sense of wealth. Read it here:  https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/a-talk-given-at-a-conservation-meeting-a-hundred-years-from-now-29716eded7fa
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and Ecology+Todd McKissick when you say "we" and "our", you're talking about the USA, right? — Looking Back from a Sustainable 22nd Century World This is from a piece by +Alex Steffen called A talk given at a conservation meeting a hundred years from now… Our prosperity has found its rightful role within that living planetary fabric. Our great cities, our global industries, our science and our inventiveness have all grown past their destructive adolescence. They’ve matured within the boundaries of our single, small world. We’ve discovered, of course, that living within our limits has made us more inventive than we were when we believed there were no limits. Science, engineering, design, technology: all have grown more creative when faced with constraints. We are richer now than we were then, in every sense of wealth. Read it here:  https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/a-talk-given-at-a-conservation-meeting-a-hundred-years-from-now-29716eded7fa
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyThis turned up today from my favourite depressive. http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2015/11/05/ive-changed-my-mind/ — Looking Back from a Sustainable 22nd Century World This is from a piece by +Alex Steffen called A talk given at a conservation meeting a hundred years from now… Our prosperity has found its rightful role within that living planetary fabric. Our great cities, our global industries, our science and our inventiveness have all grown past their destructive adolescence. They’ve matured within the boundaries of our single, small world. We’ve discovered, of course, that living within our limits has made us more inventive than we were when we believed there were no limits. Science, engineering, design, technology: all have grown more creative when faced with constraints. We are richer now than we were then, in every sense of wealth. Read it here:  https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/a-talk-given-at-a-conservation-meeting-a-hundred-years-from-now-29716eded7fa
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Commented on post by Speed Triple & R1200GS in Motorcycle RoadracingWe've now discovered that Pedrosa's main problem all those years was arm pump. So many races when he seemed to lose the ability to race in the last few laps and just give up. We all thought he didn't have any fight in him and it turned out he physically couldn't. I think he's back to being an alien. Which means his problem now is the same as for the other 3, it's the other 3!   — Pre-emptive bollocking in store by Ezpeleta. Thanks to http://bikesportnews.com comment/link on their FB feed. http://www.bikesportnews.com/news/news-detail/motogp-riders-and-teams-summoned-to-meeting-at-valencia
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPSo Dorna de-fanged them and drew the teeth of the process. The individual press conferences were boring as hell and most of the journalists came over as annoyingly stupid. — The sold out show starts now! Read Rossi, Lorenzo, Marquez and Pedrosa press conference summaries.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyI wonder at what scale point the benefits of cities really kicks in. Perhaps the C21 future consists of 0.5m sized cities rather than 20m sized.   — Looking Back from a Sustainable 22nd Century World This is from a piece by +Alex Steffen called A talk given at a conservation meeting a hundred years from now… Our prosperity has found its rightful role within that living planetary fabric. Our great cities, our global industries, our science and our inventiveness have all grown past their destructive adolescence. They’ve matured within the boundaries of our single, small world. We’ve discovered, of course, that living within our limits has made us more inventive than we were when we believed there were no limits. Science, engineering, design, technology: all have grown more creative when faced with constraints. We are richer now than we were then, in every sense of wealth. Read it here:  https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/a-talk-given-at-a-conservation-meeting-a-hundred-years-from-now-29716eded7fa
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Commented on post by Motorcyclist Magazine in MotoGPThey had the dressing down. The individual press conferences are happening right now. — And the CAS ruling on Rossi's Sepang Clash appeal is... +MotoGP +MotoGP News +MotoGP Fans +Valentino Rossi  #thegrandfinale   #sepangclash   #valenciagp   #appeal  
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Commented on post by Motorcyclist Magazine in MotoGPThe appeal is still in progress. The stay of execution on the penalty has been dismissed. Expect the appeal when it finally comes out to maintain the status quo and be rejected. This is all as it should be.   — And the CAS ruling on Rossi's Sepang Clash appeal is... +MotoGP +MotoGP News +MotoGP Fans +Valentino Rossi  #thegrandfinale   #sepangclash   #valenciagp   #appeal  
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyBruce Sterling at the beginning of this year. But speaking of the influence of William Gibson, he said something very striking last year; that in the 20th century, everyone spoke with reverence of the 21st, while here, deep into the 21st, the 22nd century never gets a look-in.  Of course he's right, but this problem seems like honest work to me.  A child born in 2015 will be 85 in the Twenty-Second Century: it's within the reach of a normal, average human life span.   So, the 22nd Century: I'm determined to make it our friend.  I've resolved to talk more and more about it.  Let it be the buzzword, let it become the watchword. The 22nd Century, the #22C : whatever the hell it is, it's getting closer every day. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/478/Bruce-Sterling-Cory-Doctorow-Jon-page01.html#post8 --- I've mentioned this before. There's a lot of predictions that were made for 2030 because when they were made it was 30 years out. And 30 years is shorthand for "far enough away that it's not worth worrying about". Except that we're over half way there now. So look for stories that say "by 2050" because 2050 is the new 2030. As Bruce says, what we need to do is make #22C  the new #21C . "Yes, you too will go to Moonbase Alpha in 2101". "Yes, we will have completely changed mankind's approach to global economics by turning the quest for endless growth into the quest for endless sustainability by 2115".   — Looking Back from a Sustainable 22nd Century World This is from a piece by +Alex Steffen called A talk given at a conservation meeting a hundred years from now… Our prosperity has found its rightful role within that living planetary fabric. Our great cities, our global industries, our science and our inventiveness have all grown past their destructive adolescence. They’ve matured within the boundaries of our single, small world. We’ve discovered, of course, that living within our limits has made us more inventive than we were when we believed there were no limits. Science, engineering, design, technology: all have grown more creative when faced with constraints. We are richer now than we were then, in every sense of wealth. Read it here:  https://medium.com/@AlexSteffen/a-talk-given-at-a-conservation-meeting-a-hundred-years-from-now-29716eded7fa
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsAnd then this. http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/11/04/2326247/controversial-new-uk-internet-powers-bill-makes-no-mention-of-vpns "But perhaps the most surprising aspect of DIPA is that Virtual Private Networks are mentioned nowhere in its 299 pages, even though VPNs are a subject of great interest to Europe, Russia, Iran, China and the United States." — Eric Blair would be proud[1] New surveillance powers will be given to the police and security services, allowing them to access records tracking every UK citizen’s use of the internet without any need for any judicial check, under the provisions of the draft investigatory powers bill unveiled by Theresa May. It includes new powers requiring internet and phone companies to keep “internet connection records” – tracking every website visited but not every page – for a maximum of 12 months but will not require a warrant for the police, security services or other bodies to access the data. Local authorities will be banned from accessing internet records.... ______________________________ Notes: 1. You may know him better as George Orwell.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsThis was explained to me on the 10 o'clock news last night. They'll know that I visited http://bbc.co.uk, but not http://bbc.co.uk/news so that's all good then. If it protects the puppies, I'm ok with that. Meanwhile, I'm wondering if I can tunnel out via my hosting provider. I've already got a shell account with ssh access so it should just be a matter of configuring some links in stunnel, right? Then I can access http://gmail.com without them ever knowing. <cough>https://facebookcorewwwi.onion</cough> — Eric Blair would be proud[1] New surveillance powers will be given to the police and security services, allowing them to access records tracking every UK citizen’s use of the internet without any need for any judicial check, under the provisions of the draft investigatory powers bill unveiled by Theresa May. It includes new powers requiring internet and phone companies to keep “internet connection records” – tracking every website visited but not every page – for a maximum of 12 months but will not require a warrant for the police, security services or other bodies to access the data. Local authorities will be banned from accessing internet records.... ______________________________ Notes: 1. You may know him better as George Orwell.
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Commented on post by Speed Triple & R1200GS in Motorcycle Roadracing2016 is going to be Pedrosa's year. Unless he finds a way to be second, just like every other year. — Pre-emptive bollocking in store by Ezpeleta. Thanks to http://bikesportnews.com comment/link on their FB feed. http://www.bikesportnews.com/news/news-detail/motogp-riders-and-teams-summoned-to-meeting-at-valencia
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Commented on postWicker Man. Because it's designed to burn opposing viewpoints with fire while providing a spectacle and re-inforcing group think in the faithful. But is clearly an insane over-reaction. 
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Code DependencyPost here, they'l tell you to post on the googlegroups forum. Post on the forum, they'll tell you to post on the issue tracker. Post on the issue tracker, they'll tell you to post on the "Feedback" link. — Dear +Google+ and Google Voice, Ringing in every single one of my G+ tabs anytime someone calls our GVoice number really isn't necessary. Truly,  just one is more than enough. (Zero would be fine.) Yours, me
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceIf you use an Android tablet with an add-on keyboard and you hate the limitations, at what point do you just give up and get a netbook with a real OS and real apps? Even a Chromebook has a full function Chrome rather than  a deliberately hobbled one. Although that has it's own problems. I can understand (just about) a cut down system with cut down apps on a phone but why put up with it on anything bigger? — Android Tablets: The Uncanny Valley of Computers I've been making extensive use of a Samsung Tab A, still running stock, unrooted Android for the past month. I'm getting ready to fix that. With an attached bluetooth keyboard, it's actually quite nice in terms of: 1. Form factor. Yes, the display's small, but so long as I'm focusing on a single task, possibly with some cross-referencing it's fine. 2. Battery life. I've got to say, simply phenomenal. 12+ hours on a charge, with near constant use. It's the first mobile computer, inclusive of my previous Android phone, which doesn't simply dash between charging stations. The laptop (a real boat anchor, though near desktop-replacement when parked) is only good for a couple-three hours, something which constantly weighs on me when it's not near mains. 3. Auto-configuring networking. Still far more a PITA under desktop Linux than it ought be. 4. Reading print-oriented materials. The portrait mode makes almost all PDFs, and e-Book specific formats (ePub, Mobi, djvu, and a few others) quite readable. It's not got the immediacy of reading a physical book, but I'd be challenged to haul 400+ of same with me. From what I've seen of Kindles and other eBook readers, it compares favourably, though on form-factor and ergonomics I might consider those. At the same time, it's frustrating, in a way I could best describe as being in an uncanny valley of real computers. It's really close to being a real computer. There are tools that ... almost work. E.g., I found a vim editor (VimTouch) ... but it doesn't support copying through the clipboard. "Shell" and similar utilities (various file-manglers) are ... all but useless. Click-and-select through 100+ items is a goddamned joke (Linux: wildcards or find | xargs). There's stupid crap such as the fact that files get downloaded with execute permissions set (e.g., documents). The obvious thing to do would be to fucking remove the execute perms. But no, I get nagged, repeatedly, with "are you sure you want to open this?". Sigh. Or "copy", which is bastardised on mobile as "share". Guess what: in virtually every last fucking case, I want to copy a link to the clipboard to paste into another application, document, or edit window. The G+ app presents me with thirty "share" options. "Copy to Clipboard" is the 10th on the list. Selections and ordering vary between apps, there's no system-wide setting. That's not hugely maddening, but it's a bit like a small pebble in your shoe -- after a while you start to notice it, and not in a good way. Browsers have various glitches. Google's own Chrome is all but unusable -- the lack of extensions means no ad-block, and the lack of a Reader Mode view means I have to deal with crap Web design. I rarely pay for software, but I'd consider paying for a browser which defaulted to a Reader-Mode layout for all content. Really. Just fuck all Web design to hell. On top of that, there's how Chrome handles suspending tabs -- it doesn't preserve state at all. Firefox actually does admirably well at that. With the one exception of a crash which took down 100 semi-curated tabs. That experience aside, Firefox for Android's actually got quite a few good features. Though, now that I think of it, the inability to move tabs, not auto-focusing the nav bar or supporting <ctrl>-L, and failing to present the Reader Mode icon until after a page has fully loaded, as well as not offering RM as a default view, are all lapses. In Chrome, ducking out of Ello whilst composing a comment to check a fact on Wikipedia means no more comment. Other tools are similarly decidedly uneven. Podcast Republic has some really good bits, but its playlist, tag, and subscription mechanics are just pants (I've had a good exchange with the developer on these points). Feedly likewise seems among the best of the feed readers, but there's much I'd change on it. Google's Gmail is a festering sore of frustrations, pathetically bad UI, but then, that's Google's current brand, isn't it? FBReader offers a book metadata editor, but the edits themselves aren't changed. PocketBook dispenses with that option altogether. Google Maps has tap-to-zoom, but no combination of tap+key will zoom out on a map (I really prefer not putting my grubby fingerprints on the screen -- that's why I've got a stylus-enabled pen and keyboard). There's no search history. Browser search completion for both Google and DDG doesn't allow for editing options before you've fired them off. Google's insistence that I create a G+ profile to rate apps in Play (even under yet another pseudonym) means that, yeah, I've pointedly not done that. Something I've mentioned to several App devs. Utilities generally don't play well with others, they don't have generalised modular connections but are hard-wired to specific other tools. Feedly doesn't have a Readability or G+ link up top, but there is Twitter (which I've never used). I suspect that App economics aren't all that favourable for devs. I'd really like to see more open source tools such that efforts can be shared. Permissions. Don't get me started on permissions. Damnit, I should have registered my name as "Edward Snowden". Though that would just feed more conspiracy theories about my true identity.... So: I'm looking to park CyanogenMod on it. But that raises another gripe. Why is it that I cannot, so far as I can readily tell, do a "try before you buy" walkthrough of CM on some Android emulator or another, readily? Actually, I know that's got to be possible (Android development happens on emulators). But it doesn't seem to be a readily supported option for Normal People -- those who'd rather not spend days sorting through poorly-written conversion procedures and officially-provided-by-Samsung-though-you-cannot-download-it-from-them utilities (Odin3). And, since I have to be special, trying to flash Android via Odin from Windows in Virtualbox on Linux.... I've spent more time watching Windows reboot in the past 24 hours than in the previous decade.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in TechMay have found the answer. Looks like it may be firefox | options | advanced | hardware acceleration. If I turn this switch on, I can no longer start the tor browser. — In the last couple of days, I've been playing with the Tor Browser bundle for Windows (5.0.3) running on Windows 10. For no obvious reason, or none that I can fathom, it's got an annoying security feature. It only runs once after a clean install. On the second and subsequent runs, I can see it start to load in task manager, the browser loads, it kicks off tor.exe which does something for a few seconds, then dies, then the browser shuts down. Running tor.exe on its own does nothing at all. Delete the whole directory, re-install and it works again. Re-install as if it's an upgrade and it still fails. So I guess there's some config file getting written that on the second start is telling tor.exe to do something it can't. Not very impressed with this.
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Commented on post by Speed Triple & R1200GS in Motorcycle RoadracingKrops tells it like he sees it. As of Tuesday. Expect more. https://motomatters.com/blog/2015/11/03/editor_s_blog_motogp_s_descent_into_madn.html — Pre-emptive bollocking in store by Ezpeleta. Thanks to http://bikesportnews.com comment/link on their FB feed. http://www.bikesportnews.com/news/news-detail/motogp-riders-and-teams-summoned-to-meeting-at-valencia
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPKrops tells it like he sees it. As of Tuesday. Expect more. https://motomatters.com/blog/2015/11/03/editor_s_blog_motogp_s_descent_into_madn.html — Today's thrilling instalment https://motomatters.com/press_release/2015/11/02/hrc_press_release_shuhei_nakamoto_on_sep.html http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/motogp/shuhei-nakamoto-hrc-sepang-clash-interview/
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Commented on post by Speed Triple & R1200GS in Motorcycle Roadracingdouble secret probation — Pre-emptive bollocking in store by Ezpeleta. Thanks to http://bikesportnews.com comment/link on their FB feed. http://www.bikesportnews.com/news/news-detail/motogp-riders-and-teams-summoned-to-meeting-at-valencia
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Commented on post by Speed Triple & R1200GS in Motorcycle RoadracingCancelling the big press conference in public means lots of small press conferences in private. Not entirely sure that's a good thing. — Pre-emptive bollocking in store by Ezpeleta. Thanks to http://bikesportnews.com comment/link on their FB feed. http://www.bikesportnews.com/news/news-detail/motogp-riders-and-teams-summoned-to-meeting-at-valencia
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Commented on postThe accused was in charge of a small backpack, your honour.
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in The Best Motorcycle Racing PicturesMotegi, I think. — Catalunya 2009: when Rossi does it, it is just good tactics, lol!?
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynIndeed. It's a shame the Audi A3 E-Tron and Golf GTE are so expensive. — This is a Good Idea Yesterday I re-tweeted this image put out by Greenpeace. Clever and eye catching image for the 21st century. One glance, read the text, message received. I wish I could think of things like this. I tend to drone on in writing or video and barely get any point across. That said, it's a very good idea and what we desperately need now is a radical departure from one of our big car makers and indeed one of our big energy companies. Not making a noise and sending PR spin about it, an actual change of direction, from the ground up. If VW said they would stop making internal combustion engine cars by 2020, (as Toyota have stated) and produced a line of cheaper, well made electric cars with ever increasing range, also investing in charging and local generating infrastructure it would be a massive come-back for the company. Pie in the sky maybe, but I have a suspicion that there are many folks at VW thinking along these lines. As usual some of the responses to the re-tweet were a little predictable, 'what about the pollution caused by making the batteries and generating the electricity.' And 'all these cars would mean we'd have to burn more coal to generate the electricity.' Duuuur! (No we wouldn't, current generating capacity and grid could charge 2 million + cars overnight which would actually help level out demand on the grid and reduce running costs. It's the absolute opposite of that anxiety) I'm now more surprised that I was 5 years ago by such comments. The mountains of evidence that shows otherwise is entirely ignored. The ignorance of the colossal reduction in detrimental global impact of electric cars has been successfully denied by endless spurious 'reports' pumped out by the fossil industry. This has then been lapped up by a mostly ignorant cut and paste press who have no time or resources to investigate the possible truth. This is then ingested by a mostly ignorant (of this topic, I don't mean thick) readership who fall back on the pat excuses to do nothing. We need to do something about the way we generate and use energy, we need to stop burning fossils. I don't for one moment suggest we need to stop exploiting fossils, they are very useful, but we really should try and stop burning the damn stuff. Come on VW, do the right thing.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Robotics and AutomationOnly a month ago though, they came from Kent. — Yes, Your Blueness Today, machines are only used to pick blueberries for the frozen fruit market, but Naturipe Farms hopes to change that with a $250K robotics challenge.
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Commented on post by Motorcyclist Magazine in MotoGPHow the grid should look. http://www.motorcycle.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/102915-top-10-rossi-marquez-sepang-memes-01-GP-grid.jpg — The ‪Sepang Clash controversy rages on this morning as MotoGP title contender Valentino Rossi files an appeal seeking annulment of the decision or a reduction of the penalty. What say you, YES or NO? +MotoGP +MotoGP News +Valentino Rossi +Marc Márquez  #sepangclash   #malaysiangp   #valencia  
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Robotics and AutomationNever mind how they're picked. At this time of year my fresh blueberries in the UK come from Argentina. Why? — Yes, Your Blueness Today, machines are only used to pick blueberries for the frozen fruit market, but Naturipe Farms hopes to change that with a $250K robotics challenge.
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Commented on postOur favourite Bond Mega-Villain has been promising stuff again. https://hacked.com/kim-dotcom-talks-about-meganet-his-blockchain-based-p2p-internet/ 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaIs that one of those myths like "English food is all bad". I can't say I've noticed any huge differences between customer service in any of the WEIRD countries. Tel and online customer service is all outsourced now anyway no matter where you call from (usually to the same places).  Now, customer service in Egypt and India. That was different. Unless you were in the local Sheraton. — Google's Dead This is a "G+ is dying+" post. Latest stats from Experian on weeky actives. G+ is rapidly approaching the 30m/wk threshold, having previously been as high as 70-75m/wk. From a private share, no attribution by request. <quote> Data... (some notes/analysis at bottom) >>>  "...Week ending October 24, 2015 Websites / Total Visits / Visits Share / Rank 10/17 - 10/10 - 10/03 Facebook 1,651,618,150 / 44.95% 1 1 1 YouTube 826,229,354 22.49% 2 2 2 Twitter 175,249,822 4.77% 3 3 3 Reddit 161,303,411 4.39% 4 4 4 Pinterest 62,058,327 1.69% 5 5 5 Tumblr 49,644,375 1.35% 6 7 7 Instagram 49,522,333 1.35% 8 8 8 Linkedin 49,502,284 1.35% 7 6 6 Yahoo! Answers 48,286,808 1.31% 9 9 9 Google+ 32,918,850 0.90% 10 10 10 "--- Obligatory preamble: Yes, ALL Web stats services have flaws in their set-ups, and how they measure Desktop vs. Mobile etc. etc. which is why one should NEVER 1) focus on the absolute numbers, or 2) compare them Apples-To-Oranges against each other, only against themselves, "apples-to-apples" to derive trend. I assume these are U.S. visits only, but it doesn't even matter... That said, some notes/analysis: 1) Today marks the first week since I started looking at this stat sometime in July 2015 again (I have some old screencaps from 2012 and 2013, which once had G+ at a high of at least 72M visits/week, and in 3rd or 4th place after FB, YT, and neck-an-neck with Twitter circa late 2013 / early 2014, post YouTube comments integration "boost"...), that the number for G+ hasn't declined by between 500k to 1M week over week (w/w). 2) Only Yahoo Answers and maybe LinkedIN are services where one can make a strong claim that they are unlikely to have much mobile usage if any, all of the rest I would assume see Mobile usage about on par with G+. (Conversely, Instagram is likely severely undercounted if this is going only by browser derived stats, their WWW version was only ever built as a complete afterthought to the Mobile App. Not that it much matters here.) 3) Given that, how on earth is it possible that Google pushed about 1B to 1.5B users into the top of their funnel, and managed to end up with numbers / usage on the level of Yahoo freaking Answers...?! I mused with +Edward Morbius recently what might happen if G+' numbers kept dropping further, and it somehow dropped off the Top 10 list alltogether; not even sure what the next lower-rated service might be... StumbleUpon...?! Given these numbers (with all of the above caveats, but Orders of Magnitude comparisons should still be allowed, no...?), G+ has eeked out ~ 1/50 of Facebook, 1/25 of YouTube, 1/5 of each Twitter and Reddit, and 1/2 or less of each of the rest. Which begs the question what on earth Google mgmt was ever thinking in trying to leash G+ Comments to YouTube, truly a case of "wagging the dog", and an amazing example of the chuzpah of corporate political types like Gundotra. No wonder the YouTube and other functioning divisions eventually (likely) told him to just fsck off. </quote> Source in a jiffy -- can't copy everything in one fell swoop on the fucking broken Android tool -- not only can you not copy either specific text sections or any links from others' posts and comments, but you cannot copy links at all -- open in browser, wait for G+ metaresolution to happen, then copy back. https://www.experian.com/marketing-services/online-trends-social-media.html
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeAll those pledges. And no actual action. — The UN released a much-anticipated technical analysis of nearly 150 national plans to tackle climate change on Friday. The verdict? Right direction, far too slow. #INDC #COP21 #Paris2015 
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Commented on post by Nishioka Yoshio in Climate Changehttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/30/indonesia-fires-disaster-21st-century-world-media Why is the world's media ignoring this? — Badman Nishioka/Japan/HUTAN Group/ rainforest action group/ On this meeting, the two urgently Public Meeting on the 21th Nov. and on the 12th Dec., Public Meeting is " After problems of Climate Change in Paris" - Fires, Deforestation, exporting Dangerous Nuclear Energy, Mining Problems. taking actions in many cities in the World! If you can present the donations at the reforestations and Orangutans habitats of broken forests by fires in Indonesia! I or another member bring our donations and yours! Making the different donations writing now! Thanks! Rain full!
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Commented on post by Jonathan Bradshaw in Climate ChangeThere's a story doing the rounds on the MSM that the pledges we have in place now mean that we've headed off the possibility of a 5C rise and the real long term rise will only be 3C or so. So that's all right then. Even though none of the pledges are actually being implemented and we're still accelerating towards the cliff edge. — https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28430-the-climate-fact-no-one-will-admit-2-c-warming-is-inevitable/?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=twitter&cmpid=SOC%7CNSNS%7C2015-GLOBAL-twitter
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Commented on post by Gr82briding in Motorcycle Roadracing+Wiggysan Wiggysan That's not yet definite. They may reject the appeal and refuse the stay of decision before Nov 6. 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaYes. But what's the relevance of the UK? Were you thinking of a specific example? There's a related fake customer care strategy that Google practices because they tend to have multiple forums on multiple platforms. "Please repost this over there." I've had this go circular on me several times. — Google's Dead This is a "G+ is dying+" post. Latest stats from Experian on weeky actives. G+ is rapidly approaching the 30m/wk threshold, having previously been as high as 70-75m/wk. From a private share, no attribution by request. <quote> Data... (some notes/analysis at bottom) >>>  "...Week ending October 24, 2015 Websites / Total Visits / Visits Share / Rank 10/17 - 10/10 - 10/03 Facebook 1,651,618,150 / 44.95% 1 1 1 YouTube 826,229,354 22.49% 2 2 2 Twitter 175,249,822 4.77% 3 3 3 Reddit 161,303,411 4.39% 4 4 4 Pinterest 62,058,327 1.69% 5 5 5 Tumblr 49,644,375 1.35% 6 7 7 Instagram 49,522,333 1.35% 8 8 8 Linkedin 49,502,284 1.35% 7 6 6 Yahoo! Answers 48,286,808 1.31% 9 9 9 Google+ 32,918,850 0.90% 10 10 10 "--- Obligatory preamble: Yes, ALL Web stats services have flaws in their set-ups, and how they measure Desktop vs. Mobile etc. etc. which is why one should NEVER 1) focus on the absolute numbers, or 2) compare them Apples-To-Oranges against each other, only against themselves, "apples-to-apples" to derive trend. I assume these are U.S. visits only, but it doesn't even matter... That said, some notes/analysis: 1) Today marks the first week since I started looking at this stat sometime in July 2015 again (I have some old screencaps from 2012 and 2013, which once had G+ at a high of at least 72M visits/week, and in 3rd or 4th place after FB, YT, and neck-an-neck with Twitter circa late 2013 / early 2014, post YouTube comments integration "boost"...), that the number for G+ hasn't declined by between 500k to 1M week over week (w/w). 2) Only Yahoo Answers and maybe LinkedIN are services where one can make a strong claim that they are unlikely to have much mobile usage if any, all of the rest I would assume see Mobile usage about on par with G+. (Conversely, Instagram is likely severely undercounted if this is going only by browser derived stats, their WWW version was only ever built as a complete afterthought to the Mobile App. Not that it much matters here.) 3) Given that, how on earth is it possible that Google pushed about 1B to 1.5B users into the top of their funnel, and managed to end up with numbers / usage on the level of Yahoo freaking Answers...?! I mused with +Edward Morbius recently what might happen if G+' numbers kept dropping further, and it somehow dropped off the Top 10 list alltogether; not even sure what the next lower-rated service might be... StumbleUpon...?! Given these numbers (with all of the above caveats, but Orders of Magnitude comparisons should still be allowed, no...?), G+ has eeked out ~ 1/50 of Facebook, 1/25 of YouTube, 1/5 of each Twitter and Reddit, and 1/2 or less of each of the rest. Which begs the question what on earth Google mgmt was ever thinking in trying to leash G+ Comments to YouTube, truly a case of "wagging the dog", and an amazing example of the chuzpah of corporate political types like Gundotra. No wonder the YouTube and other functioning divisions eventually (likely) told him to just fsck off. </quote> Source in a jiffy -- can't copy everything in one fell swoop on the fucking broken Android tool -- not only can you not copy either specific text sections or any links from others' posts and comments, but you cannot copy links at all -- open in browser, wait for G+ metaresolution to happen, then copy back. https://www.experian.com/marketing-services/online-trends-social-media.html
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:That thing about societies that don't have  a word for a colour we recognise being unable to distinguish it. Somewhere in Middle America.  — A few years ago, +Randall Munroe of XKCD did a survey of what people called various colors, and open-sourced the resulting dataset. The diagram below is a very interesting visualization of it. The X-axis represents hue, scanning over (the RGB-representable part of) the color spectrum. The Y-axis shows which names were most common for that particular color. (Note that different saturations and values are simply stacked up vertically, which is why orange and brown are on top of one another) What's interesting is that some colors seem to have much more agreed-upon names than others. Green, blue, and purple seem to create the most consensus. Red, brown, orange, and yellow create significantly less so. I wouldn't be surprised if this were tied to the way our eyes work: our green and blue cones (the color sensors in our retinas) are very color-specific, while the red cone is very broad, and so the span of "red" things could get a messier name. There's also the fact that red blends in to pink and thence into purple, colors which our eyes actually are detecting fairly indirectly: while teal really is between the frequencies of blue and green, purple isn't between red and blue at all, and our eyes process it by some creative cheating at the data processing stage. Another phenomenon you can see on this graph is the presence of certain colors which appear to be well-defined "things:" the spikes in the graph at teal, yellow, green, and so on suggest that there's a color there that we agree is distinct from other colors. There's an interesting debate about the extent to which the set of these peaks is cultural versus biological, and the answer may well be different for different peaks. For example, red and green seem to be defined pretty much across the board, but teal (and its variants) don't appear in all languages. There does seem to be some kind of well-defined hierarchy, in that everyone has words for the most basic colors, and more refined color names are added in tiers. That's true not just across cultures but within them: people whose work involves detailed color matching have much richer vocabularies for this than people who don't, for obvious reasons. Via +Grizwald Grim 
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Commented on post by Motorcyclist Magazine in MotoGPAnd do you have any respect for Marc? He's been dangerous, been punished for it and started races from the back of the grid as a result. And yet it hasn't changed his behaviour at all. I love watching Marc ride because he does some unbelievable things with a motorcycle. But I don't like him or the things he gets away with.   — The ‪Sepang Clash controversy rages on this morning as MotoGP title contender Valentino Rossi files an appeal seeking annulment of the decision or a reduction of the penalty. What say you, YES or NO? +MotoGP +MotoGP News +Valentino Rossi +Marc Márquez  #sepangclash   #malaysiangp   #valencia  
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Music+Edward Morbius This was genius. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEtcHc8rJQQ John Cage 4'33'' Autotune And yes, that's one of the approaches I had in mind. The trick would be to play it back to the audience in real time. I can't remember what it was now but there was a famous acid-club-rave track from the mid 90s that had a lot of football crowd noise mixed in in waves. Great way to get the audience to clap and cheer by playing the sound of thousands of people clapping and cheering at them. — No matter what music event you go to there'll be people in the crowd having a conversation during the performance. If it's a quiet bit of ambient in a church, it's two girls discussing a facebook post on one of their's iPhone. If it's unbelievably loud industrial it's a couple of hipsters shouting at each other. Even when it's pumping Techno and most of the crowd is leaping around and waving their arms, there's the group of friends talking about where they're going next or something. Just like the people standing in the dark reading Twitter, or the one's taking pictures of lasers through the fog machine haze, or the conga line of people pushing to the front or back to the bar, it's pointless getting upset about it. It's just part of the performance. What I'm curious about is how the talent feels about it. If you've spent months creating an audio-visual masterpiece of 3 projector CGI mixed in with artfully a-rhythmic beats and samples, does it upset you that 1/3 of the audience are not Here and Now and paying attention? When we were in the Dark Place in Galloway there was a lovely simple art installation. A projector on to a big screen and a camera recording the screen with a 15 second delay and some fuzz and pan before feeding it back into the projector. All this was across a main walk way so people left shadows which then became part of the repeat echo. Mixed in with this were some emotionally charged text like "Authentic" or "Anticipation". It's pretty simple programming with a Mac, webcam and projector but was remarkably effective. Most people walked through without realising they were part of the performance but some discovered they could manipulate the images. So here's the thing. If people talking in the crowd are part of the performance, can we make that explicit rather than just accidental. Do the same kind of approach but with the audio domain rather than the spatial. I picture a directional mic or perhaps a sneaky roving collaborator with a mic recording the conversations and then feeding it back into the mix after a few seconds delay. Would that freak out the people who noticed or would they join in?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaThere was a time when the G+ API mattered to me. For 3 successive years I had a go at the dev evangelists that our feature requests and bug reports were simply being ignored. An email notification prompted me to look at this again. https://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/list?can=1&q=&sort=-stars&colspec=ID+Type+Status+Component+Owner+Summary+Stars&cells=tiles Does the G+ Platform API issue tracker serve any purpose at all, at all? I suppose it does track issues, but since none of them ever get fixed does it matter? Then there's the support forums on Google Groups for all the Google products. There's a small team of support people who's job is to reply to all comments by saying "Please report this using the feedback tool". Even when you've explicitly said in the original post that you've already done that. It's all a bit sad really. — Google's Dead This is a "G+ is dying+" post. Latest stats from Experian on weeky actives. G+ is rapidly approaching the 30m/wk threshold, having previously been as high as 70-75m/wk. From a private share, no attribution by request. <quote> Data... (some notes/analysis at bottom) >>>  "...Week ending October 24, 2015 Websites / Total Visits / Visits Share / Rank 10/17 - 10/10 - 10/03 Facebook 1,651,618,150 / 44.95% 1 1 1 YouTube 826,229,354 22.49% 2 2 2 Twitter 175,249,822 4.77% 3 3 3 Reddit 161,303,411 4.39% 4 4 4 Pinterest 62,058,327 1.69% 5 5 5 Tumblr 49,644,375 1.35% 6 7 7 Instagram 49,522,333 1.35% 8 8 8 Linkedin 49,502,284 1.35% 7 6 6 Yahoo! Answers 48,286,808 1.31% 9 9 9 Google+ 32,918,850 0.90% 10 10 10 "--- Obligatory preamble: Yes, ALL Web stats services have flaws in their set-ups, and how they measure Desktop vs. Mobile etc. etc. which is why one should NEVER 1) focus on the absolute numbers, or 2) compare them Apples-To-Oranges against each other, only against themselves, "apples-to-apples" to derive trend. I assume these are U.S. visits only, but it doesn't even matter... That said, some notes/analysis: 1) Today marks the first week since I started looking at this stat sometime in July 2015 again (I have some old screencaps from 2012 and 2013, which once had G+ at a high of at least 72M visits/week, and in 3rd or 4th place after FB, YT, and neck-an-neck with Twitter circa late 2013 / early 2014, post YouTube comments integration "boost"...), that the number for G+ hasn't declined by between 500k to 1M week over week (w/w). 2) Only Yahoo Answers and maybe LinkedIN are services where one can make a strong claim that they are unlikely to have much mobile usage if any, all of the rest I would assume see Mobile usage about on par with G+. (Conversely, Instagram is likely severely undercounted if this is going only by browser derived stats, their WWW version was only ever built as a complete afterthought to the Mobile App. Not that it much matters here.) 3) Given that, how on earth is it possible that Google pushed about 1B to 1.5B users into the top of their funnel, and managed to end up with numbers / usage on the level of Yahoo freaking Answers...?! I mused with +Edward Morbius recently what might happen if G+' numbers kept dropping further, and it somehow dropped off the Top 10 list alltogether; not even sure what the next lower-rated service might be... StumbleUpon...?! Given these numbers (with all of the above caveats, but Orders of Magnitude comparisons should still be allowed, no...?), G+ has eeked out ~ 1/50 of Facebook, 1/25 of YouTube, 1/5 of each Twitter and Reddit, and 1/2 or less of each of the rest. Which begs the question what on earth Google mgmt was ever thinking in trying to leash G+ Comments to YouTube, truly a case of "wagging the dog", and an amazing example of the chuzpah of corporate political types like Gundotra. No wonder the YouTube and other functioning divisions eventually (likely) told him to just fsck off. </quote> Source in a jiffy -- can't copy everything in one fell swoop on the fucking broken Android tool -- not only can you not copy either specific text sections or any links from others' posts and comments, but you cannot copy links at all -- open in browser, wait for G+ metaresolution to happen, then copy back. https://www.experian.com/marketing-services/online-trends-social-media.html
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Commented on post by Motorcyclist Magazine in MotoGPDetail here (as always) https://motomatters.com/news/2015/10/30/valentino_rossi_appeals_sepang_penalty_t.html — The ‪Sepang Clash controversy rages on this morning as MotoGP title contender Valentino Rossi files an appeal seeking annulment of the decision or a reduction of the penalty. What say you, YES or NO? +MotoGP +MotoGP News +Valentino Rossi +Marc Márquez  #sepangclash   #malaysiangp   #valencia  
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Commented on post by Motorcyclist Magazine in MotoGPIf this was an option, then it has to be done. But I hope the FIM chuck it out, "pour encourager les autres". Whether the decision was right or wrong, we don't need the FIM over-ruling it. That's nothing to do with Rossi or the merits of the case and everything to do with maintaining the authority of Race Director Mike Webb. — The ‪Sepang Clash controversy rages on this morning as MotoGP title contender Valentino Rossi files an appeal seeking annulment of the decision or a reduction of the penalty. What say you, YES or NO? +MotoGP +MotoGP News +Valentino Rossi +Marc Márquez  #sepangclash   #malaysiangp   #valencia  
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPBTW. Hitler's Downfall does MotoGP. Sorry, it's Facebook. And sorry, if the Hitler-Downfall meme offends you. https://www.facebook.com/newsmoto/videos/vb.170982439664542/897914363638009/?type=2&theater — This is/was the most fun, entertaining, educating, sometimes silly/goofy, fast, thrilling, exhilarating and breathtaking sport, I have ever watched and I just want my MotoGP back the way it was before! Anyone else???
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPYeah, I want to go back to Schwantz, Rainey, Doohan, Lawson, Gardner absolutely hating each other and running each other off the track. To the Italians ganging up on Hans Spaan to give Capirossi the win with punches being thrown on the pit straight. To Biaggi's "This is not ballet" and "I was stung by a wasp". And so on, and so on.  Best Season Ever! I haven't enjoyed this so much or been so on the edge of my seat with such nail biting worry for ages. — This is/was the most fun, entertaining, educating, sometimes silly/goofy, fast, thrilling, exhilarating and breathtaking sport, I have ever watched and I just want my MotoGP back the way it was before! Anyone else???
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawBoycott Star Wars. It's just more glorification and justification for the military-industrial-financial complex. Starship Troopers was a warning not a manual. — The back-and-forth among the punditocracy about whether the US should ultimately ally itself with rebel forces or with the Empire has escalated again, with Sonny Bunch's op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that the destruction of Alderaan -- so often taken as the ultimate proof that whatever its benefits, the Empire was evil at its core and cannot be allied with -- was actually a justified military operation, and in the long run saved lives. I remain unconvinced: while the Empire may remain a darling of conservatives, with Jonathan V. Last recently rising to its vocal defense in the Weekly Standard, the fact remains that the "meritocratic force for order and stability led by a more-or-less benevolent dictatorship" (as Bunch puts it) is considerably more meritocratic and benevolent if you're within the Empire's in-group -- white, middle-class, bipedal -- than for the Empire's population as a whole. It's easy to mistake one's in-group for the general public, but that's not an error you can really justify when the fates of entire civilizations are at hand.  I concede that there is little to no evidence that the rebels would form a better government, however, and Bunch's warning of the risks of the formation of a Jedi State in the Alderaan System (JSAS) should be taken seriously. Just because the Empire is bad doesn't automatically make every alternative better -- and in a decomposing empire, genocide moves from being a risk to a near-certainty, as tribal groups fight for dominance and to settle old grudges. So I think that our interests, as well as the interests of Imperial citizens everywhere, continue to be best served by working on the systematic restructuring and opening of the Imperial government, rather than by revolution. Revolution solves a few problems but creates far more, as bloody experience has shown. via +Eoghann Irving.
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Commented on post by Matt CuttsFor some reason I also had Donald Fagen's New Frontier running through my head. http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/donald+fagen/new+frontier_20287708.html Yes we're gonna have a wingding A summer smoker underground It's just a dugout that my dad built In case the reds decide to push the button down We've got provisions and lots of beer The key word is survival on the new frontier  — The full piece is worth reading, but this was a tough paragraph to read: "What Hurricane Katrina, the floodwall and levee collapses, and the aftermath taught me is that America, and its institutions, simply don’t work — and that people like it that way. Perhaps this is a boilerplate observation, so obvious in light of what happened there, and all our other disasters and chronic problems — the Iraq war, political gridlock, gun violence, and a thousand other things. But I believe this is an under-appreciated point. America is an optimistic nation. It has a short memory. Our political system and media don’t really learn very obvious lessons that unspool right in front of everyone’s faces. And so we end up repeating our errors — at least, some of them — to great sorrow. And I expect the sorrow is going to get a lot greater in the coming decades." My recollection is that someone shared a photoset on Flickr, and that was the eye opener for me about how bad things were post-Katrina. It was also an eye opener about the power of what would eventually be called social media: people sharing information, photos, and opinions with each other directly.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingBack to San Marino, discharged from Hospital and now at home. https://motomatters.com/news/2015/10/29/alex_de_angelis_discharged_from_hospital.html Get well soon. — Alex De Angelis Update Monday 12th Oct 15th October #ForzaAlexDeAngelis   #GetWellSoonAlex   NEW UPDATE : http://www.iodaracing.it/irp2013/2015/10/15/alex-de-angelis-medical-conditions-update-october-15-2/?lang=en Its looking better every day for Alex! Great news. Full Details & Ioda Racing Press Realese via MotoMatters dot com : https://motomatters.com/news/2015/10/12/alex_de_angelis_injury_update_still_crit.html ______________________________________ +MotoGP  #MotoGP   #Ioda  +Iodaracing Project  #ForzaAlexDeAngelis  +David Emmett 
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Commented on post by Matt CuttsI'm poking fun at the US idea that their exceptionalism is based on the existence of a wild frontier in their history. I'm also half expecting the response to a sub-merging Florida and an un-inhabitably hot South to be mass migration northwards. There will be no political or economic will to try and shore up what's left. It will be left to the market to sort out which will result in a lot of ghost towns. So where will all those people end up? Maybe this is what will re-populate and re-generate Detroit! On a much smaller scale, there are plenty of examples from the past such As when the gold rushes ended or the railway came through for people to simply walk away and try their luck somewhere else. Is that no longer a possibility? The really interesting question in this area is probably not about N America but about SE Asia and Africa. Does the bulk of mankind end up in Poland- Siberia-E Russia? if you find these questions interesting, you might like these. https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/2015/10/05/preludes-to-space/ https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/preludes-to-sustainability/ https://heteromeles.wordpress.com/2015/10/17/preludes-to-collapse/ Mars is a fantasy. If we get a self sustaining man-base on Mars in <10k years, my ancestors will be amazed. And getting even 1m people off Earth and installed in it flat out impossible. Space is big. Space is hostile. The Gravity Well is deep. Getting to Mars is unbelievably f*cking hard.   — The full piece is worth reading, but this was a tough paragraph to read: "What Hurricane Katrina, the floodwall and levee collapses, and the aftermath taught me is that America, and its institutions, simply don’t work — and that people like it that way. Perhaps this is a boilerplate observation, so obvious in light of what happened there, and all our other disasters and chronic problems — the Iraq war, political gridlock, gun violence, and a thousand other things. But I believe this is an under-appreciated point. America is an optimistic nation. It has a short memory. Our political system and media don’t really learn very obvious lessons that unspool right in front of everyone’s faces. And so we end up repeating our errors — at least, some of them — to great sorrow. And I expect the sorrow is going to get a lot greater in the coming decades." My recollection is that someone shared a photoset on Flickr, and that was the eye opener for me about how bad things were post-Katrina. It was also an eye opener about the power of what would eventually be called social media: people sharing information, photos, and opinions with each other directly.
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Commented on post by Julio A Gonzales in ChromecastYes, indeed. And the results are usually catastrophic black (blue!) and white. Either it's working or it's not. What was reported was that it didn't stop working but it degraded. That's what I'm surprised by. — I just got a Chromecast 2 and have a question. Is there any disadvantage in using TV's USB as power supply instead of wall charger?
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Commented on post by Matt CuttsJust walk away. There's always room on the wild frontier for another experiment. — The full piece is worth reading, but this was a tough paragraph to read: "What Hurricane Katrina, the floodwall and levee collapses, and the aftermath taught me is that America, and its institutions, simply don’t work — and that people like it that way. Perhaps this is a boilerplate observation, so obvious in light of what happened there, and all our other disasters and chronic problems — the Iraq war, political gridlock, gun violence, and a thousand other things. But I believe this is an under-appreciated point. America is an optimistic nation. It has a short memory. Our political system and media don’t really learn very obvious lessons that unspool right in front of everyone’s faces. And so we end up repeating our errors — at least, some of them — to great sorrow. And I expect the sorrow is going to get a lot greater in the coming decades." My recollection is that someone shared a photoset on Flickr, and that was the eye opener for me about how bad things were post-Katrina. It was also an eye opener about the power of what would eventually be called social media: people sharing information, photos, and opinions with each other directly.
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Commented on post by Julio A Gonzales in ChromecastI remember that post and it still makes no sense to me. The TV's USB port should output 5v or it's not USB. It might be limiting the current to 0.5A but if that's the case, the Chromecast should turn itself off, not stutter. Inside the Chromecast is a custom Chrome-OS running Chrome. It's just running code. And code doesn't partially fail. What is possible I suppose is that the Chromecast is downgrading it's quality in the same way a laptop might if it's running on battery. I just find that unlikely. My own experience with a CC v1 attached to a recent Sony TV is that there's no difference at all, at all, in performance between running on USB or on the PSU. The only benefit is the always on and hence CEC control. — I just got a Chromecast 2 and have a question. Is there any disadvantage in using TV's USB as power supply instead of wall charger?
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle Roadracing+gerry marks Have you seen on board footage from either rider of the actual fall? If, so, where? — Heroes Who Have Feet Of Clay The best MotoGP journalist in the game is +David Emmett.  You might disagree with that, but you will be wrong! David has written his summery of the #SepangGP   #MotoGP  race including that crash. This is THE read of the week for sure: https://motomatters.com/analysis/2015/10/27/2015_sepang_motogp_round_up_heroes_who_h.html __________________________________________ +MotoGP  #SepangGP   #MotoGP   #MotoMatters   #SepangCrash   #Dorna   #Marquez   #Rossi  
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Commented on post by Speed Triple & R1200GS in Motorcycle RoadracingFair enough. Just as long as he isn't a dick about it. Do you think the Spanish marshals will show blue flags to the people about to be overtaken by Rossi? Will the Italian riders/teams/manufacturers give him a free pass? How about Crutchlow, Redding, Smith, Pol Espargaro? There's a lot of people on the grid with no great love for Marquez, Lorenzo or for the Spanish. — Anthony West weighs in (his FB feed). Love his attitude. 
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingTwo other bits worth reading. - Mat Oxley on this event.  http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/race/motogp-race/the-sepang-incident/ - Mat Oxley on racers behaving badly. http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sno44r — Heroes Who Have Feet Of Clay The best MotoGP journalist in the game is +David Emmett.  You might disagree with that, but you will be wrong! David has written his summery of the #SepangGP   #MotoGP  race including that crash. This is THE read of the week for sure: https://motomatters.com/analysis/2015/10/27/2015_sepang_motogp_round_up_heroes_who_h.html __________________________________________ +MotoGP  #SepangGP   #MotoGP   #MotoMatters   #SepangCrash   #Dorna   #Marquez   #Rossi  
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Commented on post by Julio A Gonzales in Chromecast+Shane Menshik I'm not sure I believe that stuff about how low powered USB socket could cause loss of quality. Generally with electronics and power it either works or it doesn't. — I just got a Chromecast 2 and have a question. Is there any disadvantage in using TV's USB as power supply instead of wall charger?
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Commented on postYes, please. Love-Skip-Block buttons on everything. Especially advertising. That modify the stream heuristics. But make the actions private So they don't turn up in other people's notifications the way +1 and Like do. Give us mechanisms to feed back beyond just inferring our attitudes from our general behaviour. I wonder what this would do to advertising if costs and payments were based on Likes and lack of Skip/Blocks rather than clicks and impressions.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Truth & EpistemologyWhy would anyone think The New York Times * wasn't * biased? Man Bites Dog? — Spot-on analysis of persistent bias in The New York TImes -- not Left or Right, but Establishment The New York Times is often accused of having an unacknowledged liberal bias. Leftists sometimes insist that it has a conservative bias. I don’t think any newspaper in the world does better than the Times. I subscribe to it, often marvel at its scope and excellence, and believe that, like everything, it is biased in all sorts of ways, perhaps none more than this: It is an establishment paper. It overvalues the voices, perspectives, assumptions, and observations of powerful establishment insiders, whom it treats with far more credulousness and deference than they deserve. +Peter Strempel​​​​ and I have kicked this around a few times, I suspect he'd find much to agree on regards the bias of this piece. House Rules: discussion here regards truth and bias. Take the political/topical discussion to +Allen Varney​​​​'s post.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPDavid Emmett = Kropotkin — Read this. As usual Kropotkin nails it. https://motomatters.com/analysis/2015/10/27/2015_sepang_motogp_round_up_heroes_who_h.html
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in The Best Motorcycle Racing PicturesMelandri Capirossi Barros. Pramac d'Antin Ducati Don't think it was Brazil. The last time they went there was 2004. In 2008, there was Shanghai and Istanbul though. And it must have been 2007, because Melandri was on a satellite Gresini Honda. 2008 was his horrible year on a Ducati.  — 2008 and Hayden leads the pack...  ~ Can you name the other three?
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in The Best Motorcycle Racing PicturesGot the first two. But the 3rd puzzled me for a while. Where is it though,  Brno? — 2008 and Hayden leads the pack...  ~ Can you name the other three?
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPFFS, stop signing the petition. It was always a joke and it really shouldn't have been posted when http://change.org has much bigger issues to deal with.  — MotoGP: 275k fans sign petition to drop Rossi’s penalty https://www.change.org/p/motogp-race-director-mike-webb-remove-the-penalty-from-valentino-rossi-and-bring-back-integrity-to-the-championship-2246013d-9c5a-44e9-b306-02c667fce09c
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Commented on postThanks for that. Amazing to see all the usual suspects muddying the waters and diluting the message even while they write papers that Stern was "Right for the wrong reasons". People like Yohe, Tol, Lomborg, Lawson, Cato Institute. Meanwhile it's nearly 10 years later, we've got another major climate conference coming up and that last para,  Stern said "Looking back, I underestimated the risks. The planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects are coming through more quickly than we thought then" in the 2006 Review. He now believes we are "on track for something like four degrees". And despite all that, the Tory party in the UK is throwing away the gains we've made in a renewable economy by making them less financially attractive, making things like onshore wind farms harder to gain approval for and buying China's friendship with ridiculous long term Nuclear deals. It is to sigh. Then there's my personal bug bear. These discussions hinge on long term models of the earth's environment and on global macro-economics. This is hard and uncharted territory. So whenever somebody comes up with an attempt at a model, its easy to pull it apart and discredit, especially if its pessimistic. But what the critics won't do is to try and come up with a more realistic model. At best you get a cherry picked facile model of one part that ignores all the hard work done by the original on the complex interplays between disparate factors. So you get LtoG dismissed as neo-Malthusian because it predicts exponential growth in population to a peak, overshoot and die back. But the discussion is all about how educated societies result in a falling birth rate so population growth is "not a problem". Completely ignoring resource constraints, pollution, and all the other factors in the original model.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta+Jeremy Nixon I seem to have just rediscovered IRC. Except that the channels I used to frequent seem strangely quiet and empty. People have been trying to use Twitter like IRC since it started. Do you think we could encourage them to try the real thing (tm)?  — Google's Dead This is a "G+ is dying+" post. Latest stats from Experian on weeky actives. G+ is rapidly approaching the 30m/wk threshold, having previously been as high as 70-75m/wk. From a private share, no attribution by request. <quote> Data... (some notes/analysis at bottom) >>>  "...Week ending October 24, 2015 Websites / Total Visits / Visits Share / Rank 10/17 - 10/10 - 10/03 Facebook 1,651,618,150 / 44.95% 1 1 1 YouTube 826,229,354 22.49% 2 2 2 Twitter 175,249,822 4.77% 3 3 3 Reddit 161,303,411 4.39% 4 4 4 Pinterest 62,058,327 1.69% 5 5 5 Tumblr 49,644,375 1.35% 6 7 7 Instagram 49,522,333 1.35% 8 8 8 Linkedin 49,502,284 1.35% 7 6 6 Yahoo! Answers 48,286,808 1.31% 9 9 9 Google+ 32,918,850 0.90% 10 10 10 "--- Obligatory preamble: Yes, ALL Web stats services have flaws in their set-ups, and how they measure Desktop vs. Mobile etc. etc. which is why one should NEVER 1) focus on the absolute numbers, or 2) compare them Apples-To-Oranges against each other, only against themselves, "apples-to-apples" to derive trend. I assume these are U.S. visits only, but it doesn't even matter... That said, some notes/analysis: 1) Today marks the first week since I started looking at this stat sometime in July 2015 again (I have some old screencaps from 2012 and 2013, which once had G+ at a high of at least 72M visits/week, and in 3rd or 4th place after FB, YT, and neck-an-neck with Twitter circa late 2013 / early 2014, post YouTube comments integration "boost"...), that the number for G+ hasn't declined by between 500k to 1M week over week (w/w). 2) Only Yahoo Answers and maybe LinkedIN are services where one can make a strong claim that they are unlikely to have much mobile usage if any, all of the rest I would assume see Mobile usage about on par with G+. (Conversely, Instagram is likely severely undercounted if this is going only by browser derived stats, their WWW version was only ever built as a complete afterthought to the Mobile App. Not that it much matters here.) 3) Given that, how on earth is it possible that Google pushed about 1B to 1.5B users into the top of their funnel, and managed to end up with numbers / usage on the level of Yahoo freaking Answers...?! I mused with +Edward Morbius recently what might happen if G+' numbers kept dropping further, and it somehow dropped off the Top 10 list alltogether; not even sure what the next lower-rated service might be... StumbleUpon...?! Given these numbers (with all of the above caveats, but Orders of Magnitude comparisons should still be allowed, no...?), G+ has eeked out ~ 1/50 of Facebook, 1/25 of YouTube, 1/5 of each Twitter and Reddit, and 1/2 or less of each of the rest. Which begs the question what on earth Google mgmt was ever thinking in trying to leash G+ Comments to YouTube, truly a case of "wagging the dog", and an amazing example of the chuzpah of corporate political types like Gundotra. No wonder the YouTube and other functioning divisions eventually (likely) told him to just fsck off. </quote> Source in a jiffy -- can't copy everything in one fell swoop on the fucking broken Android tool -- not only can you not copy either specific text sections or any links from others' posts and comments, but you cannot copy links at all -- open in browser, wait for G+ metaresolution to happen, then copy back. https://www.experian.com/marketing-services/online-trends-social-media.html
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Commented on post by Last Chicane in MotoGPArgentina. Assen. — ROSSI SHOULD BOYCOTT THE LAST RACE AND NOT GIVE THEM THE SATISFACTION. HE IS STILL THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME!!!!!
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Makes me think of that scene in Women in Love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3iL8euEvO4 — In the category of "really weird things I did not know:" apparently figs and certain wasps have co-evolved into a sort of single organism, with the wasps acting as highly mobile sex organs. It's basically what happens if you take "insects pollinating flowers" to its logical conclusion. Essentially, a female wasp shows up at a fig, pollen in tow and laden with egs, enters the fig, spreads the pollen around, lays her eggs, and dies. Some of the fig's ovaries are now fertilized by pollen; they develop seeds. Others have wasp eggs; they form a shell around the eggs. Male wasps hatch first; they have no wings, but instead travel around the inside of the fig, fertilize the females (still in their eggs), cut escape hatches for them, and then die. Next the male flowers mature and produce pollen. Next, the female wasps hatch, already fertilized; they get covered in pollen, and fly out, in search of another fig. The wasps which die in the fig get digested by it and turned into more fig. Which is to say, the wasp's entire life cycle is basically loading up on the parts to make more wasps and more figs, and then finding a fig.  There are a few variations on this, summarized in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_wasp . But basically, figs have managed to turn wasps into part of their biology, and can be considered to be part-animal, part-plant. Others instead would say that the figs are eating the wasps, which I suppose is also true, but that really understates the complexity of this relationship. Apparently this is also enough for some people to consider figs not to be vegan. (cf http://www.organicauthority.com/health/figs-are-they-vegan.html , although to make it clear I am not endorsing any of the, well, anything on this site; it's just an example of what arguments around the kosher vegan status of the fig look like) Mostly, this gives me an urge for figs.  Via @silentkpants on Twitter.
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Commented on post by Farid Yanka in MotoGPHere's another one. https://twitter.com/bang10/status/658203473939312640 Marquez helmet hits Rossi's knee before Rossi lifts his knee to push him back. — What r u doin rossi? ":;!??$%&+$#@:'$#&-+
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Commented on post by Farid Yanka in MotoGPVR keeps the championship points. Will start from back of grid in Valencia with 3 penalty points. [edited to add], Maybe. that's not actually official yet. 2006 all over again. Kind of.  — What r u doin rossi? ":;!??$%&+$#@:'$#&-+
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Commented on post by Farid Yanka in MotoGPDavid Emmett ‏@motomatters 24s ago I suspect both Marquez and Rossi will be punished. They both deserve it. Marquez for getting in Rossi's way, Rossi for lashing out. Let the points stand but make Marc and Vale start from 3 rows back from their QP.  — What r u doin rossi? ":;!??$%&+$#@:'$#&-+
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Commented on post by Farid Yanka in MotoGPIf you need more real time commentary,  https://twitter.com/jbond/lists/motorcycle-racing — What r u doin rossi? ":;!??$%&+$#@:'$#&-+
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Commented on post by Farid Yanka in MotoGPTry and remember, there ARE 2 stories here.  1. Rossi is right, Marquez was racing really dirty. This went on so long and was so dangerous that Rossi ran wide and forced Marquez to the edge of the track. Marquez still turned in on him and Rossi put his knee out to stop him running into his bike. Marquez could have backed off and passed him cleanly later. 2. Rossi was being harried and he lost his temper, even after almost coming to a stop, running him the edge of the track and looking at him twice, he then lashed out with his foot and kicked Marquez's handlebar. — What r u doin rossi? ":;!??$%&+$#@:'$#&-+
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Commented on post by Farid Yanka in MotoGPMeanwhile Dani wins 2 races a year, again. — What r u doin rossi? ":;!??$%&+$#@:'$#&-+
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Commented on post by Farid Yanka in MotoGPSenna, Schumacher, Capirossi, and so on,  Strongly recommend reading McWilliams' tweets and a few other ex racers. https://twitter.com/McWill99 I can't say I'm surprised given Rossi vs Marquez this year. I don't even care much if Rossi did or didn't nudge Marc's handlebar with his knee or why. But I am deeply disappointed for the championship and for Rossi's long term reputation. In the end, we forgave those three racers above and we will eventually forgive Rossi and Marquez. Still sucks though.  — What r u doin rossi? ":;!??$%&+$#@:'$#&-+
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPI have to say I'm really enjoying this. More popcorn please!  — Happy to hear Jorge confirm what a few people said to me yesterday!! That this "strategy" (I just rolled my eyes so hard they almost fell out the side of my head) has been used before......Just Race The Damn Bike Rossi!! Charts with times on them.....Are you kidding me?!?! 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceI think it's time for someone to re-invent Friendfeed. And Reader. And probably Deja News as well. This time around can we have an equivalent of Twitter Lists but with RSS/Atom so I can curate a list and you can subscribe to it.  — On browsing, formatting, curation, Readability, and lag I've been using an Android tablet for the past couple of weeks as a primary Web/Internet device, with some positive and negative perceptions. There's a lot I'd like to add, for example, to +Peter Strempel​​'s recent comments on his own several months' long experience with a tablet, and the sense that he's fighting its fundamental nature and intent to get it to do what he wants. This is an attribute he chalks up to technology generally, which I feel is misplaced, though not entirely. It's more a matter of how technology funds itself in a world of zero marginal cost, which tends to be by trying to create a captive audience within a ring-fenced "ecosystem" channelling as much activity as possible into specific revenue-positive (for the vendors) channels -- advertising, "in-app purchases", and the like. https://plus.google.com/+PeterStrempel/posts/LKVgLy7dwxD As with Peter, I find this grossly repulsive, and am desperately seeking a way out. Suggestions on rooting and re-ROMing my Samsung Tab A are appreciated. But that's a digression. Web content, simplified presentation, and curation Among the first steps I took were to install the Firefox Android browser. My experience with the Chrome browser for Android is that with its lack of extensions, obsequiously advertising-friendly approach, and lack of focus on user preferences and requirements for readable, legible content, it's simply utterly useless. Well, not completely. It has proven somewhat helpful in accessing initial WiFi hotspot pages which my Firefox implementation occasionally chokes on. What Firefox offers are several tools which address my long list of complaints of tabbed browsing as a band-aid on poor browser functionality. First, there's a tabs overview page which gives me pretty clear access to even large numbers (presently 60+) tabs I'll have open in a typical session. While not a tree-style view, showing relationship between pages (e.g., sub-pages opened from search or referencing articles), it does make cleanup after some sub-project's been completed somewhat easier. Firefox also includes a "reader-mode" icon, which presents a simplified, standardised, largely unformatted page with sensible line lengths and minimised clutter. I find this virtually **always* preferable to the default view_, and seek it out *immediately* for any multi-column pages or those with fixed headers and footers (please, someone, haul out and shoot those responsible for this idiocy). My main complaint is that the option isn't visible until the page has fully loaded. I'd prefer it be accessible immediately. Or, better, as a default page-view option. Though the latter largely addresses my asthetic preferences, in the case of a visually challenged individual, this would in fact be a massive usability improvement, rather than having to wait for, find, then select the "readability" mode each time. There's also an integrated reading list. Which, quite frankly, is what tabs for the most part are. I've started to make some use of this, though I find I am returning to and going through it infrequently (the great risk of such risks). Some sort of datelining of additions, and possibly classification of items, would be useful. Firefox has a feature in which tabs not presently being viewed are unloaded from memory. Largely this works well, through there's a bit too much lag on re-opening, as it appears the contents are re-fetched from the network. The solution that occurs to me would be for a pre-rendered page to be cached locally, presumably capable of being reloaded quite quickly from local MicroSD storage. I've also been making use of Readability, which has a few additional reading list, classification, and presentation tools. Sadly, Readability seem to have abandoned any real enhancement of their offerings both online (Web) and mobile (App). I'm afraid that winds of a tightening startup environment and impending bubble may be affecting them. The Web app still has inferior overview options to its earlier inclination, the App lacks tagging, classification, and search at all. But the worst Readability misfeature is the lag imposed when adding items to the app via the Firefox menu. It takes many seconds, up to a minute in cases, for articles to be added, during which time both Firefox and Readability are utterly nonresponsive. To say the very least, this breaks up the normal flow of reading, curating, and proceeding with other articles, and is quite frustrating. I've some 1400+ articles archived under Readability (though that list is exportable), which makes for a fair bit of friction in migrating to alternative management tools. I've casually investigated similar reformatters (InstaPaper, Pocket), and have Mendely, a bibliography management tool, installed on the tablet, though I've yet to set up its account (standard rant: *show me what your product can do before insisting I allocate personal data to you). I'd really like a self-controlled cloud version of much of this. As with Peter, I'm increasingly frustrated by the "store all your personal data in our dark NSA bunker in Utah" world of the cloud. While I'm appreciative of the tablet's form-factor (with an attached Bluetooth keyboard/cover it really is a minimalist laptop), and the ability to rotate to portrait mode for reading articles makes it a huge improvement over my laptop (wide-screen displays simply do not manage text well). The screen gets quite marred, even using a stylus pen. But it's control over my data, interoperations as I wish to define them among tools, eggregiously excessive data requests from applications (why does virtually _every__ fucking music/audio player insist on accessing both identity __and__ call information -- I've refused all of them?), etc. I've _very grudgingly accepted these intrusions for now, and, though there have been some occasional delights (I've just discovered that Google Maps includes interior floorplans of some public buildings, by floor, which really is quite cool), I'm more than slightly sick of living in Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. A key element of which, as the astute reader will recall, wasn't that you were being watched at all times, but that you could be, and simply never know. And the default and vendor-installed apps are all but entirely useless. I'll take this opportunity to say "fuck you" to Samsung for all the useless crap it's installed which (short of rooting/ROMing), I'm stuck with. There are other bits: * The failure of any of the file management tools to show me full device paths is beyond frustrating. I've got a half-dozen or so folders claiming to be my external SD card, of which only one actually is. * Music, video, and audio playback for sources of my own choosing, is far more frustrating than it should be. My primary interface is VLC, though it's prone to crashing and has a far less than intuitive interface. * In-application advertising is stunningly annoying. Quite honestly, I think Google should come up with an alternative monetisation model for applications. Some old standards (e.g., Moon+Reader) are useless with their ads. I've turned to FBReader for eBooks, the Android option is superior to the Linux desktop application. * Porting passwords, etc., from my previous device, using KeePass has been an utter failure. I'm hand-entering 20-40 character passwords one at a time. Oh well, keeps me off the streets. * Other options for transferring data from my old device have been similarly frustrating. Mutliple sneakernet transfers from one removable thumb drive (more accuragely: sub-pinkie sized MicroSD) to another. Internal free storage is sufficiently small to make this fucking annoyuing. Just put 128GB internal already, Tablet Makers of the Universe. * The overloading of my keyboard's backspace key with a "delete" function means I'm frequently eating lines below the one I'm writing. Not sure if that's Logitec's fault, Samsumg's, Androids, or what. But it's fucking stupid all the same. * Many Web pages simply don't register screen presses sufficiently accurately to be useful. Voting icons on HN and Reddit quite frequently don't respond. Pressing and holding, to be emphatic, brings up a less-than-helpful altnernate actions menu. * For the G+ app, several issues, including a far too great proclivity to ask if I'd like to abandon some painstakingly-entered, long-form content, should I happen to mis-register tapping a submit arrow. There's no recourse if you accidentally confirm. What happened to Google's awareness of don't lose my shit"? Ping +Yonatan Zunger (Oh, and the very uneven response of the +UserName completion dialogs is another massive fucking annoyance.) * The G+ editor dialogs are far too fucking small. Both comment dialogs (generally), and post dialogs, parti cularly when an attachment (image, link) has been made. The Web client suffers similar fatal flaws, it's only my own very extensive CSS mods which rescue it from the brain-death of its designers. Sadly I don't believe I've got similar options for the App. * G+ app fonts are far too small, and not adjustable. Android doesn't offer a global font size setting. * Some other websites break in their own ways. Far too many mis-register page-scroll events as link-selections, resulting in many unintented navigations and back-navigations. Ello's editor widgets break in numerous (though fundamentally uninteresting) ways, which I've noted there recently. Etc., etc., etc. Sadly, mostly boring little trivia items. As is much of computer tech.... Segregating primary comms from (more capable) surveillance devices I am somewhat relieved at having my primary comms (dumbphone) and smarts (tablet) separable. The battery-ife benefits alone are a huge plus. But for all its utility, Android is technology that I only very grudgingly, guardedly, and with extreme reservation, allow within my perimiters. If my personal pereceptions of previous tech generations have been any guide, those are concerns I expect to be more widely shared later, and assuming someone does come up with a suitable alternative in future, Google (and its various "ecosystem" vendors) are running a grave risk by alienating their customer base. Calling Android the best currently available option is far more a damnation of the present Tablet world than an endorsement of Android. #Android #Privacy #PRISM #FreeSoftware #Tablet 
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Commented on post by H.T.V. Blu in The Best Motorcycle Racing Pictures+Hutchie 2112 And he never did. — Jerez 2005 Rossi vs Gibernau That moment
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGP+jack randall Sorry, if I posted a spoiler. We have an agreement to try not to post spoilers on facebook but I've stopped worrying here. — Happy to hear Jorge confirm what a few people said to me yesterday!! That this "strategy" (I just rolled my eyes so hard they almost fell out the side of my head) has been used before......Just Race The Damn Bike Rossi!! Charts with times on them.....Are you kidding me?!?! 
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPHahahaha! Watch QP2, especially Lorenzo killing the engine as he turns into parc ferme, only to discover he's 4th. And then the shouting in the helmet and the stomping off through the garage. Unbelievable lap from Dani. Unbelievable final sector from Rossi. Unbelievable save from Marquez. Game on! — Happy to hear Jorge confirm what a few people said to me yesterday!! That this "strategy" (I just rolled my eyes so hard they almost fell out the side of my head) has been used before......Just Race The Damn Bike Rossi!! Charts with times on them.....Are you kidding me?!?! 
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPAs always, Kropotkin's commentary and the comments on it, are the best. https://motomatters.com/analysis/2015/10/22/2015_sepang_motogp_thursday_round_up_ros.html  This morning I'm more convinced than ever that this is about the future, not about Philip Island. Consider a not implausible scenario. That at Valencia, Lorenzo needs to win with Rossi third, and that Marquez is right on Lorenzo's tail going into the last lap. Rossi cannot have the Spanish gang up on him. And he needs Marc to make that Hail Mary pass for the win. He needs Marc to compete for himself and not for anyone else. That's what this is all about. — I am going to gather my full thoughts before I post about these ridiculous statements... I am utterly speechless right now......My brain is in overdrive and I don't want to say something that I will regret.....I will however, still share this with anyone that has not seen it yet. 
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPAnother thought about all this. Rossi didn't talk about Lorenzo AT ALL.  — I am going to gather my full thoughts before I post about these ridiculous statements... I am utterly speechless right now......My brain is in overdrive and I don't want to say something that I will regret.....I will however, still share this with anyone that has not seen it yet. 
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Commented on post by Speed Triple & R1200GS in Motorcycle RoadracingDon't take any of this at face value. This is Rossi trying to plant doubt in both Lorenzo and Marquez mind. And all of them know it. And it still works. — So is Rossie tripping or do you folks think he is on to something? I am wondering personally if he ate some mushrooms or something. 
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPThis is not about Marquez. It's about Lorenzo. It's all about planting doubt in Lorenzo's mind. But then it's also about winding up Marquez and encouraging him to just go for the win. To prove to everybody that he's not Lorenzo's (or Rossi's) bitch. Because the best possible thing for Rossi is for Marquez to beat Lorenzo. As it gives Rossi more of a chance of losing 4 points instead of 5. Mainly, don't take any of this at face value. What's funny about all this is that Lorenzo, Marquez, Pedrosa, Iannone know exactly what's going on and find it funny because they've al seen it before. Except that it still works. — I am going to gather my full thoughts before I post about these ridiculous statements... I am utterly speechless right now......My brain is in overdrive and I don't want to say something that I will regret.....I will however, still share this with anyone that has not seen it yet. 
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPSurprised it took so long for the mind games to properly kick off. — I am going to gather my full thoughts before I post about these ridiculous statements... I am utterly speechless right now......My brain is in overdrive and I don't want to say something that I will regret.....I will however, still share this with anyone that has not seen it yet. 
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Commented on post by James Cridland in ChromecastJust had a look at Radio 4 live and an archived radio 4 programme on the website. Neither has any obvious support for a Chromecast. I think it may be in the Android app only at the moment and not on the website.  — The BBC iPlayer Radio app has just added Chromecast support (for Chromecast and Chromecast Audio). And it works pretty well. Here's a review of the app, if you're within the UK and can use it. https://media.info/radio/review/bbc-iplayer-radio-app-v2-sets-the-standard
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Commented on post by Doug Farr in Motorcycle RoadracingEspecially when 15 more in the road bike makes no difference at all to the race bike. — Nicky Hayden Saying goodbye to the MotoGp fans at Phillip Island only to be back in Feb for the WSBK round
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle Roadracinghttp://www.crash.net/motogp/news/224456/1/alex-de-angelis-returning-home-on-sunday.html Coming home. — Alex De Angelis Update Monday 12th Oct 15th October #ForzaAlexDeAngelis   #GetWellSoonAlex   NEW UPDATE : http://www.iodaracing.it/irp2013/2015/10/15/alex-de-angelis-medical-conditions-update-october-15-2/?lang=en Its looking better every day for Alex! Great news. Full Details & Ioda Racing Press Realese via MotoMatters dot com : https://motomatters.com/news/2015/10/12/alex_de_angelis_injury_update_still_crit.html ______________________________________ +MotoGP  #MotoGP   #Ioda  +Iodaracing Project  #ForzaAlexDeAngelis  +David Emmett 
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Commented on post by Lev OsherovichNothing says "Future!" quite like blue LEDs. Fun fact about these in the UK. The're vehicles so illegal on the pavement. But not recognisable vehicles that can be tested, taxed and licensed or a pedelec bicycle that can be unlicensed so they're illegal on the road. Just like Segways before them, private land only with the agreement of the land owner. — October 21, 2015. Hoverboards. Not exactly as predicted in Back to the Future 2 but close enough.
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Commented on post by James Cridland in ChromecastI was trying to do this just recently from the desktop website. iPlayer casting of archived TV works just fine, but there was no baked in support for live TV and Radio. Has that changed?  — The BBC iPlayer Radio app has just added Chromecast support (for Chromecast and Chromecast Audio). And it works pretty well. Here's a review of the app, if you're within the UK and can use it. https://media.info/radio/review/bbc-iplayer-radio-app-v2-sets-the-standard
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Commented on post by Brent Sullivan in YouTube TVAt the moment, US only. Youtube Music coming soon. — What is YouTube Red? Source:  https://www.youtube.com/red
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Commented on post by Andreas SchouIt seems likely that all life, possibly throughout the universe, evolves in an environment with a roof. We're really lucky that our roof is semi-transparent. Never mind the Mariana Trench, imagine the life at the bottom of the ocean on Europa. Your roof is several kilometres of ice. So could you infer the presence of Jupiter from a scientific analysis of your surroundings? — Singulatarianism supposes that we are uniquely designed to investigate the universe and benefit from it, and that the universe is uniquely designed to accommodate our inquiry. Imagine a fish with human intelligence which could only live only under immense pressure at the bottom of an oceanic trench, and lacks manipulators. Do we think that it's that creature's destiny to deify itself through science? No. Even though it's capable of investigating the universe, there are almost intractable barriers keeping it from doing so. These fish might eventually produce great philosophers. They might discover everything there is to know about the bottom of the trench. But they will never build a linear accelerator. They might never become aware of the sun. If we step back from those hypothetical things living at the bottom of the sea, why should we presuppose that there no facts or scientific achievements which bear the same relationship to human inquiry as the existence of the sun does to this poor fish? (Pulled out of circles, put in public.)
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in YouTube TVYouTube Red announcement.  http://youtube-global.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/red.html Hidden in there, "Youtube music coming soon" — According to the FAQs, the new Chromecast-Audio doesn't support casting from Youtube. This seems really strange for all sorts of reasons but especially, because of Youtube MusicKey/Red. 
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Commented on post by Busa Bob in Motorcycle RoadracingSo how does Brookes get a decent ride in a world championship? Is he stuck now?  — Josh Brookes 25 (1) BSB Champion 2015 out for Morning Warmup today at Brands Hatch
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Commented on post by Doug Farr in Motorcycle Roadracing2 years. The first on an obsolete bike that's not really competitive. The second on one that is a complete unknown. Too much of his career has been like that. After watching Rea - Davies - Torres I wonder if he has the stomach for that level of aggression. Is he going to be as fast as Biaggi was when he arrived? How about Melandri? — Nicky Hayden Saying goodbye to the MotoGp fans at Phillip Island only to be back in Feb for the WSBK round
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Commented on post by Stewart BrandTechno-optimism or Techno-topians, or whatever you want to call the approach is one of several possible reactions to the situation we find ourselves in. Here's an incomplete list of some others. http://howtosavetheworld.ca/images/The-New-Political-Map-2015.pdf From http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2014/11/29/see-no-evil-the-morality-of-collapse/ It's worth reading the comments on TFA.  There are some detailed rebuttals of some of the points raised. The problem is that TFA ends up feeling like cherry picking to justify a position, just as much as the green straw men he's criticising. My main complaint is that global economic modelling (like global climate modelling) is complex. You can't simply extract one bit of it (like total population) out of the model and then try and apply common sense to it. If we're going to apply fact and evidence based analysis to it, we have to try to refine the model not just second guess it. So you can't talk about 100 year futures of the population curve without also considering the effects of resource and pollution constraints. As for nuclear power, how do you think we'll handle raw material sources/supplies, political issues with enrichment, centralised security, waste disposal, safety, energy distribution. Show your working! The nuclear option is turning out to be considerably harder than renewables although with some benefits. — 9 environmentalist myths worth questioning Peter Kareiva, new Director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, examines nine Green exaggerations: Myth 1: Human population is growing exponentially and it’s ruining the planet. Myth 2: Biodiversity is declining everywhere. Myth 3: Set up free markets with the right incentives for environmental innovation and we will “business” our way to sustainability. Myth 4: In the end, corporations are always enemies of the environment. Myth 5: If you question an environmental regulation, you’re automatically anti-environment. Myth 6: We have already used up 1.5 Earths and exceeded our planet’s carrying capacity. Myth 7: People who don’t think we should act strongly to stop climate change are just stupid/ill-informed/ignorant. Myth 8: Sustainability means eating locally. Myth 9: If we keep on our current path, Mother Earth will be destroyed and it will be the end of life on the planet.
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Commented on post by Stewart BrandThe article is just more justification for continuing business as usual from people who have a particular type of techno-optimism. What I don't understand is why Stewart Brand promotes this kind of thing. He's not stupid so why is he taken in by these half truths and why does he feel the need to give them the oxygen of publicity? Take a pessimistic model of the near future Take one of the curves out of context Argue that the curve is less extreme than in the model Use that to discredit the entire model Use that to justify business as usual You can sell a lot of books and get a lot of speaking engagements on the back of that technique. Because a lot of people want to be told that it's all ok, really. And yet, the Long Now is all about constructing optimistic models of the future. So how about working to refine the models rather than pouring scorn on the models that already exist? — 9 environmentalist myths worth questioning Peter Kareiva, new Director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, examines nine Green exaggerations: Myth 1: Human population is growing exponentially and it’s ruining the planet. Myth 2: Biodiversity is declining everywhere. Myth 3: Set up free markets with the right incentives for environmental innovation and we will “business” our way to sustainability. Myth 4: In the end, corporations are always enemies of the environment. Myth 5: If you question an environmental regulation, you’re automatically anti-environment. Myth 6: We have already used up 1.5 Earths and exceeded our planet’s carrying capacity. Myth 7: People who don’t think we should act strongly to stop climate change are just stupid/ill-informed/ignorant. Myth 8: Sustainability means eating locally. Myth 9: If we keep on our current path, Mother Earth will be destroyed and it will be the end of life on the planet.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Wingnuttery+Valdis Klētnieks  There's a difference between violence as part of a formally declared war and,  political assassination by remote controlled drone, involving significant collateral damage to civilians, in a country that is notionally on the same side. A gunship attack on a hospital because your partners called in a target as part of a tribal grievance Cruise missiles fired on a country because the leaders of that country asked you for help, except that they veered off course into a neighbouring country An invasion and regime change justified via deliberately falsified intelligence reports of "Weapons of mass destruction capable of being launched in 45 minutes"  and so on, and so on,  — Oh good -- apparently Obama is actually doing something about domestic terrorism. And yes, forced-birth firebombers and other right-wing extremists, that does include you. You're way past due. "And isn’t it fascinating how nearly everyone on the right, when they hear that the government is going to crack down on violent extremism, immediately thinks that [the government is] going to come after them? " Funny, that. via +Ed Brayton .
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyThe Pop-Sci version of the Limits to Growth, World 3 model graphs on its 40th anniversary. http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2846/28462101.jpg Taken from a New Scientist article (paywall) https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328462-100-boom-and-doom-revisiting-prophecies-of-collapse/ — I'm collecting long-term quantitative forecasts of all sorts. Here are a few we've found so far. If you know of a long-term  forecast, send me a link, or put it in the comments. http://kk.org/extrapolations/
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Commented on post by MACH1 E-Scooter in Electric Vehicles (UK)Road legal as what? It's not a pedelec so not legal as unlicensed in the UK or rest of EU. No pedals and more than 250w/25kph. I'm not really sure it's an S-Pedelec which is the next layer up in some EU countries like Germany. It's not an equivalent to a 50cc or 125cc moped/motorcycle. It's not an invalid carriage. You may get an EU cert. But I bet that's a guarantee that it's safe and won't explode. Not a license to use it in a public place. This is an issue in the UK because like the Segway and electric scooters before them, there's a new set of cheap "hover boards" appearing that are powered vehicles but don't fit the regulatory framework. They're currently only legal on private land. Not allowed on the road because they can't be licensed. Not allowed on public off road like pavements or parks because they're a vehicle. — ELECTRIC SCOOTER DRIVING
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingJust ridiculous. He can't win for winning. I'm seriously impressed with his speed. And seriously unimpressed with his racecraft and approach. And not just him but his team as well. — Close...... but no cigar What a #Moto3 race. Utter madness from start to finish. Only 19 riders finished, 16 crashed out. Sadly, Danny Kent #52 will have to wait a little longer to (hopefully) become the first British GP champion since Barry Sheene. Full Report to follow (much later today). Full Write up via +David Emmett 's MotoMatters dot com C/O Mike Lewis : https://motomatters.com/results/2015/10/17/2015_phillip_island_moto3_race_result_th.html +MotoGP​ #MotoGP #Moto3 #AustralianGP
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastAnd then this. https://www.youtube.com/musickey Thanks for taking a look at YouTube Music Key! We're no longer taking new sign ups for the beta. But keep your ear to the Internet, because there's a lot in store for music fans on YouTube. —  Well worth reading the Chromecast audio FAQs. https://support.google.com/chromecast/?hl=en-GB#topic=6279362 Especially, https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6279416?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=6279411&vid=1-635795409214628433-1838887243 This one amazed me. I’m trying to cast audio from YouTube but it isn’t working. I thought this was a Google Cast-enabled app? Chromecast Audio only supports audio apps and this currently does not include YouTube. WTF? Youtube is a major source of music. Not being able to cast YouTube to a C-A is a bit of an oversight, isn't it?
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyI'd love to see some analysis by people like Romer of how many doubling periods we are from the twin brick walls of resource constraints and pollution. And what he thinks is going to change the game enough to allow us to leap over them this time. Maybe he's already done this. Is it going to be worth my while to dig through his writings looking for it? In some ways you can look at each successive revolution and see it as a way that Mankind found for bypassing the then current resource constraint. Agricultural, city building, scientific, industrial, computing. Each takes us from the top of the S curve of the previous one. So each builds on it and creates a new S Curve to boost exponential growth. And as he writes in his analysis of combinatorial and network effects, we haven't exhausted the potential of the current revolution we're living through. I was trying to point out the downsides though. At the tail end of the exploitation of each revolution, local constraints are slowing and limiting growth. That's one of the drivers that produces the next change. The problem this time around is that the constraints are energy and pollution at the global scale not at a local scale. Running out of fossil fuel, non-renewable energy and global warming are a different order of magnitude to overgrazing a field with too many sheep. — “Across countries and over time, higher income is correlated with higher urbanization.” —Paul Romer  http://paulromer.net/economic-growth/
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyThat's an interesting article and I applaud analysis of the long term effects of exponential growth. But then I hit this:- No matter the optimistic signs from experience in recent decades, our intuition about resource constraints suggests that eventually, growth cannot be sustained. Yet when we look at data for as far back as we can go, here too we see that growth rates can increase and have big effects over time on standards of living. Hang on a minute? At some stage in the future, resource limits may become a problem. But look in the past and we didn't hit any limits. And in the past, growth came from increasing technological sophistication. and then the idea of resource limits get dropped and we're into an analysis of where past growth came from.  So, what? Is that really justification for simply dismissing the possibility of continued exponential growth hitting resource limits at some time in our future? — “Across countries and over time, higher income is correlated with higher urbanization.” —Paul Romer  http://paulromer.net/economic-growth/
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in FactoidsI went looking for some detail and came across Cacotopia. This made me think it should have been Cackotopia although that would be modern rhyming slang. But then I found this right wing university website. http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/ctp/2014/08/dystopian-definitions/ I reckon their spell checker made an amusing change that nobody picked up on. Because Cacao-topia sounds like a Willy Wonka-style society where society is ruined by an obsession with chocolate. Unless it's a reference to the City of London chocolate and coffee houses where the first libels came from. — Victorian philosopher John Stuart Mill coined the term "dystopia" in a Parliamentary speech on Britain's colonial policy in Ireland. I may be permitted, as one who, in common with many of my betters, have been subjected to the charge of being Utopian, to congratulate the Government on having joined that goodly company. It is, perhaps, too complimentary to call them Utopians, they ought rather to be called dys-topians, or cacotopians. What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they appear to favour is too bad to be practicable. H/t +paul beard​
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Commented on post by Julian Bond+Heikki Kaperi Looks good but how would this help with the OP? "copying playlists from Winamp to GPM" — Here's a good one for Google Play specialists. How do I copy a Winamp playlist to Google Play? Can anyone point me at a simple recipe? A quick search turned up some youtube vids and some descriptions that sounded horrible and awkward involving going via Windows Media player. Search both in Google and Google plus was effectively useless as it just wanted to promote Winamp for Android or it was full of spam for keycodes to Winamp Pro.
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Commented on post by Anders Lorenzen in Climate ChangeThis is beginning to feel like that Alaskan Senator asking for more oil drilling to pay for the mitigation of climate change effects. Renewables don't generate enough cash to pay for our tribe the UK ruling classes to build a defensible retreat. — UK's energy minister uses clean energy summit to talk about extracting more fossil fuels:
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPAnd then "Wings". — Should MotoGP keep the current two class format? I just replied to the NICKY HAYDEN-to-SBK news that +Melissa LuvsPlease posted, but it caused me to finely get vocal about this ... there is too much talent that gets pushed to the back because of their 2nd class rides. I don't have a solution, but don't think I like the current two class format of MotoGP. Thoughts?
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingI've removed the TV from the family and taken it to Dad's room for Sunday. MotoGP, then BSB, then WSB. Hooray! — UK Tellybox Guide for Australian GP Another early one folks....... ____________________________________________ +MotoGP  #MotoGP   #AustralianGP  +BT Sport 
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Commented on post by Kevin J. Rogers in Climate ChangeWhat is this obsession with Hydrogen when it's such a terrible fuel for vehicles? And why is Toyota relatively late to the party with plugin hybrids when they were ahead of the game with hybrids. — Toyota has pushed all its chips to the middle of the table for sure.
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate Change+Mike Lukas Really. Did we just hit Peak Denial? You mean from now on there's a steadily increasing wave of sense, intelligence and understanding? — University of Michigan 2015 Survey: Denial of Climate Change Among Americans Hits Record Low And For First Time Ever A Majority Of Republicans Believe There Is Solid Evidence Of Global Warming http://time.com/4073881/climate-change-survey-united-states/ and http://closup.umich.edu/issues-in-energy-and-environmental-policy/25/acceptance-of-global-warming-among-americans-reaches-highest-level-since-2008/ us usa united states conservative gop
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Media and Social Networks+Jason ON That's a problem that a lot of algorithmic recommendation systems used to fall into and probably still do, such as Amazon. Maybe you need to deliberately broaden the Bell curve by appearing to show interest in more things and train the algorithm to recognise that you like randomness. If you like motorcycle racing, you should follow https://twitter.com/jbond/lists/motorcycle-racing ;) Sorry, I won't do that again! Is Twitter dying; If it is, why isn't it dead already? I wish it would as that can't come soon enough for me.  — Abuse: The Negative Network Effect New piece from +Umair Haque about Twitter, but it's actually a much broader critique of the modern culture of technology startups that rely on social engagement from customers without being truly good stewards of our new public squares.  But just as a meatpacking company that sold tainted beef, over and over again, that made people ill, would eventually see a decline in sales, so too a social web which is infected with the abuse will inevitably see a decline in usage. I can put that in economist-ese if you like: network effects power social technologies, but abuse is a kind of anti-network effect, not a positive one, but a negative one: I don’t benefit from you being on the network, I suffer. And, in case you missed it, you might want to check out this piece I wrote recently about Riot Games, who is using artificial intelligence in an absolutely fascinating way to address the problem of abuse in a way that is fully consistent with its community's values: http://www.the-vital-edge.com/artificial-intelligence-behavior/ Thanks to +Andrea Learned for flagging this one for me.  #twitter   #abuse  
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatismIt feels like there should be an automatic disclosure of interest here. eg "I live in the USA and I can't imagine allowing complete freedom of movement across all the land borders between here and Panama". So go from the general to the specific and take an easy first step. What would happen if border controls were completely removed between the USA and Canada in the same way that they have been between Germany and France. No customs, no border control, no passport check. Just a couple of police stations located near the billboard that says "Welcome to Canada". — Seriously -- what are the actual, non-elitist, non-tribal reasons for having borders?
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGP+Douglas Knoyle 4 equal is complicated by the manufacturing process, but there is too much gamesmanship at the moment. There's no real reason why when Lorenzo/Rossi approve a new design and Yamaha start manufacturing enough bits for them, they couldn't produce enough bits to give them to Tech3 as well. Just as long as the Tech3 riders can't get in front of them. But also understand that the bikes are effectively new every weekend, with the exception of the sealed parts of the engine. Even Lorenzo's bikes aren't exactly the same as Rossi's. And how many wings would you like? And it gets worse when this year's engine won't fit in last year's chassis, but there's 10 of last years chassis on the shelf and 20 engines that could be refreshed and all given to Pramac.  It's complicated and more complicated than "give them 4 equal" or the satellite team gets "last year's bike". — Should MotoGP keep the current two class format? I just replied to the NICKY HAYDEN-to-SBK news that +Melissa LuvsPlease posted, but it caused me to finely get vocal about this ... there is too much talent that gets pushed to the back because of their 2nd class rides. I don't have a solution, but don't think I like the current two class format of MotoGP. Thoughts?
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatismHow did the EU go from a free trade area to a free movement area? And can lessons be learned from that which could be applied to the NAFTA area? And how far could the Schengen Agreement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement) be extended outwards? Why shouldn't the borders allow free movement with no checks all the way to Mongolia? However, free movement is not the same as automatic citizen rights regardless of where you end up. Any Road Up, for a moment there the borders were becoming more porous but various wars and political issues are closing them down again. Driving overland from London to Lhasa or Bangkok was actually easier in 1965 than it is now. — Seriously -- what are the actual, non-elitist, non-tribal reasons for having borders?
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Commented on post by Kevin Beard in ChromecastRight. But then the Server talks to your phone which talks to the CC. Whereas with proper (native?) situations, the CC talks direct to the server and your phone/PC is just acting as  a remote control. — I'm looking for a solution to play music off of a Netgear router with Ready Share on the new Chromecast Audio. Any suggestions?
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Commented on post by Kevin Beard in ChromecastThis should be a FAQ. And there are a couple of relevant answers here https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6279416?hl=en-GB Chomecasts (Like Chromebooks) don't do network drive access. So you need media server software. Either running on the NAS or in an intermediate device. That could be as simple as a Chrome browser. What's a bit disappointing is that the Chromecast doesn't support DNLA directly or something lightweight like Logitech Media Server that will run on pretty much anything. — I'm looking for a solution to play music off of a Netgear router with Ready Share on the new Chromecast Audio. Any suggestions?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceObligatory http://xkcd.com/1579/ — On browsing, formatting, curation, Readability, and lag I've been using an Android tablet for the past couple of weeks as a primary Web/Internet device, with some positive and negative perceptions. There's a lot I'd like to add, for example, to +Peter Strempel​​'s recent comments on his own several months' long experience with a tablet, and the sense that he's fighting its fundamental nature and intent to get it to do what he wants. This is an attribute he chalks up to technology generally, which I feel is misplaced, though not entirely. It's more a matter of how technology funds itself in a world of zero marginal cost, which tends to be by trying to create a captive audience within a ring-fenced "ecosystem" channelling as much activity as possible into specific revenue-positive (for the vendors) channels -- advertising, "in-app purchases", and the like. https://plus.google.com/+PeterStrempel/posts/LKVgLy7dwxD As with Peter, I find this grossly repulsive, and am desperately seeking a way out. Suggestions on rooting and re-ROMing my Samsung Tab A are appreciated. But that's a digression. Web content, simplified presentation, and curation Among the first steps I took were to install the Firefox Android browser. My experience with the Chrome browser for Android is that with its lack of extensions, obsequiously advertising-friendly approach, and lack of focus on user preferences and requirements for readable, legible content, it's simply utterly useless. Well, not completely. It has proven somewhat helpful in accessing initial WiFi hotspot pages which my Firefox implementation occasionally chokes on. What Firefox offers are several tools which address my long list of complaints of tabbed browsing as a band-aid on poor browser functionality. First, there's a tabs overview page which gives me pretty clear access to even large numbers (presently 60+) tabs I'll have open in a typical session. While not a tree-style view, showing relationship between pages (e.g., sub-pages opened from search or referencing articles), it does make cleanup after some sub-project's been completed somewhat easier. Firefox also includes a "reader-mode" icon, which presents a simplified, standardised, largely unformatted page with sensible line lengths and minimised clutter. I find this virtually **always* preferable to the default view_, and seek it out *immediately* for any multi-column pages or those with fixed headers and footers (please, someone, haul out and shoot those responsible for this idiocy). My main complaint is that the option isn't visible until the page has fully loaded. I'd prefer it be accessible immediately. Or, better, as a default page-view option. Though the latter largely addresses my asthetic preferences, in the case of a visually challenged individual, this would in fact be a massive usability improvement, rather than having to wait for, find, then select the "readability" mode each time. There's also an integrated reading list. Which, quite frankly, is what tabs for the most part are. I've started to make some use of this, though I find I am returning to and going through it infrequently (the great risk of such risks). Some sort of datelining of additions, and possibly classification of items, would be useful. Firefox has a feature in which tabs not presently being viewed are unloaded from memory. Largely this works well, through there's a bit too much lag on re-opening, as it appears the contents are re-fetched from the network. The solution that occurs to me would be for a pre-rendered page to be cached locally, presumably capable of being reloaded quite quickly from local MicroSD storage. I've also been making use of Readability, which has a few additional reading list, classification, and presentation tools. Sadly, Readability seem to have abandoned any real enhancement of their offerings both online (Web) and mobile (App). I'm afraid that winds of a tightening startup environment and impending bubble may be affecting them. The Web app still has inferior overview options to its earlier inclination, the App lacks tagging, classification, and search at all. But the worst Readability misfeature is the lag imposed when adding items to the app via the Firefox menu. It takes many seconds, up to a minute in cases, for articles to be added, during which time both Firefox and Readability are utterly nonresponsive. To say the very least, this breaks up the normal flow of reading, curating, and proceeding with other articles, and is quite frustrating. I've some 1400+ articles archived under Readability (though that list is exportable), which makes for a fair bit of friction in migrating to alternative management tools. I've casually investigated similar reformatters (InstaPaper, Pocket), and have Mendely, a bibliography management tool, installed on the tablet, though I've yet to set up its account (standard rant: *show me what your product can do before insisting I allocate personal data to you). I'd really like a self-controlled cloud version of much of this. As with Peter, I'm increasingly frustrated by the "store all your personal data in our dark NSA bunker in Utah" world of the cloud. While I'm appreciative of the tablet's form-factor (with an attached Bluetooth keyboard/cover it really is a minimalist laptop), and the ability to rotate to portrait mode for reading articles makes it a huge improvement over my laptop (wide-screen displays simply do not manage text well). The screen gets quite marred, even using a stylus pen. But it's control over my data, interoperations as I wish to define them among tools, eggregiously excessive data requests from applications (why does virtually _every__ fucking music/audio player insist on accessing both identity __and__ call information -- I've refused all of them?), etc. I've _very grudgingly accepted these intrusions for now, and, though there have been some occasional delights (I've just discovered that Google Maps includes interior floorplans of some public buildings, by floor, which really is quite cool), I'm more than slightly sick of living in Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. A key element of which, as the astute reader will recall, wasn't that you were being watched at all times, but that you could be, and simply never know. And the default and vendor-installed apps are all but entirely useless. I'll take this opportunity to say "fuck you" to Samsung for all the useless crap it's installed which (short of rooting/ROMing), I'm stuck with. There are other bits: * The failure of any of the file management tools to show me full device paths is beyond frustrating. I've got a half-dozen or so folders claiming to be my external SD card, of which only one actually is. * Music, video, and audio playback for sources of my own choosing, is far more frustrating than it should be. My primary interface is VLC, though it's prone to crashing and has a far less than intuitive interface. * In-application advertising is stunningly annoying. Quite honestly, I think Google should come up with an alternative monetisation model for applications. Some old standards (e.g., Moon+Reader) are useless with their ads. I've turned to FBReader for eBooks, the Android option is superior to the Linux desktop application. * Porting passwords, etc., from my previous device, using KeePass has been an utter failure. I'm hand-entering 20-40 character passwords one at a time. Oh well, keeps me off the streets. * Other options for transferring data from my old device have been similarly frustrating. Mutliple sneakernet transfers from one removable thumb drive (more accuragely: sub-pinkie sized MicroSD) to another. Internal free storage is sufficiently small to make this fucking annoyuing. Just put 128GB internal already, Tablet Makers of the Universe. * The overloading of my keyboard's backspace key with a "delete" function means I'm frequently eating lines below the one I'm writing. Not sure if that's Logitec's fault, Samsumg's, Androids, or what. But it's fucking stupid all the same. * Many Web pages simply don't register screen presses sufficiently accurately to be useful. Voting icons on HN and Reddit quite frequently don't respond. Pressing and holding, to be emphatic, brings up a less-than-helpful altnernate actions menu. * For the G+ app, several issues, including a far too great proclivity to ask if I'd like to abandon some painstakingly-entered, long-form content, should I happen to mis-register tapping a submit arrow. There's no recourse if you accidentally confirm. What happened to Google's awareness of don't lose my shit"? Ping +Yonatan Zunger (Oh, and the very uneven response of the +UserName completion dialogs is another massive fucking annoyance.) * The G+ editor dialogs are far too fucking small. Both comment dialogs (generally), and post dialogs, parti cularly when an attachment (image, link) has been made. The Web client suffers similar fatal flaws, it's only my own very extensive CSS mods which rescue it from the brain-death of its designers. Sadly I don't believe I've got similar options for the App. * G+ app fonts are far too small, and not adjustable. Android doesn't offer a global font size setting. * Some other websites break in their own ways. Far too many mis-register page-scroll events as link-selections, resulting in many unintented navigations and back-navigations. Ello's editor widgets break in numerous (though fundamentally uninteresting) ways, which I've noted there recently. Etc., etc., etc. Sadly, mostly boring little trivia items. As is much of computer tech.... Segregating primary comms from (more capable) surveillance devices I am somewhat relieved at having my primary comms (dumbphone) and smarts (tablet) separable. The battery-ife benefits alone are a huge plus. But for all its utility, Android is technology that I only very grudgingly, guardedly, and with extreme reservation, allow within my perimiters. If my personal pereceptions of previous tech generations have been any guide, those are concerns I expect to be more widely shared later, and assuming someone does come up with a suitable alternative in future, Google (and its various "ecosystem" vendors) are running a grave risk by alienating their customer base. Calling Android the best currently available option is far more a damnation of the present Tablet world than an endorsement of Android. #Android #Privacy #PRISM #FreeSoftware #Tablet 
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Technology Meets Humanity+Jashua Fowler And commercial fusion power. — Brain-Computer Interface by the 2030's - So Says Kurzweil "In the 2030s," said Ray, "we are going to send nano-robots into the brain (via capillaries) that will provide full immersion virtual reality from within the nervous system and will connect our neocortex to the cloud. Just like how we can wirelessly expand the power of our smartphones 10,000-fold in the cloud today, we'll be able to expand our neocortex in the cloud." Lots of interesting scenarios in this article by +Peter H. Diamandis. So here's what's bothering me about all this. We have these wild predictions about how different things will be in just a dozen or so years, and they could be true. And at the same time, we live in a world where there will also be substantial portions of our reality that will not be this way. Roads and freeways, housing stock, storefronts, parks, the interiors of our homes - these are all things that have an enormous gravity keeping them stuck back in time, a kind of "recalcitrance" to change to crib a term from Nick Bostrom.  This is simply a re-hashing of William Gibson's maxim that "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." My point is a slight modification, which is that our past will continue to remain in our future, and it too will be unevenly distributed.  #foresight  
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceAnd ... Phones, Tablets and Chromebooks are cut down real computer with deliberately reduced function. They have their place and introduce some portability to the game. But if you want control, you need a real computer. So I'm pleased to see the return of the 10/11" screen netbook. And this time around the windows tax seems to be much less. Now if we could just put those lovely large hi-rez tablet screens in the netbooks they'd be perfect. — On browsing, formatting, curation, Readability, and lag I've been using an Android tablet for the past couple of weeks as a primary Web/Internet device, with some positive and negative perceptions. There's a lot I'd like to add, for example, to +Peter Strempel​​'s recent comments on his own several months' long experience with a tablet, and the sense that he's fighting its fundamental nature and intent to get it to do what he wants. This is an attribute he chalks up to technology generally, which I feel is misplaced, though not entirely. It's more a matter of how technology funds itself in a world of zero marginal cost, which tends to be by trying to create a captive audience within a ring-fenced "ecosystem" channelling as much activity as possible into specific revenue-positive (for the vendors) channels -- advertising, "in-app purchases", and the like. https://plus.google.com/+PeterStrempel/posts/LKVgLy7dwxD As with Peter, I find this grossly repulsive, and am desperately seeking a way out. Suggestions on rooting and re-ROMing my Samsung Tab A are appreciated. But that's a digression. Web content, simplified presentation, and curation Among the first steps I took were to install the Firefox Android browser. My experience with the Chrome browser for Android is that with its lack of extensions, obsequiously advertising-friendly approach, and lack of focus on user preferences and requirements for readable, legible content, it's simply utterly useless. Well, not completely. It has proven somewhat helpful in accessing initial WiFi hotspot pages which my Firefox implementation occasionally chokes on. What Firefox offers are several tools which address my long list of complaints of tabbed browsing as a band-aid on poor browser functionality. First, there's a tabs overview page which gives me pretty clear access to even large numbers (presently 60+) tabs I'll have open in a typical session. While not a tree-style view, showing relationship between pages (e.g., sub-pages opened from search or referencing articles), it does make cleanup after some sub-project's been completed somewhat easier. Firefox also includes a "reader-mode" icon, which presents a simplified, standardised, largely unformatted page with sensible line lengths and minimised clutter. I find this virtually **always* preferable to the default view_, and seek it out *immediately* for any multi-column pages or those with fixed headers and footers (please, someone, haul out and shoot those responsible for this idiocy). My main complaint is that the option isn't visible until the page has fully loaded. I'd prefer it be accessible immediately. Or, better, as a default page-view option. Though the latter largely addresses my asthetic preferences, in the case of a visually challenged individual, this would in fact be a massive usability improvement, rather than having to wait for, find, then select the "readability" mode each time. There's also an integrated reading list. Which, quite frankly, is what tabs for the most part are. I've started to make some use of this, though I find I am returning to and going through it infrequently (the great risk of such risks). Some sort of datelining of additions, and possibly classification of items, would be useful. Firefox has a feature in which tabs not presently being viewed are unloaded from memory. Largely this works well, through there's a bit too much lag on re-opening, as it appears the contents are re-fetched from the network. The solution that occurs to me would be for a pre-rendered page to be cached locally, presumably capable of being reloaded quite quickly from local MicroSD storage. I've also been making use of Readability, which has a few additional reading list, classification, and presentation tools. Sadly, Readability seem to have abandoned any real enhancement of their offerings both online (Web) and mobile (App). I'm afraid that winds of a tightening startup environment and impending bubble may be affecting them. The Web app still has inferior overview options to its earlier inclination, the App lacks tagging, classification, and search at all. But the worst Readability misfeature is the lag imposed when adding items to the app via the Firefox menu. It takes many seconds, up to a minute in cases, for articles to be added, during which time both Firefox and Readability are utterly nonresponsive. To say the very least, this breaks up the normal flow of reading, curating, and proceeding with other articles, and is quite frustrating. I've some 1400+ articles archived under Readability (though that list is exportable), which makes for a fair bit of friction in migrating to alternative management tools. I've casually investigated similar reformatters (InstaPaper, Pocket), and have Mendely, a bibliography management tool, installed on the tablet, though I've yet to set up its account (standard rant: *show me what your product can do before insisting I allocate personal data to you). I'd really like a self-controlled cloud version of much of this. As with Peter, I'm increasingly frustrated by the "store all your personal data in our dark NSA bunker in Utah" world of the cloud. While I'm appreciative of the tablet's form-factor (with an attached Bluetooth keyboard/cover it really is a minimalist laptop), and the ability to rotate to portrait mode for reading articles makes it a huge improvement over my laptop (wide-screen displays simply do not manage text well). The screen gets quite marred, even using a stylus pen. But it's control over my data, interoperations as I wish to define them among tools, eggregiously excessive data requests from applications (why does virtually _every__ fucking music/audio player insist on accessing both identity __and__ call information -- I've refused all of them?), etc. I've _very grudgingly accepted these intrusions for now, and, though there have been some occasional delights (I've just discovered that Google Maps includes interior floorplans of some public buildings, by floor, which really is quite cool), I'm more than slightly sick of living in Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. A key element of which, as the astute reader will recall, wasn't that you were being watched at all times, but that you could be, and simply never know. And the default and vendor-installed apps are all but entirely useless. I'll take this opportunity to say "fuck you" to Samsung for all the useless crap it's installed which (short of rooting/ROMing), I'm stuck with. There are other bits: * The failure of any of the file management tools to show me full device paths is beyond frustrating. I've got a half-dozen or so folders claiming to be my external SD card, of which only one actually is. * Music, video, and audio playback for sources of my own choosing, is far more frustrating than it should be. My primary interface is VLC, though it's prone to crashing and has a far less than intuitive interface. * In-application advertising is stunningly annoying. Quite honestly, I think Google should come up with an alternative monetisation model for applications. Some old standards (e.g., Moon+Reader) are useless with their ads. I've turned to FBReader for eBooks, the Android option is superior to the Linux desktop application. * Porting passwords, etc., from my previous device, using KeePass has been an utter failure. I'm hand-entering 20-40 character passwords one at a time. Oh well, keeps me off the streets. * Other options for transferring data from my old device have been similarly frustrating. Mutliple sneakernet transfers from one removable thumb drive (more accuragely: sub-pinkie sized MicroSD) to another. Internal free storage is sufficiently small to make this fucking annoyuing. Just put 128GB internal already, Tablet Makers of the Universe. * The overloading of my keyboard's backspace key with a "delete" function means I'm frequently eating lines below the one I'm writing. Not sure if that's Logitec's fault, Samsumg's, Androids, or what. But it's fucking stupid all the same. * Many Web pages simply don't register screen presses sufficiently accurately to be useful. Voting icons on HN and Reddit quite frequently don't respond. Pressing and holding, to be emphatic, brings up a less-than-helpful altnernate actions menu. * For the G+ app, several issues, including a far too great proclivity to ask if I'd like to abandon some painstakingly-entered, long-form content, should I happen to mis-register tapping a submit arrow. There's no recourse if you accidentally confirm. What happened to Google's awareness of don't lose my shit"? Ping +Yonatan Zunger (Oh, and the very uneven response of the +UserName completion dialogs is another massive fucking annoyance.) * The G+ editor dialogs are far too fucking small. Both comment dialogs (generally), and post dialogs, parti cularly when an attachment (image, link) has been made. The Web client suffers similar fatal flaws, it's only my own very extensive CSS mods which rescue it from the brain-death of its designers. Sadly I don't believe I've got similar options for the App. * G+ app fonts are far too small, and not adjustable. Android doesn't offer a global font size setting. * Some other websites break in their own ways. Far too many mis-register page-scroll events as link-selections, resulting in many unintented navigations and back-navigations. Ello's editor widgets break in numerous (though fundamentally uninteresting) ways, which I've noted there recently. Etc., etc., etc. Sadly, mostly boring little trivia items. As is much of computer tech.... Segregating primary comms from (more capable) surveillance devices I am somewhat relieved at having my primary comms (dumbphone) and smarts (tablet) separable. The battery-ife benefits alone are a huge plus. But for all its utility, Android is technology that I only very grudgingly, guardedly, and with extreme reservation, allow within my perimiters. If my personal pereceptions of previous tech generations have been any guide, those are concerns I expect to be more widely shared later, and assuming someone does come up with a suitable alternative in future, Google (and its various "ecosystem" vendors) are running a grave risk by alienating their customer base. Calling Android the best currently available option is far more a damnation of the present Tablet world than an endorsement of Android. #Android #Privacy #PRISM #FreeSoftware #Tablet 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceTime was when everything was a file and that file might be on another computer or another storage device. So there was always a way of navigating the storage devices and accessing the file as if it was local. This led to all those protocols like NFS and CIFS/SMB we know and love. For some reason, Tablet/Phone OS and the Chrome-OS don't like this and refuse to implement it. So even if your tablet is often used at home on the home Wifi you're not allowed to access the home NAS that's got all your media files that you share with your family. There are ways round this by running a media server (PLEX/DNLA) or uploading your entire library to Google Music, but the interfaces never seem to be as good as just using a local media player. And +1 for moaning about lack of memory. Please just put an SD slot in all tablets and stop using memory size as a marketing upgrade mechanism. $100 for 16Gb is absurd.  — On browsing, formatting, curation, Readability, and lag I've been using an Android tablet for the past couple of weeks as a primary Web/Internet device, with some positive and negative perceptions. There's a lot I'd like to add, for example, to +Peter Strempel​​'s recent comments on his own several months' long experience with a tablet, and the sense that he's fighting its fundamental nature and intent to get it to do what he wants. This is an attribute he chalks up to technology generally, which I feel is misplaced, though not entirely. It's more a matter of how technology funds itself in a world of zero marginal cost, which tends to be by trying to create a captive audience within a ring-fenced "ecosystem" channelling as much activity as possible into specific revenue-positive (for the vendors) channels -- advertising, "in-app purchases", and the like. https://plus.google.com/+PeterStrempel/posts/LKVgLy7dwxD As with Peter, I find this grossly repulsive, and am desperately seeking a way out. Suggestions on rooting and re-ROMing my Samsung Tab A are appreciated. But that's a digression. Web content, simplified presentation, and curation Among the first steps I took were to install the Firefox Android browser. My experience with the Chrome browser for Android is that with its lack of extensions, obsequiously advertising-friendly approach, and lack of focus on user preferences and requirements for readable, legible content, it's simply utterly useless. Well, not completely. It has proven somewhat helpful in accessing initial WiFi hotspot pages which my Firefox implementation occasionally chokes on. What Firefox offers are several tools which address my long list of complaints of tabbed browsing as a band-aid on poor browser functionality. First, there's a tabs overview page which gives me pretty clear access to even large numbers (presently 60+) tabs I'll have open in a typical session. While not a tree-style view, showing relationship between pages (e.g., sub-pages opened from search or referencing articles), it does make cleanup after some sub-project's been completed somewhat easier. Firefox also includes a "reader-mode" icon, which presents a simplified, standardised, largely unformatted page with sensible line lengths and minimised clutter. I find this virtually **always* preferable to the default view_, and seek it out *immediately* for any multi-column pages or those with fixed headers and footers (please, someone, haul out and shoot those responsible for this idiocy). My main complaint is that the option isn't visible until the page has fully loaded. I'd prefer it be accessible immediately. Or, better, as a default page-view option. Though the latter largely addresses my asthetic preferences, in the case of a visually challenged individual, this would in fact be a massive usability improvement, rather than having to wait for, find, then select the "readability" mode each time. There's also an integrated reading list. Which, quite frankly, is what tabs for the most part are. I've started to make some use of this, though I find I am returning to and going through it infrequently (the great risk of such risks). Some sort of datelining of additions, and possibly classification of items, would be useful. Firefox has a feature in which tabs not presently being viewed are unloaded from memory. Largely this works well, through there's a bit too much lag on re-opening, as it appears the contents are re-fetched from the network. The solution that occurs to me would be for a pre-rendered page to be cached locally, presumably capable of being reloaded quite quickly from local MicroSD storage. I've also been making use of Readability, which has a few additional reading list, classification, and presentation tools. Sadly, Readability seem to have abandoned any real enhancement of their offerings both online (Web) and mobile (App). I'm afraid that winds of a tightening startup environment and impending bubble may be affecting them. The Web app still has inferior overview options to its earlier inclination, the App lacks tagging, classification, and search at all. But the worst Readability misfeature is the lag imposed when adding items to the app via the Firefox menu. It takes many seconds, up to a minute in cases, for articles to be added, during which time both Firefox and Readability are utterly nonresponsive. To say the very least, this breaks up the normal flow of reading, curating, and proceeding with other articles, and is quite frustrating. I've some 1400+ articles archived under Readability (though that list is exportable), which makes for a fair bit of friction in migrating to alternative management tools. I've casually investigated similar reformatters (InstaPaper, Pocket), and have Mendely, a bibliography management tool, installed on the tablet, though I've yet to set up its account (standard rant: *show me what your product can do before insisting I allocate personal data to you). I'd really like a self-controlled cloud version of much of this. As with Peter, I'm increasingly frustrated by the "store all your personal data in our dark NSA bunker in Utah" world of the cloud. While I'm appreciative of the tablet's form-factor (with an attached Bluetooth keyboard/cover it really is a minimalist laptop), and the ability to rotate to portrait mode for reading articles makes it a huge improvement over my laptop (wide-screen displays simply do not manage text well). The screen gets quite marred, even using a stylus pen. But it's control over my data, interoperations as I wish to define them among tools, eggregiously excessive data requests from applications (why does virtually _every__ fucking music/audio player insist on accessing both identity __and__ call information -- I've refused all of them?), etc. I've _very grudgingly accepted these intrusions for now, and, though there have been some occasional delights (I've just discovered that Google Maps includes interior floorplans of some public buildings, by floor, which really is quite cool), I'm more than slightly sick of living in Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. A key element of which, as the astute reader will recall, wasn't that you were being watched at all times, but that you could be, and simply never know. And the default and vendor-installed apps are all but entirely useless. I'll take this opportunity to say "fuck you" to Samsung for all the useless crap it's installed which (short of rooting/ROMing), I'm stuck with. There are other bits: * The failure of any of the file management tools to show me full device paths is beyond frustrating. I've got a half-dozen or so folders claiming to be my external SD card, of which only one actually is. * Music, video, and audio playback for sources of my own choosing, is far more frustrating than it should be. My primary interface is VLC, though it's prone to crashing and has a far less than intuitive interface. * In-application advertising is stunningly annoying. Quite honestly, I think Google should come up with an alternative monetisation model for applications. Some old standards (e.g., Moon+Reader) are useless with their ads. I've turned to FBReader for eBooks, the Android option is superior to the Linux desktop application. * Porting passwords, etc., from my previous device, using KeePass has been an utter failure. I'm hand-entering 20-40 character passwords one at a time. Oh well, keeps me off the streets. * Other options for transferring data from my old device have been similarly frustrating. Mutliple sneakernet transfers from one removable thumb drive (more accuragely: sub-pinkie sized MicroSD) to another. Internal free storage is sufficiently small to make this fucking annoyuing. Just put 128GB internal already, Tablet Makers of the Universe. * The overloading of my keyboard's backspace key with a "delete" function means I'm frequently eating lines below the one I'm writing. Not sure if that's Logitec's fault, Samsumg's, Androids, or what. But it's fucking stupid all the same. * Many Web pages simply don't register screen presses sufficiently accurately to be useful. Voting icons on HN and Reddit quite frequently don't respond. Pressing and holding, to be emphatic, brings up a less-than-helpful altnernate actions menu. * For the G+ app, several issues, including a far too great proclivity to ask if I'd like to abandon some painstakingly-entered, long-form content, should I happen to mis-register tapping a submit arrow. There's no recourse if you accidentally confirm. What happened to Google's awareness of don't lose my shit"? Ping +Yonatan Zunger (Oh, and the very uneven response of the +UserName completion dialogs is another massive fucking annoyance.) * The G+ editor dialogs are far too fucking small. Both comment dialogs (generally), and post dialogs, parti cularly when an attachment (image, link) has been made. The Web client suffers similar fatal flaws, it's only my own very extensive CSS mods which rescue it from the brain-death of its designers. Sadly I don't believe I've got similar options for the App. * G+ app fonts are far too small, and not adjustable. Android doesn't offer a global font size setting. * Some other websites break in their own ways. Far too many mis-register page-scroll events as link-selections, resulting in many unintented navigations and back-navigations. Ello's editor widgets break in numerous (though fundamentally uninteresting) ways, which I've noted there recently. Etc., etc., etc. Sadly, mostly boring little trivia items. As is much of computer tech.... Segregating primary comms from (more capable) surveillance devices I am somewhat relieved at having my primary comms (dumbphone) and smarts (tablet) separable. The battery-ife benefits alone are a huge plus. But for all its utility, Android is technology that I only very grudgingly, guardedly, and with extreme reservation, allow within my perimiters. If my personal pereceptions of previous tech generations have been any guide, those are concerns I expect to be more widely shared later, and assuming someone does come up with a suitable alternative in future, Google (and its various "ecosystem" vendors) are running a grave risk by alienating their customer base. Calling Android the best currently available option is far more a damnation of the present Tablet world than an endorsement of Android. #Android #Privacy #PRISM #FreeSoftware #Tablet 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietySilver, gold, sugar, rubber, slaves — One of those articles to remind you about the state of the world and how we got here. In the words of PK Dick, "The Roman empire never ended". It starts with Columbus Day and opens with this. Columbus’ landfall in the Western Hemisphere was the opening of Europe’s conquest of essentially all of this planet. By 1914, 422 years later, European powers and the U.S. controlled 85 percent of the world’s land mass. White people didn’t accomplish this by asking politely. As conservative Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington put it in 1996, “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion … but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” https://theintercept.com/2015/10/12/columbus-day-is-the-most-important-day-of-every-year/
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Commented on post by Mark Dodsworth in Google+ UpdatesCasting from the web. — Now that Chromecast is finally on Google Photos, what feature do you want to see added to Google Photos that was originally part of Google+ Photos? +Anil Sabharwal​ +David Lieb​
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingWhen was the last time we had two Germans on the podium? Feels like it was quite a while. — So after you win the title, the races come easy .....yes? Well according to Mr Zarco it does! Zarco wins the Motegi GP from Folgers & Cortesese in3rd. Full Report to follow shortly  Full Report via Mike Lewis   : https://motomatters.com/results/2015/10/10/2015_motegi_moto2_race_result_an_embarra.html _____________________________________________ +MotoGP  #MotoGP   #Moto2   #JapaneseGP  
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Commented on post by Andreas SchouIt would have been but there aren't enough decorative gourds due to climate change induced freak weather in Illinois. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/climate-change-pumpkin-crop_56183379e4b0e66ad4c80fac — It's "It's 'It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers,' Season, Motherfuckers," season, motherfuckers.
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Commented on post by Speed Triple & R1200GS in Motorcycle RoadracingThat was a crazy off in QP2. — I am turning into a bigger and bigger Smith fan with the more I learn about him. Top fella. 
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Code DependencyAmazingly there's still no SMB or NFS support in Chrome-OS. Which means you can't access files on a home NAS from a Chromebook as if they're local. Yesterday I got an email from the issue tracker that the project to implement the SMB client had gone quiet and nothing had been heard from the only dev working on it. Sometimes OSS dev is like that. You think there's a loose team of people working on something, turns out its one guy and nobody knows where he is. — Samba is trying once again to convince me that +Linux was never meant to be used by mere mortals[1]. We have here what seems to me a very basic usage-case: a. Three users on a LAN want to access (r/w) a common repository of files. b. The repository is located on a factory-configured network storage device[2]. c. One user is running Windows 2000; the other two are using recent +Ubuntu spins (+Xubuntu 14.04 LTS and and Ubuntu-MATE 15.04). d. All three users are able to access the files using their respective file managers (Windows File Manager, Thunar, and Caja). Here's where it gets problematic: e. User #3 (MATE) wants to email one of the files as an attachment on Thunderbird. She can see the file in Thunderbird when she browses for it, but it refuses to attach. So I thought, okay, let me tunnel in and try to replicate the problem (I can't go over there until tomorrow, at the earliest) -- but when I load Thunderbird, it's not even showing "Network" in the device list. Next I try loading Caja -- I know that can browse the network because (a) I tested it yesterday and (b) nobody has said they couldn't browse the network. Caja does show a "Browse Network" item but (when asked to open it) claims it doesn't know how to. (Searching for the error message -- "Caja cannot handle "network" locations" -- reveals that all I need to do is install "gvfs-backends" and that will totally fix it -- but that's already installed.) So then I browse to the Desktop folder, where I had previously set up and tested a shortcut directly to the network share that this user needs to access, and ask it to open that -- and I get the message shown below: "Could not display "smb://larder/documents/<username>". The file is of an unknown type." So either something is broken today that wasn't broken yesterday -- on two different machines (I logged into the Xubuntu machine and got much the same results with Thunar) -- or applications can only access the network when they are being displayed locally. (Lest you think the solution is something obvious like Samba being broken: smbtree shows all the other machines and their respective shares.) ...which implies either some very twisted idea of security, or else that some of the network access functions somehow depend on the X server (which in this case would be my local machine). Which makes no sense. Now... in Windows, last I knew, access to network shares is built into the file access API. Most applications don't know or care whether the file they're requesting is local or network; the default function call for reading a file is the same. You have to go out of your way to treat network files differently, especially if you're not doing more than just reading the content. In Linux, everything you might want to access as a file gets mapped into the file system by being mounted, in which case you can use the mountpoint to access it and it will look just like any other file -- unless its a protocol, like Samba (or sftp or mtp), in which case apparently the application has to have some awareness of how to handle it, even if that just means handing off the URI to a different library than the one for local file access. And apparently even an application that sometimes knows how to do this doesn't always know how to do this -- and (unless the user is misreporting the problem, which is still a distant possibility) sometimes it can't do things with a network file that it can do with a local file. Why is this? Why hasn't Linux caught up yet with what Windows got basically right in fracking 1995? -- Notes -- 1. I mean "mortal" in the sense of "a being without transfinite amounts of time in which to study the source code, run numerous test-cases in order to understand how it works, and rewrite it from scratch in order to make it work properly". 2. Specifically, one of these: http://htyp.org/Lenovo/ix2-dl #LinuxGripes
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyAh well. Maybe next time! — I finally made it to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, on the roof of the world. At 3,600 meters (11,800 feet) Lhasa is basically the lowest point in Tibet; everything else is higher. Most Tibetans are farmers, yet most of Tibet is uninhabited. There are only a few cities; Lhasa is the largest. While Tibet is modernizing and filling with Han Chinese immigrants, the old parts of Tibet retain some of their traditions. I tried to capture some of those traditions in these select images.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceWhat are android tablets and such, like these days for ad blocking and /etc/hosts control? Is this another area where mobile OS are too cut down compared with laptop/PC OS? — Tablets, 3G/4G hotspots, mobile service, and content blocking Over the past several years I've been reassessing my use of mobile devices, mobile telephony, smartphones, and other elements. After many threats to do so, and far more encouragement than was strictly necessary (thousand-dollar data charges, callously and irrevocably discarding archived voicemail, far too much NSA/surveillance cooperation), I cancelled my +Verizon​​​ service and now use a cheap (but more than sufficient) flip phone through +T-Mobile​​​. There've been some hiccups, and no, coverage isn't universal, but in most major metros, and many outlying areas, it's more than sufficient. Some recent travels have demonstrated that WiFi hotspots exist sufficiently broadly (virtually all hotels and motels, many rest stops, cafes, restaurants, libraries, and establishments such as Starbucks or McDonalds which I'd otherwise not be inclined to patronize). And that WiFi is virtually always free -- if you're charging for access (yes, you, Loves), I'll hit up Brand X. But it's not universal. I'm aware that T-Mobile offer a $20/mo 1GB wireless data plan. Pretty much ideal for quick on-the-road map and Google checks. Cricket Wireless has similar packages, though starting at a slightly higher data rate. What neither has, which is where the Mozilla proposals start entering, are hotspot devices which offer selective content filtering. In theory, one could apply this on individual devices, though, since a wireless hotspot can support multiple devices (the ones I viewed advertised up to ten supported simultaneous devices), it seems like optimising the birds killed / stones ratio to put the limitations on the hotspot itself. Say, the 65,000+ hosts and domains blocked through the various entries I've got on my laptop through uBlock's /etc/hosts entries (modulo dnsmasq's interpreting "host" as "domain" and extending said blocks). Or being able to block files in excess of a given size, or all video formats, etc. In other words, if I'm paying by the GB, let me choose exactly what GB I allow that system to serve. Hell, a built-in squid proxy would be pretty slick too. So, answering Mozilla's questions: content blocking, for me as a user, is exactly what fucking content I say I want to block. For mobile purposes, that's all advertising, save when I"m specifically querying information on some product (DDG searches, Amazon, Craigslist, vendor's product pages). It's all nonessential content -- video, audio, and other nonessential multimedia. It's gratuitously large files -- which would include those oh-so-pretty but fucking useless "hero" graphics that are all the rage now. Etc., etc. The #LazyPlus question is: is there in fact a 3G/4G WiFi hotspot device which either has built-in or programmable content filtering. Hosts files, content filters, and possibly something akin to privoxy or similar, plus squid, would be a good start. If not, figuring out how to build something of the sort would be an interesting project. T-Mobile, Cricket, etc., you'd be well-advised to offer such tools. Really, it'd be kinda fucking awesome. Mozilla: figure out what your users are likely to want to receive. Or not receive. And just fucking get out of the way and give it to them. Stop playing fucking nanny. #contentblocking 
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPI'd really like to get back to  - One set of rules - One set of tyres The only concession that perhaps should stay is relaxed testing and engine numbers and upgrades for manufacturers who haven't won anything for a while. The Open class and factory concessions have done their job in bringing up the grid size. And in theory 2 factory and 2 satellite bikes from each of Honda, Yamaha, Ducati, Suzuki, Aprilia should be enough. But I think if Honda or Ducati want to field one or two extra satellite or wild card bikes they should be allowed to. — Should MotoGP keep the current two class format? I just replied to the NICKY HAYDEN-to-SBK news that +Melissa LuvsPlease posted, but it caused me to finely get vocal about this ... there is too much talent that gets pushed to the back because of their 2nd class rides. I don't have a solution, but don't think I like the current two class format of MotoGP. Thoughts?
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Commented on post by Robert Harvey in Google+ UpdatesSome of us dislike threaded comments and prefer the flat style. I'm not entirely happy with facebook's compromise either of only allowing one depth level. If you want to fork the conversation, start a new post and point to it.  — Threaded Comments - G+ is a great place to get interesting conversations started but because all replies are posted one after the other, it get's really hard to follow conversations when multiple people get involved. Allow a "Reply to comment" option for threaded conversations under the original post to help follow conversations that branch from the original post.
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyHow did you get from NW China to Lhasa? The heroic way to do it, is by vehicle on the highway that goes past Mount Kailash. The June festival at Mt Kailash is one for the bucket list. — I finally made it to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, on the roof of the world. At 3,600 meters (11,800 feet) Lhasa is basically the lowest point in Tibet; everything else is higher. Most Tibetans are farmers, yet most of Tibet is uninhabited. There are only a few cities; Lhasa is the largest. While Tibet is modernizing and filling with Han Chinese immigrants, the old parts of Tibet retain some of their traditions. I tried to capture some of those traditions in these select images.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and Ecology"Werewolves of Chernobyl" would make a great film. In a "Dog Soldiers" style but with Russian conscripts and some Tarkovsky aesthetic. — The Amazing Resilience of Mother Earth There is something wonderful and something sad about this piece about what is happening with wildlife in the aftermath of the Chernobyl region. Basically, it is roaring back to life.  The sad part of this is that what this means is that humanity is more deadly than nuclear radiation. The wonderful part is that, even in this supposedly deadly zone of radiation, life finds a way. 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillance/sub So something like ddWRT for a Me-Fi or Huawei E5 series 3g/4g/wifi. I did a quick search for "How to root a Huawei E5" but didn't come up with much except unlocking it to work with different Sim/Providers. As a first step, has anyone tried modding a wifi router/cable modem so it uses the BIG /etc/hosts file and dnsmasq? — Tablets, 3G/4G hotspots, mobile service, and content blocking Over the past several years I've been reassessing my use of mobile devices, mobile telephony, smartphones, and other elements. After many threats to do so, and far more encouragement than was strictly necessary (thousand-dollar data charges, callously and irrevocably discarding archived voicemail, far too much NSA/surveillance cooperation), I cancelled my +Verizon​​​ service and now use a cheap (but more than sufficient) flip phone through +T-Mobile​​​. There've been some hiccups, and no, coverage isn't universal, but in most major metros, and many outlying areas, it's more than sufficient. Some recent travels have demonstrated that WiFi hotspots exist sufficiently broadly (virtually all hotels and motels, many rest stops, cafes, restaurants, libraries, and establishments such as Starbucks or McDonalds which I'd otherwise not be inclined to patronize). And that WiFi is virtually always free -- if you're charging for access (yes, you, Loves), I'll hit up Brand X. But it's not universal. I'm aware that T-Mobile offer a $20/mo 1GB wireless data plan. Pretty much ideal for quick on-the-road map and Google checks. Cricket Wireless has similar packages, though starting at a slightly higher data rate. What neither has, which is where the Mozilla proposals start entering, are hotspot devices which offer selective content filtering. In theory, one could apply this on individual devices, though, since a wireless hotspot can support multiple devices (the ones I viewed advertised up to ten supported simultaneous devices), it seems like optimising the birds killed / stones ratio to put the limitations on the hotspot itself. Say, the 65,000+ hosts and domains blocked through the various entries I've got on my laptop through uBlock's /etc/hosts entries (modulo dnsmasq's interpreting "host" as "domain" and extending said blocks). Or being able to block files in excess of a given size, or all video formats, etc. In other words, if I'm paying by the GB, let me choose exactly what GB I allow that system to serve. Hell, a built-in squid proxy would be pretty slick too. So, answering Mozilla's questions: content blocking, for me as a user, is exactly what fucking content I say I want to block. For mobile purposes, that's all advertising, save when I"m specifically querying information on some product (DDG searches, Amazon, Craigslist, vendor's product pages). It's all nonessential content -- video, audio, and other nonessential multimedia. It's gratuitously large files -- which would include those oh-so-pretty but fucking useless "hero" graphics that are all the rage now. Etc., etc. The #LazyPlus question is: is there in fact a 3G/4G WiFi hotspot device which either has built-in or programmable content filtering. Hosts files, content filters, and possibly something akin to privoxy or similar, plus squid, would be a good start. If not, figuring out how to build something of the sort would be an interesting project. T-Mobile, Cricket, etc., you'd be well-advised to offer such tools. Really, it'd be kinda fucking awesome. Mozilla: figure out what your users are likely to want to receive. Or not receive. And just fucking get out of the way and give it to them. Stop playing fucking nanny. #contentblocking 
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingThat might be +15hp stock but will that make any difference in race trim? It might not. — Hayden to Pata Honda in WSB Worst kept secret in the paddock is out. Nicky Hayden, 2006 World #MotoGP  & 2 x #AMA  champ & all round nice bloke, will be joining the PATA Honda Team alongside Micky VDM in #WSB . Fellow American PJ Jacobson will be joining him in the WSS PATA squad  Good luck to him. If he can lift the title, he will be the only rider in history to win the Golden Hat-trick of AMA, MotoGP & WSB. Full Report via +David Emmett 's MotoMatters Dot Com :  https://motomatters.com/news/2015/10/08/nicky_hayden_switches_to_wsbk_in_2016_jo.html _________________________________________ +MotoGP  #MotoGP  +WorldSBK  #WSB   +Power Electronics  #Aspar   #Hayden   +AMA Pro Racing +MotoAmerica 
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingAnother year on an ageing bike that may not be competitive. It's going to be tough up against the Kawasaki, Yamaha, Ducati, Aprilia. I wonder if it's going to be Chaz Davies' year?   — Hayden to Pata Honda in WSB Worst kept secret in the paddock is out. Nicky Hayden, 2006 World #MotoGP  & 2 x #AMA  champ & all round nice bloke, will be joining the PATA Honda Team alongside Micky VDM in #WSB . Fellow American PJ Jacobson will be joining him in the WSS PATA squad  Good luck to him. If he can lift the title, he will be the only rider in history to win the Golden Hat-trick of AMA, MotoGP & WSB. Full Report via +David Emmett 's MotoMatters Dot Com :  https://motomatters.com/news/2015/10/08/nicky_hayden_switches_to_wsbk_in_2016_jo.html _________________________________________ +MotoGP  #MotoGP  +WorldSBK  #WSB   +Power Electronics  #Aspar   #Hayden   +AMA Pro Racing +MotoAmerica 
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Commented on post by Busa Bob in Motorcycle RoadracingWhat's up with the unreliability? — John Hopkins 15 (21) on the Ducati Panigale. Great to see John back on form again P4 Race 1 but another DNF in Race 2
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Commented on post by David Manvell in ChromecastBTW. It's about time you could set the backdrop in the desktop version of the Chromecast setup app. — With the first generation Chromecast I had set it up to wallpaper a bunch of photos on my Google Drive. I can't find the section in the wallpaper settings to do the same with Chromecast 2015? Know where it is at anyone? I am sure I am missing it but been through it three times now.
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Commented on post by Henry Neugass in Chromecast AudioRe iTunes. have you tried the beta Cast for Chrome and then using "Cast Desktop". It should cast any audio source including itunes. Except, perhaps this is Windows only. — Received CCA two days ago and installed immediately. FWIW, after only two days: Successes: • Pandora on Nexus 7 Android 5.1.1 — works! • YouTube on Mac 10.10.x running Chrome with Google Cast  extension 15.827.0.2 — works! • Drag MP3 file to empty tab, Mac 10.10.x running Chrome with Google Cast  — works! • Spotify Web Player on Mac 10.10.x running Chrome with Google Cast  extension 15.827.0.2 — works! Standouts: •  Excellent audio quality (Of course, the sounds are being pushed by my experienced old hi-fi with really old, classic AR speakers.) • Stereo!  (Well, yeah, what else?) • CCA setup:  A+ for simplicity and efficiency. • Controls (audio and playback) on the 'cast source work well.  (Why shouldn't they?  I dunno.  Because it is hard to do?) • Control, conflict resolution in Chrome  with Google Cast  extension 15.827.0.2:  A+ • Conflict resolution when trying to use CCA when is already connected to another device:  A+ Note: "A+" is my top rating. Glitches: • Connection drops.   When these occur, only just after connecting.  After the connection is established for a while, I have experienced no drops. • Randomly, the control for the Google Cast  extension can't "see" and doesn't list my CCA, while it always lists the original CC attached to the TV. • A few stream hesitations — seem rare • Omitted info.  As far as I can see, most publicity and dox from Google and independent articles gloss over the fact that you need an amp (one for each channel) - either between the CCA and the speakers or inside the speakers (powered speakers.)  Or am I missing something? Not yet successful: • Anything else I tried on Mac 10.10.x • Spotify on Nexus 7 Android 5.1.1 (Alert box sez:  requires paid "Premium" Spotify account) • Native MacOS Spotify App support  —should be better quality than "tab audio" I'm using now, per  https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/3265953?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=4602553&vid=1-635798460318837689-270867782 Wishlist: • iTunes support for CCA.  I'm already subscribed to a congenial set of streams using iTunes…
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Commented on post by Chris MessinaWhen you've done mobile, please promote the same thoughts for desktop. — My thoughts on #AMP : https://medium.com/@chrismessina/observations-on-the-fight-over-the-future-of-news-fec45e4df722
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Commented on post by Michael Dopp in Chromecast Central+Michael Dopp Hmmm. See this. https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6260600?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=6279364&vid=1-635796243643786815-1838887243 Setup, iOS section:- Highly recommended: Turn on Bluetooth to help improve the set up process.  — Ifixit has their tear-downs of both the CCV2 and CCA up in a single article. The DAC and stereo line driver ICs in the Chromecast Audio are both named in the article for those interested.
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Commented on post by Alessandro Marini in MotoGPSo has Max got a wild card ride on an Aprilia at Valencia? Or did I just make that up? — http://goo.gl/IV0IvZ
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Commented on post by Michael Dopp in Chromecast CentralHmmm. So it has got Bluetooth hardware in there. But has it got any Bluetooth software support?  — Ifixit has their tear-downs of both the CCV2 and CCA up in a single article. The DAC and stereo line driver ICs in the Chromecast Audio are both named in the article for those interested.
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Commented on post by Lev OsherovichI've been wondering how to obtain pharmaceutical grade Modafinil in the UK with reasonable provenance. But perhaps what I actually need is some "Smart Drug" placebos. I think there's work to be done on the Nocebo effect. I'm wondering if careful writing of the potential side effect descriptions in the pamphlet inside the packaging could be used to manipulate the victim patient's state of mind for positive benefit.  — Pain Placebo Precession
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Commented on post by Sebastian H. Strumann in Climate ChangeAnd right on cue,  http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/07/why-should-i-eat-organic-google — The US Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services have just announced that sustainability won’t be considered as a factor when it issues its influential dietary guidelines—known as DGAs—later this year, over-ruling recommendations of an expert advisory panel.
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Commented on post by Sebastian H. Strumann in Climate ChangeWe, as supporters of the evidence based theory of global warming and its effects, really need to apply the same critical thinking and fact checking to big agricultural business that we apply to the big fossil fuel business. Being pro-science doesn't automatically make you pro-GMO, pro-industrial farming, pro-monoculture farming. It needs facts and evidence to back it up. And of course the same goes for the other position. You can be pro-sustainability and pro-big agrichem if you can support the position. But it shouldn't be automatic. The problem is one of scale. For a small holding supporting a small number of people a mixed crop and diet that includes a small amount of animals and animal products makes sense and is sustainable. But it's really hard to scale that up to billions of burgers and £1/L milk. — The US Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services have just announced that sustainability won’t be considered as a factor when it issues its influential dietary guidelines—known as DGAs—later this year, over-ruling recommendations of an expert advisory panel.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in Back in the USSROne word. Metadata. — This Salon piece about Soviet counter-espionage can help you identify CIA plants in your midst.  Totrov came up with were 26 unchanging indicators as a model for identifying U.S. intelligence officers overseas. Other indicators of a more trivial nature could be detected in the field by a vigilant foreign counterintelligence operative but not uniformly so: the fact that CIA officers replacing one another tended to take on the same post within the embassy hierarchy, drive the same make of vehicle, rent the same apartment and so on. Why? Because the personnel office in Langley shuffled and dealt overseas postings with as little effort as required. One productive line of inquiry quickly yielded evidence: the differences in the way agency officers undercover as diplomats were treated from genuine foreign service officers (FSOs). The pay scale at entry was much higher for a CIA officer; after three to four years abroad a genuine FSO could return home, whereas an agency employee could not; real FSOs had to be recruited between the ages of 21 and 31, whereas this did not apply to an agency officer; only real FSOs had to attend the Institute of Foreign Service for three months before entering the service; naturalized Americans could not become FSOs for at least nine years but they could become agency employees; when agency officers returned home, they did not normally appear in State Department listings; should they appear they were classified as research and planning, research and intelligence, consular or chancery for security affairs; unlike FSOs, agency officers could change their place of work for no apparent reason; their published biographies contained obvious gaps; agency officers could be relocated within the country to which they were posted, FSOs were not; agency officers usually had more than one working foreign language; their cover was usually as a “political” or “consular” official (often vice-consul); internal embassy reorganizations usually left agency personnel untouched, whether their rank, their office space or their telephones; their offices were located in restricted zones within the embassy; they would appear on the streets during the working day using public telephone boxes; they would arrange meetings for the evening, out of town, usually around 7.30 p.m. or 8.00 p.m.; and whereas FSOs had to observe strict rules about attending dinner, agency officers could come and go as they pleased.
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Commented on post by Michael Dopp in Chromecast CentralI'm increasingly wondering what the point is of the C-A. I'd much rather they just added a 3.5mm+digital output to the standard Chromecast. — Chromecast Audio and Youtube Fedex just dropped off my Chromecast Audio direct from Google an hour or so ago.  It works fine casting Youtube from Chrome desktop browser on Linux. However if you shut the browser down it stops.  If I bring up the Android Chromecast app device list while streaming Youtube off the browser it reports Chromecast Audio as mirroring. Still gives volume and 'stop casting' choices on card.  Meanwhile if you cast Google Play Music from the browser like this it actually streams directly. You can shut the browser down and it still keeps streaming. If I bring up the Android Chromecast app it shows that device as streaming Google Play Music, tells the name of the song, shows album art, gives controls for 'stop casting', pause, volume.  Note: The Chromecast app device cards take several seconds to update with the proper information about the devices being streamed to. Initially they say 'available to cast' but update after about five or six seconds.  Here is my quick review after playing with this for half an hour or so.  It kicks ass! update: Tried as above with Chromebook and same results as Chrome browser in Linux, as expected. Thought I'd specify it for anyone wondering though.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in YouTube TVReally? Citation? — According to the FAQs, the new Chromecast-Audio doesn't support casting from Youtube. This seems really strange for all sorts of reasons but especially, because of Youtube MusicKey/Red. 
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeSince you have been posting a bunch of these, I can recommend this http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2014/11/29/see-no-evil-the-morality-of-collapse/ and this http://howtosavetheworld.ca/images/new-political-map-2014-650x649.png It's a selection of various attitudes to the situation we find ourselves in. Of which denial is just one. — 5 Characteristics of Climate Science Denial from  the University of Queensland Australia FREE UQx Denial101x Making Sense of Climate Science Denial Class Google YouTube Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXA777yUndQ&t=9m16s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXA777yUndQ us usa united states america american merchants of doubt this changes everything conservative gop republican libertarian free market capitalist capitalism tea party teabagger patriot red state ultra right wing science scientific scientists denial deniers denialists conspiracy conspiracies theory theorists thinking global warming extreme weird weather
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Commented on post by Brent Sullivan in Chromecast CentralHaving this discussion elsewhere, but it's the lack of Youtube support which is a bit of a puzzle. I thought Apple music had died because nobody was interested? The one that irritates me is the lack of direct support for shoutcast radio streams. You can always cast the tab unless the source hides it in a separate window with no controls. But Tunein which is the obvious other way doesn't yet have a web app with Cast support. There's a hole in the market there.  — Chromecast Audio Review.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in WingnutterySince the USA apparently wants to stay in 1780, I think the answer is clear. Retain the right to bear arms, but only arms available in 1780, such as flintlock pistols, muzzle loading muskets and swords. And Gentlemen (not immigrants or coloureds, obviously) should not only be allowed to wear swords in public, but required to. — A thousand times yes. We do it for cars, which aren't actually designed to kill or injure people -- why not guns?
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawThe Brighton bombing of the Tory Party conference by the IRA is not so long ago. This stuff is not surprising at all[1]. The only surprising thing is the attempt at spin. [1]Daily Telegraph journalist David Hughes called the bombing "the most audacious attack on a British government since the Gunpowder Plot" and wrote that it "marked the end of an age of comparative innocence. From that day forward, all party conferences in this country have become heavily defended citadels". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighton_hotel_bombing — The snipers which the police placed on the various buildings around the anti-austerity rally in Manchester were "not there to shoot people," according to the police department's spokesman; they were simply placed there to observe and record, and were using their rifles for "their powerful sight, which is stronger than any pair of binoculars." Alrighty, then. I will take note of that and remember that I'm not supposed to be alarmed whenever police snipers are aiming their weapons at me. (Via William Gibson)
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastJust been reading about developing apps for Cast for Audio.  https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/audio This is suggesting that for both technical and UX reasons, apps that might work with Cast for Audio should have a dual interface and recognise if the target Chromecast has a screen. And then tell the Chromecast to stream load an appropriate receiver app and receive either an audio/video stream or an audio only stream as appropriate. This suggests a 3rd possibility, c) Supporting youtube requires a new youtube Cast app and changes to the youtube receiver and web service. And this is HARD.   I hope this isn't true and Google does end up providing an official supported mechanism since the commercial requirement is real. Even if you don't agree Phila. —  Well worth reading the Chromecast audio FAQs. https://support.google.com/chromecast/?hl=en-GB#topic=6279362 Especially, https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6279416?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=6279411&vid=1-635795409214628433-1838887243 This one amazed me. I’m trying to cast audio from YouTube but it isn’t working. I thought this was a Google Cast-enabled app? Chromecast Audio only supports audio apps and this currently does not include YouTube. WTF? Youtube is a major source of music. Not being able to cast YouTube to a C-A is a bit of an oversight, isn't it?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chromecast+Phila Phans not dastardly, but commercially stupid. And strange, given https://www.youtube.com/musickey and it's links with Google Play Music Subscription/All Access. My kids and friends now prefer to consume music via Youtube playlists. They've given up actually collecting or paying for it. Some of them run well respected music channels on youtube. There's clearly a need. And I can't see any technical reason why it wouldn't work. So either:- a) Google's firmware developers have made a mistake and cut down the HTML5 receiver side support too much, or  b) There are some kind of legal hassles and horse trading as entertainment biz agreements are being temporarily traded for service restrictions.  —  Well worth reading the Chromecast audio FAQs. https://support.google.com/chromecast/?hl=en-GB#topic=6279362 Especially, https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6279416?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=6279411&vid=1-635795409214628433-1838887243 This one amazed me. I’m trying to cast audio from YouTube but it isn’t working. I thought this was a Google Cast-enabled app? Chromecast Audio only supports audio apps and this currently does not include YouTube. WTF? Youtube is a major source of music. Not being able to cast YouTube to a C-A is a bit of an oversight, isn't it?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastYoutube also has tons of legal music uploaded by the artist or label as promotion. And Google have a subscriber version in beta specifically aimed at using Youtube as a music jukebox/radio. It's hard to think of any technical reason since the receiver in the Chromecast is just a cut down Chrome supporting html5.  —  Well worth reading the Chromecast audio FAQs. https://support.google.com/chromecast/?hl=en-GB#topic=6279362 Especially, https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6279416?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=6279411&vid=1-635795409214628433-1838887243 This one amazed me. I’m trying to cast audio from YouTube but it isn’t working. I thought this was a Google Cast-enabled app? Chromecast Audio only supports audio apps and this currently does not include YouTube. WTF? Youtube is a major source of music. Not being able to cast YouTube to a C-A is a bit of an oversight, isn't it?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in TechToday, .rars from Zippy are fine. So maybe somebody updated the blacklist. — Apparently Google Chrome has decided that .rar files from zippyshare are malicious and you're not allowed to download them. They've also decided that several famous torrent index sites are malicious and has blocked them as well. I'm sure this has nothing to do with the music and entertainment biz and is just a temporary glitch. It seems to cover sites that contribute to bending the rules on copyright as well as sites trying to attack you. The trouble with false positives like this is that it encourages you to turn off all the safety controls which defeats the object of having them in the first place. And of course most users of Chrome will leave most of the settings on default. It's also possible this will migrate to Firefox as well since they use Google's dangerous site blacklist and virus checker services. Interestingly, this is beginning to affect small software developers as well. You have to jump through all the hoops or Google marks you as untrustworthy. Made worse because you're distributing an .exe or .msi rather than just an .mp3 Meanwhile, open All downloads, click on recover file, click on Yes, I'm sure and there's your file. You just shouldn't have to do this.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastC-A FAQs https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6279416?hl=en-GB - Upload to GPM - Use an App, eg Plex, BubbleUp - Android Audio Casting to play any locally stored music - Cast a Chrome tab - Use Chrome Cast to Cast the desktop or a window — What's the recommended approach to playing music (.mp3) stored locally on a laptop or on a Home NAS through a Chromecast-Audio? And IMHO, I don't think "upload it to Google Music and play it from there" is the correct answer. I'd much rather use Winamp or VLC (or even WMP) due to the better playlist handling.
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Commented on post by Renewable Energy in Climate ChangeUnconvinced by this and the persistent obsession with Hydrogen. It's a TERRIBLE fuel for vehicles from an engineering point of view. And most of it currently comes from fossil fuels. Yes, it produces less harmful emissions at the point of use, but in all other ways, it's just wrong.
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Commented on post by James Cridland in ChromecastOr the slight judder from watching 60Hz content on a 50Hz system. — Random question. Has the new Chromecast fixed the slight judder when displaying 25fps content?
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in Tech SupportI suspect there's going to be huge synchronisation problems splitting the video to one Chromecast and the audio to another. It would be like having two laptops playing the same Youtube vid but watching one while listening to the other. You'd never manage to sync them to the 10ms needed to make it transparent. 
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Commented on post by Bob Bartlett in Chromecast AudioI've asked a related question. https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/TV4FK3HnmUx -- What's the recommended approach to playing music (.mp3) stored locally on a laptop or on a Home NAS through a Chromecast-Audio? And IMHO, I don't think "upload it to Google Music and play it from there" is the correct answer. I'd much rather use Winamp or VLC (or even WMP) due to the better playlist handling. -- Lots of people recommending Plex, or Android apps like Localcast. But at the moment, I think the best way might be to use Chrome and the beta Cast extension to Cast the whole desktop. Then you can use your fav music player like Winamp, MusicBee, iTunes, WMP, Clementine, VLC or whatever and just route the laptop's audio to the Chromecast-Audio. IMHO, I'd really like to see Google produce a desktop application/device driver that intercepted the laptop's audio and routed it all to a C-A. As an aside, Google's page on supported Apps is pretty terrible with way too much javascript. I'd like to see a list of well known music websites with Cast support but that's impossible. It's all very Android centric. And deceptive when things like Tunein-Radio have an Android app that Casts, but so far, the website doesn't.   — Newbie here - T or F?  Chromecast Audio allows me on my laptop to control/play  (stereo only) audio thru my home audio system, the same as using a (long) cable from my laptop to the receiver's stereo inputs, except Chromecast Audio limits me to certain Chromecast compatable apps, and my extension cable doesn't.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in TechEvery once in a while you hit a site where Chrome throws a warning banner saying "This site is malicious" or something similar. That's all fine if it's accurate. It's  controlled by the setting under Advanced, Privacy "Protect you and your device from dangerous sites". Then this. https://torrentfreak.com/chrome-blocks-major-torrent-sites-over-harmful-programs-150710/   Yesterday, I downloaded a .rar file from Zippy and instead of the normal file link in the status bar, I get a warning that it's potentially dangerous. It's just a file full of MP3s. The implication is not that the specific file is dangerous but that Zippy is untrustworthy.  I'm on Virgin Media, and I'm familiar with their blocks on things like Pirate Bay. This is not that. It's coming from Chrome.  — Apparently Google Chrome has decided that .rar files from zippyshare are malicious and you're not allowed to download them. They've also decided that several famous torrent index sites are malicious and has blocked them as well. I'm sure this has nothing to do with the music and entertainment biz and is just a temporary glitch. It seems to cover sites that contribute to bending the rules on copyright as well as sites trying to attack you. The trouble with false positives like this is that it encourages you to turn off all the safety controls which defeats the object of having them in the first place. And of course most users of Chrome will leave most of the settings on default. It's also possible this will migrate to Firefox as well since they use Google's dangerous site blacklist and virus checker services. Interestingly, this is beginning to affect small software developers as well. You have to jump through all the hoops or Google marks you as untrustworthy. Made worse because you're distributing an .exe or .msi rather than just an .mp3 Meanwhile, open All downloads, click on recover file, click on Yes, I'm sure and there's your file. You just shouldn't have to do this.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastThat's where I was. Still doesn't work for me, — Since they've redesigned the Chromecast promotion web site is there any easy way of finding content sources that work with desktop web? It all seems to be very phone app oriented. What's slightly annoying is that sites like Tunein Radio get promoted because their Android App supports Cast, but their website player doesn't (yet). I guess iPhone users are probably in a similar situation as there's bound to be sources with a Cast ready Android app but where the iOs version doesn't do Cast yet. 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastHmmm. I'm not getting any response from hovering. And the squares don't seem to be clickable at all. — Since they've redesigned the Chromecast promotion web site is there any easy way of finding content sources that work with desktop web? It all seems to be very phone app oriented. What's slightly annoying is that sites like Tunein Radio get promoted because their Android App supports Cast, but their website player doesn't (yet). I guess iPhone users are probably in a similar situation as there's bound to be sources with a Cast ready Android app but where the iOs version doesn't do Cast yet. 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastOf course. But without the benefits of the Chromecast getting the stream direct. — Here's the next Chromecast-Audio (C-A) issues. Are these possible yet? 1) Soundcloud desktop web -> C-A. 2) Shoutcast radio desktop web -> C-A
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastI was pretty sure Localcast and Allcast are Android only and don't have Chrome Extensions. In any case they're ok for casting a 90 minute film but aren't really a solution for queuing up 100 music tracks in a playlist. no? One option here is to use the Chrome Beta Cast extension and then use Cast Whole Screen. That captures any audio from the laptop and ought to work with a C-A. Then you can just use your fav music player. — What's the recommended approach to playing music (.mp3) stored locally on a laptop or on a Home NAS through a Chromecast-Audio? And IMHO, I don't think "upload it to Google Music and play it from there" is the correct answer. I'd much rather use Winamp or VLC (or even WMP) due to the better playlist handling.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastPerhaps I didn't make myself clear that I'm looking for a laptop solution not one that requires an android device. For bonus points, Chromebooks.  Oh. but wait, Chromebooks can't see a local NAS out of the box. — What's the recommended approach to playing music (.mp3) stored locally on a laptop or on a Home NAS through a Chromecast-Audio? And IMHO, I don't think "upload it to Google Music and play it from there" is the correct answer. I'd much rather use Winamp or VLC (or even WMP) due to the better playlist handling.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:So can we genetically engineer those meal worms to survive in salt water? — Humans have a tremendous garbage problem. In stable ecosystems, one creature's waste products are food for others, and so nutrients and resources and so on keep flowing through the entire system; the problem is when resources start piling up somewhere and not being consumable, so in effect they're taken out of action. Because of this, I've always been very interested in the ways we can find organisms which eat our waste products, from organic waste to heavy metals. And here we have a very interesting example indeed: it appears that there's a species of mealworm which finds styrofoam tasty.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chromecast+Pedro Madeira Do you work for them? — What's the recommended approach to playing music (.mp3) stored locally on a laptop or on a Home NAS through a Chromecast-Audio? And IMHO, I don't think "upload it to Google Music and play it from there" is the correct answer. I'd much rather use Winamp or VLC (or even WMP) due to the better playlist handling.
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Commented on post by Stephen Holst in ChromecastI've actually got a copy of the music collection on Google Music Play and it does work. However, there are some problems. For a long time it was limited to 20k files. It's now 50k but I'm not far from bumping up against this. When the library get that big, it really stresses Chrome, even on a new machine with plenty of memory. And GPM is pretty primitive compared with mature local applications.  I also find it slightly bizarre having to upload all my music to the cloud just to then download it back to the same PC, just so I can play it on the TV and speakers right next to me. — Does anyone else see the lack of iTunes support as a major hurdle for Chromecast audio? I realize that Apple will never support this device but with the number of iPhone users in the US it's going to be hard to really pull off any major market saturation in my opinion.
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Commented on post by Stephen Holst in ChromecastMaybe I didn't try hard enough (or read the manual!) but I tried Plex and couldn't get on with it. I can see all 50k files in windows explorer just over there in the Z: drive. All I want to do is play them. I'm not convinced I need to run a server on this machine, so I can then run a client to access it. There's a kind of cognitive dissonance here. For years and years, we had local collections of music and used local applications like Winamp, Windows Media Player, iTunes, Foobar, VLC, Amarok, Clementine, Songbird, Banshee, etc, etc, etc to play them. Now in this brave new world I need a media server. Why? — Does anyone else see the lack of iTunes support as a major hurdle for Chromecast audio? I realize that Apple will never support this device but with the number of iPhone users in the US it's going to be hard to really pull off any major market saturation in my opinion.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastChromecast-Audio ought to support being a DNLA output point. hen WMP would play to it. But all the DNLA support I've seen has been pretty flaky. — What's the recommended approach to playing music (.mp3) stored locally on a laptop or on a Home NAS through a Chromecast-Audio? And IMHO, I don't think "upload it to Google Music and play it from there" is the correct answer. I'd much rather use Winamp or VLC (or even WMP) due to the better playlist handling.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chromecast+Jose Brooks Winamp[1] is still the best! Although MusicBee is almost there now. Mostly I've got used to and want a 4 pane solution, Artist/Album/Track/Playlist and hardly anybody else does this. I also want to order albums in reverse date order and AFAIK, only Winamp does this. What Google need to do for us windows users, is build a Windows device driver or app that intercepts Windows Audio Out and then routes it to a Chromecast. Then we can use whatever audio player we fell like but have it come out of an audio system somewhere else. And without having to install and learn another system. - Localcast is Android only. - Plex is a full featured server, but I don't want a server, I just want to play my local/NAS files. - VLC desktop Cast support is still a long way off [1] RIP Winamp. I really hope it gets some development love again, but I don't hold out a lot of hope. — What's the recommended approach to playing music (.mp3) stored locally on a laptop or on a Home NAS through a Chromecast-Audio? And IMHO, I don't think "upload it to Google Music and play it from there" is the correct answer. I'd much rather use Winamp or VLC (or even WMP) due to the better playlist handling.
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Commented on post by Stephen Holst in ChromecastIgnore iTunes for a moment. The question is how you play locally stored music either on your own hard drive or on a home NAS through Chromecast-Audio. And IMHO, uploading it all to Google music is not the right answer! I personally use Winamp or VLC on  a laptop to play these files. I'd like to be able cast the audio from there.  — Does anyone else see the lack of iTunes support as a major hurdle for Chromecast audio? I realize that Apple will never support this device but with the number of iPhone users in the US it's going to be hard to really pull off any major market saturation in my opinion.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingI hear there's a Honda ride in WSB available. — Opps. All round good bloke Nicky Hayden with a busted thumb NH69 has broke his thumb whilst doing minimotos in Italy. I can only blame a certain Mr Valentino Rossi who was leading this minimoto race. WSB next year? Maybe to replace Ginters 50 at PATA Ten-Kate. More details via +Asphalt & Rubber  : http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/motogp/motogpnicky-hayden-breaks-thumb-training/#more-93684 Nicky's IG : https://instagram.com/p/7-SW15kyoh/ _______________________________________________ +MotoGP  #Aspar  +Power Electronics  #Hayden  
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingSo what does "re-written the Supersport rule book" mean? — Yamaha to return (full factory) in   #WSB  for 2016 My photoshop skills are getting better each silly season Riders : 2014 #WSB  Champ Sylvain Guintoli and 2013 #BSB  Champ Alex Lowes. Machine : Full fat cream & 8 sugars Yamaha R1. Sponsor : PATA Chips. Team : Cresent Racing. Factory Support : Yamaha Motor Europe  Reports via +WorldSBK & +Asphalt & Rubber  http://www.worldsbk.com/en/news/2015/Yamaha+Returns+to+World+Superbike http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/wsbk/yamaha-returns-world-superbike-2016/ ____________________________________________ +WorldSBK  #WSB   #WSB2015   #Pata   #Yamaha   +Yamaha Racing +Yamaha Motor Europe  +Ohlins Perfromance +Brembo +Pirelli Tyres  #Cresent  
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingI'm wondering a bit about what people see in Paul Denning. How good is he as a team manager, really?  — Yamaha to return (full factory) in   #WSB  for 2016 My photoshop skills are getting better each silly season Riders : 2014 #WSB  Champ Sylvain Guintoli and 2013 #BSB  Champ Alex Lowes. Machine : Full fat cream & 8 sugars Yamaha R1. Sponsor : PATA Chips. Team : Cresent Racing. Factory Support : Yamaha Motor Europe  Reports via +WorldSBK & +Asphalt & Rubber  http://www.worldsbk.com/en/news/2015/Yamaha+Returns+to+World+Superbike http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/wsbk/yamaha-returns-world-superbike-2016/ ____________________________________________ +WorldSBK  #WSB   #WSB2015   #Pata   #Yamaha   +Yamaha Racing +Yamaha Motor Europe  +Ohlins Perfromance +Brembo +Pirelli Tyres  #Cresent  
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingSo what of Beaubier? I think he should move to the UK and join the Milkwaukee Yamaha ;) Unless there's a second Yamaha WSB team. — Yamaha to return (full factory) in   #WSB  for 2016 My photoshop skills are getting better each silly season Riders : 2014 #WSB  Champ Sylvain Guintoli and 2013 #BSB  Champ Alex Lowes. Machine : Full fat cream & 8 sugars Yamaha R1. Sponsor : PATA Chips. Team : Cresent Racing. Factory Support : Yamaha Motor Europe  Reports via +WorldSBK & +Asphalt & Rubber  http://www.worldsbk.com/en/news/2015/Yamaha+Returns+to+World+Superbike http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/wsbk/yamaha-returns-world-superbike-2016/ ____________________________________________ +WorldSBK  #WSB   #WSB2015   #Pata   #Yamaha   +Yamaha Racing +Yamaha Motor Europe  +Ohlins Perfromance +Brembo +Pirelli Tyres  #Cresent  
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Commented on post by Tom Lombardo in Electric Vehicles (UK)Bosch claims that this next generation of batteries could be on the market in five years. Wake me up when it's a real product and not just a research project. — Bosch’s new battery could double the range of electric vehicles and decrease the risk of battery fires, all at a lower cost. 
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Commented on post by Scarfolk Councilhttps://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpt1/v/t1.0-9/12036724_900061653396440_536912180773895592_n.jpg?oh=6d1838e45d935b4864ed9021f2488eb1&oe=569E6255 — David Cameron has taken us to security level 'Piggy'. He is a threat to our national security, our economic security and your family's security. http://www.scarfolk.blogspot.com
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Commented on post by Andreas SchouThe west does like to talk about the history of great men. I find it strange that we focus on "Putin" while not talking much about "Russia". But talk about "China" without talking about the leader of China because nobody knows who he is and it doesn't seem to matter. Russia is vast. It's got gas and oil. And nuclear weapons. But in almost everything else it's a distant third.
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Commented on post by George Gonzales in ChromecastLegal, shmegal. — How do I make my chromecast work with VPN? I am in the country where netflix is not available and I am trying to cast but it won't work. I have also tried screen casting it but no luck too. Please help. Thank you! ☺
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Commented on post by George Gonzales in ChromecastI'm quite happy that some of my license fee goes to giving the world some decent TV programming and spreading the British cultural message. And I wish they didn't have to do things like close down the Afghanistan version of the world service (thanks Cameron!). But it winds me up that there's no easy way of viewing BBC America in the UK. When it only exists because it was bootstrapped with our license fee money.  Meanwhile, to view on the Chromecast via a VPN you need to implement the VPN so it intercepts and redirects at the router. Not an easy thing to set up. — How do I make my chromecast work with VPN? I am in the country where netflix is not available and I am trying to cast but it won't work. I have also tried screen casting it but no luck too. Please help. Thank you! ☺
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatism+Woozle Hypertwin Like this one from Bruce Sterling in 1999, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taklamakan_(short_story) from "A good old fashioned future". http://www.librarything.com/work/69089 — About 20-25 years ago, I probably could have rattled off a bunch of stories...
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in PoliticsThe illusion of personal free will is interesting, but the post was really about national and global free will. I'm finding this hard to think about because its throwing up so many aspects and links. I'm finding the original comment to be a bit of a mind bomb. - Can we plan for 50 or 500 years and follow through and not just 5 year plans. Let alone qtrly profit targets  - Long Now Foundation  - History of great men vs History of societies - Sometimes you have to build frameworks for other people to build on. Rather than actually solve all the problems now. eg UN or League of Nations. - ISTR one or two projects in India to build new temples that aren't expected to finish for a century or two. - Why are the Chinese building empty cities? Corrupt chaos? Or long term contingency planning. Thinking about global free will may be a complete red herring and a mistaken analogy. The real question is whether the human race is capable at this stage of consciously acting to plan and execute long term, multi-generational futures. And if we are, what those plans should be. — The Stross thread on the history of 1700-2300 smashed his longest thread record. It took till comment #1315 to throw up this nugget. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/09/the-present-in-deep-history.html#comment-1981091 --- Americans, by and large, think that they can control history, basically by sheer force of will and gumption, and the one thing I've noticed in this thread is that no one shares this assumption- not even for humanity as a whole. Currently, that's obviously not true, but the one game changer that I see, the one truly significant innovation that could completely dominate history for the next thousand years, if it's possible of course, would be if humanity learned how to plan it's own future. If we could actually set multi-century goals, and meet them. If Psycho-history became real. If the Imperial Planetologist actually knew what he was talking about. If Humanity collectively became an transcendent AI (at least in effect). Obviously not a capability we currently have. Is there any reason we might move toward it in the next three hundred years? We have advanced significantly in our understanding of complexity, nonlinear dynamic systems, and how the ecosystem, the economy and human behavioral patterns interact with one another. We are starting to do the math. Could we get there? Could we actually design systems today that would have an intended impact say, 200 years down the road? If not, what's the barrier? --- This got mixed in with thoughts about "The Roman Empire Never Ended" and the differences between pyramid-structured, command and control systems and emergent-behavious hive mind systems. I've been pushing the idea for a while now that the USA likes the first while China is more like the second, using the universal Starbucks vs Chinese takeaway as an example. People nod their heads but it doesn't really lead anywhere. They still expect Chinese Imperialism to be planned in the same way that they're told and they believe that Western Imperialism is planned. Perhaps the truth is that it's all emergent behaviour and the apparent belief in our ability to create specific futures by force of will is just a post-facto rationalisation. This has scary implications for things that are long term and multi-generational like climate change. As humans we have trouble actually exercising free will. A lot of the time what we call free will looks like the brain fooling itself with post-facto rationalisation for what we did without any conscious direction. Apparently this applies to humans en-masse as well. It's hard to talk about this stuff without mentioning Godel, Escher, Bach.  "What's below the emergent behaviour?" "Oh, its just emergent behaviour, ALL THE WAY DOWN". 
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatismIs this Brin's Hieroglyph? Where Stephenson is saying, we need more optimistic SciFi, Brin is saying we need more SF about the chrysalis moment of mankind getting something sustainable going off planet. Because if we can't dream of mankind leaving the Earth, we're stuck here. Which means we're doomed? And yet it's really, really hard. Space is still really hostile to meat puppets and the gravity well is still really deep. — About 20-25 years ago, I probably could have rattled off a bunch of stories...
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Commented on post by Edd Wilder-JamesSo G+ has zombie threads. Who knew? — Where did XML go wrong? For many years I was the editor of XML.com, and the chair of the XML Europe conference. Today, it seems that XML's mission to be a web language is mostly dead. I'm not saying XML is useless: it has proved itself as a more easily-used SGML, but I'm not sure it's expanded too far outside of that. I'd love to hear what people think about why XML has stumbled on the web.  (Some great responses so far. This discussion also some some replies  on LinkedIn: http://goo.gl/wBWnT)
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatismAre there any stories about terra-forming the Gobi desert? — About 20-25 years ago, I probably could have rattled off a bunch of stories...
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in SustainabilityBy a spooky, not quite coincidence, this article turned up recently about E-Bikes on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. https://www.electricbike.com/kickstarter-indiegogo/ — I'm with +Joby Elliott. This is a fucking idiotic product. And Wired should have simply said "it doesn't work" rather than showing one thing (it sucks) and saying another ("it's state-of-the-art") The review below, lifted from YouTube comments (whoodathunkit, actually not bad) nails it: "How to feature an expensive and impractical device: Start with utter failure, omit safety precautions, layer in some droopy music loop and end on a low note. Way to go, Wired. It actually felt like you were forced to do this feature against your better judgement and you wanted to make a disgruntled employee statement." Quite. Practical cargo bikes typically have a low-bed cargo space in front of the rider. This cargo-bike festival gives a sense of how well various designs do and don't work. Front-loaders appear far more stable and practical to me. http://fixyt.com/watch?v=qMU0dI6H5MY https://plus.google.com/+JobyElliott/posts/RCtXp8fzft6
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in SustainabilityFor the record, UK/EU limits are 250w/25kph (15mph) for unregulated E-Bikes. The EU also says, no throttle, pedelec only. The UK is a bit vague on that point. The US generally seems to be 750w/20mph. In both the UK, EU and US, actual testing of all this is not very well defined. It's generally understood that the power should cut off when you exceed that speed, and that the max power is applied when maintaining just below the max speed against enough resistance. And as far as I know nobody anywhere (UK/E/US) has been prosecuted for exceeding the limits. As always, if you look like a bicycle doing bicycle type things, nobody cares. This might change if E-Bikes become really common, and London buses and HGVs start killing their riders. I personally think the rules should be somewhere in between. 250w/25kph is not enough. As a motorcyclist, driver who's gone through training and testing and who has to get their vehicles checked, I'd worry about untrained riders on untested vehicles doing 20mph in UK traffic. That feels too close to being a moped to me and should come under moped rules. So let's have more electric mopeds. As for the comments about DWB and college towns in the US, I'd hate to have to say the US is a police state. But ... — I'm with +Joby Elliott. This is a fucking idiotic product. And Wired should have simply said "it doesn't work" rather than showing one thing (it sucks) and saying another ("it's state-of-the-art") The review below, lifted from YouTube comments (whoodathunkit, actually not bad) nails it: "How to feature an expensive and impractical device: Start with utter failure, omit safety precautions, layer in some droopy music loop and end on a low note. Way to go, Wired. It actually felt like you were forced to do this feature against your better judgement and you wanted to make a disgruntled employee statement." Quite. Practical cargo bikes typically have a low-bed cargo space in front of the rider. This cargo-bike festival gives a sense of how well various designs do and don't work. Front-loaders appear far more stable and practical to me. http://fixyt.com/watch?v=qMU0dI6H5MY https://plus.google.com/+JobyElliott/posts/RCtXp8fzft6
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in SustainabilitySame in the UK. But the reality is you have to work pretty hard at actually getting caught and fined. Outside the occasional blitz on jumping red lights, you're pretty much invisible and not worth the bother. — I'm with +Joby Elliott. This is a fucking idiotic product. And Wired should have simply said "it doesn't work" rather than showing one thing (it sucks) and saying another ("it's state-of-the-art") The review below, lifted from YouTube comments (whoodathunkit, actually not bad) nails it: "How to feature an expensive and impractical device: Start with utter failure, omit safety precautions, layer in some droopy music loop and end on a low note. Way to go, Wired. It actually felt like you were forced to do this feature against your better judgement and you wanted to make a disgruntled employee statement." Quite. Practical cargo bikes typically have a low-bed cargo space in front of the rider. This cargo-bike festival gives a sense of how well various designs do and don't work. Front-loaders appear far more stable and practical to me. http://fixyt.com/watch?v=qMU0dI6H5MY https://plus.google.com/+JobyElliott/posts/RCtXp8fzft6
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in SustainabilityThose panniers are neat. I really had two approaches in mind. The first is just to make a utility bicycle as good as it could be. Pashley went quite  along way with this with their post Office bike. But there's clearly things that are overengineered and/or built down to a RFQ price.  http://www.pashley.co.uk/bikes/carrier-cycles/pronto.php The front and back racks and step through design works well. The rest of it, not so much. The other approach is a small vehicle for people who don't want to cycle in the rain. That brings to mind some Bruce Sterling comments about golf cart architecture. Designing urban and suburban community architecture for old people in glorified golf carts. And not specifically for Florida sunset communities but much more generally for the rest of us, because it's sensible. There are huge sections of the world where most journeys are <5 miles, single person or 1+1, requiring only space for 4 bags of groceries. We shouldn't need to use the full size vehicle that gets used for everything for these journeys. And it causes all kinds of problems when we do. On the other hand, one universal vehicle may be easier for more people than everybody having a garage full of alternatives. Cycles and E-bikes do have one huge benefit though. Almost everywhere, they're unregulated and as outside the laws as being a pedestrian. — I'm with +Joby Elliott. This is a fucking idiotic product. And Wired should have simply said "it doesn't work" rather than showing one thing (it sucks) and saying another ("it's state-of-the-art") The review below, lifted from YouTube comments (whoodathunkit, actually not bad) nails it: "How to feature an expensive and impractical device: Start with utter failure, omit safety precautions, layer in some droopy music loop and end on a low note. Way to go, Wired. It actually felt like you were forced to do this feature against your better judgement and you wanted to make a disgruntled employee statement." Quite. Practical cargo bikes typically have a low-bed cargo space in front of the rider. This cargo-bike festival gives a sense of how well various designs do and don't work. Front-loaders appear far more stable and practical to me. http://fixyt.com/watch?v=qMU0dI6H5MY https://plus.google.com/+JobyElliott/posts/RCtXp8fzft6
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in SustainabilityI would like to see more low tech, low impact options for carrying 1 person and 4 bags of groceries. That's a very common use case that really doesn't need an SUV or full sized car. That goes for general purpose bicycles, EBikes, scooters, motorcycles, trikes and quads where carrying 4 bags of groceries is a key requirement. Unfortunately it always seems to be an afterthought.  And preferably without bruising the bananas. — I'm with +Joby Elliott. This is a fucking idiotic product. And Wired should have simply said "it doesn't work" rather than showing one thing (it sucks) and saying another ("it's state-of-the-art") The review below, lifted from YouTube comments (whoodathunkit, actually not bad) nails it: "How to feature an expensive and impractical device: Start with utter failure, omit safety precautions, layer in some droopy music loop and end on a low note. Way to go, Wired. It actually felt like you were forced to do this feature against your better judgement and you wanted to make a disgruntled employee statement." Quite. Practical cargo bikes typically have a low-bed cargo space in front of the rider. This cargo-bike festival gives a sense of how well various designs do and don't work. Front-loaders appear far more stable and practical to me. http://fixyt.com/watch?v=qMU0dI6H5MY https://plus.google.com/+JobyElliott/posts/RCtXp8fzft6
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Sustainability- Wired is increasingly ridiculous. But then they jumped the shark in the 90s. Why do we still care? Is it because we bought issue one back when cyberpunk was already old but hitting commercial mainstream? - Cargo bikes designed as a conventional bike with an extended rear are a thing with several manufacturers. Some people like them. They work in some circumstances. They're probably proof that the ideal number of bikes is N+1 where N is how many you currently have. They don't make a lot of sense to me, but they haven't gone away so some people must like them. - The Bosch mid drive is just about the most expensive way of adding E-Assist. Not least because it requires a frame design change so you're stuck with it. I'm fairly sure it will be EU legal instead of US legal so will be weak. - Overly "designed" E-Assist bikes on Kickstarter is a thing. There are plenty of other entries where you wonder why they don't do the work real small businesses do and just source designs from China. Are they just vanity projects? Of course this isn't limited to E-Bikes. It feels like 99% of Kickstarter is like this. — I'm with +Joby Elliott. This is a fucking idiotic product. And Wired should have simply said "it doesn't work" rather than showing one thing (it sucks) and saying another ("it's state-of-the-art") The review below, lifted from YouTube comments (whoodathunkit, actually not bad) nails it: "How to feature an expensive and impractical device: Start with utter failure, omit safety precautions, layer in some droopy music loop and end on a low note. Way to go, Wired. It actually felt like you were forced to do this feature against your better judgement and you wanted to make a disgruntled employee statement." Quite. Practical cargo bikes typically have a low-bed cargo space in front of the rider. This cargo-bike festival gives a sense of how well various designs do and don't work. Front-loaders appear far more stable and practical to me. http://fixyt.com/watch?v=qMU0dI6H5MY https://plus.google.com/+JobyElliott/posts/RCtXp8fzft6
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Commented on post by Jason Phan in Motorcycle RoadracingIts not over yet Not sure if I can hold my breath that long. — I can already hear this being echoed for next season '10 TIMES WORLD CHAMPION' #ValentinoRossi #JorgeLorenzo #MarcMarquez #MovistarYamaha #RepsolHonda #MotoGP   https://jasonphan.wordpress.com/2015/09/17/rossis-10th-title-doing-the-math/
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPTrue. It is what it is. Kind of disappointing as well that Vale's run of podiums came to an end. — "The race was a bit strange" is a "bit" of an understatement, Vale!  That was a whole lotta strange, No? lol
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPAnd then there were two. Has Vale done enough? Is 23 points enough?   — "The race was a bit strange" is a "bit" of an understatement, Vale!  That was a whole lotta strange, No? lol
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Party PoliticsWish You Were Here was the last album that was any good. Obviously. ;) — +Roger Waters hereby regains a few of the points he lost for The Final Cut ;-)
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Commented on post by Chris F in Climate ChangeTry this one. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/14/2015-and-2016-set-to-break-global-heat-records-says-met-office
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Commented on post by Sisco Vanilla in Mixology 🍸I've just been trying to find the background of the Valentino cocktail. Is that named after Rudolph? — With today being the 91st anniversary of the passing of silent film star Rudolph Valentino, I wanted to profile a cocktail named after one of Valentino's most popular films: The Blood and Sand Blood and Sand 1/4 Orange Juice 1/4 Scotch Whisky 1/4 Cherry Brandy 1/4 Italian Vermouth Shake well and strain into cocktail glass #BloodandSand   #RudolphValentino   #Dewars12   #Scotch   #CherryHeering   #ItalianVermouth   #OrangeJuice   #SavoyCocktailBook   #GaryRegan   #Cocktail   #Cocktails   #Coctel   #Cocteles   #Cocteleria   #SiscoVanilla  
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Commented on post by Environmental Defense Fund in Climate ChangeLarge pinches of salt needed? http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/the-group-of-ten/environmental-defense-fund/ — Turning the corner on climate change is possible, and 2015 is shaping up to be a year of giant steps forward. Here are 4 reasons we’re headed in the right direction. #ClimateChange   #Progress   #Renewables   #CleanEnergy   #Hope  
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Commented on post by Theodore Ts'osupports real mail threading (unlike, say, GMail), and so it can deal with high volume mailing lists This. I wish more MUAs had explicit support for mailing lists and usenet and supported per group threading control. Things like automatic highlighting of threads that you have contributed to. Obvious choices for followup versus reply to sender versus start new thread. Inclusion of your messages in the stream. Remembering the unsubscribe and list control addresses, Plonk for blocking. Controllable expiry of messages. Explicit encouragement for selective quoting, reply at bottom, dealing with digest mode and so on and so on. — Actually, I like using Mutt.  It's fast and supports real mail threading (unlike, say, GMail), and so it can deal with high volume mailing lists like LKML.  The fact that it's more secure is just a bonus.  (One way it's more secure --- I can much more quickly determine which e-mails are phishing attempts.)
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Commented on post by Derick Lila in Climate ChangeIt could easily be moored on the new continental shelf of drowned land after the sea level rise. And the old levees will work as break waters to protect it from the surf. Probably not suitable for places prone to hurricanes. — Using giant #solar-powered floating farms for food security
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Commented on post by Adele Archer in Developing with Google+There's a few plugins that all wordpress sites should have. - Jetpack - Akismet - All In One SEO Jetpack will deal with most of your social media button needs. — Does anybody know how to add an official G+ badge to a Wordpress blog? Apparently it can't be done because of the javascript in the code given (which Wordpress strips out). All I can currently do is create a G+ icon which wasn't what I wanted. Any ideas please...?
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Commented on postWould you rather have Benevolent Paternalism or Grandmotherly Kindness? Or simply a call to the kind of "Be Most Excellent" behaviour that oils the wheels of social behaviour. And since several of the examples are British, you might like these as celebrations of that peculiarly British approach to dealing with the vicissitudes of living in a crowded country. https://twitter.com/SoVeryBritish https://www.facebook.com/soverybritish I don't want to make a fuss, so I'll get my coat.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Artificial IntelligenceSo where's the OPML list?  It was annoyingly awkward to generate this. http://voidstar.com/downloads/gideon_ai.opml Feedly really should make this easier. And the remaining RSS/Atom/Feed community should do some work on being able to subscribe or just view other people's curated collections. Thanks, Google :( — Artificial Intelligence RSS Feed For those of you on feedly and who are interested in artificial intelligence, this one's for you. I'm taking advantage here of feedly's new "Shared Collections" feature. Never used it before, so let me know if you have problems with it. And if you're not on feedly yet, well, I have to say that it's a great service.  Oh, and if I'm missing good AI sites that I should be following, please let me know.  #artificialintelligence   #feedly   #rss  
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Commented on post+Steve S A shill that isn't a shill. Is there a name for that; preferably something derogatory that can be used with a sneer? I've run up against that. After calling a relentless promoter a shill, to be told that "he doesn't take any money so you can't call him a shill".
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThe first reaction before reading TFA was "anyone can run a web server". Just like "anyone can run an email relay". Except that you don't have enough upstream bandwidth and both of those things are hard to properly. To the point of it being a full time job managing them. And your ISP will put all sorts of brick walls in the way. 2nd reaction was IPV6. 3rd reaction was .magnet/.torrent/.onion links. But then I read TFA and realised it's a HARD problem. And that's why the .net .gods find it interesting. I come from a single rack, LAMP background so I find it hard enough getting my head round cdns without trying to figure out maintaining state and PUT/DELETE updates to distributed data. — Will there be a Distributed HTTP? One of the things that came up at the HTTP Workshop was “distributed HTTP” — i.e., moving the Web from a client/server model to a more distributed one. This week, Brewster Khale (of Archive.org fame) talked about similar thoughts on his blog and at CCC. If you haven’t seen that yet, I’d highly suggest watching the latter. These are not new discussions, and there are a growing number of systems — e.g. IPFS, Twister, Tahoe-LAFS, Storj, Maidsafe, FileCoin, ICN and NDN — that offer distributed storage in a way that can easily be leveraged into the Web. Likewise, there’s a lot of interest — as evidenced by things like Peerjs, peerCDN and Peer5 (more here) — in using WebRTC’s DataChannel for peer-to-peer Web content distribution.... There's a lot of interesting talk in this direction happening (I'd seen and may have commented on Khale's proposal earlier). Stuff I'd very much like to see myself. HN discussion, see particularly kragen's (Kragen Sitaker) comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10159873 https://www.mnot.net/blog/2015/08/18/distributed_http_
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Environmentre dystopian fiction, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Hieroglyph Neal Stephenson's project to try and get SF authors to write optimistic stories about the future. The trouble is I read it, and Stephenson's own Seveneves and they read like some wildly impractical Silicon Valley techno wet dream. The sort of thing Elon Musk is proposing. And it feels to me like it encourages thinking about the Earth as if it's a student flat that you can walk away from when you've destroyed it. — If you're in the prime of life, say between 30 and 55, you probably remember 1985, more or less. And you've got a pretty reasonable chance of seeing 2045. So what do you think the world will be like in 30 years time? And how different will it be from 30 years ago? If business as usual continues, it's quite likely that the global population will be 4 times what it was in 1985. Same goes for GDP. And total energy consumption. And total food production. But also other limited resource consumption and total pollution production. Now bear in mind that first statement. This is a future you will probably see and experience. It isn't some far distant time that you don't need to worry about because you won't see it. Or problems that you can just leave to your children and descendants to sort out. 30 years is time enough to raise children and get them to child bearing age, but it's not that long. Because think back and you can remember 30 years ago. Remember 2000 and the Millenium and how 2030 felt like the far distant future? Well we're half way there. So is "Business As Usual" sufficiently sustainable that it will keep going for another 30 years? Will 2045 be pretty much like 2015, just more so?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in EnvironmentEven if you can't personally make a difference, there may be value in working out how to roll with the punches. Like avoiding buying a house on a low lying flood plain near the sea. Or deciding not to emigrate to central Spain. That's a whole 'nother discussion to be had about where is the best place to ride out the chaos. But mostly I'm curious about people's views of the future. And not 100 or 1000 (or 10k) year futures, but 30 year futures that they might actually see. I take it your vision isn't very optimistic. That's certainly a valid and justifiable position. I'm still not convinced that the real shit-fan discontinuity is < 30 years away. — If you're in the prime of life, say between 30 and 55, you probably remember 1985, more or less. And you've got a pretty reasonable chance of seeing 2045. So what do you think the world will be like in 30 years time? And how different will it be from 30 years ago? If business as usual continues, it's quite likely that the global population will be 4 times what it was in 1985. Same goes for GDP. And total energy consumption. And total food production. But also other limited resource consumption and total pollution production. Now bear in mind that first statement. This is a future you will probably see and experience. It isn't some far distant time that you don't need to worry about because you won't see it. Or problems that you can just leave to your children and descendants to sort out. 30 years is time enough to raise children and get them to child bearing age, but it's not that long. Because think back and you can remember 30 years ago. Remember 2000 and the Millenium and how 2030 felt like the far distant future? Well we're half way there. So is "Business As Usual" sufficiently sustainable that it will keep going for another 30 years? Will 2045 be pretty much like 2015, just more so?
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Karin Curran Yes, please we really, really need Idris Elba, Lone Ranger. So who should play Tonto? Johnny Depp, again? — I grew up in Colorado, which is very much a part of the American West. We learned about all of the famous heroes, villains, and characters of that time not through fiction and westerns, but as part of our history lessons. And yet, with all those stories about Wild Bill Hickok, and Baby Doe Tabor, and Al Swearengen and the whole rest of our somewhat disreputable predecessors, I somehow never heard the story of Bass Reeves: the man behind the tales of the Lone Ranger. My education was clearly deficient.
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Commented on post by Electric Cars Guide in Electric Vehicles (UK)There are two assumptions made by the authors of the study. One – that there will be more than 6 million electric cars in the UK by 2030 and then 23 million by 2050. Second – that most of the energy that will be used to run these cars will be provided by renewable energy. That second one is quite an assumption. Perhaps the first is as well. — Researchers have recently quantified an estimate of the extent of the potential benefits that #UK residents could enjoy if more #electriccars are used in the country. #ElectricCarsGuide  
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Commented on post by Fi Fi in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)Cargo bikes look like an obvious candidate for mid-drives that use the rear gears to increase the effective torque of the motor. Also given that speed is less important. This could be via a Bafang BBS. The frame design above has also got a big space above the stand waiting for a mid motor. The question is whether there are natural chain lines forwards to the crank and backwards to the rear mech and cassette.
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Commented on postIt's worth ignoring the political point scoring in the Daily Kos and going back to the source material here. http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue71/Smith71.pdf China appears to be running out of effluent sinks before it runs out of resources. Or maybe it's just the Limits to Growth prediction playing out that if the resource limits don't get you, the pollution will. I figured China has to recapitulate our industrial revolution with all it's pitfalls but 10 times as fast. The question is what shortcuts get taken along the way and how bad the side effects are before they have effective controls in place to manage them. And how good they are at learning the lessons from the mistakes we made. For instance, we had to turn numerous rivers into open sewers before we could take action and turn them back into rivers again. We had to suffer the miners with black lung, London Smog, and so on and so on, to get to our current HSE rules. To some extent we in the west have exported our pollution problem along with our manufacturing. Now we expect the Chinese to deal with it on our behalf. If they keep growing as fast as they have been, with their foot hard down on the accelerator pedal, then they hit the brick wall first. But we're in the trailer right behind them. 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in EnvironmentSeveral layers back through the links, here's the source material, http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue71/Smith71.pdf — As one Western commentator had it: If China destroys itself faster than we destroy ourselves then we win, right? China appears to be running out of effluent sinks before it runs out of resources. Or maybe it's just the Limits to Growth prediction playing out that if the resource limits don't get you, the pollution will. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/31/1417071/-Much-of-China-Is-Now-An-Unrepairable-Ecological-Disaster
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in EnvironmentWhat's it got to do with the USA? Except in as much as the USA outsourced it's pollution along with it's manufacturing. And yes, I do understand that The Daily Kos spun the story as a critique of unfettered US-style capitalism. But the real story is about China, not about the USA. — As one Western commentator had it: If China destroys itself faster than we destroy ourselves then we win, right? China appears to be running out of effluent sinks before it runs out of resources. Or maybe it's just the Limits to Growth prediction playing out that if the resource limits don't get you, the pollution will. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/31/1417071/-Much-of-China-Is-Now-An-Unrepairable-Ecological-Disaster
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in ResourcesI've long felt that the management summary of LtoG covers just about the minimum set of variables that you can use for modelling. So you can't separate out one variable and argue about it without considering it's interaction with the others. At what point does the pollution problem limit your ability to exploit the remaining resources? But yes, effluent sink limits is a good one. SeeAlso land fill, fracking and groundwater, tar sands, industrial scale meat production, and so on, and so on. — Energy math: Business-as-usual on renewables is really hard. If not impossible
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in ResourcesChina as touchstone for what happens when we hit the limits. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/08/31/1417071/-Much-of-China-Is-Now-An-Unrepairable-Ecological-Disaster?detail=email — Energy math: Business-as-usual on renewables is really hard. If not impossible
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in ResourcesAmong other problems, all current nuclear technologies require a great deal of centralisation and a security state. Moral responsibility for your descendants is interesting. Does it perhaps tail off exponentially? So you have a 100% responsibility for getting your children to child bearing age, but only 50% responsibility in your actions for the survival of your grandchildren? I wonder how that should be factored in to personal economic modelling of the future in an exponential growth world. It ought to be related to the 30[1] year rule where futures of less than 30 years will directly affect you, while anything more than 30 years out can be ignored because it's too far out to matter directly to you. If you're in the prime of life doing stuff, acting on the world, you're probably between 30 and 60. in which case you have personal knowledge of 30 years ago and can expect to still be around in 30 years. You probably have children. You will probably see your grandchildren. So all of this is personal, not hypothetical. Except that this particular 60 year stretch are the interesting times when exponential growth runs up against the resource constraints and the pollution constraints.   30 years, eh. Will 2045 be more of the same and basically like 1985, just more so, or is it the other side of the discontinuity? — Energy math: Business-as-usual on renewables is really hard. If not impossible
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Commented on post by Sandy Dechert in Climate Change+Don Graham 2024? citation needed.
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Commented on post by Kevin J. Rogers in Climate ChangeDoes “This anomaly is well north of the oceanic warming associated with a typical El Niño.” mean geographically to the north, or a greater temperature rise? — “Sea surface temperatures are extremely warm, averaging 2 to 5 degrees above normal,” said meteorologist Chris Robbins, a former NHC forecaster and founder of Robbins Meteorological Consulting and iWeatherNet.com. “This anomaly is well north of the oceanic warming associated with a typical El Niño.”
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle Roadracing+charlie crocker Sorry, mate. Can't get the hang of your banter. Say, what? — So what happened in the 250LC Pro-Am at Silverstone?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle Roadracinghttp://thumbsnap.com/6v6SNvz3 http://tsl-timing.com/event/153551 TL:DR; Niall Mackenzie by 14s. Fastest lap 3m31s — So what happened in the 250LC Pro-Am at Silverstone?
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Commented on post by Dave Kemp in Google+ Updates+Nikita Remez I think he was asking for the ability to email a picture TO photos. Not share a picture FROM photos. — It would be nice to be able to email an image(s) to Google Photos. This was possible with Picasa - an email address unique to the account was assigned. Worked very well.  Missing this feature a lot. Thanks
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Commented on post by Noel Zammit in Electric BikesseeAlso: https://www.electricbike.com/friction-drive/
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Commented on post by Noel Zammit in Electric BikesHave a dig around in here and you'll find several people experimenting with designs like this. Including Kepler. https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=28 One big problem with using RC motors in this environment is the controller. RC controllers are small and light, but they really don't like running at low revs or part throttle. So a major issue has been building add on electronics to keep this under control and provide a UI that's safe for the motor. And the more traditional sensor-less hub motor controllers (Infineon) don't really like powering RC motors. So the noise, tyre wear, wet weather, sealing, cooling issues are really quite small compared with making the damn thing work reliably. Which is a shame because these designs can be very small, light and unobtrusive.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceRe notifications and another example of Google's ADHD, there's a G+ Notifications page at https://plus.google.com/notifications/all Except that the data is always a few days out of date, and AFAIK it's not actually linked from anywhere. "who's the G+ product manager this week?" LOL. — Site metrics and FP Top 100 Global Thinkers +Eric Enge and I have been continuing our occasional exchange on how to measure discussion site activity, he and I having both made our own semi-infamous stabs at measuring activity on G+ to the extent possible. Among other points raised was this: I'm increasingly inclined to believe that the group of Truly Interesting People online is rather more finite than we tend to estimate -- that the combination of intelligence, communications skills, and sheer interest in engaging with hoi polloi and all the frustrations that entails. The notable mark of the elder blogger / online commentator is in large part their absence from any communications. E.g., Clay Shirky hasn't just stopped posting at Ello, he hardly posts anywhere any more, and hasn't much for years. Likewise for numerous others. Further discussion expanding on those reasons. On which one point I'd like to reiterate: the Great Hope of finding untapped outside the developed / OECD world strikes me as both 1) unlikely and 2) not useful. Unlikely not because there's no native brilliance there (though environmental factors such as crushing poverty, malnurishment, and high levels of childhood stress almost certainly don't help), but because such genius often (though not always) finds a way out. We've even got a term for that: Brain Drain. As to the "not useful", it has more to do with diminishing returns to technology and innovation, and applies equally to OECD-native genius. But that did raise the question of who compiles the official list of public intellectuals. Turns out that's a task assumed by Foreign Policy magazine, and its FP Top 100 Global Thinkers list. As with all such things, it's not perfect and I see signs of political motivation and possible ballot stuffing (Bjørn Lomborg, SRSLY? Barak Obama and Ron Paul's brief 2010 appearances, and Thomas Friedman (well, he's public), off the top). A few others I can think of, say, Richard M. Stallman, are excluded. But as things go, it's not a bad list. The top ten 2014 entries:  1. Noam Chomsky  2. Ashraf Ghani  3. Richard Dawkins  4. Václav Havel  5. Christopher Hitchens  6. Paul Krugman  7. Jürgen Habermas  8. Amartya Sen  9. Jared Diamond 10. Salman Rushdie (Other than Habermas, I've at least heard of all, read or listened to several.) Rounding out the tail:  90. Gordon Conway  91. Pavol Demes  92. Elaine Scarry  93. Robert Cooper  94. Harold Varmus  95. Pramoedya Ananta Toer  96. Zheng Bijian  97. Kenichi Ohmae  98. Wang Jisi  99. Kishore Mahbubani 100. Shintaro Ishihara (None of whom is immediately known to me.) It might also be interesting to pair it with an anti-intellectual global 100 (sadly, queries for that phrase show no discerningly compiled tabulations....). The Karadashians, Deepak Chopra, and Rupert Sheldrake, as well as the whole of Fox News, come to mind. If mention of the FP Top 100 are positives, then the latter would deduct from the score. And painfully so. Might be the final push to finally see widespread adoption of the W3C <irony> tag. So here's one proposal for a club whose willingness to have someone like me as a member might not be an instant disqualification: that it have some participation from the likes of those mentioned above. (Worth mention is that Clay Shriky himself weighs in at #67 for 2010.) That might be either direct participation (preferable) or discussion of. And yes, it could be added to by other generally inspirational types (someone you'd want to sit closer to at a party, but to overhear more than to gaze upon). Authors, possibly a few scientists. A very few politicians (most generally don't make the cut). And yeah, measurement of this sort of thing especially on the basis of content is difficult and painful at best, don't get me started. "Lunch pix" and vague one-liners seem a poor candidate for inclusion. Someone like +David Brin or +Yonatan Zunger who actually wade into comments and engage, (neither make the cut, get your votes in, Geeple), far better. It also helps tremendously if those who really have an interest in engaging get the chance to do so. Much as I enjoy Reddit, one of the disappointments of its AMAs is that they're frequently flooded with not-particularly-interesting questions. Running a good Q&A at scale is difficult (I've had experiences running relatively small ones in front of largely well-behaved crowds and even that was a challenge). And no, I'm not saying that all discussion has to be lead by or about this list. But if none is, or worse, the clue flees rapidly then you've got problems. A criticism of mine of Ello is that it did have a fairly hefty crowd of interesting people who I was really happy to be able to follow online. Sadly, all but a couple are now silent for many months. A standing challenge to the Ello crew from me is to figure out how to win them back. Similar criticisms could be made of G+ as well. https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/qNaGY6s0tStDkT5eaubaLg So, that leaves us with "where are the top 100 global thinkers posting online?" I strongly suspect that many have a Facebook presence. How much that's used is another question. Some (sampling from the top ten) are found on G+, in some form, but don't appear active. My earlier metric of counting search results from various domains might prove interesting, though that would measure discussion, not necessarily presence, and be subject to numerous other biases. But, as with the earlier public posts metric, it is accessible. Curious what thoughts +Yonatan Zunger might have as to applications of this to general relevance and/or credibility scoring this might have.
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Commented on post by Aldebaran in MotoGPThe commentators said Jarvis went ballistic with Lorenzo earlier in the year with his helmet malfunction. Questioning his choice of not going for one of the premier brands for the sake of the money. They were expecting another eruption over this. Meanwhile what was up with Dani? Why couldn't he keep up and pass Lorenzo? — Come on...crew!! can anyone fix the visor problems this man is having?
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Commented on post by Aldebaran in MotoGPIdiot Miller crashed again. Why should he have a job next year? — 2 LCR's Down ... Disaster
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Commented on post by Aldebaran in MotoGPIronic if the championship is decided by his choice of helmet manufacturer. — Come on...crew!! can anyone fix the visor problems this man is having?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPWhile I'm having a moan, can we please have pit reaction shots picture in picture in the corner, when there's still major action on the track. — Why do we have to have a different race day schedule for the British GP? Portugal has the same timezone. It can't be the only race that conflicts with an F1 race on the same continent? And anyway, so what. I dislike it!
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Authoritarian RuleSeems to me we need a drone version of robot wars. Flying chainsaws; what could possibly go wrong? — #goingTheWrongWay  
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Authoritarian RuleFrom TFA, "tasers ... stun guns, beanbag rounds, tear gas, and other “less-than-lethal” weapons".  I'm curious about aimed weapons like tasers, stun guns, beanbag rounds. How's that going to work? And I take it we're talking about quadcopters as in the attached images and not Predators patrolling the border. — #goingTheWrongWay  
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Authoritarian RuleThese are not the drones you're looking for. These are Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAV) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_combat_aerial_vehicle Still, at least they're not autonomous. So far. — #goingTheWrongWay  
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsIf Trump is the ultimate troll, the message should be:  "Don't Feed The Donald". — Sincerity (and speaking your mind) is overrated Australian economist Steve Keen: Class was largely open discussion, the instructor rarely engaged. Except for one session, where students were discussing a politician, and said, "Well, at least he's sincere." And the class sort of murmurs, "Oh, yeah, nobody can deny the guy's sincere." The teacher, who normally kept quiet, piped up from the back of the room, "Don't overrate sincerity. The most sincere person you'll meet in your life is the maniac chasing you down the road with an ax trying to chop your head off." At 8 minutes: http://fixyt.com/watch?v=7F2FKxxN_IE
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Commented on post by Mattia Emili in MotoGPExpecting rain, then? — Who Will Win in Silverstone?
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeI'm extremely dubious about this narrative that GDP growth can be decoupled from energy growth. And note that even if the rate of CO2 emissions didn't go up, it's still a huge amount being poured into the atmosphere that the ecosystem can't handle. It's still too fast even if it didn't get any faster. — We don’t have to choose between the economy and our jobs (and our money) and our climate environment https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNXg2jqWEAAj1ZT.png
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Commented on post by Scarfolk CouncilAs would Ivor Cutler — If there were a "Discovering Scarfolk" audiobook who would you like to narrate it? Someone contemporary? A recognisable voice from the '70s?
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Commented on post by Brighton E-bikes in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)I assume that's a derailleur rear gear on your bike. Do you have any problems with changing gear under power? — The newest addition to my Bafanged up Lynskeys On One Inbred. A rather tasty 42 tooth Bling Ring from the lovely people at LEKKIE bike. A 7075AL T6 CNC machined piece of niceness. Ride reports to follow, but it certainly looks pretty bling compared to the stock ring. More Smile per Mile. http://www.brightonebikes.co.uk
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Commented on postSlightly puzzled though. That setting is for email and phone notifications. If they're both turned off does it also remove them from the Plain Old Web Version and the bell in the top right? Re-reading the text and playing with the bell's notification settings, it's not obvious if you can turn off bells for community invites.
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Commented on post by Scarfolk Council+Chris Blackmore Thanks for pointing at that. Still prefer the live Robert Calvert version. There is something very Scarfolk about the lyrics, especially the bits around:- "Every man for himself". Statistically more people survive if they think only of themselves. Do not attempt to rescue friends, relatives, loved ones. — If there were a "Discovering Scarfolk" audiobook who would you like to narrate it? Someone contemporary? A recognisable voice from the '70s?
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Commented on postI'm beginning to think that Google has ADHD. That's the corporation as a whole, not the individuals in it. Although it probably applies to a significant proportion of them as well.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google+A bit more digging turned up an API via Picasa documented here. https://developers.google.com/picasa-web/docs/2.0/reference?hl=en eg http://photos.googleapis.com/data/feed/api/user/[UserID]?access=public&kind=photo&alt=atom http://photos.googleapis.com/data/feed/api/user/106416716945076707395?access=visible&kind=photo&alt=atom This gets part of the way there. But I'm not sure it's providing data about photos uploaded into Google Photos or Drive since the ones I dropped into Picasa. It also provides huge amounts of media:rss data but not a simple bit of html <img> in the <description> tag. Even better is to use the picasaweb versions. eg https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/106416716945076707395/?alt=rss&kind=photo&hl=en_US  and it's more up to date. And the support forum seems to have wandered over here. https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/photos — Google doesn't seem to like RSS/Atom much any more (there's still no feeds from G+). But Is there an RSS/Atom feed for Google Photos? And preferably one that's as easy to use and consume as Flickr's that has content that contains the html to show the photo imgs. And if not, why not? eg.  https://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=83642842@N00&lang=en-us&format=atom
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceI know there's a comments section in there somewhere, but where have they hidden it this time? — Web Annoyances: What the fuck is with auto-advance webpages? +Forbes, yeah, you. So, I'm trying to read a Forbes article. First, there's the usual problem of annoying-ass fucking page design, but, yeah, I can CSS that shit. But: as I page up or page down the article, it flips to another. Oh, and breaks navigation. No, I didn't want to read some other article. I wanted to read the one I headed to in the first place. Oh, and Readability is broken too -- the article text is "false". Oh, fuck me. Dittos on text-only via console browsers. Hey, isn't sending different content to different user-agents a Google search violation? Of course, if http://forbes.com wants to be /etc/hosts blacklisted, I'm down with that. +The New York Times pulls this shit as well, though on left-right scroll (accompanied by really fucking annoyingly off-center page layouts).
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Tech A bit more digging turned up an API via Picasa documented here. https://developers.google.com/picasa-web/docs/2.0/reference?hl=en eg https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/[UserID]?access=public&kind=photo&alt=atom https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/106416716945076707395/?alt=rss&kind=photo&hl=en_US Weirdly, Picasa Web still works better than Google Photos. And the rss link on the page works better than the documentation examples. And uploads to Google Photos seem to auto-magically appear in Picasa. What a mess. And all this despite Google support telling me it's impossible on their support forum.  https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/photos/opCJHLGbioI All they seem to be able to tell anyone is "Post feedback". Which of course makes you feel good but is a write only black hole. — Is there an RSS/Atom feed for Google Photos? And preferably one that's as easy to use and consume as Flickr's that has content that contains the html to show the photo imgs. And if not, why not? eg.  https://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?id=83642842@N00&lang=en-us&format=atom
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in A bit more digging turned up an API via Picasa documented here. https://developers.google.com/picasa-web/docs/2.0/reference?hl=en eg https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/[UserID]?access=public&kind=photo&alt=atom https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/106416716945076707395/?alt=rss&kind=photo&hl=en_US — Google doesn't seem to like RSS/Atom much any more (there's still no feeds from G+). But Is there an RSS/Atom feed for Google Photos? And preferably one that's as easy to use and consume as Flickr's that has content that contains the html to show the photo imgs. And if not, why not? Feeds are the simplest, lowest common denominator for getting content out of Photos and into other systems. eg using http://dlvr.it or iftt to auto-post to other systems. Or to fill a sidebar widget in a personal blog. eg.  https://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?
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Commented on post by Chris Cox in Chromecast CentralHopefully we'll get support for Cast in the Plain Old Web Version soon as well. — SoundCloud's Android app now has Chromecast support!
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric BikesI have a switch for pedelec vs throttle. I tend to use the throttle in town and the pedelec just as a cruise control. It kicks in after about half a turn of the crank. This is with a BPM rear geared hub. The big advantage of mid drive is that the torque available depends on the rear gear chosen. This makes them great for climbing hills as well as for top speed. I'm not hearing of problems with reliability of chains or rear gears. One possible catch is trying to change gear under power. ev3em sell a button kill switch so you can momentarily kill the power while changing gear. — Two new and good articles on Electric Bike .com Big power custom build https://www.electricbike.com/marks-cromotor-phatrod/ Bafang BBS02 review https://www.electricbike.com/bafang-bbso2-750w-mid-drive/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/photos/opCJHLGbioI;context-place=forum/photos — Google doesn't seem to like RSS/Atom much any more (there's still no feeds from G+). But Is there an RSS/Atom feed for Google Photos? And preferably one that's as easy to use and consume as Flickr's that has content that contains the html to show the photo imgs. And if not, why not? Feeds are the simplest, lowest common denominator for getting content out of Photos and into other systems. eg using http://dlvr.it or iftt to auto-post to other systems. Or to fill a sidebar widget in a personal blog. eg.  https://www.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyFact interview with UK independent label heads about starting a label. http://www.factmag.com/2012/06/23/how-to-start-a-record-label/ Alex Waldron (Greco-Roman): “Don’t rely on revenue from music sales to keep afloat. I know that sounds obvious these days, but I don’t think people really realise how little money is generated from this: still no one seems to believe just how few digital sales are generated, how few 12″s are bought, how much music is shared and how much of a piss-take Spotify is. So you better have a Plan B… which is actually your Plan A.” — Brilliant piece by Steven Johnson about why art industries -- such as music, books, film -- did NOT collapse due to digitization as those industries feared. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/magazine/the-creative-apocalypse-that-wasnt.html?_r=0
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Commented on postI can't be bothered with this. Plonk.
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Commented on postI think you should read the non-Libertarian FAQ http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html The law dictionary is referring to US law. We're talking about UK legal definitions. Sorry, mate. Wrong country. The EU and UK have numerous regulations over power and max speed of motorcycles both IC and electric. eg 50cc moped, 125cc learner, quads, trikes and so on. Anything faster and more powerful than an unregulated E-Bicycle falls under these regs. You say you live in Scotland. Do you drive a car? Do you choose to drive with no license, insurance, car tax, MOT because none of these things apply to you because they're legal fictions? I find that hard to believe. Terry Pratchett quotes? Really? FFS.
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Commented on postWe have all the laws to cover any irresponsible use of any contraption that endangered the public already! Yes. And they're called motorcycles. We're talking here about unregulated, untested, unregistered, untaxed, uninsured bicycles. Given the density of traffic and people in the UK, I'm uncomfortable with anything much bigger than 500w-20mph  being treated as a bicycle and uncontrolled. Especially when we already have laws to control 1500w-30mph mopeds. So I can't say I'm that unhappy with the current situation. Seb, I wonder if the Police would have noticed you if you'd been pedalling? It seems likely that the vagueness about hand throttles vs pedelec may get resolved in favour of making non-pedelec illegal. But probably only for new machines. It does give an easy to see pointer for the Police. If it's uphill or on the flat, fast and the rider isn't pedalling it might be worth a collar.
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Commented on postIs this some libertarian bollox? Here's a hint. They've got a bigger stick. The trick is not to come to their attention so they don't start thinking about hitting you with it.
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Commented on post by Feed me Google+RSS3.5 years later and there's still no sign of RSS/Atom from G+ There are a few 3rd party options that more or less work, but I gave up and wrote my own in php. Feel free to use, fork and improve it. https://gist.github.com/julian-bond/3938374 — What’s up ahead for Google+RSS and the Google+ API? The short answer is we don't know, but we think we ought to be given an inkling. Here's some context and a plea… Just over 2 years ago +Jonathan Rosenberg wrote a great Google blog post on ‘The meaning of open’ [A] in which he set out Google's approach to: - Open technology: open standards, open source - Open information: value, transparency and control In commenting on why open systems win he said… "…if you are trying to grow an entire industry as broadly as possible, open systems trump closed. And that is exactly what we are trying to do with the Internet. Our commitment to open systems is not altruistic. Rather it's good business, since an open Internet creates a steady stream of innovations that attracts users and usage and grows the entire industry. " Where are we headed? We’d like to know if Google+ intend to natively support RSS and Atom (an open standard they helped create and that +Tim Bray of Google co-chairs [B]), or are they intent on having all programmatic interactions go through their proprietary API. If it's the latter, they should at least reduce the barrier to entry to using their API by documenting some examples of things people commonly want to do or take a leaf out of +ifttt's book and create some recipes that people can just apply: http://ifttt.com/recipes. So here's our plea: Google please open up and tell us if you will offer Google+RSS natively. If not, why not, and what other Really Simple options will you give us? [A] The meaning of open: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/meaning-of-open.html [B] Atom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(standard) #Atom_0 .3_and_adoption_by_Google Creative Commons road block image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/willienqn/118977188/
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Commented on post by Dylan Cuffy+Dylan Cuffy This is what we're up against. Here's an official communication about groups. Unbelievable. https://getsatisfaction.com/lastfm/topics/missing-social-features groups and their forums are definitely coming back, but they haven't been built yet.  Again, I'm not sure how long this will take, so please bear with us while we restore this feature for you. As an aside, it's worth stressing that the team haven't really worked on groups in over five years (as long as I've been here), so this would be a great time for you to tell us what kind of features and improvements you'd like see.  Fixing the group leaders problem springs to mind, for example. — #WhatLiesAground Speaking of Last.fm Beta: From what I read across past forum threads on the old site in days past, it'll be Myspace all over again if the staff doesn't eventually keep up with the demand. Scores of users, as per usual, are up in arms. How much longer will they survive? On the other hand, I made the best out of the five weeks I ultimately had between my comeback and the relaunch. If you're an old-timer who just stepped back in as well, how about you? At least it paid lots to read the old forums for a glimpse at the hubbub, hubris, and drama surrounding the change-up. If these return, then I'll let you know.
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Commented on post by Andrew HawkinsSigned up in 2004. Used it ever since. Written tools to work with the APIs. I'll be very sorry to see it go. The worst is, I don't know of ANY alternatives. — Does anyone out there (still) use Last.fm? I'm thinking about cancelling my account. It's kinda cool to keep track of the songs you listen to, but the ads are annoying and keeping all of my music apps configured for it seems to be more trouble that it's worth.
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Commented on post by Dylan CuffyAnd it sucks. Just about the worst managed website update I've ever seen. What's really sad is the old forums and groups have gone awol. Signed up in 2004 and have been using it ever since. Written tools to work with the API. — #WhatLiesAground Speaking of Last.fm Beta: From what I read across past forum threads on the old site in days past, it'll be Myspace all over again if the staff doesn't eventually keep up with the demand. Scores of users, as per usual, are up in arms. How much longer will they survive? On the other hand, I made the best out of the five weeks I ultimately had between my comeback and the relaunch. If you're an old-timer who just stepped back in as well, how about you? At least it paid lots to read the old forums for a glimpse at the hubbub, hubris, and drama surrounding the change-up. If these return, then I'll let you know.
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Commented on post by ThePocketTechGuideAnd it sucks. Just about the worst managed website update I've ever seen. — By Nate Swanner After being in an open beta for over two months, Last.fm is finally rolling out its new features to all. The homepage is totally new, promising to surface “all the music you’re sure to love” straight away. The new playbar lets you scrape…
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Commented on post by TNWAnd it sucks. Just about the worst managed website update I've ever seen. — Last.fm is transitioning its cool beta features to an official full release http://tnw.me/7QBNHkM
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Commented on post by Fabian RThis is one of the worst managed website updates I've ever seen. It's hopelessly broken at the moment. Quite apart from the broken API and missing function, what's really sad is the groups/forums have gone AWOL. — Read it and bring back the old design please! +Last.fm 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MusicThis is what we're up against. Here's an official communication about one missing feature. Unbelievable. https://getsatisfaction.com/lastfm/topics/missing-social-features groups and their forums are definitely coming back, but they haven't been built yet.  Again, I'm not sure how long this will take, so please bear with us while we restore this feature for you. As an aside, it's worth stressing that the team haven't really worked on groups in over five years (as long as I've been here), so this would be a great time for you to tell us what kind of features and improvements you'd like see.  Fixing the group leaders problem springs to mind, for example. — It's so sad to watch a web site that you've been using for more than 10 years screw up and slowly destroy all the goodwill they've built up. Come on Last.Fm, please don't fail us now. http://www.last.fm/home They've mistakenly gone live with a complete redesign when the beta clearly wasn't ready yet. And yet again, 10 years of communities and discussions have gone AWOL probably never to re-emerge. It also seems that most of the APIs are currently broken so there's a lot of developer goodwill lost as well. Thanks, CBS.
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyI'm reminded again of Bruce Sterling's comments about musicians. Whatever happens to musicians will eventually happen to everybody. http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/459/State-of-the-World-2013-Bruce-St-page02.html#post38 I don't have the stats to back it up, but my perception is that the "Long Tail" has been skewed. The short head is shorter. Fewer big stars are making less money. The top end of the fat middle is doing a bit better. There's a rise in the number of people just about able to do music and have no proper job. They're not getting wealthy but they're surviving. The bottom end of the fat middle and the long tail is more numerous than ever but basically making no money. There are more people making music than ever before but the vast majority of them are doing it as a hobby that generates a little pocket money or a free festival ticket and that's it. Total all of that together and the music GDP has probably increased. But the internal spread has changed. The Biz only ever made money from the short head and that's not doing as well as it used to. As for me, I hardly spend money on music at all. I spend it on overpriced alcohol at music events. — Brilliant piece by Steven Johnson about why art industries -- such as music, books, film -- did NOT collapse due to digitization as those industries feared. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/magazine/the-creative-apocalypse-that-wasnt.html?_r=0
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Commented on post by Andreas SchouI think the Archdruid is probably right. The thing I take exception to is his timescales. I'm absolutely convinced that Business As Usual cannot be maintained for another 500 years. I'm fairly convinced it can't survive 100 years. I think it will probably avoid falling apart for 50 years at least. So I'll probably be able to enjoy my retirement without having to cope with revolutionary civil war. Depending on where I choose to go next.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThe Chinese haven't bothered as they had all the data already. But Experian did. 
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Commented on post by Ade OshineyeEven if Google don't buy it from CBS, I'd really like to see Google apply the same kind of wiki crowdsourcing and scrobbling to Google Play Music. And tags. And all the other good stuff. Ain't going to happen though.  — There goes the neighbourhood.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MusicSome of the API has come back although the docs are frequently throwing 502, bad gateway. However the V1.0 of the API is MIA. Which is sad as it's a key part of a bit of old flash called Tuneglue for exploring music space. I also used it for the recently listened RSS which doesn't seem to have a V2.0 equivalent since user.recentracks format=rss doesn't seem to work. — It's so sad to watch a web site that you've been using for more than 10 years screw up and slowly destroy all the goodwill they've built up. Come on Last.Fm, please don't fail us now. http://www.last.fm/home They've mistakenly gone live with a complete redesign when the beta clearly wasn't ready yet. And yet again, 10 years of communities and discussions have gone AWOL probably never to re-emerge. It also seems that most of the APIs are currently broken so there's a lot of developer goodwill lost as well. Thanks, CBS.
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Commented on post by Brighton E-bikes in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)Good to see em3ev now have 48t and 52t sprockets with covers. http://em3ev.com/store/index.php?route=product/product&path=46&product_id=193  — The newest addition to my Bafanged up Lynskeys On One Inbred. A rather tasty 42 tooth Bling Ring from the lovely people at LEKKIE bike. A 7075AL T6 CNC machined piece of niceness. Ride reports to follow, but it certainly looks pretty bling compared to the stock ring. More Smile per Mile. http://www.brightonebikes.co.uk
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsDamn, he's good at this epic troll thing. There's a constant stream of meaningless click-bait pouring out of his campaign. — "I'm gonna have to scare the Pope because it's the only thing," Trump said. "The Pope, I hope, can only be scared by God. But the truth is -- you know, if you look at what's going on -- they better hope that capitalism works, because it's the only thing we have right now. And it's a great thing when it works properly." God help us. 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionI'm a bit puzzled why they should shut down. It suggests there's some architectural problem because the running costs shouldn't be more than $10 pm. Or are they paying for all the bandwidth of their customer's downed sites? If I was doing this, the business model would be based on office clearance and second hand Aeron chairs not web service subscriptions. — Shutdownify is shutting down "Shutdown Notice as a Service" startup will cease operations by year's end ...I founded Shutdownify after recognizing an unmet need in the market. Startups that were ceasing operations, whether because of financial distress or an acquisition, faced an unenviable problem: They had to replace their entire site with a shutdown notice in a very limited time window.... Well ... that's a niche. Not much repeat business. Or is there? Also: a company who have adopted a motto from John Maynard Keynes: "In the long run we are all dead". http://www.thecommentator.com/article/3689/john_maynard_keynes_in_the_long_run Hoisted from comments on +Noah Friedman's share, +T. Pascal's earlier inspired take: "With all the talk about services, I offer some novel ideas:..." https://plus.google.com/108463274542772401626/posts/epMbJ8GicQw At HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10088229 http://www.shutdownify.com/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / Surveillancehttp://serverfault.com/questions/118378/in-my-etc-hosts-file-on-linux-osx-how-do-i-do-a-wildcard-subdomain led to a couple of lightweight solutions that support wildcards. A Python DNS proxy http://code.google.com/p/marlon-tools/source/browse/tools/dnsproxy/dnsproxy.py and dnsmasq http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html — This is evil: any way to /etc/hosts block unlimited hosts? I received an email spam (purporting to come from a friend) today, with a URL advertising some crap or another. The initial link was to the following host, now on my blocklist: 0.0.0.0                 http://sztaiyo.com                     # Spam That, however, is a redirector, which happened to resolve, at least this time, to http://862-diet.com-c3d.net The leading '862' raised suspicions, so I ran in bash: for i in {1..1000}; do host $http://i-diet.com-c3d.net; done Actually, to speed things along, what I ended up with was: for i in {1..1000}; do host $http://i-diet.com-c3d.net & sleep 0.1; done Every host resolved (to multiple IPs). The thought struck me that serially scanning the space might prove time-consuming, so I switched tactics: i=2; while host $http://i-diet.com-c3d.net; do i=$( echo "$i^2" | bc ); done That is: search powers of two. bc overflowed before I ran out of hosts. OK, what if I throw random crap at them? for i in {1..100}; do host $(pwgen 20 1)-http://diet.com-c3d.net; done Still resolves (though I'll note at this point, YMMV in terms of1what specific hosts you're going to see): http://ipheega0XaefaiXoshie-diet.com-c3d.net has address 62.109.23.7 http://ipheega0XaefaiXoshie-diet.com-c3d.net has address 103.18.58.13 http://ipheega0XaefaiXoshie-diet.com-c3d.net has address 62.109.23.11 http://ipheega0XaefaiXoshie-diet.com-c3d.net has address 103.18.58.14 http://kuasha6Oot9ahTeig6te-diet.com-c3d.net has address 62.109.23.11 http://kuasha6Oot9ahTeig6te-diet.com-c3d.net has address 103.18.58.14 http://kuasha6Oot9ahTeig6te-diet.com-c3d.net has address 62.109.23.7 http://kuasha6Oot9ahTeig6te-diet.com-c3d.net has address 103.18.58.13 http://wiDa5eezoghooz4MeG0h-diet.com-c3d.net has address 103.18.58.14 http://wiDa5eezoghooz4MeG0h-diet.com-c3d.net has address 62.109.23.7 http://wiDa5eezoghooz4MeG0h-diet.com-c3d.net has address 103.18.58.13 http://wiDa5eezoghooz4MeG0h-diet.com-c3d.net has address 62.109.23.11 Further testing shows that any string of up to 58 characters prefixed to '-http://diet.com-c3d.net' works. Other than firing up a bind9 instance and getting all athoritaytive on .http://com-c3d.net's ass, what are my options here? Yes, they seem to own just the four IPs, though I suspect those are more readily changed than the domain.
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Commented on postWrite once, cross-post everywhere. I wonder how much of his cross posting is automatic. You can do quite a lot with http://dlvr.it and hand crafted G+ to RSS/Atom. But you pretty much have to start with G+ because there's still no Write API. There are some good reasons for archiving all your posts from everywhere on a personally controlled website. This is mainly due to limitations of all the other shared sites but also to avoid your content simply disappearing when $_SHARED_SITE closes down. It does also have a small side benefit of increasing your reach.
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Commented on postThis only works if you ask fundamentally different questions, or questions that result in different answers. I made the mistake of reading the linked article. They successfully replace a stupid question with no answer with one that's even more stupid and has even less of an answer. Arguably, it's exactly the same question. Our strategists are constantly asked: How can we win the war in Iraq? But it is the wrong question, and therefore has no correct answer. ... The real question — the life and death question — is: How can we win the war in the Middle East, which now extends from Afghanistan to Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, and Somalia?
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaI went looking for all this again and repeated a few experiments I did a couple of years back. And found myself in the traditional Google maze of twisty passages all looking the same. I did manage to call from web hangouts to a UK mobile (for money!). I haven't managed to send a TXT on the same route. The help seems to reference a menu option I don't have or can't see. Even in it's current incarnation, I still find Skype a bit more UI consistent. One big problem with Hangouts as with many other current Google products is the mis-matches between desktop web, mobile web, Android and iOS. And the way the help keeps wanting to talk about Android when you're trying to find answers for desktop web. — Google Hangouts: Free Domestic Calls I'm still catching up on news, so haven't seen the announcement, but apparently Google Hangouts is: 1. Independent from G+. 2. Doesn't require the remote party to have a Google / G+ account (this is something I'd strongly recommended ... ages ago) 3. Allows computer-to-landline service. This is combined with free toll rates on domestic calls. Yes, I've got issues with Google's tremendous data-snarfing power. But virtually every telco in existence, and +AT&T and +Verizon in particular, have long mainlined data straight into national security systems. Google seems modestly better about this. Given choices of lesser evils, I might generally support this. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10076696 https://hangouts.google.com/
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in PhotospheresThe spherical image glyph in the summary photo always looks to me like a UFO has landed in the middle of the scene. — Still quite hazy today but the westerly wind is dispersing some of the smoke.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaPlease wake me up when Google's links into POTS are worldwide and not just N America. I might consider things like Voice and Hangouts telephone and SMS support if it was available over here. — Google Hangouts: Free Domestic Calls I'm still catching up on news, so haven't seen the announcement, but apparently Google Hangouts is: 1. Independent from G+. 2. Doesn't require the remote party to have a Google / G+ account (this is something I'd strongly recommended ... ages ago) 3. Allows computer-to-landline service. This is combined with free toll rates on domestic calls. Yes, I've got issues with Google's tremendous data-snarfing power. But virtually every telco in existence, and +AT&T and +Verizon in particular, have long mainlined data straight into national security systems. Google seems modestly better about this. Given choices of lesser evils, I might generally support this. HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10076696 https://hangouts.google.com/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta+John Davidson Unless you have all notification turned off. And there's no notification for one's own comments so no curation for those via gmail. There's only a notification if somebody else comments on your comment. And communities are handled differently. So even if the G+ devs, use G+, have notification to gmail turned on and use that as curation, it still doesn't work for comments. And there's no notification for +1s you do inside G+ (or outside) so no possible curation of your +1s in Gmail. And I also do not want notifications from social networks, including G+, cluttering up my email system. — Death of Google+? Film at 11 The question of G+'s death is being bandied about again, and it's one that deserves asking. I've been behind a fair bit of the discussion myself[1]. I'd also like to add, since the point seems to get lost in discussions: ⚫ I use G+ heavily, and have since early Beta days, June, 2011. ⚫ I find it useful. ⚫ My concerns with G+ and Google fall into three general categories: 1) a failure to live up to expectations for discussion, 2) grave misgivings over privacy and trust, and 3) numerous UI/UX failures. All indicate places Google could improve. And I really wish it would, though four years in, I've largely lost any hope it will. ⚫ I also use several other sites, some heavily, including Reddit, Hacker News, and Ello. Though not Facebook -- my trust issues with it are far greater than with Google. And specifically this: with a highly curated set of profiles followed, and a no-regrets policy to blocking fuckwits[2], the G+ experience can be pretty good. Not excellent, mind. But reasonably compelling. That said... Quantitative numbers for G+ performance and activity have greatly lagged other networks. Over the past year and some, Google have progressively de-emphasized the social network in marketing, discussion, and systems. Playing this as some cryptic sign of strength is profoundly unconvincing. Google have, from the very beginning, been at best coy, and frequently manifestly deceptive in activity, engagement, participation, and referral activity concerning G+. The rationale for my own investigations has been to demonstrate that the numbers are fairly apparent if you look for them. Which means they're simply not fooling anyone who matters. Possibly their own fanatical users, and employees. But not marketers, advertisers, investors, business partners, or competitors. There's the frequent claim that G+ has some hidden strengths. Sadly, if the issue is public discussion, then you do far better to advertise your strengths, loudly. No, Communities aren't some vast wealth of discussion (see previous studies). No, there's not some vast depth of private discussion (though yes, I've found limited private discussion useful). Widespread collaborative discussion tends to strongly favor open rather than closed networks, though not entirely without standards. Noise and referral mechanisms are conspicuously opaque, and always have been.[3] There's the claim that G+ discussion is somehow "better" or "higher quality" than Facebook. I've been taking a stab at a direct measure of "tracking the conversation" on various terms across multiple sites.[4] I've expanded this to a more general "Rating the Socials" study, which compares Google results for the first 36 of Foreign Policy magazine's "FP Top 100 Global Thinkers" on multiple domains[5], vs. a publicly notable woman largely famous for being famous: Rating the Socials: Foreign Policy Top 100 36 Global Thinkers vs. KK https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/OWi0xokvAwo3j-9SYRa5dw (The accompanying image highlights results from this study.) Tested are Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, Google+, LiveJournal, Quora, Metafilter, Medium, and Ello. The first standout result is that, if you're interested in discussion or focused intelligent content, you don't want either G+ or Facebook, but Reddit (discussion) and good old fashioned blogs (content). I'm shocked, shocked to learn that interest-oriented discussion sites favour discussion, and that long-form content sites favour long-form content. There's also what seems to be an opportunity for a system which works far better to tie together disparate blogs with intelligent commentators across the Internet. Oh, say, something like Google Fucking Reader. But no, that had to get killed. I've suggested to Ello's team that they might want to consider the space -- the social graph there is tiny, but the site has numerous features which might make the concept attractive. Another element to come out of Rating the Socials is the FP:KK ratio. That's a comparison of the ratio of FP-36 posts per 1,000 pages (see the report below for why), and the KK posts per 1,000 pages. A higher FP:KK ratio means more FP Global Top 36 results relative to KK. An estimate of total pages per site is obtained using a search for "this" (a common, unbiased, English word). G+, Reddit, and Wordpress all have roughly 1/15 the total page count of Facebook by this metric. The surprise for me is that G+ is far more ass-obsessed than Facebook: a 3.45 KK/1,000pg ratio vs. 0.58 for Team Zuckerberg. This shows in the FP:KK ratio, where Facebook does 5.38x better than G+ in terms of discussing the Global Thinkers. Google's FP:KK ratio is the lowest of the lot. So much for Highbrow.... The best FP:KK ratio by the way: Metafilter, at 32.75. The full list, ranked highest to lowest: ⚫ Metafilter: 32.75 ⚫ Quora: 6.80 ⚫ Reddit: 4.52 ⚫ Wordpress: 2.26 ⚫ Facebook: 2.10 ⚫ Ello: 1.06 (estimated)[6] ⚫ Twitter: 0.94 ⚫ Medium: 0.73 ⚫ LiveJournal: 0.55 ⚫ Google+: 0.39 Of course, raw numbers aren't all there is. There's the question of how accessible content is, and how easy it is to find (though as noted, G+'s Noise, Notifications, and Search weaknesses are substantial). There's the question of how long any given discussion is live. Here G+ has an edge: threads are never locked due to time, though there's a reply-limit maximum of 500 comments. There's the question of domain-expert depth. G+ suffers here in that with what seems to be perhaps 10% the participation of FB, domain experts on any given topic may not be present. Some are (notably in the Linux community), but this tends to be the exception. There's also the question of presentation capabilities. The entire reason I posted my findings to Ello, and not G+, is because of the ability to include tables, multiple images (editable after publishing), sections, lists, inline links, and the like. If I'm going to discuss complex topics, Ello makes a far better blogging platform than G+.[7] Its superior capacity for images and embeds makes it more attractive than Reddit (inline images supported only under the RES browser extensions) or many blogs (independent image hosting required). What would make G+ better? Making it a chosen option rather than a forced one would help a lot. Better publishing tools. Markdown (I requested that of Yonatan years ago). Or better yet: user's choice of markup language, appropriately sanitized. Multi-image support. Embeds. Tables. ***********TRUE FUCKING CONTENT CLASSIFICATION*********** This isn't fucking rocket science. Blogs have had this forever, it's called "tags". A stock set of content tags, and the ability to subscribe to these, would be Really Fucking Slick.[8] Oh, and classification by language (foreign posters may be of interest, their foreign-language posts generally less so, despite G+'s quite good inline translation). By media type (images, animations, video, music). Location, where appropriate. RSS/Atom feeds. Incoming and outgoing. G+-as-feedreader could be a thing. With Sparks (an early feature, long since ditched), it had elements of this. Better Search. The comprehensiveness and speed are good. The specificity and controls are fucking idiotic. The fact that Google launched a service without search capabilities initially still boggles my mind. Curation. 'Nuf said. Interest-graph focus with an author/authority spin. Facebook owns social. Face it, that's going to be reality for a while. Attack Facebook's weaknesses rather than strengths: Real Names mandates, utter lack of privacy controls, morally bankrupt management, floods of irrelevant content. Unfortunately Google's been chasing those taillights instead of taking the winning move: flying the opposite direction at warp speed. Attracting "thought leaders". Not sycophants (Mike Elgan and Jeff Jarvis come to mind). But people who are distinctly and genuinely original. Lower all barriers for them so long as the content is quality. And yes, I count Robert among the good (he's not Einstein, but his posts are interesting, informed, and he engages). This is the same recommendation / challenge I've presented Ello.[9] Why listen to me? I'm a space alien cat. I offer no claims to authority other than my own record, and the data and methods I present. Those last are independently verifiable, and I openly invite others to independently verify (again: kudos to Eric Enge who's actually done that). If you don't care to believe me, fine. I'd suggest however that assume good faith[10]. My views and understanding are based on a mix of experience, on G+ and previously, which admittedly others can't verify, but also some substantial quantitative analysis, which is visible. Draw your own conclusions. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Notes: 1. Estimating G+ User Activity: 4-6 million active posters in January 2015 to date https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/nAya9WqdemIoVuVWVOYQUQ This was the subject of a number of articles in January, 2015. Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting did a far more rigorous follow-up: https://www.stonetemple.com/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on-google-plus/ 2. "This One Trick Will Revolutionize Your Use of Social Media: Block fuckwits." https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/drLZV8sm7Tq 3. Robert Scoble, "Why Yo Daddy Won’t Use Google+: No Noise Control" http://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-yo-daddy-wont-use-google-no-noise-control-2011-7 4. See: "Tracking the Conversation: "Mark Blyth"" https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/rPizdGtcOi1UikLL1k4A1Q "Tracking the Conversation: Postcapitalism" https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/kkfMVN5egp0HsCy5zOmtew The initial inspiration was a search for "Thomas Piketty" across several domains. 5. Why the first 36 and not the full 100? Because the queries are being run by an automated script (10,700 manual queries is a tad obsessive, even for me), and they're rate-throttled to keep from triggering blocks by Google. The process is now working through the 51st name. Still, the first 36 give a pretty good overall ndication. While we're answering whys, why the FP Global 100 and not some other list with $YOUR_PREFERRED_INCLUSIONS? It's arbitrary, but as an extant list drawn from a fairly broad and representative interest group, it's a reasonable proxy for "where is conversation on substantive topics occurring?" Agree or disagree with any one member, if you're talking about them, you're not just talking about the weather (though you might be talking about the climate). 6. I didn't run the full FP100 query over the http://ello.co domain, but instead estimated counts using the top seven names, accounting for 66% of the hits for the FP36. Pope Francis was added to Pope Benedict given timeframe (Benedict's papacy ended prior to Ello's launch), which highly favours Ello (47% of total hits are Francis). Take with much salt. Ello's tiny, thatsthepoint.jpg. 7. For a discussion of strengths, see: "Ello As Blog / Publishing Platform" https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/HN7ZS4dFJDWsSq3JayVIbg Yes, changing the present site styling would be a major win. I've [written my own](http://stylebot.me/styles/9519) which I consider to be a massive improvement. I also have my own CSS for G+, whose stock UI is awful, and whose underlying CSS is an unmitigated clusterfuck. Google's use of Closure CSS minification is a category error. A better Markdown parser (more complete, fewer bugs) is also high on my list. 8. Yeah, something else I've written about: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/FTpX7LWNFjtOpYGu5xRkHg For what's wrong with G+ "Collections", admittedly a start though a bad one: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/gdidy2f4MTuS8zpxiUKSGQ 9. "This is a challenge to the Ello team (and Ello members)" https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/qNaGY6s0tStDkT5eaubaLg 10. See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith Also: "Our social policies are not a suicide pact" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Our_social_policies_are_not_a_suicide_pact You're welcome to drop the assumption if you've found compelling reason to show it unwarranted. Though I've seen far too many attacks based on prior frames and lenses which my counterpary won't drop.
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyI need to see a moebius strip of train track. Of course the train would have to end up upside down so would need some kind of monorail attachment. — Perfect hack. 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaRe RSS feeds. There's a hole in the market for a Friendfeed replacement. There's also potential in the Profile|About|Links section to show most recent post from each link in the style of one of the standard Blogger blog-roll widgets. Tags are old now. David Weinberger's book http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Is-Miscellaneous-Digital-Disorder/dp/0805088113 was 2008 and we were talking extensively about them in 2005.  http://del.icio.us was launched in 2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicious_(website) since http://del.icio.us was absorbed by Yahoo, ignored and then resold, it's efffectively died. It's another idea that is simply AWOL and deserves to be re-invented. "Tag" systems are quite hard both from a UI and from a data architecture POV. I think it's important to make it really easy to re-use tags you've used before. This was a very early lesson also learnt by http://last.fm[1]  While we're talking about missing G+ function. It's simply unbelievable that there's still no way of tracking what G+ posts/comments you've (or they've) +1ed and no way of tracking your and their comments. [1]Google Play Music? Another Google site that makes me angry because it's quite good but broken in really annoying ways and suffering from lack of internal love. While CBS has dropped the ball with http://last.fm. — Death of Google+? Film at 11 The question of G+'s death is being bandied about again, and it's one that deserves asking. I've been behind a fair bit of the discussion myself[1]. I'd also like to add, since the point seems to get lost in discussions: ⚫ I use G+ heavily, and have since early Beta days, June, 2011. ⚫ I find it useful. ⚫ My concerns with G+ and Google fall into three general categories: 1) a failure to live up to expectations for discussion, 2) grave misgivings over privacy and trust, and 3) numerous UI/UX failures. All indicate places Google could improve. And I really wish it would, though four years in, I've largely lost any hope it will. ⚫ I also use several other sites, some heavily, including Reddit, Hacker News, and Ello. Though not Facebook -- my trust issues with it are far greater than with Google. And specifically this: with a highly curated set of profiles followed, and a no-regrets policy to blocking fuckwits[2], the G+ experience can be pretty good. Not excellent, mind. But reasonably compelling. That said... Quantitative numbers for G+ performance and activity have greatly lagged other networks. Over the past year and some, Google have progressively de-emphasized the social network in marketing, discussion, and systems. Playing this as some cryptic sign of strength is profoundly unconvincing. Google have, from the very beginning, been at best coy, and frequently manifestly deceptive in activity, engagement, participation, and referral activity concerning G+. The rationale for my own investigations has been to demonstrate that the numbers are fairly apparent if you look for them. Which means they're simply not fooling anyone who matters. Possibly their own fanatical users, and employees. But not marketers, advertisers, investors, business partners, or competitors. There's the frequent claim that G+ has some hidden strengths. Sadly, if the issue is public discussion, then you do far better to advertise your strengths, loudly. No, Communities aren't some vast wealth of discussion (see previous studies). No, there's not some vast depth of private discussion (though yes, I've found limited private discussion useful). Widespread collaborative discussion tends to strongly favor open rather than closed networks, though not entirely without standards. Noise and referral mechanisms are conspicuously opaque, and always have been.[3] There's the claim that G+ discussion is somehow "better" or "higher quality" than Facebook. I've been taking a stab at a direct measure of "tracking the conversation" on various terms across multiple sites.[4] I've expanded this to a more general "Rating the Socials" study, which compares Google results for the first 36 of Foreign Policy magazine's "FP Top 100 Global Thinkers" on multiple domains[5], vs. a publicly notable woman largely famous for being famous: Rating the Socials: Foreign Policy Top 100 36 Global Thinkers vs. KK https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/OWi0xokvAwo3j-9SYRa5dw (The accompanying image highlights results from this study.) Tested are Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, Google+, LiveJournal, Quora, Metafilter, Medium, and Ello. The first standout result is that, if you're interested in discussion or focused intelligent content, you don't want either G+ or Facebook, but Reddit (discussion) and good old fashioned blogs (content). I'm shocked, shocked to learn that interest-oriented discussion sites favour discussion, and that long-form content sites favour long-form content. There's also what seems to be an opportunity for a system which works far better to tie together disparate blogs with intelligent commentators across the Internet. Oh, say, something like Google Fucking Reader. But no, that had to get killed. I've suggested to Ello's team that they might want to consider the space -- the social graph there is tiny, but the site has numerous features which might make the concept attractive. Another element to come out of Rating the Socials is the FP:KK ratio. That's a comparison of the ratio of FP-36 posts per 1,000 pages (see the report below for why), and the KK posts per 1,000 pages. A higher FP:KK ratio means more FP Global Top 36 results relative to KK. An estimate of total pages per site is obtained using a search for "this" (a common, unbiased, English word). G+, Reddit, and Wordpress all have roughly 1/15 the total page count of Facebook by this metric. The surprise for me is that G+ is far more ass-obsessed than Facebook: a 3.45 KK/1,000pg ratio vs. 0.58 for Team Zuckerberg. This shows in the FP:KK ratio, where Facebook does 5.38x better than G+ in terms of discussing the Global Thinkers. Google's FP:KK ratio is the lowest of the lot. So much for Highbrow.... The best FP:KK ratio by the way: Metafilter, at 32.75. The full list, ranked highest to lowest: ⚫ Metafilter: 32.75 ⚫ Quora: 6.80 ⚫ Reddit: 4.52 ⚫ Wordpress: 2.26 ⚫ Facebook: 2.10 ⚫ Ello: 1.06 (estimated)[6] ⚫ Twitter: 0.94 ⚫ Medium: 0.73 ⚫ LiveJournal: 0.55 ⚫ Google+: 0.39 Of course, raw numbers aren't all there is. There's the question of how accessible content is, and how easy it is to find (though as noted, G+'s Noise, Notifications, and Search weaknesses are substantial). There's the question of how long any given discussion is live. Here G+ has an edge: threads are never locked due to time, though there's a reply-limit maximum of 500 comments. There's the question of domain-expert depth. G+ suffers here in that with what seems to be perhaps 10% the participation of FB, domain experts on any given topic may not be present. Some are (notably in the Linux community), but this tends to be the exception. There's also the question of presentation capabilities. The entire reason I posted my findings to Ello, and not G+, is because of the ability to include tables, multiple images (editable after publishing), sections, lists, inline links, and the like. If I'm going to discuss complex topics, Ello makes a far better blogging platform than G+.[7] Its superior capacity for images and embeds makes it more attractive than Reddit (inline images supported only under the RES browser extensions) or many blogs (independent image hosting required). What would make G+ better? Making it a chosen option rather than a forced one would help a lot. Better publishing tools. Markdown (I requested that of Yonatan years ago). Or better yet: user's choice of markup language, appropriately sanitized. Multi-image support. Embeds. Tables. ***********TRUE FUCKING CONTENT CLASSIFICATION*********** This isn't fucking rocket science. Blogs have had this forever, it's called "tags". A stock set of content tags, and the ability to subscribe to these, would be Really Fucking Slick.[8] Oh, and classification by language (foreign posters may be of interest, their foreign-language posts generally less so, despite G+'s quite good inline translation). By media type (images, animations, video, music). Location, where appropriate. RSS/Atom feeds. Incoming and outgoing. G+-as-feedreader could be a thing. With Sparks (an early feature, long since ditched), it had elements of this. Better Search. The comprehensiveness and speed are good. The specificity and controls are fucking idiotic. The fact that Google launched a service without search capabilities initially still boggles my mind. Curation. 'Nuf said. Interest-graph focus with an author/authority spin. Facebook owns social. Face it, that's going to be reality for a while. Attack Facebook's weaknesses rather than strengths: Real Names mandates, utter lack of privacy controls, morally bankrupt management, floods of irrelevant content. Unfortunately Google's been chasing those taillights instead of taking the winning move: flying the opposite direction at warp speed. Attracting "thought leaders". Not sycophants (Mike Elgan and Jeff Jarvis come to mind). But people who are distinctly and genuinely original. Lower all barriers for them so long as the content is quality. And yes, I count Robert among the good (he's not Einstein, but his posts are interesting, informed, and he engages). This is the same recommendation / challenge I've presented Ello.[9] Why listen to me? I'm a space alien cat. I offer no claims to authority other than my own record, and the data and methods I present. Those last are independently verifiable, and I openly invite others to independently verify (again: kudos to Eric Enge who's actually done that). If you don't care to believe me, fine. I'd suggest however that assume good faith[10]. My views and understanding are based on a mix of experience, on G+ and previously, which admittedly others can't verify, but also some substantial quantitative analysis, which is visible. Draw your own conclusions. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Notes: 1. Estimating G+ User Activity: 4-6 million active posters in January 2015 to date https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/nAya9WqdemIoVuVWVOYQUQ This was the subject of a number of articles in January, 2015. Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting did a far more rigorous follow-up: https://www.stonetemple.com/real-numbers-for-the-activity-on-google-plus/ 2. "This One Trick Will Revolutionize Your Use of Social Media: Block fuckwits." https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/drLZV8sm7Tq 3. Robert Scoble, "Why Yo Daddy Won’t Use Google+: No Noise Control" http://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-yo-daddy-wont-use-google-no-noise-control-2011-7 4. See: "Tracking the Conversation: "Mark Blyth"" https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/rPizdGtcOi1UikLL1k4A1Q "Tracking the Conversation: Postcapitalism" https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/kkfMVN5egp0HsCy5zOmtew The initial inspiration was a search for "Thomas Piketty" across several domains. 5. Why the first 36 and not the full 100? Because the queries are being run by an automated script (10,700 manual queries is a tad obsessive, even for me), and they're rate-throttled to keep from triggering blocks by Google. The process is now working through the 51st name. Still, the first 36 give a pretty good overall ndication. While we're answering whys, why the FP Global 100 and not some other list with $YOUR_PREFERRED_INCLUSIONS? It's arbitrary, but as an extant list drawn from a fairly broad and representative interest group, it's a reasonable proxy for "where is conversation on substantive topics occurring?" Agree or disagree with any one member, if you're talking about them, you're not just talking about the weather (though you might be talking about the climate). 6. I didn't run the full FP100 query over the http://ello.co domain, but instead estimated counts using the top seven names, accounting for 66% of the hits for the FP36. Pope Francis was added to Pope Benedict given timeframe (Benedict's papacy ended prior to Ello's launch), which highly favours Ello (47% of total hits are Francis). Take with much salt. Ello's tiny, thatsthepoint.jpg. 7. For a discussion of strengths, see: "Ello As Blog / Publishing Platform" https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/HN7ZS4dFJDWsSq3JayVIbg Yes, changing the present site styling would be a major win. I've [written my own](http://stylebot.me/styles/9519) which I consider to be a massive improvement. I also have my own CSS for G+, whose stock UI is awful, and whose underlying CSS is an unmitigated clusterfuck. Google's use of Closure CSS minification is a category error. A better Markdown parser (more complete, fewer bugs) is also high on my list. 8. Yeah, something else I've written about: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/FTpX7LWNFjtOpYGu5xRkHg For what's wrong with G+ "Collections", admittedly a start though a bad one: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/gdidy2f4MTuS8zpxiUKSGQ 9. "This is a challenge to the Ello team (and Ello members)" https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/qNaGY6s0tStDkT5eaubaLg 10. See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith Also: "Our social policies are not a suicide pact" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Our_social_policies_are_not_a_suicide_pact You're welcome to drop the assumption if you've found compelling reason to show it unwarranted. Though I've seen far too many attacks based on prior frames and lenses which my counterpary won't drop.
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Commented on post by Catherine He in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)Not the fat tyres but the size of the rear hub. It looks like one of the smaller Bafangs or similar that are normally rated at 250w and smaller than the BPM (350w-500w) because the rear sprockets are almost as big. But it's a small photo so hard to tell exactly. — fat tire ebikes with powerful motor and big capacity battery.
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Commented on postIt's not the rogue machines, it's rogue machines being ridden in a way that calls attention to themselves. It's why I'm really against E-Assist bicycles that look like 50cc scooters with vestigial pedals.
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Commented on post by Catherine He in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)Where is this powerful motor? That looks like a 250w hub motor. — fat tire ebikes with powerful motor and big capacity battery.
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Commented on postPlease, take the piss quietly and get away with it. If you look like a bicycle doing bicycle like things below 25mph or so on the road, nobody will bother you. If you ride like it's a motorcycle at 30mph plus without pedalling, you're taking the piss and will eventually have to justify it in court or accept the punishments. If that results in the rest of us having to justify ourselves and a clamp down on more or less legal devices, I for one, will be pissed at you. I'd much rather have an effectively un-regulated, un-controlled, un-enforced  environment where everyone just turns a blind eye. If too many of us take the piss, we might lose that. Oh, and btw, mass civil disobedience rarely works.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in For the Love of ScienceThere's a zombie joke in here somewhere. If an octopus has a significant part of it's brain in it's tentacles, that means that most recipes for Octopus involve eating deep fried brains. — Read the article. It's great, and provides a rare, in-depth look into an 'alien' creature from this planet. They have big, complex nervous systems with a donut-shaped brain that runs around their esophagus. Also they have three hearts. It's the nervous system that I find particularly interesting. It's a fundamentally different architecture (lacking myelin and the ability to scale long distances) than our own and yet still results in an amazingly intelligent creature. The most notable expansion was in the protocadherins, a family of genes that regulate neuronal development and short-range interactions between neurons. The octopus genome contains 168 protocadherin genes – 10 times more than other invertebrates and more than twice as many as mammals. It was previously thought that only vertebrates possessed numerous and diverse protocadherin genes. The research team hypothesized that because cephalopod neurons lack myelin and function poorly over long distances, protocadherins were central to the evolution of a nervous system whose complexity depends on short-range interactions. #octopus #intelligence
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Truth & EpistemologyNo mention of The Onion? I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you. Or The Mail for that matter. I wonder where this fits with the obsession with "Fair and Balanced" journalism. IMHO, all news sources are biased and the trick is to read them allowing for the bias rather than expecting them to simply report the news without editorialising it. — Trust in Media +Pew Research Center survey (October, 2014) on trusted news sources, by political ideology. Much commented that the WSJ's trust is apparently across the board. Fairly predictable left/right splits on most sources, more focus on who conservatives trust (and those sources tend to be batshit nuts). My own view is that NPR, BBC, and the Economist are all sharply pro-business in bias. Pew's link: http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/pj_14-10-21_mediapolarization-01/ Full report: "Political Polarization & Media Habits" http://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/ See +Yonatan Zunger's post and commentary/comments https://plus.google.com/u/0/+YonatanZunger/posts/Zaf13huBwcq And +Alex Schleber's / Totalitarian Monitor: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AlexSchleber/posts/YkP5WV3D26P
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Mixology 🍸Yes, the Rusty Spoon is good. 35ml your fav London Dry Gin 35ml Bermondsey Tonic Syrup 1 generous squeeze of Lime 1 Dash of Angostura Over rocks in a rocks glass. Lime garnish. — Got some Bermondsey Tonic Syrup today from the East London Liquor Company in Hackney, London. 50ml Adnams Copper House Gin 25ml Bermondsey Tonic Syrup 100ml Soda water Makes a damn fine G&T. It ends up something like Fevertree but with some woody notes and a bit more bitterness. Recommended. The brown colour comes from the Cinchona bark that is unfiltered. Some might find that a bit off putting! They also suggest a short cocktail, 35ml Gin, 35ml BTW syrup, dash of bitters and lime. It'll be interesting to see how that works out. Google doesn't seem to like me posting links to alcohol so find it at btw-drinks dot com Also picked up a bottle of the ELL's standard London Dry Gin but I haven't tried that yet. Adnams is a long established brewery of real ale on the East Anglian coast. In the last few years they've branched out into Gin, Vodka, Rum and even a fortified 20% ale thing. They're gin is lovely both in standard 40% and export 47% versions.
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPhttp://www.crash.net/motogp/news/221959/1/pedrosa-in-pain-after-fork-oil-fall.html Today it was oil leaking from a fork. In the past it was a stuck throttle. Dani does have a lot of bad luck. If it's not other people scooping him up, it's his own mechanics. — This is exactly why my head was pounding by the time the race was over!!! Screaming at Dani to not lose that podium spot to Rossi (as if he could hear me..lol)! I can tell you what the writers won't.......Dani Pedrosa is one unhappy dude! He is miserable in the garage and he does not care one bit for his fans......It is sad to watch.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeI think the Tories are going to come unstuck over this. The same Tory voters who oppose on-shore wind farms because NIMBY will be against fracking under their land. Especially if the industrial scale installation is just down the road on the way to the Waitrose and garden centre.  That's pretty much the whole of the south and south midlands as well as anywhere else with wealthy land owners. Perhaps they should just re-open the coal mines. — Daisy Sands, Greenpeace head of energy campaigns said in a statement: "There is a clear double standard at play - the same government that is intent on driving through fracking at whatever cost has just given more powers to local councils to oppose wind farms." #UK #Fracking
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillancePart of the challenge of searching for very early posts was trying to remember what email address I was using then. I've had pretty much the same one since 1997 and only really had one before that. Sharing a name with a prominent US politician doesn't help with searches! I think my first dial up internet account using Trumpet Winsock was late 1993 or early 4. Certainly pre-Netscape as the first browser I fired up was Cello. So much has simply disappeared. Try finding your first post on Orkut, Buzz, Friendster, Friends Reunited, Livejournal, etc.  — Online Public Activity: Usenet, 2002 So, I've been tracking total online activity for a while, across a number of different platforms. One aspect that seems to keep turning up is that there's a fairly small set of active public posters, especially when you consider the size of various networks. There've been two bits of information that have eluded me for some time. One is a tally of total Usenet activity at its peak -- I'd been focusing more on the pre-Eternal September era (1993), though later's not all that bad either. I'm somewhat known for suggesting that the monthly active public posting G+ population is closer to 6-12 million than the 300 million Google had long claimed. Some support for this appears in Bradley Horowitz's recent announcement post in which he noted that G+ was used by "millons" -- not tens or hundreds of millions, but just plain old "millions" of users. The other piece of information is a bit of research that looked into patterns of activity in Usenet (a sort of early Facebook), particularly looking at patterns of replies within message threads. I'd remembered seeing something from Microsoft in the late 1990s / early 2000s, but couldn't track it down. My Search-Fu has improved. Turns out both are in the same source: Mark Smith, of Microsoft research, and the (apparently now defunct) "Netscan" project.   "Newsmaker:  Microsoft's in-house sociologist" http://web.archive.org/web/20070320071108/http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065298.html Smith's idea is that you can tell a lot about the quality of data by tracking its newsgroup contributors' social habits--a notion that holds promise for sorting through millions of messages, and peril for a online world increasingly skittish about invasions of privacy. Incidentally, he gives a number for 2002 Usenet engagement. And you'll never guess what it was: Q: My impression was that the use of e-mail lists was on the decline. To the contrary  It's on the rise. Usenet alone--which is a backwater in that most people don't know where it is and how to find it--on Usenet alone there were 13.1 million unique identities who used Usenet in 2002, and by that we mean that they were a contributor and wrote at least one message. How many people read the message? We have no idea. That number is invisible and is fragmented over a half-million servers that are not sharing their data. But conservatively you could estimate that there are 10 readers for every writer, so that makes it 130 million Usenet users per year. That's ... ***AWFULLY*** similar to the number of people actively and publicly using G+. Maybe, just... maybe, there's a global Public Online Discussion Saturation Point? Hrm? A few additional resources: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/coet/01-94.doc ftp://ftp.cs.washington.edu/tr/2005/06/UW-CSE-05-06-05.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/72926/cikm585s-fortuna07.pdf #Usenet   #Plussology   #ImNotDeadYet   #TrackingTheConversation  
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGP+Douglas Knoyle I was looking this morning for old posts on rec.motorcycles.racing There were a whole bunch of people on there complaining about how the 800cc Honda was built around Pedrosa and Nicky was left out to dry despite being their current world champion. I never really bought into that argument even then. Since then a Pro-Hayden, Pro-USA, Anti-Pedrosa, Anti-Spain argument just comes and goes on places like http://crash.net. It's not a big deal any more, but it definitely was. In the same way as a lot of Brits took against Stoner for being a whingeing Aussie. Not because the crowd shouldn't have booed him, because of his reaction. It's only now that he's left that they're beginning to warm to him again. We're a fickle lot of bastards that don't forget! — This is exactly why my head was pounding by the time the race was over!!! Screaming at Dani to not lose that podium spot to Rossi (as if he could hear me..lol)! I can tell you what the writers won't.......Dani Pedrosa is one unhappy dude! He is miserable in the garage and he does not care one bit for his fans......It is sad to watch.
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGP+Ron Breau That was 6 years ago, if it even happened. That's a long standing grudge you've got there. Time to get over it? — This is exactly why my head was pounding by the time the race was over!!! Screaming at Dani to not lose that podium spot to Rossi (as if he could hear me..lol)! I can tell you what the writers won't.......Dani Pedrosa is one unhappy dude! He is miserable in the garage and he does not care one bit for his fans......It is sad to watch.
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in For the Love of ScienceFound it. The octopus can see with its skin. http://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/may/20/octopus-skin-contains-light-sensors — Read the article. It's great, and provides a rare, in-depth look into an 'alien' creature from this planet. They have big, complex nervous systems with a donut-shaped brain that runs around their esophagus. Also they have three hearts. It's the nervous system that I find particularly interesting. It's a fundamentally different architecture (lacking myelin and the ability to scale long distances) than our own and yet still results in an amazingly intelligent creature. The most notable expansion was in the protocadherins, a family of genes that regulate neuronal development and short-range interactions between neurons. The octopus genome contains 168 protocadherin genes – 10 times more than other invertebrates and more than twice as many as mammals. It was previously thought that only vertebrates possessed numerous and diverse protocadherin genes. The research team hypothesized that because cephalopod neurons lack myelin and function poorly over long distances, protocadherins were central to the evolution of a nervous system whose complexity depends on short-range interactions. #octopus #intelligence
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPWill Dani win a race this year? I think it might just be the first year of his career when he doesn't. And actually it might just be that like Gibernau, he never wins another one. I find that a bit sad. There's a lot of USA fans that have never forgiven him for knocking off Hayden all those years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if he's just sick of that and it comes out in his attitude when he's in the USA.  — This is exactly why my head was pounding by the time the race was over!!! Screaming at Dani to not lose that podium spot to Rossi (as if he could hear me..lol)! I can tell you what the writers won't.......Dani Pedrosa is one unhappy dude! He is miserable in the garage and he does not care one bit for his fans......It is sad to watch.
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Commented on postThe UK is currently proposing a control of drugs law based on a white list. Any psycho-active chemical would be illegal and controlled except for a named list; alcohol, nicotine, caffeine. This is aimed at new chemicals emerging out of Shulgin's work (TIKHAL, PIHKAL) along with things like Somalian Khat, but of course has numerous unforeseen consequences. Like making Cream Whippers illegal. It's not clear if the evil Theresa May can ram this through parliament on the back of the Tories small majority but the forces of Awe and Boredom seem determined to try with the help of the gutter press.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceQuite a lot of early Usenet seems to have gone missing. I know I was posting a lot in the mid 90s, but Google's store in googlegroups seems to have lost it all. Their search seems curiously broken as well. I can no longer see any way of bringing up advanced search tools or changing sort order. — Online Public Activity: Usenet, 2002 So, I've been tracking total online activity for a while, across a number of different platforms. One aspect that seems to keep turning up is that there's a fairly small set of active public posters, especially when you consider the size of various networks. There've been two bits of information that have eluded me for some time. One is a tally of total Usenet activity at its peak -- I'd been focusing more on the pre-Eternal September era (1993), though later's not all that bad either. I'm somewhat known for suggesting that the monthly active public posting G+ population is closer to 6-12 million than the 300 million Google had long claimed. Some support for this appears in Bradley Horowitz's recent announcement post in which he noted that G+ was used by "millons" -- not tens or hundreds of millions, but just plain old "millions" of users. The other piece of information is a bit of research that looked into patterns of activity in Usenet (a sort of early Facebook), particularly looking at patterns of replies within message threads. I'd remembered seeing something from Microsoft in the late 1990s / early 2000s, but couldn't track it down. My Search-Fu has improved. Turns out both are in the same source: Mark Smith, of Microsoft research, and the (apparently now defunct) "Netscan" project.   "Newsmaker:  Microsoft's in-house sociologist" http://web.archive.org/web/20070320071108/http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065298.html Smith's idea is that you can tell a lot about the quality of data by tracking its newsgroup contributors' social habits--a notion that holds promise for sorting through millions of messages, and peril for a online world increasingly skittish about invasions of privacy. Incidentally, he gives a number for 2002 Usenet engagement. And you'll never guess what it was: Q: My impression was that the use of e-mail lists was on the decline. To the contrary  It's on the rise. Usenet alone--which is a backwater in that most people don't know where it is and how to find it--on Usenet alone there were 13.1 million unique identities who used Usenet in 2002, and by that we mean that they were a contributor and wrote at least one message. How many people read the message? We have no idea. That number is invisible and is fragmented over a half-million servers that are not sharing their data. But conservatively you could estimate that there are 10 readers for every writer, so that makes it 130 million Usenet users per year. That's ... ***AWFULLY*** similar to the number of people actively and publicly using G+. Maybe, just... maybe, there's a global Public Online Discussion Saturation Point? Hrm? A few additional resources: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/coet/01-94.doc ftp://ftp.cs.washington.edu/tr/2005/06/UW-CSE-05-06-05.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/72926/cikm585s-fortuna07.pdf #Usenet   #Plussology   #ImNotDeadYet   #TrackingTheConversation  
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in For the Love of ScienceLovely Peter Watts vignette. http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=5875 Riffing on the way they have distributed intelligence into each arm. Then there's the photo-receptor thing. Octopi have an eye. But they also have photo-receptors all over their bodies that are used to sense their surroundings and apply the skin colour changing camo. — Read the article. It's great, and provides a rare, in-depth look into an 'alien' creature from this planet. They have big, complex nervous systems with a donut-shaped brain that runs around their esophagus. Also they have three hearts. It's the nervous system that I find particularly interesting. It's a fundamentally different architecture (lacking myelin and the ability to scale long distances) than our own and yet still results in an amazingly intelligent creature. The most notable expansion was in the protocadherins, a family of genes that regulate neuronal development and short-range interactions between neurons. The octopus genome contains 168 protocadherin genes – 10 times more than other invertebrates and more than twice as many as mammals. It was previously thought that only vertebrates possessed numerous and diverse protocadherin genes. The research team hypothesized that because cephalopod neurons lack myelin and function poorly over long distances, protocadherins were central to the evolution of a nervous system whose complexity depends on short-range interactions. #octopus #intelligence
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Commented on post by Siddharth Bandhu in ChromecastGood. Hopefully the Plain Old Web version will get Chromecast support soon as well. — Soundcloud
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Commented on post by Khanin the Uhnahkian in ChromecastAn officially approved method of casting audio to an audio only amp. — If there is Chromecast 2 or something of the sort, what would it bring and would it be worth the upgrade? Also, would it be more expensive or cheaper?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)And yet, there's a huge number of single person journeys that only require room for 4 bags of groceries. Then there's the increasing need to support invalid-old age scooters. Perhaps we should be designing cities and towns to be more golf-cart friendly for an ageing population. I live near Stevenage and Harlow. Both towns are very well served with segregated pedestrian-cycling paths. However they are also designed around large scale car ownership, so although the off road paths do get used they're pretty empty except at school chucking out time. — I've just been reminded of a post of mine from 2012 about E-Velomobiles. https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/bSnwp6n5TA2 I think we need more electric Velomobiles on the roads. It's just a shame that they really don't fit existing US and EU regulations. Perhaps they could be licensed as Quads, but I suspect there's still a whole load of awkwardness around insurance, let alone TUV and MOT testing. I think something that can do 50mph should require safety checking, be licensed and insured, but I also want this to be easy for one-off or low production quantities. There's a Velo that I occasionally see around here in Hertfordshire. They're surprisingly tiny. I'm not at all sure how well it mixes with the BMWs, Audis and all the SUVs being driven aggressively by the locals. Let alone the tipper aggregate trucks.  I'm really not sure 2015 UK roads and traffic can cope with these sort of small slow, low tech vehicles. And last weekend I was in deepest Oxfordshire and came across a bunch of cyclists waving to get mme to slow down, because hidden around the bend on the single track road was a couple of trikes struggling slowly up the hill. Electric power would have really helped them and made them somewhat safer.  http://www.icebike.org/30-iconic-velomobile-designs-from-the-past-85-years/ http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2012/10/electric-velomobiles.html http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/09/the-velomobile-high-tech-bike-or-low-tech-car.html http://www.velomobiles.co.uk/
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeNote that Food production and Population are just two factors in the Limits to Growth graphs. The models are more complex than that.  http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2846/28462101.jpg
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeAnd 1 Billion by 2100. I'm trying to believe that a soft landing is possible where this happens gradually and relatively painlessly. The worry is that business as usual continues for too long and the scale of the overshoot and collapse result in a dramatic hard landing.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Authoritarian RuleI should note that I've also got away with a speeding ticket in Massachusetts because, I was driving somebody else's car, I'd left my passport 20 miles away by mistake, my name was J Bond, and I spoke with a posh English boarding school accent. Clearly booking me was going to cause way too much trouble and paperwork. — I reshared one of Rall's earlier posts about this, but I think the questions he asks in panel 4 kind of clarify the issue. Why did this audio recording suddenly materialize 14 years later? Why did the Times accept it, vague and noisy as it was, as conclusive proof? Why were they uninterested in discussing the matter further when the cleaned-up version of the tape contradicted the police's claims about it? This stinks of authoritarians at work: we do what we must, because we can, and you'd better like it.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in History/sub — I'm busy this week (and the next, and the next) with a whole bunch of privacy reviews. Does anyone want to write a history of medieval Persian, Turkish, and Kurdish ethno-religious communist movements for me? Topics to cover: Mazdakism, Qarmatians, Khurramites, and Qizbilashis.  Alternatively, just tell me something that you know that I don't. 
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Authoritarian RuleJaywalking. Way back in the day when I was hitch-hiking around the West Coast (aged ~23), I found myself in Oakland and was walking to the BART for a day in central SF. There was a junction, a motorcycle in the far distance with no other traffic visible but the light was against me. Like any normal Englishman, I just crossed the road. The motorcycle accelerates hard towards me comes to a screeching halt and it's a Police bike. He shouts at me, "Do you want a ticket?", In my best English accent, I go "I'm sorry, what? Did I do something?", "Jaywalking is illegal. Don't do it. I'm going to let you off today". I spent the rest of the day going "WTF?" to myself. I think it was only much later that I found out what a heinous crime jaywalking is in the USA.  — I reshared one of Rall's earlier posts about this, but I think the questions he asks in panel 4 kind of clarify the issue. Why did this audio recording suddenly materialize 14 years later? Why did the Times accept it, vague and noisy as it was, as conclusive proof? Why were they uninterested in discussing the matter further when the cleaned-up version of the tape contradicted the police's claims about it? This stinks of authoritarians at work: we do what we must, because we can, and you'd better like it.
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Commented on post by John Englart in Climate ChangeI was at an experimental arts and music fest at the weekend. One of the projects was to produce drawings to discuss personal and collective dream and nightmare visions of what 2060 may look like. I wrote this:- There will be less of us. There will be more of us. I think the world's population in 2060 will be smaller and not necessarily in a good way. I think there will be a bigger proportion of that population and much larger numbers actively working towards a sustainable long term future than there are now. — Interesting interview with Professor Peter Wadhams from Cambridge University from May 2015 canvassing issues from loss of sea-ice, to dangers of a methane outbreak, the Pope's encyclical, and what we need to do for human survival.
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPIf you look over his entire career, he has relatively few pole positions. I think he finds it hard to drop straight into a one lap blitz. There's only been a few times when the bike is just right on Saturday afternoon and he's prepared to put it all on the line and surf a perfect lap. The problem these days is the competition is so strong in depth that it can easily drop you back to 8th as the younger hooligans take their brains out. — Well that was a very good race as Indy races go. I wish Vale could get better starts to increase chances of being at the front in the end.
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Commented on post by George Beckingham in Climate Change- One cubic metre of water weighs one tonne. - 200 Billion cubic metres is a cube of approx 6Km or 6000m on each side. - Mount McKinley is approx 6000m tall. - So imagine a cube of ice as big as Mount McKinley on each side. — This is an old article, linked from another article I was reading, but it gave me the idea to play with math a bit. 200 billion tons is a lot of ice. In fact it's very difficult to picture such a quantity, so I looked for a metric... People like drinking. In summer (when Greenland is melting), you like to have ice in your drink. So for everyone who would rather be sitting on the porch sipping a scotch on the rocks than thinking about climate change, here's a mathematical journey. Follow it through to the end: 2 cm x 2 cm x 3 cm - Dimensions of an average ice cube 12 cm3 - Volume of an average ice cube 0.9167 g/cm3 - Density of ice 4 ice cubes per drink to keep it nice and cold 44.0 g of ice per drink 200 billion tons of ice lost per year in Greenland 181.4 billion tonnes of ice lost per year in Greenland (metric units for simplicity of calculation) That's 4123 trillion drinks worth of ice lost per year in Greenland Now, let's say you're a retired billionaire, and have nothing to do but drink all day, 12 hours a day, one drink per hour, every day of the year. That's 4383 drinks per year. It would take 940 billion years to drink enough drinks to account for the ice lost in one year in Greenland. Since the universe is only 13 billion years old, you'll need some help. It would take 72.4 retired billionaires, drinking 12 drinks a day for the age of the universe, to consume enough ice cubes to account for the amount of ice lost in Greenland in one year at current melting rates. But that's still an unwieldy number. Let's give everyone a drink. Or two. Or more: Current global population is around 7.3 billion. Let's give everyone 12 drinks per day, every day of the year, 4 ice cubes per drink.  This global party would have to go on for 129 years to consume the amount of ice lost in Greenland every year. That's something to think about the next time you order a drink.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaISTR that name from when I was following things like OpenID. It's always a bit disappointing to go to these kinds of profiles and find they are socially invisible. Half a dozen posts if you're lucky and nothing for a year or two. But also no links to blogs or personal web sites. — Dear Googles: So, when the fuck are you going to stop silently re-creating my YouTube account? Since December, I've been using https://myaccount.google.com to delete the YouTube account which I 1) never wanted associated with this G+ profile, 2) Never permitted to be created, 3) had created anyway, and, over the past seven months, has been repeatedly, silently, without active assent on my part, and without notice, been re-created. Seriously. Just. Fucking. Stop. Doing. That. If Google wants to be trusted with people's content, it's got to demonstrate trustworthiness. Which means, say, not fucking outing people: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6746731 Why the fuck do I trust Google with private data when it arbitrarily changes its rules at any fucking time? Seriously. (Slight bonus: dialog now claims comments are also deleted. That's been varying of late.) You've said you'd stop doing that shit. Well, stop doing it already. +Susan Wojcicki +Bradley Horowitz +Yonatan Zunger +Shimrit Ben-Yair +Larry Page +Sergey Brin +Keith Enright +Andreas Schou  +Violet Blue +Dan Gillmor +Danny Sullivan +Cory Doctorow +Andrew Orlowski +Laura L. Sydell +The Guardian +Dan Goodin +Ashlee Vance +Brad Reed +Financial Times +The Economist +Ashwin Seshagiri  (Oh, and why can't I categorise posts and include specific circles for notifications, just sayin'?) Also: who's head of Identity at Google? https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/VZSLjkdqksG
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaThe buck probably stops there, but there's also probably somebody below them responsible for https://myaccount.google.com/ and all the huge number of options and dashboards attached to that. — Dear Googles: So, when the fuck are you going to stop silently re-creating my YouTube account? Since December, I've been using https://myaccount.google.com to delete the YouTube account which I 1) never wanted associated with this G+ profile, 2) Never permitted to be created, 3) had created anyway, and, over the past seven months, has been repeatedly, silently, without active assent on my part, and without notice, been re-created. Seriously. Just. Fucking. Stop. Doing. That. If Google wants to be trusted with people's content, it's got to demonstrate trustworthiness. Which means, say, not fucking outing people: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6746731 Why the fuck do I trust Google with private data when it arbitrarily changes its rules at any fucking time? Seriously. (Slight bonus: dialog now claims comments are also deleted. That's been varying of late.) You've said you'd stop doing that shit. Well, stop doing it already. +Susan Wojcicki +Bradley Horowitz +Yonatan Zunger +Shimrit Ben-Yair +Larry Page +Sergey Brin +Keith Enright +Andreas Schou  +Violet Blue +Dan Gillmor +Danny Sullivan +Cory Doctorow +Andrew Orlowski +Laura L. Sydell +The Guardian +Dan Goodin +Ashlee Vance +Brad Reed +Financial Times +The Economist +Ashwin Seshagiri  (Oh, and why can't I categorise posts and include specific circles for notifications, just sayin'?) Also: who's head of Identity at Google? https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/VZSLjkdqksG
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeA lot of the study appears to call pollution costs a subsidy because it's paid for by society as a whole rather than by the fossil fuel industries. What I'd like to see though is the direct subsidies in terms of things like tax breaks, R&D subsidies and so on. These are the things the lobby groups complain about when renewables are subsidised. — New figures reveal widespread support for oil, gas and coal sector, highlighting climate and health risks linked to pollution. China spends $2,271 billion a year backing the oil, gas and coal sector, the largest supporter in dollar terms on the planet, followed by the US with $700m and Russia on $335m. #FossilFuelSubsidies
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta"who's head of Identity at Google?" Now there's a question. And not one I've seen asked before. — Dear Googles: So, when the fuck are you going to stop silently re-creating my YouTube account? Since December, I've been using https://myaccount.google.com to delete the YouTube account which I 1) never wanted associated with this G+ profile, 2) Never permitted to be created, 3) had created anyway, and, over the past seven months, has been repeatedly, silently, without active assent on my part, and without notice, been re-created. Seriously. Just. Fucking. Stop. Doing. That. If Google wants to be trusted with people's content, it's got to demonstrate trustworthiness. Which means, say, not fucking outing people: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6746731 Why the fuck do I trust Google with private data when it arbitrarily changes its rules at any fucking time? Seriously. (Slight bonus: dialog now claims comments are also deleted. That's been varying of late.) You've said you'd stop doing that shit. Well, stop doing it already. +Susan Wojcicki +Bradley Horowitz +Yonatan Zunger +Shimrit Ben-Yair +Larry Page +Sergey Brin +Keith Enright +Andreas Schou  +Violet Blue +Dan Gillmor +Danny Sullivan +Cory Doctorow +Andrew Orlowski +Laura L. Sydell +The Guardian +Dan Goodin +Ashlee Vance +Brad Reed +Financial Times +The Economist +Ashwin Seshagiri  (Oh, and why can't I categorise posts and include specific circles for notifications, just sayin'?) Also: who's head of Identity at Google? https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/VZSLjkdqksG
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Commented on post by Our Kitchen Our World in Climate ChangeThe analysis is all pretty irrelevant since we have absolutely no idea how to suck CO2 from the sky in the quantities described. — Thoughts?
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Privacy, Security, and TechJust fell over this. http://mashable.com/2011/03/30/google-buzz-ftc-settlement/ I'd completely forgotten the privacy issue around Buzz and GMail contacts. — Maintaining a social network is more like gardening than architecture. There's this huge living thing underneath the surface of the product you built, and it's very different from place to place, and it's not always what you expected.  Once you get up to your elbows in the numbers underlying any social network except, maybe, Facebook. you realize how weird they are. This nice, natural social graph you expected, where virtually everyone is plugged in to people they already know? That happens once. For one company at a time. (Probably. Either that or we screwed up.)  Everyone else gets a wild garden, stretched across the world and across relationships which would never have existed otherwise. Relationships which become real, even if they started out ephemeral. Twitter would be getting the same treatment -- except it's used by everyone in the press, so they intuitively understand the strange contours of the strange social relationships that this strange social technology has promoted. These new, cluttered networks are, in some ways, more exciting than Facebook's tame graphs of people, their friends, and the high school acquaintances they never really wanted to remain in contact with. But those numbers and the successes, however weird, are something that you can't really find a word for, or easily express in a marketing line. Remember: Twitter started out as a platform for sending SMS-sized updates to your close ties, not as a platform for sharing links and yelling at celebrities.  But does the media understand what's going on here? For that matter, do we, as users? How about as the people who built it? I trust my coworkers. I trust my fellow users. But I'm intimidated by the size of the task. If you add up all of the time spent by users on G+, it's the size of a medium-sized country which speaks almost every language in the world. Is it really possible to get a good grasp on anything that size using only statistical methods? It's always possible to accidentally ruin something you love. Digg is instructive here. But admitting to the press (and the world) that the real, living people underlying the thing we built are participating in something more complicated than a statistic, even if our understanding and success metrics are based on statistics that don't capture that complexity? That users have opinions about what we built, and (more importantly) what we should build? Listening is the first step, not the last. (Linking is not endorsement; commentary is directed at all social products, not specifically the one I do privacy work for. I am not speaking on behalf of Google. Warranty not implied. Side effects may include psoriasis, seizures, and kidney failure. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.)
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeLinking to an obviously satirical article in the Guardian? Life imitates the Onion? I'm confused. Is Josh a denier or not? I think we should be told. — 165°F with F for Fucking Hot http://www.christiantoday.com/article/extreme.temperature.iran.city.sizzles.with.near.world.record.breaking.heat.of.165f/60749.htm #F  Bandar Mahshahr city in Iran
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeShame these stories won't talk about actual temperature instead of quoting apparent temp. 115F (46C) with high humidity is still 115F not 165F. — 165°F with F for Fucking Hot http://www.christiantoday.com/article/extreme.temperature.iran.city.sizzles.with.near.world.record.breaking.heat.of.165f/60749.htm #F  Bandar Mahshahr city in Iran
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Commented on post by Aron Knifström in Climate ChangeAt what point do you simply give up and leave? Maybe continued colonisation of low lying islands in the Pacific is simply untenable. — Small islands need partnerships to battle climate change, address ‘unique vulnerabilities,’ says Ban http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=51533#.VbxDePmdUng
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Commented on post by Janko Roettgers in ChromecastWe need something like this for Windows as well. So that audio can be cast from things like Winamp, WMP or other music managers. You can use the beta "Cast screen" option but it's not ideal. And especially with Cast for Audio. This also raises the need again for an official Google dongle or 2.0 Chromecast with an audio jack. There's an SDK issue for this as well. https://code.google.com/p/google-cast-sdk/issues/detail?id=277 — Tested it successfully with iTunes, Spotify and Safari... http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/this-os-x-app-sends-itunes-music-spotify-and-other-audio-to-your-chromecast-1201554230/
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyAlso ignores fossil fuels as feedstock for industrial processes. And gas used for both domestic and industrial. And doubtless numerous other activity. It's the missing "for electricity generation" on the end of the lede that confuses. — Go Germany! What caused the record-breaking numbers? According to Craig Morris, a writer for the German website Energiewende, it was the weather. Morris attributs the rise in wind power to a storm passing through the north of the country, where the majority of Germany's wind turbines stand. It also helped that it was a sunny day in southern Germany, home to most of the country's solar panels. #windpower   #solarpower  
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Technology Meets HumanityYou got the reference then. But did you get the reference to Godel, Escher, Bach? As Feynman said, there's plenty of room at the bottom. Some common elements plus some trace elements that are only formed in Supernovae. Add a touch of luck and a pretty ordinary star in the unfashionable arm of a pretty ordinary galaxy. It's all just physics. Clockwork machines. But complex, chaotic clockwork machines that generate some interesting emergent behaviour. — Big Data, Neo-Behavioralism, and the Mathematics of Human Relationships Zuckerberg: "I’m also curious about whether there is a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about. I bet there is." Nicholas Carr: It’s not hard to understand the source of Zuckerberg’s misperception. Human beings, like ants or chickens, share a certain bundle of tendencies, a certain nature, and if you analyze our behavior statistically that nature will evidence itself in mathematical regularities. Zuckerberg is hardly the first to confuse the measurement of a phenomenon with the cause of the phenomenon. If some amount of data reveals a pattern, then, surely, more data will reveal “a fundamental mathematical law.” Is there really an algorithmic explanation for the cause of our behavior; is that the way things actually work inside us, or is it just something we reflect back to ourselves when we look at ourselves with our computational tools? More: The New Behavioralism http://www.roughtype.com/?p=6376
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Technology Meets HumanitySo what's beneath the emergent behaviour? Oh, it's just emergent behaviour, all the way down. — Big Data, Neo-Behavioralism, and the Mathematics of Human Relationships Zuckerberg: "I’m also curious about whether there is a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about. I bet there is." Nicholas Carr: It’s not hard to understand the source of Zuckerberg’s misperception. Human beings, like ants or chickens, share a certain bundle of tendencies, a certain nature, and if you analyze our behavior statistically that nature will evidence itself in mathematical regularities. Zuckerberg is hardly the first to confuse the measurement of a phenomenon with the cause of the phenomenon. If some amount of data reveals a pattern, then, surely, more data will reveal “a fundamental mathematical law.” Is there really an algorithmic explanation for the cause of our behavior; is that the way things actually work inside us, or is it just something we reflect back to ourselves when we look at ourselves with our computational tools? More: The New Behavioralism http://www.roughtype.com/?p=6376
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Commented on post by Andreas SchouPerhaps Turkey could use it via a reverse takeover to gain entry into the EU? — This makes Tsipras' motivations much more clear: the other two members of the Troika are caught between the IMF and Greece. If Greece is not offered substantial debt relief by its creditors, then the Eurozone will have to cover the bailout without any outside assistance.  This gives the Eurozone three options: (1) Reject the IMF's assistance, and boot Greece from the Eurozone notwithstanding the success or failure of its reforms. You might call this the Schauble option. It might be acceptable to Germany and the Nordic states, but appears dangerous to the other European debtor states and would likely be unacceptable to France. It also expends diplomatic credibility simply to punish another state -- not necessarily a rational decision. (2) Refuse to render debt relief, and come to a Troika-Greece agreement which covers the IMF's anticipated share. This cuts off Europe's nose to spite its face. It's possible that Germany thinks that avoiding moral hazard is important enough to pay a couple tens of billions of dollars, but it's quite unlikely that anyone else in the Eurozone would agree to these terms. Why leave free money lying on the table? (3) Come to an agreement with both the IMF and Greece, rendering debt relief while bailing out the Greek government. Note that this option is perfectly identical, from a purely utilitarian perspective, with the option where the Eurozone declines IMF assistance, up to an amount of debt relief equal to the anticipated contribution by the IMF. This would likely be acceptable to anyone, and Germany would bear a substantial diplomatic cost for refusing it. It's a nice, elegant trap. I hope it works out -- but the Eurozone seems to be committed to shooting itself in the foot. I'm not confident.
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Commented on post by Gi Fly in Electric BikesThere's a lot of Bromptons in London. The official E-Brompton has never appeared so an add on E-Assist kit would still fly. Meanwhile, designers who want to re-invent the bicycle really should employ a few engineers. Actually, even mainstream bicycle designers ought to employ engineers. There's an amazing number of bicycle details that are the engineering equivalent of trying to push a string.  — Hi everyone!  We are a bunch of dreamers and entrepreneurs. We would like to introduce to you our project: THE GI BIKE. It´s a smart, folding and beautiful ebike.  We are launching a kickstarter campaign soon and want to hear some feedback. Any comments or suggestions are welcome. The idea is to improve our project before official launch!  Thanks in advance. PD: For more information you can visit ouw website: http://www.gibike.com
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Commented on post by Andreas SchouWhat has Greece got that Chinese ex-pat entrepreneurs might want? I'm sure the Chinese diaspora has already filled the usual niches. Shipping maybe? — This makes Tsipras' motivations much more clear: the other two members of the Troika are caught between the IMF and Greece. If Greece is not offered substantial debt relief by its creditors, then the Eurozone will have to cover the bailout without any outside assistance.  This gives the Eurozone three options: (1) Reject the IMF's assistance, and boot Greece from the Eurozone notwithstanding the success or failure of its reforms. You might call this the Schauble option. It might be acceptable to Germany and the Nordic states, but appears dangerous to the other European debtor states and would likely be unacceptable to France. It also expends diplomatic credibility simply to punish another state -- not necessarily a rational decision. (2) Refuse to render debt relief, and come to a Troika-Greece agreement which covers the IMF's anticipated share. This cuts off Europe's nose to spite its face. It's possible that Germany thinks that avoiding moral hazard is important enough to pay a couple tens of billions of dollars, but it's quite unlikely that anyone else in the Eurozone would agree to these terms. Why leave free money lying on the table? (3) Come to an agreement with both the IMF and Greece, rendering debt relief while bailing out the Greek government. Note that this option is perfectly identical, from a purely utilitarian perspective, with the option where the Eurozone declines IMF assistance, up to an amount of debt relief equal to the anticipated contribution by the IMF. This would likely be acceptable to anyone, and Germany would bear a substantial diplomatic cost for refusing it. It's a nice, elegant trap. I hope it works out -- but the Eurozone seems to be committed to shooting itself in the foot. I'm not confident.
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Commented on postGood stuff. Taking the lower bound of 1.5B and 4.5TW of total average energy use. I wonder if we can generate that amount using renewable sources. Is it reasonable, within a factor 10 or so? The article thinks 3KW per capita is reasonable for a global tech society, but can we generate 3KW per capita without using oil and coal? Since that article was written, total average energy use has grown from 13TW to 17TW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption So we're still heading away from the long term goal.
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Commented on postDid y'all forget the Pluribus bit of "e pluribus unum"?
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Commented on postThis is true of most nations created by drawing ink on pieces of paper (ie, all of them). Why is it an issue?
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Commented on post+Steve S  the only way to provide a first-world existence for everyone is for us to have fewer people in total Is anyone aware of any realistic analysis of the minimum (or maximum) viable and sustainable global population where everyone has a first world technological lifestyle equivalent to that of a middle class person in, say, Sweden circa 2000? Can we envisage a modern global economy and benefits with a total population of 500M? How about 100M? Or even Seven Eves? ;)
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Privacy, Security, and Tech+Andreas Schou "But what happened to Buzz was... uh... very public" So what's the consensus narrative about what happened to Buzz? Because there were lots of things I really liked about it and still miss. ps. And why does G+ quote formatting so rarely work? — Maintaining a social network is more like gardening than architecture. There's this huge living thing underneath the surface of the product you built, and it's very different from place to place, and it's not always what you expected.  Once you get up to your elbows in the numbers underlying any social network except, maybe, Facebook. you realize how weird they are. This nice, natural social graph you expected, where virtually everyone is plugged in to people they already know? That happens once. For one company at a time. (Probably. Either that or we screwed up.)  Everyone else gets a wild garden, stretched across the world and across relationships which would never have existed otherwise. Relationships which become real, even if they started out ephemeral. Twitter would be getting the same treatment -- except it's used by everyone in the press, so they intuitively understand the strange contours of the strange social relationships that this strange social technology has promoted. These new, cluttered networks are, in some ways, more exciting than Facebook's tame graphs of people, their friends, and the high school acquaintances they never really wanted to remain in contact with. But those numbers and the successes, however weird, are something that you can't really find a word for, or easily express in a marketing line. Remember: Twitter started out as a platform for sending SMS-sized updates to your close ties, not as a platform for sharing links and yelling at celebrities.  But does the media understand what's going on here? For that matter, do we, as users? How about as the people who built it? I trust my coworkers. I trust my fellow users. But I'm intimidated by the size of the task. If you add up all of the time spent by users on G+, it's the size of a medium-sized country which speaks almost every language in the world. Is it really possible to get a good grasp on anything that size using only statistical methods? It's always possible to accidentally ruin something you love. Digg is instructive here. But admitting to the press (and the world) that the real, living people underlying the thing we built are participating in something more complicated than a statistic, even if our understanding and success metrics are based on statistics that don't capture that complexity? That users have opinions about what we built, and (more importantly) what we should build? Listening is the first step, not the last. (Linking is not endorsement; commentary is directed at all social products, not specifically the one I do privacy work for. I am not speaking on behalf of Google. Warranty not implied. Side effects may include psoriasis, seizures, and kidney failure. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.)
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Commented on post"We're supposed to be smarter than lobsters." Margaret Attwood. Quoted here:- http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/07/were-supposed-to-smarter-than-lobsters.html But are we smarter than an AI based on a cluster of uploaded lobster brain-scans? http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html If we were, we'd understand that "Global industrial civilization must get smaller as quickly as possible."
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeDon't cut subsidies for renewables until we cut subsidies for fossil fuels. — Governments have devised several different ways of giving handouts for fossil fuels. Most surveys analyse “consumption” subsidies, rather than support or tax breaks for producers. Traditional “pre-tax” measures keep prices below supply costs for folk filling up their cars, or switching on the lights, and are particularly popular with the poor in developing countries. Rich countries subsidise too mostly by “post-tax” systems which fail to factor the costs of environmental damage into prices. This is a problem because it wastes fiscal resources and hardly benefits the poor, as the wealthy drive more and guzzle more power. IMF number-crunchers reckon that if the subsidies were cut, global carbon-dioxide emissions would fall by over 20% and government revenues would increase by $2.9 trillion, or 3.6% of GDP. #FossilFuelSubsidies
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Commented on postThe title suggests that somewhere near the end there's a few suggestions for the future that might offer some hope. But the GoodReads reviews make it look like there actually aren't any.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Miranda's Knitting and Tea SocietyJust occured to me that the 1970s oil crisis might be an example of an economy running up against a limit on the rate of fossil fuel consumption. It didn't last long enough to bring down western civilisation. But it undoubtedly shaped policy after that event. Which then maybe has some bearing on the Reagan-Thatcher years. It's highly likely that Thatcher's (and her cadre of advisors) thinking about unions and coal were a reaction to the 3 day week event when the UK was brought to it's knees by energy limitations. — Mirandans might find this one interesting. https://medium.com/@ianmorris/hard-ceilings-doomed-past-societies-184b557df0f5 A classical historian comparing the forage-agrarian and agrarian- industrial transitions to now in terms of societies running up against energy limits. His suggestion is that the energy limits act as a forcing function that encourages repeated experiments in social evolution but with numerous failures. Along with various collapses, often violent, come a few successes that provide for the next stage in social evolution. I think there are several problems with this. Not least is that fossil fuels don't really have a sustained limit in the way that total land area limits forage or arable production. I'm not sure we've hit any limit on rate of fossil fuel use. The limit is rather mostly a finite total quantity rather than a maximum rate of production. Though as we approach that the cost of production perhaps puts a limit on rate of production. Our Dred friend has done work on total potential energy budgets that probably feed in here.  There's also a total lack of citations. Some facts are simply stated. eg 20% chance of a violent death in a forage society, 2.5%-5% in an agrarian society, 1-2% in the 20th century and <0.7% in this century.  Another potentially missing issue is the one of pollution. Are there any examples of pre-industrial societies that were destroyed by their pollution? There's food for thought in the article but I end up wanting to see LtoG style models. There's some worth in a qualitative approach, I'm just not sure the comparisons with transitions in the distant past actually tell us much.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Science, Medicine, and Statistics+1 for somebody else that reads Peter Watts.  — For decades now, I have been haunted by the grainy, black-and-white x-ray of a human skull. It is alive but empty, with a cavernous fluid-filled space where the brain should be. A thin layer of brain tissue lines that cavity like an amniotic sac. The image hails from a 1980 review article in Science: Roger Lewin, the author, reports that the patient in question had “virtually no brain”. But that’s not what scared me; hydrocephalus is nothing new, and it takes more to creep out this ex-biologist than a picture of Ventricles Gone Wild. What scared me was the fact that this virtually brain-free patient had an IQ of 126. Briefly, a hypothesis.  Most of the volume of your brain consists of white matter: a fatty substance the texture of semi-firm tofu, composed of glia, myelin, and the long tails of axons further up in the brain. It can tolerate a fair amount of damage before causing serious effects: as we age, its volume shrinks considerably without affecting IQ, and although diffuse white-matter injuries can have horrifying effects, small ischemic strokes can take chunks out of it without the patient noticing. Most of what's missing in this guy is white matter.  But even if you're completely lacking white matter, there's a second route between parts of the brain: across the surface of the grey matter. In most anatomically normal people, the routes across the surface of the brain are fairly slow and unreliable, as they only directly interconnect adjacent parts of the brain. But presuming that whatever deprived him of most of his white matter didn't impair axon recruitment between lobes -- and it looks like it might not have, as one of the few interior structures that's still intact is the corpus callosum -- it's possible that his brain is simply more space-efficient than the rest of Homo sapiens. Which did not, I might remind you, undergo a design review process to prove that its brain is constructed efficiently.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:We need a video. Preferably involving Vin Diesel or Jason Statham. — It is possible that this design for a system to safely blow up buildings containing chemical or biological weapons, without spreading said weapons into the air, had its design secretly influenced by an eight-year-old. It is possible because, if I were eight and trying to come up with the coolest possible way to make something catch on fire, it would probably involve dropping a giant container full of burning bouncy balls. I have no idea whether or not this idea would work, but it would be tremendous fun to watch.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaI went looking for "Reverse Anschluss" and found this. https://www.reddit.com/r/Borkball/comments/2en9ds/ It amused me. ;) — Google retreats(?): #Anschluss  is over It's not clear to me if this is a division of G+ from what it had been, or a rebranding of what had been "Google+" to "Google", particularly as a unified platform. I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm inclined to close comments here, but will leave them open. Comments aimed for Google / Bradley really should go to his post though. At HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9955947 At reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/3esc2e/g_no_longer_required/ Actually, surprisingly little discussion on this elsewhere. Nobody cares?
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Commented on post by Steban Hernández in Google+ Updateshttp://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/everything-in-its-right-place.html https://plus.google.com/+BradleyHorowitz/posts/Aq59SxzyjWT — Welp.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingSo pleased for Team Yamaha. Bradley's first win since 2010. That last safety car was a little nerve wracking. — Results from the  #Suzuka #Suzuka8Hours #8Tai race Full write to follow later, but for now, I need some Zzzz's!  I went full hardcore & stayed up all night. I'm certainly not 18 again. I feel old !!  Great race. More later Bradley Smith, Pol Espargaro and Katsuyuki Nakasuga gave Yamaha their first Suzuka 8 Hours victory since 1996 after a superb race in Japan this morning ....... Full Report via Steve English C/O +MCN - Motorcyclenews.com : http://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/2015/july/first-yamaha-win-at-suzuka-since-1996/  1st - Team Yamaha Factory - Pol Espargarò – B.Smith – K.Nakasuga Yamaha YZF-R1   2nd - Team F.C.C. TSR Honda - J.Hook - D.Aegerter - K.Smith Honda CBR 1000 3rd - Team Kagayama - N.Haga – R.Kiyonari – Y.Kagayama  Suzuki GSX-R 1000 _________________________________ +Suzuka Circuit 
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Commented on post+paul beard _making portable music available in a consistent and legal format_ AAC+DRM vs MP3. And with a sub-standard MP3 encoder in itunes? I've kept well away from AAC so I've always taken this story with a big pinch of salt that Apple didn't want to use DRM and was only forced to by the labels. It's a good marketing story, but I don't have to like it.
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeI mean, don't explain what you believe but explain why you believe it. — India has 1.2 BILLION people, and hundreds of millions still lack electricity.  India also has THOUSANDS of miles of canals which carry river water and groundwater to farms.  Much of this canal water evaporates due to the hot climate in India. So ingeniously, India has begun to install solar panels across the tops of their canals. This will create enormous amounts of electricity without sacrificing farmland which feeds a huge population. And the solar panels will conserve water by keeping water in the canals shaded and cool. Greatly reducing evaporation. The climate crisis can be solved if we are willing to open our eyes and think creatively. 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingAnd more,  http://planetjapanblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/8-hours-suzuka-2015-gallery-2.html — Some 8 hour pics. http://planetjapanblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/8-hours-suzuka-2015-gallery-1.html
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesI didn't vote for the ZOG, I voted for the TSOG,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSOG:_The_Thing_That_Ate_the_Constitution Hail Eris! — Touché.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsSlightly off topic, but an apparently little known side to this is Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven claiming to have brought down the USSR, via Reagan's StarWars project. Proposed by the Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy; a loose collection of right wing SciFi Authors that provided policy suggestions to the incoming Reagan administration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Advisory_Council_on_National_Space_Policy — Reagan was a puppet figurehead. But who was or were the puppetmasters? Reagan's emergence, his appeal and popularity at the time, his direct rejection of (some) government influences, as well as his enduring popularity (in some quarters), along with the subsequent GOP dynamics (Gingrich's "Contract on America", growing jingoism, Faux News, the Cheney junta -- are part of a dynamic. Reagan, and arguably Nixon[1], came at the start of the period, and Reagan especially marked a shift much of the national political tenor. But I cannot see him as its architect. Reagan wasn't the brain trust. Though I confess I'm not entirely sure who might have been. Among the core advisers: National Security Advisor, Robert C. McFarlane Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger. National Security Advisor, John Poindexter Assistant Secretary of State, Eliott Abrams Chief of Staff, Michael Deaver Press Secretary, Lyn Nofziger All were convicted of illegal activities for actions in office, a tiny fraction of the 138 administration officials convicted, indicted, or subject to investigations. I believe 21 were actually convicted (some later pardoned/commuted). http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/17/157477/-List-of-Reagan-administration-convictions Other notable advisers (partial -- selecting for suspects): Secretary of State: Alexander Haig Secretaries of Treasury: Donald Regan (1981–1985), James Baker (1985–1988), and Nicholas F. Brady (1988-1989). Attorneys General: William F. Smith (1981–1985), Edwin A. Meese III (1985–1988), and Richard Thornburgh (1988–1989). Chiefs of Staff: James Baker (1981–1985), Donald Regan (1985–1987), Howard Baker (1987–1988), and Kenneth Duberstein (1988–1989). Directors OMB: David A. Stockman (1981–1985), James C. Miller III (1985–1988), and Joseph R. Wright, Jr. (1988-1989). Supreme Court: Antonin Scalia (though also O'Connor and Kennedy). Federal Reserve: Paul Volcker (incumbant), Alan Greenspan (appointed). Chief Economic Advisor: Martin Feldstein. Though he's listed as a deficit hawk opposed to Reagan's free-spending, tax-cutting, policies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Feldstein Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Nance, James W. (1981-1982) McFarlane, Robert C. (January 1982-October 1983) Poindexter, John M. (October 1983-1986) Small, Karna (1984-1986) Powell, LTG Colin L. (1986-1987) Negroponte, John D. (1987-1989) Assistant to the President for Policy Development: Anderson, Martin, Harper, Edwin L., Svahn, John A. (Jack), Bauer, Gary L. Assistant/Deputy Assistant to the President for Political Affairs: Nofziger, Franklyn (Lyn), Rollins, Edward J.,  Tutwiler, Margaret D. Trivia: Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige, Jr. died age 64 from injuries sustained in a rodeo calf-roping competition. http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/reference/keyofficials.html Economic policy was also strongly influenced by the Spawn of Satan, Milton Friedman. Friedman himself was in many ways a puppet of the Foundation for Economic Freedom (FEE) See Mark Ames's excellent history: "When Congress Busted Milton Friedman (and Libertarianism Was Created By Big Business Lobbyists)" https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/milton-friedman/ A partial list of FEE’s original donors in its first four years includes: The Big Three auto makers GM, Chrysler and Ford; top oil majors including Gulf Oil, Standard Oil, and Sun Oil; major steel producers US Steel, National Steel, Republic Steel; major retailers including Montgomery Ward, Marshall Field and Sears; chemicals majors Monsanto and DuPont; and other Fortune 500 corporations including General Electric, Merrill Lynch, Eli Lilly, BF Goodrich, ConEd, and more. The FEE was set up by a longtime US Chamber of Commerce executive named Leonard Read, together with Donaldson Brown, a director in the National Association of Manufacturers lobby group and board member at DuPont and General Motors.... “Libertarianism” was a project of the corporate lobby world, launched as a big business “ideology” in 1946 by The US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. The FEE’s board included the future founder of the John Birch Society, Robert Welch; the most powerful figure in the Mormon church at that time, J Reuben Clark, a frothing racist and anti-Semite after whom BYU named its law school; and United Fruit director Herb Cornuelle. On "Supply-Side Economics": The term "supply-side economics" was thought, for some time, to have been coined by journalist Jude Wanniski in 1975, but according to Robert D. Atkinson's Supply-Side Follies,[5] the term "supply side" ("supply-side fiscalists") was first used by Herbert Stein, a former economic adviser to President Nixon, in 1976, and only later that year was this term repeated by Jude Wanniski. Its use connotes the ideas of economists Robert Mundell and Arthur Laffer. Supply-side economics is likened by critics to "trickle-down economics." A key conflict between trickle-down and Keynesian or resitributionist economics policies focuses on Say's Law (as I've pointed out recently): As in classical economics, supply-side economics proposed that production or supply is the key to economic prosperity and that consumption or demand is merely a secondary consequence. Early on this idea had been summarized in Say's Law of economics, which states: "A product is no sooner created, than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value." John Maynard Keynes, the founder of Keynesianism, summarized Say's Law as "supply creates its own demand." He turned Say's Law on its head in the 1930s by declaring that demand creates its own supply.[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics My commentary: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3a7wku/the_imf_income_inequality_and_history_and_scholar/ ______________________________ Notes: 1. See especially the Lewis Powell Memo / Manifesto: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/ In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.... Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced or inspired the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy...
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesEverything seems in tune On a Spring afternoon As we poison the pigeons in the park,  And maybe we'll do in a squirrel or two While we're poisoning pigeons in the park. Just say, Neigh! — Note to self: Remember this answer for future use.  (From: http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3010) (See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhuMLpdnOjY)
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Commented on postAnd the Atlantic trade deal, TTIP.
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeHere's a discussion of quite a few common reactions to the state of the world beyond just denialism and catastrophism. http://shift-magazine.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/new-political-map-2014-image-for-Dave-Pollard-article.png http://shift-magazine.org/magazine/see-no-evil-the-morality-of-collapse/ "Technology/Innovation/Progress will save us" is an understandable reaction given the progress that technology brought between say 1850 and 1970 (or even 1970-2010). So it's interesting that one of the LtoG model runs showed that technical fixes lead to increased resource exploitation, leading to a higher peak and a more catastrophic crash. So let's say that your mental model includes the possibility that Climate Change can be mitigated and reduced by the application of technology and political will. Well, show your working! It was Allen that stated categorically, The climate crisis can be solved if we are willing to open our eyes and think creatively. not me. — India has 1.2 BILLION people, and hundreds of millions still lack electricity.  India also has THOUSANDS of miles of canals which carry river water and groundwater to farms.  Much of this canal water evaporates due to the hot climate in India. So ingeniously, India has begun to install solar panels across the tops of their canals. This will create enormous amounts of electricity without sacrificing farmland which feeds a huge population. And the solar panels will conserve water by keeping water in the canals shaded and cool. Greatly reducing evaporation. The climate crisis can be solved if we are willing to open our eyes and think creatively. 
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeBoth of you. That's such a US-centric view of the world. How do you propose to slow down the middle classes in SE Asia? They want their iPhones/BMWs/Washing machines too. — India has 1.2 BILLION people, and hundreds of millions still lack electricity.  India also has THOUSANDS of miles of canals which carry river water and groundwater to farms.  Much of this canal water evaporates due to the hot climate in India. So ingeniously, India has begun to install solar panels across the tops of their canals. This will create enormous amounts of electricity without sacrificing farmland which feeds a huge population. And the solar panels will conserve water by keeping water in the canals shaded and cool. Greatly reducing evaporation. The climate crisis can be solved if we are willing to open our eyes and think creatively. 
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeI'm not sure they're Political either but SOCIAL. I find it very hard to understand how 7B people globally are collectively going to decide that business as usual has to change. — India has 1.2 BILLION people, and hundreds of millions still lack electricity.  India also has THOUSANDS of miles of canals which carry river water and groundwater to farms.  Much of this canal water evaporates due to the hot climate in India. So ingeniously, India has begun to install solar panels across the tops of their canals. This will create enormous amounts of electricity without sacrificing farmland which feeds a huge population. And the solar panels will conserve water by keeping water in the canals shaded and cool. Greatly reducing evaporation. The climate crisis can be solved if we are willing to open our eyes and think creatively. 
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Commented on post by Allen Insight in Climate ChangeWhen you say, The climate crisis can be solved if we are willing to open our eyes and think creatively I think you mean, "we can keep business as usual going longer".  — India has 1.2 BILLION people, and hundreds of millions still lack electricity.  India also has THOUSANDS of miles of canals which carry river water and groundwater to farms.  Much of this canal water evaporates due to the hot climate in India. So ingeniously, India has begun to install solar panels across the tops of their canals. This will create enormous amounts of electricity without sacrificing farmland which feeds a huge population. And the solar panels will conserve water by keeping water in the canals shaded and cool. Greatly reducing evaporation. The climate crisis can be solved if we are willing to open our eyes and think creatively. 
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Wingnuttery+Doug Senko Didn't Groucho Marx have something to say about this? "I wouldn't belong to any church that would have me as a member." It's why he's one of the patron saints of the Church of Eris. — Umm.... pretty sure churches don't have to let anyone in that they don't want to let in. You don't need an executive order for that. Especially not in South Carolina.
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Commented on post by Seb K in Electric BikesIt kind of looks like the baby Bafang QSWXH (I think). You can run these at 50v-15A for short bursts of 750w or all day at 500w. The extra volts give you power up to a higher no load speed. I think somebody does a 48v-9Hr battery in the same bottle mount. So there's some useful future upgrades available.  I like pedelec as a kind of cruise control on open roads, but dislike it in town or on the trails. I really wouldn't like to lose the throttle, and have a switch so I can change from pedelec to throttle. On my BPM with 36v-15AHr, I can eke out 55-60 miles and still have some power left to get me up the last hill. But range then is all about how much effort you put in yourself. Back in the real world of 25 mile afternoons, you can use as much power as you like and still get home.  — Well here it is . This is my heavily custom MTB Ebike . A lot of work has been put into this bike . There are pre preg carbon parts handmade in Germany (MCFK, Carbonice, Tune), parts from Italy  , America  , Switzerland  and parts I have made myself . The frame has been machined in sections to accommodate the new parts . The ECU has been re-wired because of the new brakes . I have even removed the battery holder and used titanium plates (custom made by myself) and custom stainless steel fixings to remove another 300grams . So much detail so I'll let the pictures do the talking .  26kg down to 11.8kg . Edit: When I had the bike outside of my house a local editor of a motorbike magazine (won#t mention the name) went past my house then turned around and came back and asked to take a few shots . Pretty cool .
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingIs it my imagination or is the course shorter than it used to be? ;) Back in the days of Fogarty, Kocinski, Haga, Corser, Yanagawa, Bostrom(s), there seemed to be more passing places and a lap took longer to unfold. I can't help feeling that modern bikes have outgrown the track.  And then losing two racers at turn one in the MOTA race sucks. Track problem, or just one of those horrible racing things? — WSB Results from Laguna Seca Again, sorry this report is late folks. I've been none stop for the last 3 weeks. Chaz Davies scored a fantastic double on the +Aruba.it Racing - Ducati Superbike Team 1199. In great form this year. Full write up via +Jared Earle c/o +David Emmett 's MotoMatters dot com : Race One : https://motomatters.com/results/2015/07/19/2015_laguna_seca_world_superbike_race_on.html Race Two : https://motomatters.com/results/2015/07/19/2015_laguna_seca_world_superbike_race_tw.html  Complete Photo collection by ace trigger man +PHOTO.GP aka +Scott Jones : https://motomatters.com/news/2015/07/19/at_home_with_scott_jones_laguna_seca_wor.html Cover photo of the man of the weekend himself, Chaz on the stunning 1199 Factory +Aruba.it Racing - Ducati Superbike Team  ________________________________________________ +WorldSBK  #WSB   #WSB2015  +Laguna Seca  +Kawasaki Motors +MOTOCARD +Monster Energy  +Aruba.it Racing - Ducati Superbike Team +Aruba S.p.A.  +Aprilia Official +HondaProRacing +Honda Motorcycles & ATVs  +Team Suzuki Racing +Tyco Suzuki  #Ducati   +BMW +BMW Motorrad  #MV  +Pirelli +Ohlins Perfromance  Sadly no +Erik Buell Racing :-( 
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Commented on post by Seb K in Electric BikesNice. What's the motor/battery/controller specs?  And have you got a rear brake? ;)  — Well here it is . This is my heavily custom MTB Ebike . A lot of work has been put into this bike . There are pre preg carbon parts handmade in Germany (MCFK, Carbonice, Tune), parts from Italy  , America  , Switzerland  and parts I have made myself . The frame has been machined in sections to accommodate the new parts . The ECU has been re-wired because of the new brakes . I have even removed the battery holder and used titanium plates (custom made by myself) and custom stainless steel fixings to remove another 300grams . So much detail so I'll let the pictures do the talking .  26kg down to 11.8kg . Edit: When I had the bike outside of my house a local editor of a motorbike magazine (won#t mention the name) went past my house then turned around and came back and asked to take a few shots . Pretty cool .
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Commented on post by Keith Williams in Motorcycle Roadracing+H.T.V. Blu that assumes there was some actual thought involved. Ignore the middle bit of the bike completely, the wheels, shocks, forks, brakes are still worth lots of money. — Its a job to say why this has occurred, opportunists who don't know what they're nicking, stolen to order for some unscrupulous collector, who knows? One thing for sure is it is, or was a bit of a unique piece of kit that is going to ring loud bells to whoever comes across it, as long as they are a bit bike savvy that is. You could alert the Scrapyard's who might be approached with a load of batteries to weigh in but I would have thought they were lithium so there is bugger all to weigh. I hope they catch the scumbag/s and wire their testicles to the power unit, that'll make em think twice before half hitching other people's property.
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Commented on post by Keith Williams in Motorcycle Roadracinghttp://www.roadracingworld.com/news/stolen-victory-electric-racebike-recovered-by-police/ Local low-life with history was going to part it out. Only got as far as removing the rear wheel before it was recovered. — Its a job to say why this has occurred, opportunists who don't know what they're nicking, stolen to order for some unscrupulous collector, who knows? One thing for sure is it is, or was a bit of a unique piece of kit that is going to ring loud bells to whoever comes across it, as long as they are a bit bike savvy that is. You could alert the Scrapyard's who might be approached with a load of batteries to weigh in but I would have thought they were lithium so there is bugger all to weigh. I hope they catch the scumbag/s and wire their testicles to the power unit, that'll make em think twice before half hitching other people's property.
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Commented on post by Mark Dodsworth in Google+ UpdatesMore likely it will just get dropped. Google's location handling has never worked very well. Latitude has gone and not been replaced. Sharing location on posts doesn't work. Nearby doesn't work and has been partially dropped. Setting location on profiles doesn't work. Local has all but disappeared. Location detail in the API doesn't get returned very well and goes missing every so often. Location in the API profile has gone. Very little location stuff was ever available on desktop web, despite Chrome location reporting via IP/Wifi being "good enough". Location stuff in Mobile web only works if you have the right UserAgent. For a company with amazing Map technology this is puzzling. — The latest Android Police APK teardown suggests that Location tracking is the latest feature on the chopping block for G+, I'm all for it.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in GMO NewsTHEM!! A Horror Horde of Crawl and Crush Giants Clawing Out of the Earth from Mile-Deep Catacombs! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047573/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2 And they said 1950s SciFi movies didn't predict the future. — I, for one, welcome our transgenic insect overlords UK's House of Lords will be studying the risks and benefits of using genetically engineered insects in agriculture and human health. A committee headed by John Palmer, 4th Earl of Selborne, is seeking public comments by September 18 (see press release below) Lord Selborne has a long history of involvement in UK agricultural affairs and is likely to be open-minded about the merits of GM technology. **** Media Notice Monday 20 July 2015 LORDS COMMITTEE LAUNCHES INQUIRY INTO GM INSECTS   Science and Technology Committee to investigate the potential of GM insect technologies to control disease and protect crops and livestock   Could genetically modified insects be used to control the spread of human disease? Would farmers benefit if insects were modified in order to reduce crop pests? What are the safety and ethical concerns over the release of genetically modified insects? How should this emerging technology be regulated? A new inquiry into the possible uses of GM insect technologies is today launched by the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee; the investigation will aim to shed light on these and other areas. The development of GM insects is a growing area of scientific research, looking to explore, among other things, the potential benefits to public health and agriculture. Following their inquiry the Committee will publish a report including recommendations to the Government which could help shape this developing area. The Committee is seeking written evidence from as wide an audience as possible. Questions which the inquiry will aim to cover include:   ·         Which human diseases, across the world, could be addressed through GM insect technology? ·         Are there any human disease risks in Europe, particularly the UK, for which GM insects are under development? ·         What are the possible livestock and agricultural crop applications of GM insects across the world? Are there any potential applications of relevance to UK agriculture? ·         What could GM insects do that other approaches, such as biological control methods, can’t? ·         Do the current EU and UK GMOs regulatory frameworks work for GM insects? ·         Are there lessons to be learnt from the regulation of GM insects in other countries such as Brazil? ·         How is research into the development of GM insects currently funded, and how can we attract more private funding? ·         Given the possible public health benefits of GM insects, should the Government be funding their commercialisation? ·         How could the UK benefit economically from both developing GM insect technology and its use within the UK? ·         How can the gap between regulatory approaches and public concerns over GMOs be addressed?                                                                                                                Chair of the Committee, Lord Selborne, said:   “The development of GM insects is an emerging area of bioscience that presents a host of questions aswell as opportunities. Concerns about lasting effects on our ecosystems and rapid spread must be considered alongside the potential opportunities for disease control and agricultural pest management.   “The policy implications of developing GM insect technologies include how the UK actively funds research, how the current regulations for genetically modified organisms can be applied, and what the potential economic benefits might be from this industry.   “What we hope to do with this inquiry is to probe some of these areas, and establish a clearer picture for the scientific community as well as the public. I welcome the contribution of written evidence in order that we can carry out the most thorough and informative inquiry possible.”   The Committee is inviting written evidence on the issue, to be received by 18 September 2015.   House of Lords Press Office, House of Lords, London SW1A 0PW 020 7219 8550 lordspressoffice@parliament.uk http://www.parliament.uk/lords **   
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeThe mind boggles really, massed feral cats behaving like lemmings and throwing themselves into the sea? Water run off from people's gardens where the next door's cat has poo-ed in the flower beds? Fly-tipping of used kitty litter that ends up washed out to sea instead of turned into land fill? That last one does suggest a possible gull intermediary as well. The article and comments suggests that the Inuits are keeping more cats as pets, waste disposal is primitive and waterways and water runoff are leading to infected fish and crustaceans. The Belugas are the local top of the food chain so get to concentrate all the infections further back down the chain. — Scientists at the University of British Columbia have discovered a dangerous parasite, spread by domestic cats, in western Arctic beluga #Arctic #Beluga   #KittyLitterDisease  
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Commented on post by Leonidas Savvides in Developing with Google+it appears to be, yes. — https://developers.google.com/+/web/share/ how I share text with URL to G+ , just like Twitter: https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=We%20started%20with%20Photography
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeWeirdly, Toxoplasmosis makes rats less wary of cats. The predator doing behaviour modification on the prey via a common gut parasite. So are the Beluga whales and cats now better friends? Is this the cats evolutionary strategy to get more love when the sea levels inevitably rise? — Scientists at the University of British Columbia have discovered a dangerous parasite, spread by domestic cats, in western Arctic beluga #Arctic #Beluga   #KittyLitterDisease  
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatism+Darius Constantine The paradigm will change, because "nature bats last" and if the resource limits don't get you the pollution will. The question is whether we want to continue business as usual as long as possible and have a hard landing or have the wisdom and imagination to throttle back just enough to have a soft landing. That presupposes though that the collective mind of all mankind is actually capable of any conscious informed choice. On some days it really doesn't look like it. I think If there's anything really wrong with the Limits to Growth model and curves it's that the model will break down in the period after the peaks. Even the down side is portrayed as nice stable curves which hide some deeply unpleasant mass behaviour. Timescale is everything. Getting to stable sustainability in 10 generations might be fun rather than terrifying. — The recent history of the Aral Sea is kind of a microcosm of resource depletion in general. Basically, the Soviets redirected the flow of the rivers which had formerly been feeding the Aral. This was done for the purpose of farm irrigation (specifically cotton) with the idea of creating more agricultural exports. They knew perfectly well it would cause the Aral to dry up, but didn't care -- either because they didn't realize the negative economic effects this would have (there were many fishing towns dependent on the Aral, and a substantial fishing industry -- the hulks of many abandoned ships are still on site), or else possibly because that economic activity consisted of low-level revenues of long standing that were difficult to capture and turn into rents, while the farms were larger-scale operations which -- even though quite wasteful of water and utilizing poor soil-management practices -- were expected to produce more revenues in more substantial chunks and were a new thing, and hence could be taxed or extorted or whatever it was that the Soviet bureaucracy did in order to enrich its powerful. At the time (1960s, arguably the height of the Soviet regime), anyone who disagreed with the plan was risking their neck, so it went forward. Later on, too many people had become too dependent on the new economic status quo -- the farms now being fed by the waters that used to keep the Aral full -- so projects to undo the damage were generally very unpopular... ...despite the health hazard now created by the polluted dust that blows off the Aralkum Desert (i.e. the desert now occupying most of what used to be the Aral Sea), never mind the loss of the once-prosperous fishing industry. So basically, they can't fix the problem they created because there are too many people in the area who are now dependent on the new status quo. The problem could probably be ameliorated somewhat by making the delivery systems more efficient, and promoting better soil-management practices -- but "there's no money in that", while there is money to be made siphoning off public funds for warfare and the banking industry. (While I can only point to specific examples here in the US, I suspect this is a worldwide problem.) As we continue to fill up the planet past the overflow point, we can less and less afford the luxury of pure capitalism, which assumes unlimited resources; we more and more urgently need to move towards a system of government that prioritizes efficiency and preservation -- the public good, and conserving of valuable resources -- over private gain. (I came across this while Wikidiving off one of +Dana Hunter 's articles on Christianist geology textbooks -- http://freethoughtblogs.com/entequilaesverdad/2015/07/14/adventures-in-christianist-earth-science-education-xiv-wherein-we-row-our-creationist-boat-gently-down-the-streams/ )
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Commented on post by Richard Anthony Johnson in Climate ChangeGo North, old man. — “We’ve missed the boat, so to speak, on stopping serious warming in a way so we can turn it around real quick,” says Harold Wanless, chair of the department of geological sciences at the University of Miami. “That’s gone, we’ve warmed the ocean too much. So we’re in for it now.” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/come-hell-or-high-water-the-disaster-scenario-that-is-south-florida/article25552300/?service=mobile
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Commented on post by Leonidas Savvides in Developing with Google+You might want to look at and star this issue. https://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?id=750 And also this one, https://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?id=50 — https://developers.google.com/+/web/share/ how I share text with URL to G+ , just like Twitter: https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=We%20started%20with%20Photography
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Commented on post by Kevin Kelly+Johnathan Gross Please note. I'm not suggesting that Kevin Kelly or his friends are taking money from BigAg. So "Shill" is perhaps unnecessarily emotive. However he repeatedly promotes pro-GMO stories like this. I'm asking why. What is it in his make up and back ground that results in a desire to share this kind of story? There's lot of pro-science stories that need promoting, why this one? — If you are open to scientific evidence this superb essay may change your mind. It succinctly makes the case for GMOs (including the one area where they are of legitimate concern). It also does a good job in describing why labeling (in current form) is not the answer. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/are_gmos_safe_yes_the_case_against_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html
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Commented on post by Kevin KellySo many of the arguments against GMO actually seem to be arguments against the US style of corporate industrial agriculture. And analysis of GMOs that show they're safe doesn't necessarily make US style corporate industrial agriculture safe. Some curious questions though. Why is Kevin Kelly and other friends of the Long Now foundation shilling for the GMO industry? Is there a correlation between pro-GMO lobbyists funded by big agrichem and climate change denial lobbyists funded by big oil? Because their methods often look very similar. — If you are open to scientific evidence this superb essay may change your mind. It succinctly makes the case for GMOs (including the one area where they are of legitimate concern). It also does a good job in describing why labeling (in current form) is not the answer. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/are_gmos_safe_yes_the_case_against_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html
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Commented on postVaguely disappointed that this came from doge recognition algorithms and not cate recognition. It would have been much more internetty if all the pictures were turned into pictures of cats.
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Commented on postHere's another person, dismayed that SSNs are no longer secret and are stored all over the place but unable to accept that the answer is to stop using them as an authenticator. Even though he recognises that that is where the problem is. https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/jeremyepstein/too-many-ssns-floating-around/
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyArticle is unreadable due to broken Business Insider website with too many redirect loops. Oh well. — Changing your mind due to evidence is admirable. Bill Nye changes mind on GMOs; now in favor. http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-nye-explains-his-stance-on-gmos-2015-7
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Commented on postThe problem is not OPM or whatever replaces it and how secure it was or is or will be. The problem is all the systems that treat the data contained as if it was secret. IMHO, of course.
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPhttp://www.crash.net/motogp/news/221009/1/crutchlow-sorry-dani-hails-hernandez-smith.html — Wow!! That is Class right there folks!!@CalCrutchlow
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Commented on postSo what will it take to get the systems changed that rely on that data. Suing the bank that allowed access to your bank account is a bit hard when all your money has already gone. Is anyone considering the sheer scale of the problem now? It's not enough to offer insurance or monitoring for the people who might be at risk because even if the bill gets passed, you know they'll try and wriggle out of any real compensation. http://fedscoop.com/recover-act-opm-breach-2015
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Commented on postAnd then this http://fedscoop.com/opm-losses-a-40-year-problem-for-intelligence-community --- Richard A. Russell is a former senior national intelligence service executive who served in progressively responsible national security positions for more than 36 years before retiring in January 2015. According to Russell, the U.S. government has vastly underestimated the financial cost of providing identity theft monitoring. At least four to five people will require monitoring for every non-married federal employee in the background investigation database, according to Russell. For those who have been married, or married more than once, the number of affected people is more like 12 to 14, he said. "With those factors alone, the total number of people whose information is likely to be rolled up in the breaches would be in excess of 50 million," Russell said. "Just doing the math suggests it could be higher: 19.7 million times four to 14 yields between 78.8 million and 275.8 million whose information is now in untrusted hands," he said. "This is about more than getting the numbers right. It's about taking a true measure of what has happened and what must be done," Russell said. "For some, the proposed protection would run out before their child enters the first grade in school. If a child is currently 20 years old, their risk will last between 50 and 70 years or longer." --- There's something really wrong with the systems if this many people are at risk of identity theft because the OPM data is no longer secret. As if it ever was secret.
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Commented on post by Scott Baker in Climate Change+Jan Galkowski Because Science.
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Commented on post by EcoCars4Sale in Electric Vehicles (UK)No VW E-Golf? And do all 10 have a plugin mode? It wasn't clear in the article. — Our top 10 plug-in cars. Here you can see the vital's from the price, mpg, range to the per per mile.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionAs opposed to the compsci FuhShyzzleLoad (FSL) which scales by factors of 1024 instead of 1000. — Proposed new numerical nomenclature: "illion" Definition: a number large enough to be difficult to wrap your head around, give or take some orders of magnitude. h/t: my clumsy fingers.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionIs there an imperial shitload that's 1/1000 of a metric shitload? How many Smithsonians is that? — Proposed new numerical nomenclature: "illion" Definition: a number large enough to be difficult to wrap your head around, give or take some orders of magnitude. h/t: my clumsy fingers.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThere might have been a middle ground here where anyone could run a Reddit-like shard or server instance all on Port 80. Wordpress or Drupal might have morphed into this. Instead of locating your sub-reddit on Reddit or an Ello page, or whatever, you'd rent a hosted instance on Godaddy or 1&1 that took 5 minutes to set up. The ecosystem of Blogs, RSS, Blog Search, Disqus, Friendfeed almost got there, but the unwillingness to plug the holes and some technical difficulties stopped it. And then free painless alternatives and land grab meant we gave up. So is there a partially de-centralised system possible where anyone can run a server, the servers all talk to each other, there's room for 3rd parties to innovate on top of the ecosystem and the whole is accessible from any browser anywhere. — NB: title is misleading, project was actually a decentralised Reddit Former redditor: "Fix reddit with bitcoin." https://medium.com/@ryanxcharles/fix-reddit-with-bitcoin-7da3f85fb9ba I had an opportunity to talk to the then-CEO of reddit, Inc., Yishan, last summer, and told him I wanted to create a decentralized reddit. He was very excited about this idea— turns out they had a high-level plan of decentralizing reddit in the works, and they needed someone to execute this vision. Soon thereafter, I left my job at BitPay, the leading bitcoin payment processing company, to join reddit, Inc. My primary goal at reddit on Day 1 was to decentralize reddit. There is a problem with decentralization, which is how to incentivize the participants. Since there is no company in the middle that can earn money from advertising to pay the server bills, the people themselves need to earn money to pay their own costs of hosting the system. Using a credit card doesn’t work, because there would need to be someone in the middle processing payments, breaking the decentralization, and introducing the same asymmetry we are trying to solve. To create a purely decentralized reddit, we need decentralized money. Such a thing was invented in 2009 by Satoshi Nakamoto: bitcoin. I disagree that a decentralized architecture necessitates decentralized currency -- this seems far more likely yet another case of Bitcoin as a solution in search of a problem. But the ideas that 1) a decentralised Reddit was seen as a positive, and 2) that finding a financial model to support that goal was the ultimate roadblock is, respectively, interesting and unsurprising. Much what Meredith L. Patterson discussed earlier in "On Port 80": https://medium.com/@maradydd/on-port-80-d8d6d3443d9a
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Commented on post+John Davidson "Biometrics need to be a secret if they are used as a replacement for verification of identity". They're not necessarily, or no longer secret. So we should no longer be using them as proof of identity. Identity is a hard set of problems but clever people have put a lot of thought in to it. What's really disappointing is that so many systems ignore the theoretical analysis and try and re-invent it from scratch. And this is endemic in the western economic systems. It's absurd that a hack into a government database should then potentially lead to people's bank accounts or credit references being at risk. But dealing with that means changing all the other systems, not just the system that was hacked. Complete aside. We're now chipping all our animals like horses, cats and dogs. Are animal thieves now doing surgery to change the chips? I guess I'd expect this to happen first around the big money, like race horses. That question was prompted by thinking that we should be requiring that gov employees and contractors have an rfid chip embedded in their neck with their own personal IPV6 number. We could sell it on the basis of being given TSA/passport fast track at airports.
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Commented on post by Janko Roettgers in ChromecastWith Cast for Audio, I'd hope Google would do this themselves, either with a built in DAC and jack socket on the Chromecast or an official HDMI pass-thru with audio jack. But then I'd also hope for a bit more support from third party audio apps for Chromecast. And/or a better generic solution for casting audio from Google. — http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/chromecast-audio-adapter-streaming-music-1201537725/
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPTill Honda gave him a bill for the tank that Dani punched in frustration. — Wow!! That is Class right there folks!!@CalCrutchlow
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Commented on post by Ahmed Maadan in Google+ Updateshttps://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/nearby still works in the mobile web version. Still fairly useless, but it does work. — Where's nearby option in Android G+ ???
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Commented on postIn my experience, you can't get anyone to pay a sub if there's a VC-funded (or otherwise) competitor offering the same thing for free. The only place this seems to work is in very niche markets offering a premium service to a small premium audience. Hence pretty much every attempt at a social network funded by subscriptions has failed and the conversations have migrated to Facebook. I'm not at all convinced by the idea of "freemium" either. Are there any examples of it actually working?
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Commented on postI'm not that bothered one way or the other. But is there even a token attempt to make them road legal?
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Commented on postInteresting. So fingerprints are not a one way hash. It's possible to use a stored record to produce a physical object that will then pass authentication against that stored record. I know it's different, but this smacks of storing passwords instead of storing password hashes. 
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Commented on postWhy is it an issue if identity data including biometrics is not secret? Or to put that another way, why do we rely on identity being secret in order to use knowledge of it as proof of identity? I'm thinking particularly here of bank account number and Social Security number.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPWell he did the horrendous off at the top of the waterfall a couple of years ago. I think he's due to lose the front on the brakes at the bottom, 2nd last corner.  — Any guesses on exactly how Crutchlow is going to throw his bike at the scenery this weekend? Pedrosa for the win.
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Commented on post by Urmil Shroff in ChromecastIf the charging USB port on the Chromecast has the data pins connected, what else could it be used for; a keyboard/Mouse? Perhaps it would have been better if Google had exposed an accessory USB-A port as well as the Cat5 port. It would have been nice if it had an audio out as well. You can see where this is going, turn the power plug into a dock. — Wired #Chromecast , anyone?
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in EconomicsAre they finished? Who knows. Perhaps they're just empty shells. There's something very JG Ballard about this picture. [edited to add] Actually quite likely is that they're finished, but there's no electricity and no water in the pipes. And the sewage pipes just stop 5 miles out of town. — Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the fenqing economists were wrong, and that it's impossible to sustain double-digit growth rates forever, in the face of vast misallocations of resources. It does not appear that China is headed for anything close to a soft landing -- much to the rest of the world's horror.  http://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/chinese-investors-stung-market-rout-n387261
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in EconomicsChina's been building a lot of empty cities. It's one example of spectacularly useless busy work that resulted in the notional GDP growth. http://thequietus.com/articles/17799-ghost-cities-of-china-wade-shepard-psychogeography-economics This could be viewed as the insane result of corruption and central planning. Or maybe it's extremely prescient. All this building and connected economic growth will be needed shortly. Just not now. — Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the fenqing economists were wrong, and that it's impossible to sustain double-digit growth rates forever, in the face of vast misallocations of resources. It does not appear that China is headed for anything close to a soft landing -- much to the rest of the world's horror.  http://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/chinese-investors-stung-market-rout-n387261
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesIs there a collective noun for a group of CCTV cameras? Flock doesn't seem quite right. I thought pigeons but loft and kit doesn't work. But then I saw  sparrows - a ubiquity of sparrows  CCTV - a ubiquity of CCTV Yeah, that works.  — I always wondered what they did in their natural habitats; now I know. I'm really tempted to build ornithopter drones with surveillance camera bodies. Also, the art here is cool. You should click through and see the rest of it.
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Commented on postPiketty weighs in on the Greece problem. https://medium.com/@gavinschalliol/thomas-piketty-germany-has-never-repaid-7b5e7add6fff Piketty: Those who want to chase Greece out of the Eurozone today will end up on the trash heap of history. If the Chancellor wants to secure her place in the history books, just like [Helmut] Kohl did during reunification, then she must forge a solution to the Greek question, including a debt conference where we can start with a clean slate. But with renewed, much stronger fiscal discipline.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionRussell and Whitehead would like a word with you. Maybe over a cup of tea so you can play a round of "spot the cosmic teapot". Or perhaps you're hoping to solve the Greek financial crisis[1] with the help of Epimenedes' friend who was the only Cretan who always told the truth. As he said himself, "So all Cretans are sarcastic? Yeah right!". [1]Here's one solution. Γερμανούς, να πάει στο σπίτι — I'm compiling a list of all lists ... ... which don't contain themselves.
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Commented on postGoes to show you should not try to turn a discussion service built primarily on user-owned categories/rooms into a business. Without being very careful not to upset the real owners in the process. IMHO, this is not a morality tale about anarchism or systems built on voluntary labour. It's a morality tale about arrogant management. Especially arrogant new management of an existing system.
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPThinking about this. I think the game from Rossi with Marc is to say, "Come on if you're good enough. But I'm not going to let you past unless it's clean and complete." Hence the way he really leant on Marc in the second part of his pass near the end. Versus Marc's pass on Rossi at turn one. When we get to the last corner, I think Rossi had played out a lot of scenarios in his head and after watching previous races. He was very quick to stand the bike up and take to the gravel. Most racers in that situation keep on trying to make the corner and fall off while leant over. Either on the grass or in the gravel. The moment Marc touches him, it's "Oh, that's scenario #5, OK, done". And there's a long term plan to this. He needs to get Marc to think twice before committing to a pass. Which is going to be hard but part of that is making it clear that he won't yield unless the pass is complete and fair. He also needs Marc and Dani (and Dovi and whoever)  to get between him and Lorenzo. It hardly needs saying but I think everybody knows now that this year it's serious. — Rossi finely gets an opportunity to display his 'D o c t o r' skills - it's been a long time! Nice to see Rossi exercising the chess skills that earned him the name "The Doctor". I just saw the race and haven't had time to read much news, but I'll bet you Rossi allowed Marc to pass. I know Marc performed one of his famous 'rides-over-the-edge' to catch back up to Rossi on those final corners, but that doesn't take away from the mental prowess that we loved to see from Rossi for so many years. I find it extremely interesting that so many riders over the recent few years lack this "chess player" like thought process. From Marquez to Crutchlow - it escapes me how they just don't seem to gain this awareness ...mental thought processes/skills that should be fundamental for every modern rider by this time. 
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Commented on post by Gr82briding in Motorcycle RoadracingRossi's already got a special friend. He doesn't need another one. But he hasn't had a proper enemy for a while.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatismIf you're prepared to wait for geological time, then a lot of things become possible. Even biological terra-forming. Though perhaps it depends which Sci-Fi novel you think you're living in. — "Statements of the bleeding obvious, the outcomes of basic arithmetic, are treated as exotic and unpardonable distractions, while the impossible proposition by which we live is regarded as so sane and normal and unremarkable that it isn't worthy of mention. That's how you measure the depth of this problem: by our inability even to discuss it." The idea that "economic expansion" is not only good but necessary has been so relentlessly drummed into people's heads that the idea of it stopping -- much less reversing on a long-term basis -- seems akin to the idea of civilization collapsing, and inspires feelings of panic and fear. We're programmed to ignore the problem until it kills us. While our current system is such that we're likely to keep going full steam until some kind of massive crash happens -- resulting in global famine, wars, and other substantial shocks to human civilization leading to widespread collapse of industry -- those things are less likely to happen if we stop the expansion machine and start thinking of resources as common property to be both cultivated carefully and shared equally. (Remember the "spaceship Earth" metaphor? The plutonomists were hoping we had forgotten.) In other words, admitting resource limitations -- "limits to growth" -- isn't anti-industry nor even a form of austerity; it's a way to prevent a crash -- a way to bring our civilization in for a soft landing so we can continue building and creating. via +bill camp https://plus.google.com/u/0/108669151989134721823/posts/E78SgH7FcXS .
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Star Trek conservatismI for one, welcome the plan to seed Venus with algae in the hope that DNA-based intelligent life appears in 500m years or so. And a few star sails with some DNA on board aimed roughly at Sirius-B might be fun and not too expensive. Self sustaining human populations off planet, not so much. Space is extremely hostile and the gravity well is deep. Go and colonise the Gobi desert, Antarctica and the Mariana Trench first. Gravity and the ozone layer make things a lot easier. And you can still call for help when the first 100 attempts go wrong while you refine the process. — "Statements of the bleeding obvious, the outcomes of basic arithmetic, are treated as exotic and unpardonable distractions, while the impossible proposition by which we live is regarded as so sane and normal and unremarkable that it isn't worthy of mention. That's how you measure the depth of this problem: by our inability even to discuss it." The idea that "economic expansion" is not only good but necessary has been so relentlessly drummed into people's heads that the idea of it stopping -- much less reversing on a long-term basis -- seems akin to the idea of civilization collapsing, and inspires feelings of panic and fear. We're programmed to ignore the problem until it kills us. While our current system is such that we're likely to keep going full steam until some kind of massive crash happens -- resulting in global famine, wars, and other substantial shocks to human civilization leading to widespread collapse of industry -- those things are less likely to happen if we stop the expansion machine and start thinking of resources as common property to be both cultivated carefully and shared equally. (Remember the "spaceship Earth" metaphor? The plutonomists were hoping we had forgotten.) In other words, admitting resource limitations -- "limits to growth" -- isn't anti-industry nor even a form of austerity; it's a way to prevent a crash -- a way to bring our civilization in for a soft landing so we can continue building and creating. via +bill camp https://plus.google.com/u/0/108669151989134721823/posts/E78SgH7FcXS .
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Commented on post by Marina E in MotoGPLoved this. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1f9L2H_akq8/VZENi6RliGI/AAAAAAAACKo/zOYPkGDZt_k/s640/blogger-image--931975090.jpg
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesHTML. Which gives you each post as a single HTML page. So you can then use directory sort to see them in reverse chronological order. But while Takeout does download all your posts including private ones, it doesn't give any route to find or download your comments on other people's posts. — With the 4th anniversary of G+ I thought I'd go back and look at my early posts. This was stupidly hard. The easiest way was to request a data takeout, unzip it locally and then sort the posts by reverse date modified. My first public post was about a week after the launch day. It turns out it was a report about looking for features that were in Buzz but missing from G+  https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/1qBXL7B367V _I've been searching for something in G+ that let's me see all the posts I've commented on. I can't find it yet._ Now it's 4 years later. There's still no way of getting a list of all the posts you've commented on. And you can't get it from Takeout either.
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Commented on post by Douglas Knoyle in MotoGPI suggest you go back and watch the last 8 laps or so and especially the passes. Rossi made a small mistake at the exit of the chicane running onto the grass on the inside. This would have cut drive a fraction, allowing Marc to get just close enough to do the braking pass at the first corner. I don't believe that was letting Marc past deliberately. After that it was just classic Assen race craft. A bit of a block pass back where it's not expected followed by a ballsy lean on the other guy round the outside. Then the first time at the chicane make him take the long way round the outside. A killer lap to get 0.5s in front. And then the classic fast line through the chicane for the run to the line. The catch was that Marc shouldn't have been able to get close enough to do the lunge but he did. And the revenge was "just don't shut off". Yes it was all good race craft, thought through, but I don't think it was deliberate chess. More like improvisation from a bunch of planned possibilities. — Rossi finely gets an opportunity to display his 'D o c t o r' skills - it's been a long time! Nice to see Rossi exercising the chess skills that earned him the name "The Doctor". I just saw the race and haven't had time to read much news, but I'll bet you Rossi allowed Marc to pass. I know Marc performed one of his famous 'rides-over-the-edge' to catch back up to Rossi on those final corners, but that doesn't take away from the mental prowess that we loved to see from Rossi for so many years. I find it extremely interesting that so many riders over the recent few years lack this "chess player" like thought process. From Marquez to Crutchlow - it escapes me how they just don't seem to gain this awareness ...mental thought processes/skills that should be fundamental for every modern rider by this time. 
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingDovi's Problem. http://www.crash.net/motogp/news/220564/1/broken-seat-ruins-doviziosos-challenge.html — If you think this is close ........ Its nothing compared to the Timmer Chicane on the last lap. I'll leave the words to +Jared Earle C/O +David Emmett 's MotoMatters dot com. https://motomatters.com/results/2015/06/27/2015_assen_motogp_race_result_assen_deli.html  ____________________________________________________ +MotoGP  #MotoGP   #Moto2   #Moto3  +TT Circuit Assen  #AB  +Aprilia Official +GresiniRacing  #Aspar   +Athinà Lux +NGM  #Yamaha   +CWM-LCR Honda MotoGP Team  #Ducati   +E-Motion #Ioda  +Estrella Galicia 00 +MVDSRacingTeam  +Monster Energy +Dribble Dots +Pramac Ibérica S.A.U.  #Tech3  +Monster Energy Girls +Bridgestone  +Yamaha Racing +yamahamotogp  +TELEFONICA MOVISTAR +Monster Energy  +HondaProRacing +Box Repsol +Red Bull  +Team SUZUKI ECSTAR +Team Suzuki Racing  +MOTUL +Ohlins Perfromance  #Assen  
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingHayden and Edwards Bayliss and Toseland Fogarty and Chili Numerous 125GPs and 250GPs, Often 5 abreast into the final corner with 3 of them ending up in the gravel. It's great isn't it! I'm glad Marc really went for it on that final lap and was almost close enough for the lunge. So good to see them both hanging it out in the scary fast corners.  But also glad they both finished in the same order as they started the lap and nobody actually crashed. Meanwhile did Dovi have no tyres left? And when will Crutchlow work out how to tell the truth without sounding like a whiny git? — If you think this is close ........ Its nothing compared to the Timmer Chicane on the last lap. I'll leave the words to +Jared Earle C/O +David Emmett 's MotoMatters dot com. https://motomatters.com/results/2015/06/27/2015_assen_motogp_race_result_assen_deli.html  ____________________________________________________ +MotoGP  #MotoGP   #Moto2   #Moto3  +TT Circuit Assen  #AB  +Aprilia Official +GresiniRacing  #Aspar   +Athinà Lux +NGM  #Yamaha   +CWM-LCR Honda MotoGP Team  #Ducati   +E-Motion #Ioda  +Estrella Galicia 00 +MVDSRacingTeam  +Monster Energy +Dribble Dots +Pramac Ibérica S.A.U.  #Tech3  +Monster Energy Girls +Bridgestone  +Yamaha Racing +yamahamotogp  +TELEFONICA MOVISTAR +Monster Energy  +HondaProRacing +Box Repsol +Red Bull  +Team SUZUKI ECSTAR +Team Suzuki Racing  +MOTUL +Ohlins Perfromance  #Assen  
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Commented on post by Andrew Chason in CyberPunkOne problem with a lot of this stuff is that it was often early in the author's careers when they were still learning their craft. So the ideas may be good but the writing is terrible. Have you gone back and tried to re-read "Islands in the Stream" lately? I remember it as really good, but 20 years later I couldn't get more than 25 pages in. — Posted today on io9...
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Commented on post by Andrew Chason in CyberPunkIt's not a bad starting point and you could do worse than read everything any of those authors have ever written. Or just start with Mirrorshades and follow the links to each author. But also these books and everything by these people as well. John Brunner - Shockwave Rider Paul Di Filippo - Ribofunk Lucius Shephard - Life During Wartime Michael Swanwick - Vacuum Flowers Mink Mole - Alligator Alley Jeff Noon - Needle in the Groove Walter Jon Williams - Hardwired Ken Macleod - The Execution Channel Jack Womack - Random Acts of Senseless Violence Samuel Delaney - Dhalgren Ian McDonald - The Dervish House Misha - Red Spider White Web Martin Bax - The Hospital Ship Paolo Bacigalupi - The Windup Girl St. Jude (R.U.Sirius, Mondo2000) - Cyberpunk handbook : the real cyberpunk fakebook http://www.librarything.com/tag/cyberpunk Back in the 80s and 90s I read everything cyberpunk I could find. My tastes veered off though towards Slipstream and the sort of cross breed between Cyberpunk, Slipstream, Magical Realism and the late 60s New worlds crew like JG Ballard. Part of the reason for that is that the writing is generally better. It's a common criticism of early books by new SciFi authors that the writing is often terrible even while the ideas are interesting. What's a bit sad is how much of that stuff is getting really hard to find now, long since out of print and pulped. Anyone got a copy of Lewis Shiner - Deserted Cities of the Heart? — Posted today on io9...
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Commented on postWe have the same problem in large parts of the UK and especially the SE and London. Meanwhile squatting is now a criminal offence, being homeless is effectively criminal and house prices are so high that even though interest rates are low, you can't afford the deposit on a mortgage. Tony Benn would have seen this as another example of a deliberate policy to reduce the power of organised labour. You can't strike and withdraw your labour when your house is on the line. The only winners are the landlords who've managed to leverage capital into buy-to-let property and the agents who serve them. There's a weird side effect here on the artistic scene and especially music. The venues used to be in the city along with the part time jobs, and a ready supply of squattable derelict property that was combined home and rehearsal area. The venues are being closed, the part time jobs are hard to find, and squatting is illegal. So the artists are leaving for places where they're treated better. Like Berlin, for the moment. http://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/blog/london-is-no-longer-manageable-for-musicians
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Commented on post+Steve S What about people who look like they're not from around these parts, boy?
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Commented on postSorry. Too obtuse. Engaging the trolls by asking them questions may be entertaining but it won't convince them or the gallery. So is it just entertainment? The famous Sea Lion cartoon is here.  http://wondermark.com/1k62/ I'm sure you'll recognise the internet debating mode that's being lampooned.
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Commented on postFeeding the trolls entertains me. But I usually end up feeling like a Sea Lion.
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Commented on post by Charles Werbick in Electric BikesGood work. Bicycle theft is a huge problem in big cities. I imagine E-Bike theft will become the same issue. Perhaps more so. — Here's the prototype alarm system I'm working on for my eBike.  It's designed to go in the battery box and steal power from it to recharge. It has GSM Cell/GPS/motion sensing and uses an RFID card as the key to arm/disarm. If anyone moves the bike and triggers the accelerometer, it sends a text message that includes the speed and heading of the unit as well as GPS coordinates as a google maps link. Motion sensor sensitivity is adjustable to prevent false positives. Current prototype is about the size of a deck of cards. Next iteration will be significantly smaller... It cost around $100 to build and is 100% open source.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MotoGPI'm on Virgin cable on a high end package. At the moment BT Sport HD is included. The one thing I don't get is Sky Atlantic because Sky and Virgin can't reach agreement. I can't stand the commentators on MotoGP.com but at least the video is the same. What really sucks about this is BT reaching a 5 year agreement with MotoGp and then changing the rules half way through. Bring back Eurosport, I say. Their coverage of BSB and WSB is great. But then with Dorna now running WSB, I wonder where that will go. — BT Sport no longer free part of BT broadband from next year. http://www.crash.net/motogp/news/220382/1/bt-sport-price-rise-for-motogp-viewers.html Will it stay an included part of Virgin's upper end packages? All due to the bidding war for football. FFS.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceRe-reading the article, there's a bit in the middle where he suggests that the journalists who received the files were and are a target and were probably unable to keep out state level actors. But then shortly after when suggesting that direct access is more likely, he says, "Remember that Snowden was able to wander through the NSA’s networks with impunity, and that the agency had so few controls in place that the only way they can guess what has been taken is to extrapolate based on what has been published.". If the NSA had access to the journalist's systems they would be able to get a copy of the documents and so find out what had been taken. So to Hugh's point, maybe the people who received the files were hacked and various states obtained access, but apparently not the NSA. Or, that's the story we're supposed to believe. So the NSA is both omnipotent and omni-incompetent depending on the propaganda needs of the moment. Edward, my earlier comments were aimed at a commenter who has been moderated out and so now looks like I'm stating the obvious. That's a problem with aggressive moderation. I still think there's a point though. The MSM narrative we're given continues to confuse and talks about this stuff AS IF it's something physical. We're told that hard drives get smashed, colleagues get detained at customs and USB thumb drives confiscated. It's sometimes hard to tell if this is deliberate spin or journalistic incompetence. Or maybe it's real and there really are moments when there is a copy of interest on a piece of physical media that could then be usefully examined or destroyed. — "I know how deep we are in our enemies’ networks without them having any idea that we’re there. I’m worried that our networks are penetrated just as deeply."
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Commented on post by Trevor Larkum in Electric Vehicles (UK)This is all good. But I have a collection of words. Diesel, London, HGV, Tipper Truck, Bus, Taxi, White Van, Diesel SUV. We desperately need to transition all these to ULEV countrywide for the climate, for pollution, for the economy. £35m feels like a small amount of subsidy to try and achieve this. — http://fuelincluded.com/2015/04/12-cities-shortlisted-for-ulev-funding/
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Commented on post by Art Thompson, Jr. in Mixology 🍸We need auto-conversion to metric to complete the puzzle! But then we also need recipes that avoid mixing absolute measurements (1/2 Pony) with relative (2 Parts). The Savoy book is particularly bad at this. — Just scored the Rosetta Stone of vintage cocktail recipes. Ponies to jiggers to ounces.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThere's some cognitive dissonance here. Everybody keeps talking about "the documents" as if it's 3 ring binders or sheaves of printout. Even when it's obvious it's actually computer files, the UK Gov plays up to this with their bizarre act of theatre; destroying a laptop or two in The Guardian's basement. But we're quite happy with the idea that you keep multiple backups in multiple places on multiple media. So even if Snowden walked out of the Hawaii NSA office with one thumb drive, how many copies do you think there are now? When you say "they were destroyed", which copies are you talking about? As someone else has pointed out, it's not hard to construct a situation where Snowden handed the docs on to the journalists and then arranged that he couldn't access them. So that when he arrived in Russia he didn't have access and couldn't get access. — "I know how deep we are in our enemies’ networks without them having any idea that we’re there. I’m worried that our networks are penetrated just as deeply."
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceIDC produces estimates of total global data growth. I think this is the source of the EMC report. There seems to be a 2014 report here. http://idcdocserv.com/1678 Like the physical universe, the digital universe is large – by 2020 containing nearly as many digital bits as there are stars in the universe. It is doubling in size every two years, and by 2020 the digital universe — the data we create and copy annually — will reach 44 zettabytes, or 44 trillion gigabytes. — Dear Layzplus: Estimates of total online content? (And a sigma-basis statement of the quantity of online crap) I'm interested in (rough, ballpark) estimates of, in decreasing order of significance: 1. How many pages there are on the Internet. 2. The average size of those pages (in words or bytes of text). 3. The fraction in English. 4. The duplicate content rate. That is, how much of this is original content? As starting points, I've got an estimate of "about 1 trillion pages" from 2010. http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/09/12/web.index/index.html There are claims that "knowledge" is doubling every 12 months, soon to be every 12 hours, from Industry Tap's David Russell Schilling, a source I've previously found to be both highly unreliable and hyperbolic[1]: http://www.industrytap.com/knowledge-doubling-every-12-months-soon-to-be-every-12-hours/3950 (The article contains, no surprise, virtually zero information.) From EMC: "Worl' [sic] Data More Than Doubling Every Two Years—Driving Big Data Opportunity, New IT Roles" http://www.emc.com/about/news/press/2011/20110628-01.htm JUNE 28, 2011 -  EMC Corporation (NYSE:EMC) today announced results of the EMC-sponsored IDC Digital Universe study, "Extracting Value from Chaos"—which found the world's information is more than doubling every two years—with a colossal 1.8 zettabytes to be created and replicated in 2011, which is growing faster than Moore's Law. The article contains some data equivalences: In terms of sheer volume, 1.8 zettabytes of data is equivalent to: ⚫ Every person in the United States tweeting 3 tweets per minute for 26,976 years nonstop ⚫ Every person in the world having over 215 million high-resolution MRI scans per day ⚫ Over 200 billion HD movies (each 2 hours in length)—would take 1 person 47 million years to watch every movie 24x7 ⚫ The amount of information needed to fill 57.5 billion 32GB Apple iPads. It's worth noting that much of that data likely isn't text: images, audio, video, and data. A better set of estimates of indexed pages: http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/ Looking at the number of indexed pages, we get about 47 billion pages (Google) vs. 13 billion (Bing), as of Monday, 22 June, 2015. From Google in 2009: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html [O]ur systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once.... So how many unique pages does the web really contain? We don't know; we don't have time to look at them all. (From Jesse Alpert and Nissan Hajaj.) Estimates of text-on-page are hard to come by, but I'm finding estimates of HTML content on pages of 25-30KB (remarkably consistent since the late 1990s).[2] I'll assume that text content is 70% of HTML size, and use the higher bound, so, 21 KB of text. At 1 byte per character and 6 characters per word (spaces included), that's about 2,600 words per page, or 8m 40s reading time at 300 WPM. If anyone's got better values for these estimates, I'd appreciate them. Web filtering as a quality control problem: Six sigma is so not good enough Which gets at the estimate I'd been looking for: it would take 16.48 million years to read the entire World Wide Web. Or, given that the average time spent with digital media online daily is 5h 9m[3], the average adult can read at most 35 trillionths of the Web daily. Or, as a percentage: 99.9999999964% of the Internet is crap. That's ten nines (six sigma is five nines). If you want to give yourself a year to survey that information, you're still excluding: 99.9999986%, or seven nines. That's a seven-sigma level.[4] ______________________________ Notes: 1. See "How crap spreads -- the story of a badly reported boring materials science R&D story" https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/KKHQGfGBV32 2. "The Average Web Page" http://www.optimizationweek.com/reviews/average-web-page/ 3. "Americans Will Spend More Time On Digital Devices Than Watching TV This Year: Research" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/tv-digital-devices_n_3691196.html 4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma +Nissan Hajaj Ping
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric BikesThe USA is mostly 750w, 20mph cut off. But then they get all confused by city and some (NYC) stop treating them as bicycles with an outright ban. If it looks like a bicycle and is doing bicycle things, then nobody cares. but if you're doing 30mph on a thing that looks like a scooter with no helmet or plates, you'll get pulled. Even with the UK-EU limits of 25kph, 250w, there's no real agreed testing procedure and the power is continuous, not peak. So you could have 1kW, 0-10mph, 250w 10mph to 18mph and be almost legal. Everybody seems to be relying on a maker's mark or plate that says "250w". Then there's the confusion about throttles, the EU doesn't allow them, the UK did. So existing bikes are grandfathered in. Personally, I don't see the problem and would rather they were allowed as it makes riding in dense traffic easier. — There seems to be something happening in the EU over licensing of bikes that fall somewhere between light motorcycle and unregulated E-Bicycle. These are sometimes called S-Pedelecs. The Netherlands seem to be planning to treat them as mopeds (UK AM Licensing class) from 2017 and so require helmets, plates, insurance etc. http://www.bmf.co.uk/news/show/mopeds-or-bicycles-what-helmet-law-applies-to-speed-pedelecs I have no problem with 50cc mopeds and the equivalent electric powered devices (approx 30mph, 3.5Kw) requiring helmets, registration, MOTs, insurance and tests. I'm also happy with some of these to be less of a requirement than 125s and above. But please, let's keep bicycles unregulated including e-assist bicycles. This is fairly clear for something that looks like a scooter or small motorcycle. The tricky bit is what we think should be done for things like the Stealth. And of course  then there's the whole issue of enforcement. I frequently see unregistered field bikes being ridden on the back roads round here. The kids are usually wearing boots, gloves and MX helmets so not completely stupid but still highly illegal. Does anyone care? At least if they were on electric field bikes, they'd be silent!
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Commented on postThe Invisible Tentacles of the Free Market. I like it. And of course it led me back to this. The Invisible Hand Society in one of RA Wilson's books.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger's_Cat_Trilogy#Tanstagi Clearly, there should be a shadowy organisation working ceaselessly for their own dark and eldritch benefits called the "The Society of the Invisible Tentacle". I for one, welcome, etc.
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Commented on postIt's not that they're invisible, the Emperor doesn't have any hands!
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Commented on postAnd then this. Uber's Ts&Cs now ban guns in the cab. (change introduced June 10) http://www.engadget.com/2015/06/20/uber-firearm-policy-update/ The USA is ... strange. 
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Commented on post by Peter StrempelThere's some 50s-60s, psycho-sexual semiotics to be unpacked here. The Man is always about 38-45. The Girl might be 22. The Spurned Lover is 29 who must be a lesbian in league with the devil because she had a mind of her own and wouldn't have his babies. Then there's the couple running screaming from the monster. He's wearing a suit, tie and sensible shoes. She gets to try and run in high heels and one of those bondage skirts that's really tight at the knee. It keeps her from running away from the man, but doesn't help much when running away from a monster (or are they the same?). Through the woods. At night. — Aaarrrrghhahahahahah
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Commented on post by Aby Varghese in Developing with Google+https://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?id=207 seems relevant here. In the comments, there's a request for additional parameters to pre-fill the share form with title, content, etc. eg https://plus.google.com/share?url=...&hl=...&title=...&referer=... Also https://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?id=750 — How to pass the custom title, description and Image to google plus button like facebook share button through Google API and PHP any one please give full tutorial
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Change64 mm. As measured by change in sea level since 1993 as observed by satellites. — Update: Sea level change: Latest measurement remains about 64 mm (2.5 inches) #SealevelRise
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Commented on postIt's a young country I have to disagree. >200 years is not young. There's no hiding left behind that idea, I think.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Limits/sub — What resources have humans exhausted? There are numerous resources which are on the verge of exhaustion. What have actually been exhausted? I've got a few in mind, but will wait for responses.
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Commented on post by Electric Cars Guide in Electric Vehicles (UK)A couple of years back, it was very difficult to get lease financing and corporate insurance for EV. Has that changed now? — The overall #sales of #electriccars in the #UnitedStates dramatically increased from 2010 to 2014. From virtually nothing, it is now selling over 120,000 units per year.  #ElectricCarsGuide   #Gas  
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Commented on post by Derren Walliams in Electric Bikes36v-15AHr-350w Bafang BPM. If I set the assist to low (12mph) and so only use it much on hills and acceleration, I've done a few 50 mile rides and still had power for the last climb back to my house. The other approach is pulse and ride. Pedal hard but use pulses of assist to push the average speed up. I'd like to try a traditional tourer-audax style bike with drop bars and skinny tyres and some light assist. That's probably the way to maximise the range. A serious MTB with the BBS02 is probably enormous fun, but it's not really about distance is it! So what's the flat out top speed of those two? Is there a tall enough gear to be able to keep pedalling? — Twin Bafangs (inbred 250w BBS01, reign 750w BBS02). 800 miles so far and not missed a beat.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in LimitsOlaf Stapledon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_and_First_Men Last Men in London and Starmaker. 1930. A reaction to the First World War. +Steve S Why depressing? You always knew that all things die, including Earth and Universe. I heartily approve of the Long Now Foundation's 10k year viewpoint. I just disagree with some of their conclusions. I think considering futures in factors of 10 is a useful mental tool. What does X mean in terms of 10, 100, 1000, 10k, 100k, 1m years out. What would a geologist do? There are numerous Black Swan events on that map. Which leads to the hubris of the followers of Elon Musk. If mankind fails to get off the planet, there's no future for the human race. Um, so? — What you've got to look forward to Timeline of the far future. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140105-timeline-of-the-far-future There's a pretty good Wikipedia article on the topic as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceIt's not a solution but web 1.0 bubble financing was more fun. Or at least it paid for an awful lot of cocaine, flights on Concorde and fancy hotel rooms in strange places. One or two people even got rich enough from it to retire. Divert pension fund money into VC capital funding a "free" service aimed at gaining market share. Where the valuation is based on making it up on volume leading to a ridiculously over-priced exit to an old fashioned sucker company that then goes bust, writing off all the debt. Works for me. — What business model for free content do you see other than ads? I understand all the privacy and distraction issues related, but increasingly many news sites I read feature only paid content. I suppose it's connected to the rise of ad blocking. Asked on an HN article about uBlock, an ad blocker. What are the alternatives to advertising-supported media? What are the implications of those alternatives? What's been tried before? Think long view -- not in the past 2-3 decades, but the past 2-3 centuries. Or millennia. Are there new models to be tried now? How much revenue is required? What's the budget of a news organization? Or independent investigator? Where's the money? How do you bring it to the product? Who, really, is doing credible work in this space? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9718910
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Commented on postTony Benn's corollary to the State's repetition of errors. “The older I get, the more I realise every single generation has to fight the same battles again and again and again – there’s no final victory, and there’s no final defeat.” As quoted in a wonderful bit of deep house from DJ Sprinkles and Mark Fell. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb_ocNslPk0
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+Matt Schofield Meanwhile in China, Lifan plans to phase out IC cars and has a bunch of electric cars in the pipeline including one's with quick replaceable batteries. Better move quickly Tesla, before you're swallowed up.  http://connevted.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/china-lifan-introduces-evs-with.html And Korea focuses on electric microcars for the 60% of the world's population that lives in cities. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me given your points: "there won't be space to park them, let alone drive them."  http://connevted.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/korea-focus-on-micro-e-mobility-from.html — I occasionally will write a long article. This article is, I have to say, longer than even what I would write. But it explains a tremendous number of really important things extremely clearly: power production and use, the history of cars, how these things all fit together, and how Tesla is trying to change that. There's no way I could give you a useful short summary, because the point of this article is that, by the time you're done reading it, you'll understand all of the things well enough that you can join in very serious conversations about them. So don't feel compelled to read this at one sitting -- but this is an article you may want to bookmark, and read bit by bit, because by the time you reach the end, you'll have learned a lot.
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Commented on post by Motorcyclist Magazine in Motorcycle RoadracingThere's clearly quite a match going on between the first two. How far back is 3rd and the rest? I'd love to see Cameron come back to Europe. How about a Yamaha factory team in WSB or WSS? I also think Josh Herrin should get a second chance but in BSS or WSS. — MotoAmerica weekend race recap from Barber Motorsports Park +MotoAmerica +GravesMotorsports +KTM  #superbike   #RC390Cup   #JoshHayes   #CameronBeaubier   #JDBeach  +Monster Energy  #BarberMotorsportsPark  +Motorcyclist Magazine 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)Meanwhile in China, Lifan plans to phase out IC cars and has a bunch of electric cars in the pipeline including one's with quick replaceable batteries. http://connevted.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/china-lifan-introduces-evs-with.html And Korea focuses on electric microcars for the 60% of the world's population that lives in cities. http://connevted.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/korea-focus-on-micro-e-mobility-from.html — The epitome of TL;DR. And it's only one part of 4.  So go and read it. http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ HelpI've tried a few tricks in http://google.com search to get back every G+ post I've commented on in reverse chronogical order but haven't come up with anything actually useful. The real problem here is the lack of a function in G+ to list my comments. Just one of many inexplicably missing functions.  — I've been using a trick in G+ search to find my comments like this. https://plus.google.com/s/%22Julian%20Bond%22%20-inurl%3A106416716945076707395/posts However I'm finding now that -inurl:my_profile_id isn't removing posts posted by me. I've tried also using -inurl:my_profile_short_url but that also fails. inurl: without the - never used to work as a keyword. -inurl: seems to do something, just not what you'd expect. So is it now broken? Is there an accurate current list of the search keywords anywhere? 
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Also note: There have been successful car startups since 1925 in other parts of the world. — I occasionally will write a long article. This article is, I have to say, longer than even what I would write. But it explains a tremendous number of really important things extremely clearly: power production and use, the history of cars, how these things all fit together, and how Tesla is trying to change that. There's no way I could give you a useful short summary, because the point of this article is that, by the time you're done reading it, you'll understand all of the things well enough that you can join in very serious conversations about them. So don't feel compelled to read this at one sitting -- but this is an article you may want to bookmark, and read bit by bit, because by the time you reach the end, you'll have learned a lot.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see much talk about scale. What happens when we push total energy growth by 3% a year and simultaneously push the source of that energy to renewables. — I occasionally will write a long article. This article is, I have to say, longer than even what I would write. But it explains a tremendous number of really important things extremely clearly: power production and use, the history of cars, how these things all fit together, and how Tesla is trying to change that. There's no way I could give you a useful short summary, because the point of this article is that, by the time you're done reading it, you'll understand all of the things well enough that you can join in very serious conversations about them. So don't feel compelled to read this at one sitting -- but this is an article you may want to bookmark, and read bit by bit, because by the time you reach the end, you'll have learned a lot.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Nice description of Runnymede meadow yesterday http://diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/magna-carta-800.html Be careful, post is full of Brit sarcasm and irony! — Eight hundred years after its signing, the Magna Carta is seen as part of the foundation of the idea of democratic rule, of the notion that there should be a law to which even the King is subject. Today, if anything, its relevance is greater than it ever was: the US Supreme Court was citing it in decisions only a few weeks ago. But an increasing group of scholars has been pointing out that the idea of its importance in defining the relationship between the law and the ruler is based on myth, not history: in 1215, the Magna Carta had nearly no effect on anything, and King John promptly ignored it. (And then promptly died of dysentery) The importance of the Magna Carta comes not from its importance at the time, but from the story which we have crafted around it in the centuries since. This is not the most extreme such case: there's another historical document with an even stranger history. The Pact of Umar was a formal agreement by the 7th-century Muslim Caliph Umar ibn Khattab and the Christians of the Syrian town of Bakt about their rights and responsibilities in the society. To understand the significance of the Pact of Umar, you need to understand that during the life of the various Islamic empires, the "people of the Book" -- the Jews, the Christians, and the Zoroastrians -- had a specific legal status ("dhimmi"), under which they were required to pay additional taxes, wear specific clothing, and live under various legal restrictions, but were otherwise full citizens, and could live in their communities, practice their professions, and even become key members of government. This was at the heart of the great efflorescence of culture in the 9th through 12th centuries in particular, with places like Baghdad, Cairo, and Toledo becoming the world's great centers of learning and commerce. At the same time, Europe was only dragging itself out of the wreckage of the Dark Ages, and "citizenship" was defined purely by membership in the local church: there was no law against robbing and murdering anyone who wasn't part of the church or otherwise legally protected. This contrast was really at the heart of one of the most significant differences between the worlds: in the Islamic world, everyone was subject to the rule of law, from the lowliest to the highest. (I did research, many years ago, into the legal status of prostitution in the Islamic world during this period, and it was an extremely eye-opening contrast with its analogue in the Christian world; both in legal manuals and in the much more practical police manuals, you can see that everyone, no matter their profession, is seen as part of the society and subject to the law, while across the Mediterranean you get rulings such as that a prostitute cannot be raped, as her body is a public commodity to which she has no claim of ownership.) The Pact of Umar plays the same role in the law of dhimmi (in the law of the relationship of people of different faiths) that the Magna Carta plays in many modern documents of the rule of law, like the US Constitution. It was cited left and right, used as a template, used to define the natural scope of such relationships. The most interesting thing about the Pact of Umar is that it didn't exist. The pact itself was utterly mythical; from what historians can tell, the legend of it came from cobbled-together memories of several treaties, legal documents, and ideas that had been floating around that region of the world during the seventh and eighth centuries.  So despite the fact that the archetypal document which defined relationships between Jews, Christians, and Muslims for centuries never actually existed, it was nonetheless the template for hundreds of real documents, and its legend formed the basis for some of the most important legal structures of the Middle Ages. As you may guess, this is not historically unique. There has been a long tradition of people "finding" ancient documents which substantiate a good idea -- from Moses de Leon's Zohar, the foundational work of the Kabbalah published in the 13th century (in Spain, the same world created by that great peace above) which he claimed to have been the work of great sages from a thousand years earlier (which just happened to be written in ungrammatical, 13th-century Aramaic; it's a miracle!) to the Bible itself. (See 2 Kings 22; going to excavate and repair a temple, the ancient scrolls of the Law just happened to be discovered, and people realized that they had not been doing Judaism according to the way that God had commanded it thousands of years earlier. It's a miracle! NB that 2 Kings was being written right around the time that the entire Bible was being edited together from the two major local sources; the history of the writing of the Bible is quite fascinating) But it would be wrong to say that later invention of ancient texts is a bad thing. For one thing, across a wide range of human societies, age gives wisdom its acceptability: a brand-new idea would be rejected outright, but a rediscovered ancient one will be considered seriously. This "ancientization" is often the only way for a new and important idea -- such as the rule of law or democracy -- to be taken seriously. For another, some of these discoveries are purely accidental, simply putting a name on a tradition which has been growing. Nobody forged the Pact of Umar: it was simply that everyone acknowledged that this tradition had been growing up for some time, it was vaguely associated with Umar and with Bakt, and so the legend grew into a more specific form in retelling which helped it propagate. In each of these cases, the value of the legend has been not in its direct veracity, but in the effects which it had on people. The Magna Carta and the Pact of Umar share this: quite independently of what they actually said or did, they both drove people to create great things in their own societies.
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Commented on postThere's a difference between how the economy looks from the NYT economics desk, No. 11 Downing Street or Canary wharf and from a small provincial commuter town in the SE. There's what I read in the papers and then there's what I see around me. I live in a neighbourhood of Victorian terrace houses built around 1900 for the up and coming middle class. From my windows I can see 3 Porsches, 2 Aston Martins, a high end Jag and a couple of Range Rovers all parked on the street. AFAIK, these are owned by small businessmen doing all right, thank you. Loadsamoney!  Paul Krugman has some good accurate points, but then he tries to say that UK trains and traffic are somehow worse than New York and I wonder what planet he's living on. It may well be that his longer form analysis is good, but I dislike his short form blogs. It feels too much like he's being paid per thousand words.  The City of London long ago discovered that there were huge riches to be made by positioning yourself in the major currents of currency. So yes, everyone has a bank account and even if you make a living from cleaning windows, the bank shares in your success. But they're not responsible for the wealth creation, they share in it.
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Commented on post by Meloney Hall in Climate ChangeThe shrinking of the Aral Sea isn't a result of climate change. But it is an example of an anthropogenic disaster. We (humans) did this for economic and political reasons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea  — Our shrinking waterways...
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:+No body Body No Treat it as an aside then. Although it is somewhat ironic that the bit of ancient woodland on open land being occupied is scheduled to be developed into a housing estate by the current owners. And that very close to the Magna Carta monument is an acre of land dedicated to JFK. — Eight hundred years after its signing, the Magna Carta is seen as part of the foundation of the idea of democratic rule, of the notion that there should be a law to which even the King is subject. Today, if anything, its relevance is greater than it ever was: the US Supreme Court was citing it in decisions only a few weeks ago. But an increasing group of scholars has been pointing out that the idea of its importance in defining the relationship between the law and the ruler is based on myth, not history: in 1215, the Magna Carta had nearly no effect on anything, and King John promptly ignored it. (And then promptly died of dysentery) The importance of the Magna Carta comes not from its importance at the time, but from the story which we have crafted around it in the centuries since. This is not the most extreme such case: there's another historical document with an even stranger history. The Pact of Umar was a formal agreement by the 7th-century Muslim Caliph Umar ibn Khattab and the Christians of the Syrian town of Bakt about their rights and responsibilities in the society. To understand the significance of the Pact of Umar, you need to understand that during the life of the various Islamic empires, the "people of the Book" -- the Jews, the Christians, and the Zoroastrians -- had a specific legal status ("dhimmi"), under which they were required to pay additional taxes, wear specific clothing, and live under various legal restrictions, but were otherwise full citizens, and could live in their communities, practice their professions, and even become key members of government. This was at the heart of the great efflorescence of culture in the 9th through 12th centuries in particular, with places like Baghdad, Cairo, and Toledo becoming the world's great centers of learning and commerce. At the same time, Europe was only dragging itself out of the wreckage of the Dark Ages, and "citizenship" was defined purely by membership in the local church: there was no law against robbing and murdering anyone who wasn't part of the church or otherwise legally protected. This contrast was really at the heart of one of the most significant differences between the worlds: in the Islamic world, everyone was subject to the rule of law, from the lowliest to the highest. (I did research, many years ago, into the legal status of prostitution in the Islamic world during this period, and it was an extremely eye-opening contrast with its analogue in the Christian world; both in legal manuals and in the much more practical police manuals, you can see that everyone, no matter their profession, is seen as part of the society and subject to the law, while across the Mediterranean you get rulings such as that a prostitute cannot be raped, as her body is a public commodity to which she has no claim of ownership.) The Pact of Umar plays the same role in the law of dhimmi (in the law of the relationship of people of different faiths) that the Magna Carta plays in many modern documents of the rule of law, like the US Constitution. It was cited left and right, used as a template, used to define the natural scope of such relationships. The most interesting thing about the Pact of Umar is that it didn't exist. The pact itself was utterly mythical; from what historians can tell, the legend of it came from cobbled-together memories of several treaties, legal documents, and ideas that had been floating around that region of the world during the seventh and eighth centuries.  So despite the fact that the archetypal document which defined relationships between Jews, Christians, and Muslims for centuries never actually existed, it was nonetheless the template for hundreds of real documents, and its legend formed the basis for some of the most important legal structures of the Middle Ages. As you may guess, this is not historically unique. There has been a long tradition of people "finding" ancient documents which substantiate a good idea -- from Moses de Leon's Zohar, the foundational work of the Kabbalah published in the 13th century (in Spain, the same world created by that great peace above) which he claimed to have been the work of great sages from a thousand years earlier (which just happened to be written in ungrammatical, 13th-century Aramaic; it's a miracle!) to the Bible itself. (See 2 Kings 22; going to excavate and repair a temple, the ancient scrolls of the Law just happened to be discovered, and people realized that they had not been doing Judaism according to the way that God had commanded it thousands of years earlier. It's a miracle! NB that 2 Kings was being written right around the time that the entire Bible was being edited together from the two major local sources; the history of the writing of the Bible is quite fascinating) But it would be wrong to say that later invention of ancient texts is a bad thing. For one thing, across a wide range of human societies, age gives wisdom its acceptability: a brand-new idea would be rejected outright, but a rediscovered ancient one will be considered seriously. This "ancientization" is often the only way for a new and important idea -- such as the rule of law or democracy -- to be taken seriously. For another, some of these discoveries are purely accidental, simply putting a name on a tradition which has been growing. Nobody forged the Pact of Umar: it was simply that everyone acknowledged that this tradition had been growing up for some time, it was vaguely associated with Umar and with Bakt, and so the legend grew into a more specific form in retelling which helped it propagate. In each of these cases, the value of the legend has been not in its direct veracity, but in the effects which it had on people. The Magna Carta and the Pact of Umar share this: quite independently of what they actually said or did, they both drove people to create great things in their own societies.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Talking of living in tents. Magna Carta 800th anniversary celebration vs Runnymede Eco-Village free festival. The Eco-camp is maybe 1/2 mile away and despite repeated legal attempts to get rid of them, they're still there. http://www.occupy.com/article/freer-ive-ever-been-squatted-eco-village-overshadows-royals-magna-carta-celebrations#sthash.ccA53cIs.dpuf — Eight hundred years after its signing, the Magna Carta is seen as part of the foundation of the idea of democratic rule, of the notion that there should be a law to which even the King is subject. Today, if anything, its relevance is greater than it ever was: the US Supreme Court was citing it in decisions only a few weeks ago. But an increasing group of scholars has been pointing out that the idea of its importance in defining the relationship between the law and the ruler is based on myth, not history: in 1215, the Magna Carta had nearly no effect on anything, and King John promptly ignored it. (And then promptly died of dysentery) The importance of the Magna Carta comes not from its importance at the time, but from the story which we have crafted around it in the centuries since. This is not the most extreme such case: there's another historical document with an even stranger history. The Pact of Umar was a formal agreement by the 7th-century Muslim Caliph Umar ibn Khattab and the Christians of the Syrian town of Bakt about their rights and responsibilities in the society. To understand the significance of the Pact of Umar, you need to understand that during the life of the various Islamic empires, the "people of the Book" -- the Jews, the Christians, and the Zoroastrians -- had a specific legal status ("dhimmi"), under which they were required to pay additional taxes, wear specific clothing, and live under various legal restrictions, but were otherwise full citizens, and could live in their communities, practice their professions, and even become key members of government. This was at the heart of the great efflorescence of culture in the 9th through 12th centuries in particular, with places like Baghdad, Cairo, and Toledo becoming the world's great centers of learning and commerce. At the same time, Europe was only dragging itself out of the wreckage of the Dark Ages, and "citizenship" was defined purely by membership in the local church: there was no law against robbing and murdering anyone who wasn't part of the church or otherwise legally protected. This contrast was really at the heart of one of the most significant differences between the worlds: in the Islamic world, everyone was subject to the rule of law, from the lowliest to the highest. (I did research, many years ago, into the legal status of prostitution in the Islamic world during this period, and it was an extremely eye-opening contrast with its analogue in the Christian world; both in legal manuals and in the much more practical police manuals, you can see that everyone, no matter their profession, is seen as part of the society and subject to the law, while across the Mediterranean you get rulings such as that a prostitute cannot be raped, as her body is a public commodity to which she has no claim of ownership.) The Pact of Umar plays the same role in the law of dhimmi (in the law of the relationship of people of different faiths) that the Magna Carta plays in many modern documents of the rule of law, like the US Constitution. It was cited left and right, used as a template, used to define the natural scope of such relationships. The most interesting thing about the Pact of Umar is that it didn't exist. The pact itself was utterly mythical; from what historians can tell, the legend of it came from cobbled-together memories of several treaties, legal documents, and ideas that had been floating around that region of the world during the seventh and eighth centuries.  So despite the fact that the archetypal document which defined relationships between Jews, Christians, and Muslims for centuries never actually existed, it was nonetheless the template for hundreds of real documents, and its legend formed the basis for some of the most important legal structures of the Middle Ages. As you may guess, this is not historically unique. There has been a long tradition of people "finding" ancient documents which substantiate a good idea -- from Moses de Leon's Zohar, the foundational work of the Kabbalah published in the 13th century (in Spain, the same world created by that great peace above) which he claimed to have been the work of great sages from a thousand years earlier (which just happened to be written in ungrammatical, 13th-century Aramaic; it's a miracle!) to the Bible itself. (See 2 Kings 22; going to excavate and repair a temple, the ancient scrolls of the Law just happened to be discovered, and people realized that they had not been doing Judaism according to the way that God had commanded it thousands of years earlier. It's a miracle! NB that 2 Kings was being written right around the time that the entire Bible was being edited together from the two major local sources; the history of the writing of the Bible is quite fascinating) But it would be wrong to say that later invention of ancient texts is a bad thing. For one thing, across a wide range of human societies, age gives wisdom its acceptability: a brand-new idea would be rejected outright, but a rediscovered ancient one will be considered seriously. This "ancientization" is often the only way for a new and important idea -- such as the rule of law or democracy -- to be taken seriously. For another, some of these discoveries are purely accidental, simply putting a name on a tradition which has been growing. Nobody forged the Pact of Umar: it was simply that everyone acknowledged that this tradition had been growing up for some time, it was vaguely associated with Umar and with Bakt, and so the legend grew into a more specific form in retelling which helped it propagate. In each of these cases, the value of the legend has been not in its direct veracity, but in the effects which it had on people. The Magna Carta and the Pact of Umar share this: quite independently of what they actually said or did, they both drove people to create great things in their own societies.
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Commented on post by Dan Gillmor+Chris Beck The Guardian wasn't uncritical. You're right though it's disgusting how the journalism echo chamber simply repeated the Sunday Times story with absolutely zero critical analysis. It's not surprising from the BBC which has been leading with it. But everybody else? It feels like this is largely a UK sponsored story against criticism of the UK security services by the Anderson report and to head off criticism of the Snoopers Charter that Theresa May is pushing. The timing against the OPM hack is an added bonus. Here's some other commentary on the lie. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/06/five-reasons-the-mi6-story-is-a-lie/#comments http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/14/russia-and-china-broke-into-snowden-files-to-identify-british-and-us-spies http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/14/snowden-files-read-by-russia-and-china-five-questions-for-uk-government https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report-snowden-files-journalism-worst-also-filled-falsehoods/ http://notes.rjgallagher.co.uk/2015/06/sunday-times-snowden-china-russia-questions.html — The Sunday Times of London has a story today that is a classic in awful journalism. It quotes anonymous government sources in claims about Edward Snowden that I choose not to repeat, in order not to further spread what I strongly believe is a lie. How can I know that? I can't. But my hard-and-fast rule with anonymous sources is not just to disbelieve them, but to actively believe that something else must be true when the sources -- and the media organizations that enable them -- are sniping at other people. This is particularly the case when not even a shred of evidence is presented to back up the claims. The news organizations that do this kind of thing get special contempt, because they are carrying water for unnamed people with hidden or unstated agendas. The Times, which was a highly reputable paper before Rupert Murdoch took control, still had some credibility in my thinking. Barring the production of clear evidence that what they printed is true, they have very little credibility left at this point.
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Commented on postMeanwhile, Greenwald is pointing out the details of the lies. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/14/sunday-times-report-snowden-files-journalism-worst-also-filled-falsehoods/
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Commented on postI was just looking at this; a story about somebody who's data was exposed.  http://fusion.net/story/149831/opm-hack-happened-to-me/ And saw this. They don't just have everything they need to steal my identity - my Social Security number, date of birth, and everywhere I've lived. And it all reminds me again that we really shouldn't be using these kinds of publicly accessible information as proof of identity. There was a lot of thought about this back around 2000 but we never really found any good alternatives. Identity still looks like an onion where you keep removing layers until there's nothing left. It's a similar problem to treating a bank account number or a credit card number as a secret that is only known to the owner. Which is ridiculous when we give these out to so many other people. It really should not matter who knows these things. But then we have to layer another secret on top (secret numbers or a PIN code) which we then have to hand over.  So who's trying to solve these problems in 2015? If you take everyone contained in the OPM breach, and then all their close contacts, we must be getting up into 10m and possibly 100m identities that are now at risk. Is that enough reason to come up with new solutions? Or are they just going to try and contain the problem with some credit monitoring for the 1st level of employee?
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Commented on postCraig Murray's 5 reasons this is a lie. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/06/five-reasons-the-mi6-story-is-a-lie/ The key one is this.  4) This anti Snowden non-story – even the Sunday Times admits there is no evidence anybody has been harmed – is timed precisely to coincide with the government’s new Snooper’s Charter act, enabling the security services to access all our internet activity. This is a power play by Theresa May's Home Office. Not necessarily anything to do with the OPM hack although the timing is convenient for that as well.
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Commented on postMy packet of ironic quotation marks is running low and I'm in danger of running out. Please send more.
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Commented on posthttp://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/14/russia-and-china-broke-into-snowden-files-to-identify-british-and-us-spies And then today we have this. - Murdoch owned Sunday Times story - "anonymous sources from Downing Street" - "senior Downing Street source" - "senior Home Office source" - "British intelligence source" - BBC (and everyone else) just repeats the same story completely uncritically. "According to a story in The Sunday Times" and then  - A Downing Street spokeswoman told the Observer on Saturday night: “We don’t comment on leaks.” Do they think we're idiots? Are we idiots for giving this story any credence at all, at all? Why now?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Mixology 🍸The French Gimlet worked pretty well. It's just another sour but the elderflower does add something. 40ml gin, 20ml St Germain, 10ml lime juice, shaken, martini glass, lime twist Of course, if you view the Gimlet as a quintessentially British Limey thing, a "French" Gimlet is bit off-point! The Saint Negroni works but it really just adds more sweetness with the elderflower masked by all the other flavours. 25ml each of Gin, Red Vermouth, Campari, St Germain, Soda. Tumbler, Rocks, Orange twist. I've scoured the St germain, and Chase websites and nothing really attracts the imagination. The one exception is the Elderfucker. Love the name, love the photo. http://barnotes.co/recipes/the-elderfucker — Has anyone got some acceptable uses for St Germain? I've been given a bottle of Chase Elderflower liqueur which is a 20% Chase vodka and Elderflower concoction that's basically the same. The problem is that my tastes prefer the more bitter and dryer end of the spectrum and it's all a bit sweet for me. I did find this on Barnotes and in Chase's recommendations. It's really just a slightly sweeter G&T with some extra flavours but just the thing for a muggy evening that's an hour away from a downpour. Gin & Germain Today's Friday Night Cocktail is the Gin & Germain. Except that it's not St Germain. The Gin is Adnam's Copper House from our trip last week to the Suffolk coast. So without further ado, 50ml Adnams Copper House Gin 25ml Chase Elderflower 75ml Fevertree tonic Over Ice, Collins glass, Lime garnish. http://barnotes.co/recipes/gin-st-germaine [note: this is a repost as a previous copy got deleted somehow.]
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Commented on post by Dennis Cardwell in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)I guess what I'm most interested in is the day to day experience of using the BBS02. Do the controls work, how unobtrusive is the pedelec function. Do you get scared you'll catch a trouser leg in the chain, does it affect gear function and so on. And was it easy to fit. — I added a Bafang mid drive to My Townie. 
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The PlutonomyI'm beginning to think there's something like this happening in Europe. There's one faction working for the pigopolists trying to force the TTIP through. There's another deliberately leaking it and stirring up the malcontents to get back at the USA.  — Here's my little fantasy: it's actually Obama leaking these sections. (It wouldn't be the first time the White House leaked its own secret documents.) He wants the plutonomists to believe he's working for them, but he also wants to have a plausible excuse to veto the TPP when it gets to his desk. I can dream, right? :D
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceRe balkanization of society into non-geographic affinity groups or technological tribes? Or of the spread of disinformation, or of malware and spam? RA Wilson and the Illuminatus Trilogy. Computers and technological communications play a part but it's very centralised. The key bit of balkanisation is the idea of multiple overlapping conspiracy and sociological groups. That led me to think of people like Korzybski, and looking at his wikipedia page, A.E. Van Vogt. I know sociology has a deeper past and did feed into the political thought of the 18th and 19th centuries but I get the feeling that as a subject it morphed considerably in the 20th. It's why I mentioned systems theory and emergent behaviour earlier. Because I think there was a change from studying social philosophies created and executed by great men, to a study of societies as a sum of millions of individual actions. And that change happened around 1900. Lots of uninformed guesswork there. I may be getting some of that wrong! And then there's India. They've been thinking about this stuff for longer than most. The entire caste system is about the balkanization of society into non-geographic affinity groups / technological tribes. — Did any early Science Fiction authors forsee the sociological implication of the Internet? In particular, did any of them foresee the social effects, such as balkanization of society into non-geographic affinity groups or technological tribes? Or of the spread of disinformation, or of malware and spam? There are some recent authors who've shown this: Cory Doctorow and Neal Stephenson both come to mind. And it's the sort of thing I could see a Bradbury or Dick or le Guin or Atwood getting into. But, say, pre-1950, or at the least pre-1980? Better: pre-20th century. I'd particularly be interested hearing from in some of the SciFi authors here who might have a deeper knowledge of the field: +David Brin +John Scalzi +Ksenia Anske +Neal Stephenson +Cory Doctorow +Neil Gaiman
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Commented on post by Dennis Cardwell in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)Nice. Positives, negatives? — I added a Bafang mid drive to My Townie. 
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Commented on post by John Poteetthe most socially liberal culture in the world wuh? or should that be, que? — Just to be clear: All conservative claims about the imminent demise of California are STILL WRONG. They were wrong two years ago, five years ago, ten year ago and thirty years ago.  Embracing the most socially liberal culture in the world U.S. has been great for California's economy. 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceJohn Brunner - The Shockwave Rider was 1975. I'm struggling to think of any SciFi books talking about a global comms network and its social implications prior to that. You'd think there would be people writing about what the widespread telephone network or short wave radio would do to society but I can't think of any. The whole idea of emergent behaviour in complex systems is comparatively recent isn't it? — Did any early Science Fiction authors forsee the sociological implication of the Internet? In particular, did any of them foresee the social effects, such as balkanization of society into non-geographic affinity groups or technological tribes? Or of the spread of disinformation, or of malware and spam? There are some recent authors who've shown this: Cory Doctorow and Neal Stephenson both come to mind. And it's the sort of thing I could see a Bradbury or Dick or le Guin or Atwood getting into. But, say, pre-1950, or at the least pre-1980? Better: pre-20th century. I'd particularly be interested hearing from in some of the SciFi authors here who might have a deeper knowledge of the field: +David Brin +John Scalzi +Ksenia Anske +Neal Stephenson +Cory Doctorow +Neil Gaiman
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesBonus track. 10cc - Rubber Bullets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dTnvhGHDGA — Seen in a San Francisco shop window today: this Police Play Set. Apparently the police no longer have badges or handcuffs, only safety goggles, batons, and knives. "To protect, serve, club, skin, and tan hides, all while maintaining proper biosafety procedures?"
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesIf one person plays policeman with the baton, somebody else has to play protester. And clearly the anti-CS goggles, water flask, watch and compass are for them. The knife is for the policeman to leave lying on the ground to show probable cause. — Seen in a San Francisco shop window today: this Police Play Set. Apparently the police no longer have badges or handcuffs, only safety goggles, batons, and knives. "To protect, serve, club, skin, and tan hides, all while maintaining proper biosafety procedures?"
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Commented on postObvious sarcasm is obviously sarcastic. As we said before. It's just a logistics problem to be automated out of existence. See here. http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/554a37b469beddec3292e053-1200-800/rtx16dda-1.jpg From this ludicrous article about US hawks preparing for war on China. http://www.businessinsider.com/what-alarmists-dont-realize-about-chinese-military-power-2015-6?IR=T
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Commented on post by Gideon Rosenblatt in Sustainability and EcologyThe traditional small farm crop rotation meant a diet of pea soup and bread (or rice) with the occasional meat and small amounts of eggs, dairy and fruit to vary things. The scale and specialization problem is to do that on a big enough scale to support cities. So is anyone working on strategies for mixed produce farms but with scale and modern agricultural tech? Like, say, in China? Expecting to solve the problems by changing attitudes isn't going to work. Expecting everyone to switch (back) to a locavore, mainly veggy diet isn't going to work and doesn't scale. But frankly, I don't believe a tech fix like the OP to maintaining business as usual is going to work either. — Meat: The Habit We Don't Want to Give Up (or Talk About) Eating meat tastes great. At least I think so. There's debate about what a meat-heavy diet does to our body, of course, but the part that's less controversial is what it's doing to our planet - especially as growing markets like China develop more of a hankering for it.  What I didn't realize is that Silicon Valley is investing in a number of startups right now aimed weaning humans from our meat-heavy diets:  “The way to win is the awesome power of the free market,” Brown says. Meat, he adds, “is like the horse-and-buggy industry at the turn of the century: It’s obviously doomed, and it’s just a question of who takes it down and how soon.” You might be able to guess who he says will help him do that: “Our target market is not vegetarians. It’s not vegans. It’s not fringy health nuts. It’s not food-fad faddists. It’s mainstream, mass-market, uncompromising, meat-loving carnivores.” Citing a U.N. calculation that 30 percent of the planet’s land is used for animal agriculture, he hopes his plan will “change the way Earth looks from space.” “The way that we’re going to monitor our progress,” he says, “is by looking at Google Earth, basically.” .... You may not have heard of Brown’s own start-up, which is trying to do the same thing, because he has spent four years working mostly in secret, tweaking the user experience like his iPhone-making counterparts in Cupertino. But what he has done, he says, is spectacular: He has cracked meat’s molecular code. Which means that by sometime next year, he intends to sell what he calls a “shock and awe” plant-based burger that bleeds like beef, chars like it, and tastes like it (and eventually, critical to its long-term prospects, costs less). ... Brown had a singular advantage, an ingredient no other meat-replacing army had deployed. He led the way to a room of incubators, where a scientist held up a flask of what looked like pink juice: a slurry of genetically modified yeast. Its DNA had been rewired to produce leghemoglobin, a protein found in nodules attached to the roots of leguminous plants — and similar to both myoglobin and hemoglobin, which turns blood red. They all possessed what most people call heme, which Brown called “the molecule that makes meat meat.” So, why is this issue important? The ecological impact of animal husbandry are mind-numbingly disturbing. What's more, it has a very powerful set of economic forces with lots to lose from a meatless diet. For background, check out: http://www.cowspiracy.com/infographic I have not yet watched the Cowspiracy documentary, so I can't vouch for it myself, but it looks very intriguing. Some information from their website: * Livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32,000 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, or 51% of all worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. * Methane is 25-100 times more destructive than CO2. * Methane has a global warming power 86 times that of CO2. I am very intrigued by these new investments in meat substitutes. I like the taste of meat, I love it, actually, but it's getting harder and harder for me to justify when I better understand what it's doing to the world we will leave for our future generations. These new ventures are a source of hope.  I'm eager to try what they create. You? #food   #meat  
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Commented on postI think we found the answer to this didn't we? All the cheap industrial labour becomes truck drivers. It's going to be interesting watching China transition to a post-industrial service and knowledge worker economy. If that's what happens.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaSkype: Initial release August 2003; 11 years ago G-Talk: Initial release August 2005; 9 years ago I'm still waiting for a  Google messaging system that is as good as Skype was in about 2006. Or even ICQ in about 2000. And it feels like they embraced and then destroyed XMPP which I find hard to forgive.
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Commented on post by Matthew Moynihan in Climate ChangeAnd d) doesn't produce net energy. And e) wouldn't scale to commercial levels even if it did. — #TheSpaceShow did a 90 minute show on #Polywell #Nuclear #Fusion .  My hope is fusion power stops the burning of fossil fuels, that lead to #climatechange . https://thespaceshow.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/dr-matthew-moynihan-tuesday-5-26-15/
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaWe recently mentioned the per community setting for "Show posts in home stream" . I'd got this backwards, thinking that the per community setting was for my posts. Sometimes you wonder if the G+ UX and functional designers actually use the system. You often come across systems and applications where the design management can't decide what to do so just add another user setting. Google tends to go too far the other way. "You don't need this, so we're not even going to give you the choice." — Why can I not set selected communities such that my posts show in my Profile? Some I prefer to share. Some I don't. It's all or nothing. Oh well: nothing.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in EnvironmentYou've got to love the artist's impression of the mega-mall, airport lounge style interior. http://www.nextnature.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/black-gold-project-4-530x226.jpg — Instead of repurposing shipping containers, repurpose a whole tanker into a popup village. It's a rather fanciful answer to the question of what happens to old oil tankers when global geopolitics and peak oil means they're no longer needed.  http://www.nextnature.net/2015/06/from-discarded-mega-oil-tanker-to-village/comment-page-1 They'll need to allow for sea level rise when burning the old contents of the ships results in global warming. I still have a Loompanics book on the shelves called "Free Space" exploring strategies for living space outside traditional nation state jurisdictions. One possibility was taking old tankers, loading them with soil and then scuttling them on one of the Pacific Atolls that lies just beneath the waves to make an instant island. The idea above feels remarkably like this. Then there's the abandoned aircraft carrier arcology from Snowcrash.  The big problems with all these ideas is the cost of moving the abandoned ship. And the scrap value of the metal. Getting and maintaining control is not going to be cheap.
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Commented on post by stevie rial in Motorcycle Roadracing120 lap next year? — http://roadracingnews.co.uk/john-mcguinness-makes-it-tt-win-number-22-in-2015-tt-zero/
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Commented on post by Woozle HypertwinThen there's the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership which shares many of the same problems. — #signed #signalBoost  
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaDoh. I'd forgotten that setting. And of course it's hidden away. — Use-case: Trying to find a previously-viewed Home Stream item I'd inadvertently closed a browser tab opened from my G+ session. I browse G+ from an Incognito session, so Chrome history won't have the page. So I try G+ search. It's comprehensive, right? Too comprehensive. Happened to recall it was a Guardian article, though the topic slipped my mind. OK. Drop "Guardian" into the G+ search dialog and select the "from your circles" option. Problem: "my circles" is not what feeds my G+ Home Stream. I have a limited subset of Circles which does, though there's no one Circle containing all those members. So the results set isn't limited to that set of posters, and contains a huge number of irrelevant posts. It was actually easier to load up my home stream, page down until yesterday's posts started showing, and then search page for Guardian. Incidentally, the piece I was looking for might be of application to Google's own promotion and hiring practices, particularly given demonstrated results: Phelan and Lin wanted to see whether, over the long haul, it pays best to promote people on supposed merit (we try, one way or another, to measure how good you are), or on an "up or out" basis (either you get promoted quickly or you get the boot), or by seniority (live long and, by that measure alone, you will prosper). As a benchmark, a this-is-as-bad-as-it-could-possibly-get alternative, they also looked at what happened when you promoted people at random. They got a surprise: random promotion, they admitted, "actually performed better" than almost every other method. Phelan and Lin seemed (at least in my reading of their paper) almost shocked, even intimidated, by what they found. But, yeah, being able to filter search by specific sources ... would be a tad useful.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google Meta"my circles" is not what feeds my G+ Home Stream. I have a limited subset of Circles which does, though there's no one Circle containing all those members. OK. So how do you do that? — Use-case: Trying to find a previously-viewed Home Stream item I'd inadvertently closed a browser tab opened from my G+ session. I browse G+ from an Incognito session, so Chrome history won't have the page. So I try G+ search. It's comprehensive, right? Too comprehensive. Happened to recall it was a Guardian article, though the topic slipped my mind. OK. Drop "Guardian" into the G+ search dialog and select the "from your circles" option. Problem: "my circles" is not what feeds my G+ Home Stream. I have a limited subset of Circles which does, though there's no one Circle containing all those members. So the results set isn't limited to that set of posters, and contains a huge number of irrelevant posts. It was actually easier to load up my home stream, page down until yesterday's posts started showing, and then search page for Guardian. Incidentally, the piece I was looking for might be of application to Google's own promotion and hiring practices, particularly given demonstrated results: Phelan and Lin wanted to see whether, over the long haul, it pays best to promote people on supposed merit (we try, one way or another, to measure how good you are), or on an "up or out" basis (either you get promoted quickly or you get the boot), or by seniority (live long and, by that measure alone, you will prosper). As a benchmark, a this-is-as-bad-as-it-could-possibly-get alternative, they also looked at what happened when you promoted people at random. They got a surprise: random promotion, they admitted, "actually performed better" than almost every other method. Phelan and Lin seemed (at least in my reading of their paper) almost shocked, even intimidated, by what they found. But, yeah, being able to filter search by specific sources ... would be a tad useful.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in CarsThat's not a G reg, it's post the scrapping of the yearly number plate update. I think it's from late 2001 and doesn't look long enough to be a 4+4. So I'd guess a +4 — First time seeing a Morgan in real life! This one was outside the West Gate of Canterbury, UK. Good eye to +Molli Amara Simon​ for spotting it. Can anyone tell what model this is? +paul beard​​ +Michael Bennett​​
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawLOL, cryptography is hard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chaum — This article highlights a bit of common foolishness. Not in the making of a "village currency," but in reporting: "[t]here's also no inflation risk," the article tells us, "as the rate is fixed at five kolions for a bucket of potatoes." Why is this nonsense? Say you're a chicken farmer, and you've been using kolions. Then a really good year comes for potatoes -- say, there's a long cool season -- and there are bushels of them everywhere. The potato farmers are still selling them at five kolions per bucket, so they make a killing, but there are suddenly a lot more kolions on the market, because they literally came out of the ground. But there aren't magically more chickens, so the price of chickens goes up through the roof. The potato farmers are OK with this; they've got plenty of kolions, and so they can bid up the price of chicken quickly. And the chicken farmers can bid up the prices of chicken wire in turn, and so on. And the value of the kolions you've got stashed under the mattress? Well, if all you want to buy is potatoes, it's the same as ever, five per bucket. But if you happen to ever want to eat protein or wear clothing, you're SOL. And likewise, what happens when a potato blight hits? Suddenly there are far fewer potatoes, but all of those potatoes could be bought at five kolions per bucket from anyone fool enough to sell at official prices. If people really want potatoes, of course, they'll bid up the price of potatoes on the secondary market pretty fast, which means there'll be a whole business in illegal potato sales. If you could actually use kolions to buy potatoes at "official prices," anyone with kolions under their mattress would be in great shape, and any farmers forced to sell at those prices would be bankrupt within the week.  Of course, there's a basic problem out there, because there are more kolions printed than there are actual potatoes out there. You can't actually let everyone by potatoes at the official rate. So if you want to keep the kolion tied to the potato, not only do you have to suppress the black market, you also have to institute potato rationing. This is why it's generally not a good idea to try to tie a currency to a good whose production can vary widely from year to year. But more generally, you see these problems whenever you try to forcibly tie the price of two goods to each other, even if the goods are things like "dollar bills" and "kilos of gold." At any given instant, there's going to be a real supply and demand of each of those two goods. Tying two of them is basically a promise to continue to exchange them at some fixed rate, and whenever that fixed rate doesn't match the one that's in the market -- i.e., always -- people can make money buying one and selling the other, and that money basically comes at the expense of whoever is offering this rather unwise fixed-price market. To keep that market from bleeding you dry, you therefore have to force the price to stay the same -- generally, by legally forbidding anyone from transacting in one or both of those goods except through that market. This works about as well as you would expect. So while the kolion is a well-intentioned notion, and the bills do look fairly nice, I don't think anyone should be investing in them anytime soon.  Unless they're ruthless potato speculators, that is.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawBack when Cypherpunks were a thing, I remember people talking about theoretical cryptocurrencies that had some plausible deniability built in. They'd be closer to an ideal of a virtual cash that was as anonymous as real physical cash. So it disappointed me a bit that bitcoin doesn't have anonymity baked in. — This article highlights a bit of common foolishness. Not in the making of a "village currency," but in reporting: "[t]here's also no inflation risk," the article tells us, "as the rate is fixed at five kolions for a bucket of potatoes." Why is this nonsense? Say you're a chicken farmer, and you've been using kolions. Then a really good year comes for potatoes -- say, there's a long cool season -- and there are bushels of them everywhere. The potato farmers are still selling them at five kolions per bucket, so they make a killing, but there are suddenly a lot more kolions on the market, because they literally came out of the ground. But there aren't magically more chickens, so the price of chickens goes up through the roof. The potato farmers are OK with this; they've got plenty of kolions, and so they can bid up the price of chicken quickly. And the chicken farmers can bid up the prices of chicken wire in turn, and so on. And the value of the kolions you've got stashed under the mattress? Well, if all you want to buy is potatoes, it's the same as ever, five per bucket. But if you happen to ever want to eat protein or wear clothing, you're SOL. And likewise, what happens when a potato blight hits? Suddenly there are far fewer potatoes, but all of those potatoes could be bought at five kolions per bucket from anyone fool enough to sell at official prices. If people really want potatoes, of course, they'll bid up the price of potatoes on the secondary market pretty fast, which means there'll be a whole business in illegal potato sales. If you could actually use kolions to buy potatoes at "official prices," anyone with kolions under their mattress would be in great shape, and any farmers forced to sell at those prices would be bankrupt within the week.  Of course, there's a basic problem out there, because there are more kolions printed than there are actual potatoes out there. You can't actually let everyone by potatoes at the official rate. So if you want to keep the kolion tied to the potato, not only do you have to suppress the black market, you also have to institute potato rationing. This is why it's generally not a good idea to try to tie a currency to a good whose production can vary widely from year to year. But more generally, you see these problems whenever you try to forcibly tie the price of two goods to each other, even if the goods are things like "dollar bills" and "kilos of gold." At any given instant, there's going to be a real supply and demand of each of those two goods. Tying two of them is basically a promise to continue to exchange them at some fixed rate, and whenever that fixed rate doesn't match the one that's in the market -- i.e., always -- people can make money buying one and selling the other, and that money basically comes at the expense of whoever is offering this rather unwise fixed-price market. To keep that market from bleeding you dry, you therefore have to force the price to stay the same -- generally, by legally forbidding anyone from transacting in one or both of those goods except through that market. This works about as well as you would expect. So while the kolion is a well-intentioned notion, and the bills do look fairly nice, I don't think anyone should be investing in them anytime soon.  Unless they're ruthless potato speculators, that is.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MusicIndeed. Hard to see how you could leave out things like John Martyn - Solid Air. — One of those, "My god you can't be serious, how could you leave out XXXXX" articles. Anything entitled "The 100 best albums of " is bound to be rubbish. But I'm surprised by just how much of this I've never heard or even heard of, but also how many real but little known gold'n'nuggetz they included. http://www.factmag.com/2014/07/14/the-100-best-albums-of-the-1970s/101/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesAnd then for no obvious reason, https://plus.google.com/notifications/all catches up and now matches the notifications drop down for "Previously read (Google+)". I guess there was a bug/fault that's now been cleared. Maybe. — What's happened to Notifications (desktop web)? When you used the drop down bell there used to be a link at the bottom called "See All" or something like that which took you to a web page https://plus.google.com/notifications/all That link has disappeared. And the web page at that address has changed and no longer matches what you see in the drop down under "previously read". The new web page design has 3 options "All posts" "Your posts" "Other people's posts" but the contents is curiously old and out of date. I don't like this! :(
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawRA Wilson comes to mind here, and HempScrip. What better underlying good to use for pegging a notional currency than something that gets you high and goes up in smoke. seeAlso https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=506320.0 and The HempCoin (THC). THC is yet another bitcoin spinoff. — This article highlights a bit of common foolishness. Not in the making of a "village currency," but in reporting: "[t]here's also no inflation risk," the article tells us, "as the rate is fixed at five kolions for a bucket of potatoes." Why is this nonsense? Say you're a chicken farmer, and you've been using kolions. Then a really good year comes for potatoes -- say, there's a long cool season -- and there are bushels of them everywhere. The potato farmers are still selling them at five kolions per bucket, so they make a killing, but there are suddenly a lot more kolions on the market, because they literally came out of the ground. But there aren't magically more chickens, so the price of chickens goes up through the roof. The potato farmers are OK with this; they've got plenty of kolions, and so they can bid up the price of chicken quickly. And the chicken farmers can bid up the prices of chicken wire in turn, and so on. And the value of the kolions you've got stashed under the mattress? Well, if all you want to buy is potatoes, it's the same as ever, five per bucket. But if you happen to ever want to eat protein or wear clothing, you're SOL. And likewise, what happens when a potato blight hits? Suddenly there are far fewer potatoes, but all of those potatoes could be bought at five kolions per bucket from anyone fool enough to sell at official prices. If people really want potatoes, of course, they'll bid up the price of potatoes on the secondary market pretty fast, which means there'll be a whole business in illegal potato sales. If you could actually use kolions to buy potatoes at "official prices," anyone with kolions under their mattress would be in great shape, and any farmers forced to sell at those prices would be bankrupt within the week.  Of course, there's a basic problem out there, because there are more kolions printed than there are actual potatoes out there. You can't actually let everyone by potatoes at the official rate. So if you want to keep the kolion tied to the potato, not only do you have to suppress the black market, you also have to institute potato rationing. This is why it's generally not a good idea to try to tie a currency to a good whose production can vary widely from year to year. But more generally, you see these problems whenever you try to forcibly tie the price of two goods to each other, even if the goods are things like "dollar bills" and "kilos of gold." At any given instant, there's going to be a real supply and demand of each of those two goods. Tying two of them is basically a promise to continue to exchange them at some fixed rate, and whenever that fixed rate doesn't match the one that's in the market -- i.e., always -- people can make money buying one and selling the other, and that money basically comes at the expense of whoever is offering this rather unwise fixed-price market. To keep that market from bleeding you dry, you therefore have to force the price to stay the same -- generally, by legally forbidding anyone from transacting in one or both of those goods except through that market. This works about as well as you would expect. So while the kolion is a well-intentioned notion, and the bills do look fairly nice, I don't think anyone should be investing in them anytime soon.  Unless they're ruthless potato speculators, that is.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Mirth & DiversionThe 1-9-90 rule. 1% produce all the light. 9% produce all the heat, and the remaining 90% are dark matter. — Lesser-known Laws of Thermodynamics The Santayana law of 2nd law of thermodynamics: those who fail to understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics are condemned to repeat it. Spencer's law of the 2nd law of thermodynamics: those who fail to understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics are condemned to reinvent it -- badly. The fifth law of thermodynamics: you have taken the laws of thermodynamics too seriously. Rule 34 of thermodynamics: if you can imagine it, there's thermodynamic porn about it. The three-fifths rule of thermodynamics: The degree of taking thermodynamics too seriously approaches a constant value as the temperature approaches three fifths that of all other Persons.
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Commented on post+Alex Schleber It's more complicated than that. The UK may not have a lot of heavy industry left or even many market brand names, but it's still a huge economy. Perhaps we're turning back into a nation of petit bourgeois shopkeepers because it feels like there's a  LOT of money around in small businesses. You can drive from London to Edinburgh or Bristol and feel like you've never left the South East's middle class sprawl of Audi, BMW, Land Rover traffic jams. Of course there's pockets of poverty, inequality, harsh justice and broken systems, but it's not Greece. The BBC, quality media and the broadsheets generally hide their propaganda well.  Or maybe it's just harder to see close up rather than from another country. The big one coming up is the EU referendum. It feels like their success in heading off Scotland's independence makes them feel they can twist the argument and force a Yes (stay in) vote and in the process kill the anti-EU extreme right. This is the kind of place where the BBC's propaganda is most obvious in the way they slant the debates. Don't be too quick to write off France or Germany (or the Scan countries) either. Just because Google hides them from us English speakers doesn't mean they're falling behind. By most measures, Germany, France, UK are all in the top 10 of the list of countries by GDP.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in Good NewsWon't anyone think of the bees? — Next, they should require new commercial buildings to be powered by some minimum percentage of sustainable energy.
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Commented on post by S H in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)In my head, I've got a perfect bike for me. I just haven't built it yet. - Audax Tourer. Drop bars. CX style mechanical disk front brake. Preferably but not necessarily steel frame. Rack and pannier mounts, mudguards. 700c wheels, 32 or 35 tyres, two speed front mech in about 52t-38t. - Small 36v Bafang motor on the back wheel. 8-9 speed freewheel - 48v Li-NCA battery and uprated controller from http://em3ev.com/ for no load max speed of about 28mph and nominal 750w max. Mid frame mounted battery. Thumb throttle, with switchable pedelec. If you can solder and do basic bicycle maintenance, building your own is not hard. And by starting with a decent bicycle and adding a kit you get better quality components. I'd strongly recommend disk brakes, at least on the front. — Hard to find ebikes under 50 lbs, I wanted to be easy pedal even without power. So I had to built my own. Waited patiently using craiglist search alerts, and got an electra townie and an kit.. Then Battery from ebay. Total cost...around $500 for 36V 15ah, 750W direct drive, UNDER 45 lbs. Second bike, 48V 10ah, 500W geared motor, high tensil 24" wheel steel bike, around $750, UNDER 40 lbs. Strangely enough, my small recumbent with 24V, 250W, weights the most, OVER 45 lbs. because of the all steel frame. I had to stop myself now, running out of garage space for all my ebikes and stuff. I did do double torque arms on FWD motors after these pics are taken. Thanks for reading.
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Commented on post by Woozle HypertwinLiberty is Theft — I finally took this... Mommmmyyyy! It called me a LIBERTARIAN!!
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Mixology 🍸I shouldn't be too rude about Bombay because it's made 5 miles from my Mum's house. And the coriander does work quite well. The main complaint though is that it's a bit tasteless. Through my son, I know a few people in the London cocktail bar trade. They all swear by Beefeater for cocktails. A good honest, straight forward, balanced gin with enough flavour to work in cocktails without overpowering them. Plus, it's relatively cheap so improves the profit margins. — Has anyone got some acceptable uses for St Germain? I've been given a bottle of Chase Elderflower liqueur which is a 20% Chase vodka and Elderflower concoction that's basically the same. The problem is that my tastes prefer the more bitter and dryer end of the spectrum and it's all a bit sweet for me. I did find this on Barnotes and in Chase's recommendations. It's really just a slightly sweeter G&T with some extra flavours but just the thing for a muggy evening that's an hour away from a downpour. Gin & Germain Today's Friday Night Cocktail is the Gin & Germain. Except that it's not St Germain. The Gin is Adnam's Copper House from our trip last week to the Suffolk coast. So without further ado, 50ml Adnams Copper House Gin 25ml Chase Elderflower 75ml Fevertree tonic Over Ice, Collins glass, Lime garnish. http://barnotes.co/recipes/gin-st-germaine [note: this is a repost as a previous copy got deleted somehow.]
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Mixology 🍸Just made a Passenger. San Pellegrino Aranciata Rossa is good stuff that's obviously improved with a bit of Gin and the other ingredients! One of my favourite non-alcoholic pub drinks is the St Clements [1]. A bottle each of Britvic Orange juice and Schweppes bitter lemon. The point being that these ingredients are virtually always available in a pub. This works well and tastes exactly the same if you add a double shot of Gin. The Passenger reminds me of this with just a little more refinement. [1]From the East end of London nursery rhyme. Oranges and Lemons sing the bells of St Clements — Has anyone got some acceptable uses for St Germain? I've been given a bottle of Chase Elderflower liqueur which is a 20% Chase vodka and Elderflower concoction that's basically the same. The problem is that my tastes prefer the more bitter and dryer end of the spectrum and it's all a bit sweet for me. I did find this on Barnotes and in Chase's recommendations. It's really just a slightly sweeter G&T with some extra flavours but just the thing for a muggy evening that's an hour away from a downpour. Gin & Germain Today's Friday Night Cocktail is the Gin & Germain. Except that it's not St Germain. The Gin is Adnam's Copper House from our trip last week to the Suffolk coast. So without further ado, 50ml Adnams Copper House Gin 25ml Chase Elderflower 75ml Fevertree tonic Over Ice, Collins glass, Lime garnish. http://barnotes.co/recipes/gin-st-germaine [note: this is a repost as a previous copy got deleted somehow.]
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Commented on post by Woozle HypertwinNobody ever wants to talk about the bottom left, and what that means. I see you're also further SW than Gandhi and the UK Green party; respect! ps. https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2015 All the major UK parties are top right. which fits since they're pretty much interchangeable. Beware Right Wing Authoritarians. They want to tell you what to do for their own benefit. — I finally took this... Mommmmyyyy! It called me a LIBERTARIAN!!
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Commented on post by Matthew Moynihan in Climate ChangeYebbut, we haven't actually got fusion, that produces more power than you put in, and looks likely to do that at scale, within 30 years. So what if it's cheap, if it doesn't look like an actual, commercial production of power. Please prove me wrong. I want to believe. Preferably with a few citations, not links to Letterman show youtubes. — #TheSpaceShow did a 90 minute show on #Polywell #Nuclear #Fusion .  My hope is fusion power stops the burning of fossil fuels, that lead to #climatechange . https://thespaceshow.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/dr-matthew-moynihan-tuesday-5-26-15/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Climate ChangeGo North, young man! — The monthly Ice report is out from the NSIDC. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2015/06/may-be-declining/ Average Arctic Ice coverage in May was 3rd lowest. At the end of May, ice extent was at daily record low levels.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Mixology 🍸Thanks for that. Looks like I've got the next Friday Night Cocktail, then. Cans of San Pellegrino Orange are fairly easy to find round here. But Bombay Sapphire? Ugh! ;) — Has anyone got some acceptable uses for St Germain? I've been given a bottle of Chase Elderflower liqueur which is a 20% Chase vodka and Elderflower concoction that's basically the same. The problem is that my tastes prefer the more bitter and dryer end of the spectrum and it's all a bit sweet for me. I did find this on Barnotes and in Chase's recommendations. It's really just a slightly sweeter G&T with some extra flavours but just the thing for a muggy evening that's an hour away from a downpour. Gin & Germain Today's Friday Night Cocktail is the Gin & Germain. Except that it's not St Germain. The Gin is Adnam's Copper House from our trip last week to the Suffolk coast. So without further ado, 50ml Adnams Copper House Gin 25ml Chase Elderflower 75ml Fevertree tonic Over Ice, Collins glass, Lime garnish. http://barnotes.co/recipes/gin-st-germaine [note: this is a repost as a previous copy got deleted somehow.]
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Chrome OSGiven that there might finally be support for SAMBA/CIFS it's perhaps time to try and make this work again. https://plus.google.com/+FrancoisBeaufort/posts/AUvJw6VjTd2 — Trying to run ChromeOS on an Asus eeePC 900 but failing. I'm trying to boot an old eeePC 900 into ChromeOS from a USB thumb drive and I'm hitting a brick wall which is leading to a certain amount of yak-shaving. I don't really see why this should be a problem because there are plenty of Linux distros that manage this easily and just work. Like SystemRescue for instance. So here's the deal. - Download a recent ChromeOS image from http://chromium.arnoldthebat.co.uk/index.php?dir=weekly%2F - Unpack it, and copy it onto a 4Gb USB drive using Win32DiskImager.exe - Plug it into the eeePC and boot. Hit Esc on the BIOS screen, choose the USB drive - Fail with 10 or so lines about a Kernel Panic. - Google for ChromeOS Kernel Panic and find out that ChromeOS hard codes it's location as /dev/sdb But of course an external USB on this machine is going to be /dev/sdc - Discover you can over-ride this by hitting esc during the ChromeOS boot and typing chromeos-usb.A root=/dev/sdc3 to tell it where the boot partition is. - Get past the kernel panic but now it says "Your system is repairing itself, please with" then reboots. - More googling suggests this is due to a missing or corrupt STATE partition, 1Gb on /dev/sdc1 There's a suggestion to look for unencrypted/clobber.log on the STATE partition to see how it failed - Fire up SystemRescueCD. Fix /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg so ChromeOS boots from sdc. Try booting again. Goes into the repairing cycle again. - Discover that the STATE partition should be EXT4 but is displayed as UNKNOWN by gparted, realize my old copy of Systemrescue doesn't support EXT4, re-create my rescue thumb drive. - Start again from scratch - Check the ChromeOS drive before trying it out. Fix the boot target. Check that STATE looks ok, is in EXT4, has a directory structure and stuff. - Try and boot. And guess what, it fails with "Your system is repairing itself" - Go back and check it again with SystemRescue and discover that STATE is now back to "Unknown" file system So:- 1) ChromeOS can't cope with booting from a USB drive if it's not /dev/sdb Excuse me, but WTF? 2) It's getting confused by the STATE partition and then failing completely to sort it out, actually making it worse. So now what? It's just a Linux distro with most of the UI being through a copy of Chrome, right? How hard can this be? Why doesn't it "just work"? Can anyone here help with this? BTW. I've put this into discussion, because there's no obvious category to place posts about running ChromeOS on non-chromebook hardware. Doing a quick search here, there are a few other posts about this and similar problems from people trying to do similar things.
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Commented on post by michael marsh in Chrome OSGlad something is finally happening in this area. It was always a bit of a puzzle that it was so hard to play media that was on the local network.
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Commented on postMarch Onwards Decelerationista! Towards a soft landing[1]. Both personal and global. Decelerationists enjoy music as well with their cup of tea. I don't know where we'd be without the music. [1] Insert piece here about getting the global economy back on the ground, when there's not much fuel left in the tanks and one engine is on the verge of flaming out. Try not to let anyone notice that you're walking slowly back to where the parachutes are stored as there aren't enough to go round.
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Commented on post by Matthew Moynihan in Climate ChangeAhem, commercial reality — #TheSpaceShow did a 90 minute show on #Polywell #Nuclear #Fusion .  My hope is fusion power stops the burning of fossil fuels, that lead to #climatechange . https://thespaceshow.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/dr-matthew-moynihan-tuesday-5-26-15/
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Commented on post by Matthew Moynihan in Climate ChangeIs there anything to suggest that Fusion is less than 30 years away from commercial reality? Because it's been one of those technologies that is permanently 30 years out for the whole of my life and that's 60 years now! — #TheSpaceShow did a 90 minute show on #Polywell #Nuclear #Fusion .  My hope is fusion power stops the burning of fossil fuels, that lead to #climatechange . https://thespaceshow.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/dr-matthew-moynihan-tuesday-5-26-15/
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Commented on postIt's occurred to me that Google keeps trying to redo the evolution of functionality that other sources have done better. And they did it better really quite a long time ago. eg Yahoogroups, http://last.fm, Skype, Flickr. So you get a fairly good implementation of a subset of the function with a couple of unusual new features but with whole sections of meat unfinished. For instance, Photos gets RAW archives, unlimited storage and auto-awesome but virtually no social at all. Then when it doesn't work, or doesn't get traction it gets buried or the feature is killed. Or in some cases the entire app is killed. It makes you wonder if anyone ever asked if perhaps it didn't work because it was unfinished and some crucial bit of function just never got written. Ripples always looked like a Friday time project that somebody put together because the data was available. Nice, but basically irrelevant. Meanwhile being unable to find your old comments or breaking and hiding notifications|all is just ridiculous. Activity-history and Activity-search is ESSENTIAL and should have been there on day two. And yet, 4 years later it's still missing.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesPossibly. But I think weeks rather than months. — What's happened to Notifications (desktop web)? When you used the drop down bell there used to be a link at the bottom called "See All" or something like that which took you to a web page https://plus.google.com/notifications/all That link has disappeared. And the web page at that address has changed and no longer matches what you see in the drop down under "previously read". The new web page design has 3 options "All posts" "Your posts" "Other people's posts" but the contents is curiously old and out of date. I don't like this! :(
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Commented on post by Sebastian H. Strumann in Climate ChangeThis modern world, eh? It boggles the mind that it's economic to source wood biomass from the USA to burn in European power stations. It's not like Europe doesn't have forests. That's quite separate from the question of whether biomass power stations are a good idea. Any more than biomass grown to be turned into alcohol for powering vehicles is a good idea. — “All biomass emits carbon when it’s burned, but when you burn a tree, you’ve liquidated a lot of carbon into the atmosphere and you have to wait a very long time to recapture it.” 
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Commented on post by Kevin KellySo what set of models are you now using to try and understand the 100 year future for the planet? The Limits to Growth models seem to be holding up and the headline message from that has always been that if the resource limits don't get you the pollution will. It's an underdamped, exponential growth but finite system with significant lags so overshoot and instability near the peaks is pretty much inevitable. The LtoG models predict fairly sharp state transitions in the 100 year timescale. The big question is not whether total population will peak and then fall back, but if we have a hard or a soft landing. I personally think that a sustainable technological society of say 500m population is a possible long term future (10k years) for mankind. If the transition to that from where we are now takes 200 years it can be relatively painless. If we were forced into it in 50 years it would be horrific. http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2846/28462101.jpg This stuff is complicated. Which can be summed up in the headline from this article. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/01/3653348/sixth-extinction/ "Can a 4C warmer earth support 10B people". That's the pollution limitation at work. — Paul Ehrlich was wrong about the Population Bomb. So was Stewart Brand. But Brand admits his mistake, while Erlich won't. Good retro spective by the NYTimes. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0
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Commented on post by Sebastian H. Strumann in Climate ChangeThe links between ideological positions gets quite strange here. There's quite a strong correlation between climate change denial and pro-GMO. Even as Pro-GMO criticise Anti-GMO for being anti-scientific followers of woo associated with things like the Vaxxers. Or even worse, labelling them as "Liberal". Meanwhile, the bees keep dying. — http://www.salon.com/2015/05/30/monsantos_next_power_play_partner/
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Commented on post by Sebastian H. Strumann in Climate Change+Scot Close GMO is a centralised big business technology. To some extent you're right that It's just a technology and not immoral or unsafe in it's own right, but it's impossible to separate it from the corporate interests that profit from it. It seems entirely legitimate to me to criticise the environmental ethics of US-led agribusiness in which GMO is just one factor. — http://www.salon.com/2015/05/30/monsantos_next_power_play_partner/
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Commented on post by Alex Reusch in Google+ UpdatesIt's somewhat strange watching Google re-do the evolution of long standing products. eg Yahoogroups, Flickr, http://last.fm, http://del.icio.us, Skype. It's almost as though their product designers and coders have no knowledge of web history. How is G-Photos better than Flickr in any way at all? — Google Photos - the anti social platform As much as I like the fact that Photos got an independent service of G+ (it was on my wish list for many years), I think Google did not really understand what users wanted. An independent website is fine, but remove all the social layers out of it? I agree on the point which +Thomas Hawk made in his review of Google Photos (http://thomashawk.com/2015/05/thoughts-on-google-photos.html), that the social aspect of a photo site is the real fun thing. We have it on all major photo sites like Flickr, 500px etc. Sure, users did not like the fact, that for storing and sharing your photos, a G+ profile was required. Also, that the photos part was so tightly coupled to G+. But why not run it as a separate site, but still have the social component of G+ integrated (comments and +1's)? What would be really awesome, is to have an open commenting system, which allows commenting and likes/+1s from multiple social networks on your photos (G+, Facebook etc.). Right now, you can only create a post from Google Photos to other social networks (G+, Facebook, Twitter), but it is a disconnected experience. For a photographer who wants to represent his portfolio on a site, Google Photos is useless.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the Lawhttp://chinaautoweb.com/2010/09/how-many-cars-are-there-in-china/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/278424/amount-of-trucks-in-china/ What will happen to truck drivers in China when they automate the factory to port logistics problem? — We have here an extremely interesting and well-balanced article about the various consequences of self-driving trucks on the American economy. I hadn't realized just how large a fraction of the population works in truck logistics today -- 3.5 million drivers, and an additional 5.2 million in other parts of the truck industry. And there are countless towns along the Interstate Highway system (especially in the west) whose entire existence is predicated on serving passing trucks and their drivers. The effects here are going to be complicated, especially during the next few decades. Right now, there's a serious shortfall of truck drivers, and this will no doubt continue for the next few years. The first autonomous trucks to really be in use will clearly be "class 3 autonomous vehicles," requiring a driver to be on-hand and ready to override them in case of emergency (as opposed to "class 4," which are fully autonomous), and will probably be human-driven entirely within cities. You would think that this would not affect jobs, but as Santens points out, it would be very easy to drive trucks in small convoys, with a single driver able to be the standby for all of them. That's likely to be the first major step in this transition. Going forward, I expect that these trucks will have the same effect on the trucking industry that containerized freight had on longshoremen: replacing a huge number of relatively low-skilled jobs with a much smaller number of higher-skilled jobs. The management of that transition proved very complex; on the west coast, deals were worked out where the shipping companies essentially continued to pay existing workers for the rest of their careers, while on the east coast, where unions spent more time fighting each other, the dockyards simply collapsed and were replaced by entirely new, containerized-from-the-start facilities.  But this isn't a story simply about bad news. Trucks kill about 4,000 people every year, almost all passenger car drivers, almost all due to driver error. The benefit of automating passenger cars is far greater: as Uber has pointed out, an automated car would be so quick and cheap to rent that only dedicated hobbyists would want to own their own car. That makes everything in life cheaper for all of us (especially for those for whom their car -- or their lack thereof -- is a huge financial burden), and also could let us eliminate things like "parking." Imagine what cities, and our days, would look like without that. In short, autonomous vehicles are going to make the world a much better place: greener, easier to live in, cheaper, and much safer. So the key challenge that faces us isn't preventing these -- it's intelligently managing the transition.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesWell, eg this one. Shared to Public. No Audience restrictions. https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/QhmQYMz96AJ I also have to wonder why this post was deleted from the Google + Updates community by a moderator. Getting a little tired of overly aggressive moderation. — Did "Pin This Post" disappear from desktop web profiles? I can't seem to find the option any more in the drop down menu. If it was removed, that's a shame.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ Updatesyup. public posts. — Did "Pin This Post" disappear from desktop web profiles? I can't seem to find the option any more in the drop down menu. If it was removed, that's a shame.
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Commented on post by Steban Hernández in Google+ UpdatesI recently got a T&Cs warning from Google for the first time ever. The warning is extremely vague about exactly what was the problem as it doesn't even point at the offending post. As near as I can tell my crime was providing a link to a specialist alcohol manufacturer without restricting the post to 21+ and Not USA. And that counts as promoting Regulated Goods and Services. Which leads me to think that Google have tightened their automatic reporting and warning algorithms. — Good news I guess.
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Commented on post by Woozle Hypertwin in The Plutonomy+Kevin Carney You're wrong. It's actually the entire banking system that is the ponzi scheme. Social Security Pensions is just one small part of it. However, it works fine just as long as you believe in Tinker Bell and clap your hands. If you don't believe a state pension scheme can work, do you believe a private pension scheme can work for you? (and everybody else). So what are you going to do when you can't work any more? +Tommy ODomirok You could have all of what you've paid in so far plus the interest that capital has earned. But there are some fees. And overall, it earned less than inflation. — #whatCouldPossiblyGoWrong  
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google+Thanks. Starred and Comment added. — I've just hit an interesting problem. If you restrict audience access by age or country, your posts are no longer fully public. Which means they no longer turn up in an API request for activities.list because the only collection type allowed is "public". This then means my G+ to Atom code doesn't work and neither does http://dlvr.it to grab the posts and take them elsewhere. Which is somewhat annoying. I can see the logic, but it means that the API cannot be used to access posts that are not fully open and apparently Google doesn't or can't use the initial authorisation to work out if the calling program should have been able to access the post.
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Commented on postThe ongoing news story over the last month in the UK has been the fate of 3 18-year old girls from Luton who travelled via Turkey to Syria to join the cause. That doesn't feel to me like it quite fits your description. Heedless, reckless, idealistic, stupid, yes. And sadly pretty much everybody involved on every side is self-evidently malevolent with the limited and possible exception of groups like the UN peace corps. It's a bloody mess with no simple answers.
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Commented on postThis has crossed my mind as well. With the youth of Europe who travel to Syria to fight with IS against the great enemy cast in the same role as the 1930s socialists who fought against the fascists in Spain. So where's Ernest Hemingway or George Orwell? Who's going to write a modern "For whom the bell tolls" or "Homage to Catalonia"? Or even "The Road to Wigan Pier".
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Commented on post by Julian BondI've been told that the probable problem with my main profile post that triggered the warning algorithm was probably the links. Linking to drinks companies, especially small ones is apparently a no-no due to Google's T&Cs (and peculiarly US morality!). I've done many previous "friday night cocktail" posts with no problems. The only difference with this one was that it linked to product pages for William Chase and Adnams Gin. I'm somewhat scared of testing the boundaries of Google's algorithms as losing the main google account would be a PITA. I figure posting inside a community is probably OK. I'll try again in Mixology without the links and see what happens. — Sorry to bother you. I'm sure I posted in Mixology last night about Gin&Germain asking for St Germain recipes. This morning I get a warning from Google about inappropriate posting of regulated goods, and I can't find the post in Mixology. Did I do something wrong and the admins deleted the post? It may be that the two things are unrelated because I also posted a similar but different one to my main profile. Or perhaps that alerted some google algorithm for having the same links in it even though the text was different.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceIndeed. Human history 10k to 5k years ago is pretty interesting. As is 5k to 10k in the future! — "We Need A Modern Origin Story: A Big History" I thought, we need a history of humanity. What would it look like? I realized immediately that you have to take the Paleolithic era seriously. Chronologically, most of human history was spent in the Stone Age. In Australia the Stone Age survived until very recently. Then I started thinking you had to talk about human evolution. You have to go beyond the borders of the history discipline and talk about how humans evolved. Then I thought, yikes, now I'm in biology. To do that seriously I have to talk about how you get from bacteria to multi-celled organisms. In other words, I have to have some grip on the whole history of life on earth. To do that seriously I have to talk about the origins of life, which means talking about how the planet was formed and getting into geology. Then, I thought, to do that seriously I have to look at astronomy. This started looking terrifying until I realized there's a starting point, with the Big Bang.... I have a feeling that within this story it's possible to offer a fairly simple but powerful definition of what makes life a different level of complexity from the complexity of, say, simple chemical molecules or stars, or galaxies. With life, you get complex entities appearing in extremely unstable environments. Stars create their own environments so that they can work mechanically. If you have complex things in very unstable environments, they need to be able to manage energy flows to maintain their complexity. If the environments are constantly changing, they need some mechanism for detecting changes. That is the point at which information enters the story.... I'm increasingly thinking that this idea that modernity puts us in a world without meaning—philosophers have banged on about this for a century-and-a-half—may be completely wrong. We may be living in an intellectual building site, where a new story is being constructed. It's vastly more powerful than the previous stories because it's the first one that is global. It's not anchored in a particular culture or a particular society. This is an origin story that works for humans in Beijing as well as in Buenos Aires. It's a global origin story, and it sums over vastly more information than any early origin story. This is very, very powerful stuff. It's full of meaning. We're now at the point where, across so many domains, the amount of information, of good, rigorous ideas, is so rich that we can tease out that story.  E.O. Wilson has been arguing for this for a long time. In Consilience he argued for this. It's the same project.... I increasingly think that ... within modern science there is a story that's even bigger than those of the institutionalized religions. It's not deistic. It's about a universe without teleology, without a conscious creator. But, as Dan Dennett explains beautifully in his book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea.,it's a universe which can blindly create interesting and complex things. That's the story....   This is hitting on a tremendous number of concepts that've been bouncing around my own skull for much of the past 25-30 years. h/t +Tim O'Reilly  http://edge.org/conversation/david_christian-we-need-a-modern-origin-story-a-big-history
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Commented on post by Keith Quirk in MotoGPI feel kind of lucky that I already subbed to a high enough Virgin TV (tel, broadband, tv) package that Eurosport+BTSport come as part of the package. We should perhaps talk about race day track prices as well. BSB Donington crowd was 2* the WSB Donington crowd. The ticket price was also 2* the price. There's a connection there. — Dont know what its like in the rest of the world, but this is my UK view. I like many others at the moment, cannot justify paying Sky, Btsport et al, so I only have freesat and freeview. At this point I realised I could only see edited (very) highlights after the event, be it MotoGP, WSBK or BSB, and I wondered why do the sponsors put up with this? I can understand why the series managers are happy, big corporation money! But surely if the sponsors are not happy, and they move elsewhere – no series. Looking at the viewing figures I found on BARB makes interesting reading. Paytv 2015 – MotoGP 130,000 – 280,000. BSB 97,000 – 120,000. WSBK 75,000 – 144,000. FTA 2014 – Isle of Man TT – 558,000 – 728,000. Also the other week I heard David Coultard say that going away from FTA would kill F1, if a huge event like that needs FTA, how can the present Paytv be viable for the future?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google+Do you think there's a feature request for this in the issue tracker? If there is, I couldn't see it. — I've just hit an interesting problem. If you restrict audience access by age or country, your posts are no longer fully public. Which means they no longer turn up in an API request for activities.list because the only collection type allowed is "public". This then means my G+ to Atom code doesn't work and neither does http://dlvr.it to grab the posts and take them elsewhere. Which is somewhat annoying. I can see the logic, but it means that the API cannot be used to access posts that are not fully open and apparently Google doesn't or can't use the initial authorisation to work out if the calling program should have been able to access the post.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceTwo parts of this story need more attention and explanation in the popular narrative. The jump from amino acids to DNA modulated single cell life. And the first million years of humans from 1m years ago to 10k years ago. — "We Need A Modern Origin Story: A Big History" I thought, we need a history of humanity. What would it look like? I realized immediately that you have to take the Paleolithic era seriously. Chronologically, most of human history was spent in the Stone Age. In Australia the Stone Age survived until very recently. Then I started thinking you had to talk about human evolution. You have to go beyond the borders of the history discipline and talk about how humans evolved. Then I thought, yikes, now I'm in biology. To do that seriously I have to talk about how you get from bacteria to multi-celled organisms. In other words, I have to have some grip on the whole history of life on earth. To do that seriously I have to talk about the origins of life, which means talking about how the planet was formed and getting into geology. Then, I thought, to do that seriously I have to look at astronomy. This started looking terrifying until I realized there's a starting point, with the Big Bang.... I have a feeling that within this story it's possible to offer a fairly simple but powerful definition of what makes life a different level of complexity from the complexity of, say, simple chemical molecules or stars, or galaxies. With life, you get complex entities appearing in extremely unstable environments. Stars create their own environments so that they can work mechanically. If you have complex things in very unstable environments, they need to be able to manage energy flows to maintain their complexity. If the environments are constantly changing, they need some mechanism for detecting changes. That is the point at which information enters the story.... I'm increasingly thinking that this idea that modernity puts us in a world without meaning—philosophers have banged on about this for a century-and-a-half—may be completely wrong. We may be living in an intellectual building site, where a new story is being constructed. It's vastly more powerful than the previous stories because it's the first one that is global. It's not anchored in a particular culture or a particular society. This is an origin story that works for humans in Beijing as well as in Buenos Aires. It's a global origin story, and it sums over vastly more information than any early origin story. This is very, very powerful stuff. It's full of meaning. We're now at the point where, across so many domains, the amount of information, of good, rigorous ideas, is so rich that we can tease out that story.  E.O. Wilson has been arguing for this for a long time. In Consilience he argued for this. It's the same project.... I increasingly think that ... within modern science there is a story that's even bigger than those of the institutionalized religions. It's not deistic. It's about a universe without teleology, without a conscious creator. But, as Dan Dennett explains beautifully in his book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea.,it's a universe which can blindly create interesting and complex things. That's the story....   This is hitting on a tremendous number of concepts that've been bouncing around my own skull for much of the past 25-30 years. h/t +Tim O'Reilly  http://edge.org/conversation/david_christian-we-need-a-modern-origin-story-a-big-history
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Commented on postI remember a joke comment about government regulation from back in the Cold War days that had a kernel of truth. The general view of the US and USSR was completely backwards. You couldn't do anything in the USSR (even eat) without using the black market which was naked capitalism in it's simplest form. You couldn't do anything in the USA without dealing with acres of red tape and legal controls which is the very essence of bureaucratic socialism. So it was the USSR which was free market and the USA that was centralised planning and control.
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Commented on postThat's important. Straight traditional accounting is also important because it sheds light on motivations within the current system.  There's a big difference here as well on amortised capital costs vs running costs. Building a dam or a nuclear power station (and decommissioning it) and the grid to manage the electricity is rather different from the ongoing cost of digging coal and transporting it. Even within EROEI, some of those sources have a big startup or capital energy investment compared with their running energy cost. Ignore for a moment all the other factors. For an oil company, investing $1 to get $80 back over (say) 3 years is a huge and highly attractive return. Especially when it scales. It's no wonder so much effort has been put into it, why the companies pay such good dividends and so why investors pour money into their stocks.
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Commented on postVery often (possibly always) "Markets" are rigged because the state at least sets the ground rules. In many cases, especially around infrastructure it's much more than that with the state regulating and mandating cartels or attempting to create and maintain artificial competitive markets. The very idea that there is a free market in anything may be flawed and unreal. Pure propaganda in fact designed to discourage examining too closely what's actually going on. In which case, if it's always the state rigging the playing field, the question is who it benefits or tries to benefit. The People vs The Politicians vs The Corporates.
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Commented on postI wonder how that graph compares on monetary ROI as  against energy EROEI. Particularly in light of the current discussions about the IMF's views on fossil fuel subsidies and the cost of their externalities vs fossil fuel lobbyists complaining about subsidies to renewables.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:I wonder about the social and entertainment aspects of this. In the land of 24 hr TV is there TV/Radio programming aimed at the intersleep period? It's not quite so obvious now but for a long time, UK TV was party to the nationwide social and industrial programming. The pub's shut at 10:30, TV shut down at 11pm. It was all part of and reinforced the national daily rhythm you learnt at school. There's a whole set of time values about pre-school as well beginning with pressure on mothers to persuade their infants to "sleep through the night". — I'd heard about the "divided sleep" phenomenon before -- that humans, left to their own devices (and the absence of artificial light) will naturally sleep in a pattern of roughly four hours asleep, two awake, four asleep, and that this period between sleeps had cultural significance in many preindustrial cultures -- but never about evidence that there are significant hormonal and state-of-mind differences between ordinary waking and this intersleep waking. Now I'm even more curious about the phenomenon, and may have to try some experiments with it on myself. It's going to be difficult, though, as I'm rather a night owl by nature.
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Commented on post by Brent Sullivan in Chromecast Central+Jason McKnespiey And the plain old desktop Chrome. And Chromebooks. — Chromecast app now has backdrop history!
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Commented on postLovely article about the ghost cities of China. One of the weirder sides to the China economic "miracle". No civilisation in history has built so much in such a short space of time. Yet the majority of these new constructions remain virtually empty. Why is this happening? Could China be building these metropolises in preparation for a mass external migration as it surpasses the West as the world's economic power? "By 2030 it is projected that one in eight people on Earth will live in a Chinese city..." http://thequietus.com/articles/17799-ghost-cities-of-china-wade-shepard-psychogeography-economics --- I'm also struggling with the idea of western countries crowing about reducing their carbon, resource and pollution footprint while growing GDP. By exporting their footprint to China and leaving that out of the calculation.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in EconomicsThere's an optimism bias here. We're too quick to upsize in the good times and too slow to downsize in the bad times. I've known lots of people who tried to keep the lifestyle going long after they could no longer afford it. But some things are hard, like moving house or taking the kids out of private school. — "Losing it All": Six-figure income to homeless Things were going ok until I received notice that my main client (and major source of funds) was hiring a full-time IT person and my services would no longer be needed. My other clients ended up putting me on “hold” while they were in the middle of the financial suck the recession and natural disaster caused. So there I was, an independent consultant with no active clients and bills were piling up. I went from making > 100K/year to literally 500/mo. Needless to say I was flat broke. Further insights via author's HN comments: I've learned my lesson when it comes to debt loading. Now if I can't afford something, I simply don't buy it. I don't even have a car note or mortgage. Everything is paid for in cash or I simply go without. I was just beginning to make 100k/year. I had the knowledge but was irresponsible with not putting enough away. It was a mistake which I will not incur again. Yes, the house foreclosed after 2 missed payments. Bank of America moved quick in my instance. I could have stayed in the house but I also lost my car and my house was very far away from my haunting grounds. Logistically it wouldn't have worked. Plus there's the fact that I couldn't afford utilities (in Texas you need A/C). I have no deficiency judgement as that was all cleared up after I was forced to file Chapter 7. I've since learned to not live beyond my means and am much more frugal in my older age....These days I save every penny I can, drive a used car, live frugally, and try to keep the "oh shit" fund alive. I live way below my means nowadays....The whole homeless experience has taught me to save every penny I can in an "oh shit" or "emergency" fund. These days I'm well protected and typically have 5-6 months worth of expenses in case the bottom drops out again. No, I never believed in credit cards. I always tried to carry a low debt load, at least as much as I can. Yes I applied for public assistance, but since that year I made a good bit of money on paper I didn't qualify for government assistance. Trust me, I couldn't even get approved for WIC or Texas Lone Star. http://shakycode.com/post/119775920434/losing-it-all
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in TechHere's the previous posts that didn't cause any ructions. https://plus.google.com/s/julian%20bond%20cocktail — This morning I get one of those threatening messages from Google about posting "Inappropriate material regarding regulated goods". As usual you get no links or help to know what to do or what they're referring to. A bit of searching leads to this. https://support.google.com/plus/answer/6020454?p=restricted_profile&hl=en-GB&rd=1 and Special conditions for regulated goods and services You can’t use Google+ to facilitate the sale of regulated goods like alcohol or tobacco. If you do, Google may remove the offending content or suspend your account. FFS, Google! I've done this many times before and have probably posted 20 or 30 "Friday Night Cocktails". The only difference this time is that I added some links to the manufacturers. Is that the problem? Linking to specialist drug providers purveyors of quality spirits is as bad as pictures of nipples or make money now pyramid scams?  Anyway, I've changed my audience settings to 18+ FWIW. But maybe I'd still be breaking the laws of Google Land. [edited to add] I posted a similar post with the same links but with different text to the Mixology community and that's disappeared. I've reached out to the owner to see if I've upset them and it was removed by an Admin. Which makes me wonder if this was more a spam algorithm I've triggered rather than an alcohol related one.  Along the way I've also discovered that I can restrict my posts so that they are invisible to people in the USA. I might just do that! [further edited] Here's some text. Dear Julian Bond, We've determined that your posts may be in violation of our User Content  and Conduct Policy. Facilitating the sale of regulated goods or services, or promoting   regulated goods and services to inappropriate audiences, is not  permitted. Continued violation of our policies can lead to the loss of your ability  to  use some or all features of Google+ and other Google services. Please review our policies to avoid violating them in the future. Yours sincerely, The Google+ Team
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in TechInteresting side effect of restricting audience. Your posts are no longer fully "public". Which means they no longer turn up in an API request activities.list because the only collection type allowed is "public". Which means my G+ to Atom code doesn't work and neither does http://dlvr.it to grab the posts and take them elsewhere. And changes to restrictions only affect new posts not older posts, like this one. — This morning I get one of those threatening messages from Google about posting "Inappropriate material regarding regulated goods". As usual you get no links or help to know what to do or what they're referring to. A bit of searching leads to this. https://support.google.com/plus/answer/6020454?p=restricted_profile&hl=en-GB&rd=1 and Special conditions for regulated goods and services You can’t use Google+ to facilitate the sale of regulated goods like alcohol or tobacco. If you do, Google may remove the offending content or suspend your account. FFS, Google! I've done this many times before and have probably posted 20 or 30 "Friday Night Cocktails". The only difference this time is that I added some links to the manufacturers. Is that the problem? Linking to specialist drug providers purveyors of quality spirits is as bad as pictures of nipples or make money now pyramid scams?  Anyway, I've changed my audience settings to 18+ FWIW. But maybe I'd still be breaking the laws of Google Land. [edited to add] I posted a similar post with the same links but with different text to the Mixology community and that's disappeared. I've reached out to the owner to see if I've upset them and it was removed by an Admin. Which makes me wonder if this was more a spam algorithm I've triggered rather than an alcohol related one.  Along the way I've also discovered that I can restrict my posts so that they are invisible to people in the USA. I might just do that! [further edited] Here's some text. Dear Julian Bond, We've determined that your posts may be in violation of our User Content  and Conduct Policy. Facilitating the sale of regulated goods or services, or promoting   regulated goods and services to inappropriate audiences, is not  permitted. Continued violation of our policies can lead to the loss of your ability  to  use some or all features of Google+ and other Google services. Please review our policies to avoid violating them in the future. Yours sincerely, The Google+ Team
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Commented on post by Stef KunzerAnd you can say "everyone can read this except people in the USA" Hooray! — Wow. I didn't realise this before, but you can restrict which country and age group see your posts! h/t +Julian Bond​
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Commented on post by Google+ in Google+ Help+Gerwin Sturm +CircleCount When did you last see an issue in the G+ API issue tracker get fixed? Or even addressed? :( — Starting today, the Ripples feature in Google+ is no longer available. Page owners can continue to get post performance analytics through the Google+ Insights tool, located in the My Business dashboard. Thanks for your support as we continue to make Google+ a simpler, more streamlined experience for all. 
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeThis is getting a lot of press but it's confusing because it doesn't separate out direct subsidies (tax relief, funding, R&D, capital infrastructure) from the cost to governments of externalities and implications (pollution). I'd like to see a similar analysis of nuclear. And renewables. — Dramatically higher than previously estimated, fossil fuel subsidies exceed what the world’s governments spend on health care, according to the International Monetary Fund. What’s more, they’re likely to remain this high — despite fossil fuels being the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, the main culprit driving climate change. #FossilFuelSubsidies #GHGEmissions
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Commented on post by Nina Jackel in Climate ChangeFirst World Problems. — Sign and share to tell Keurig that K-cups must be biodegradable! The plastic waste is killing the planet.
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Commented on post by Mike Potter in Google Play MusicLaziness. Pressure of other priorities. There's no fundamental difference between a folder full of files listed in a playlist directory file and a folder of files referenced in an itunes playlist, or a WMP playlist. You can download a track or an album or an entire library. But you can't download a playlist. — Please, Google, provide support for uploading m3u or wpl playlists.  I have thousands of songs already organized into play lists and I'm not going to duplicate that time and effort.  m3u format has been around for decades.  No excuse to not support it. I've tried uploading my entire Windows Media Player library (which has playlists) from scratch.  Playlists not uploads.  I've tried synching a directory with m3u files.  No luck.  I've tried dragging/dropping m3u files into the Chrome music manager.  Nope. Your new 50,000 limit is great, but without a way to use my existing organization of those songs, your service is not worth the trouble.  I'd even pay for your service if you supported this.
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawDo you believe this? — If you're running a large enough organization, you're going to find yourself doing certain standard things, like accounting, expense reports, and HR. And that's apparently true even if your organization is a shadowy international terror group. Thanks to recently-declassified data, we have (I kid you not) al-Qaeda's job application form, and this lecture (https://youtu.be/VpJqFpBwAm8) about their management procedures, complete with slides of things like their insurance forms, reimbursement procedures, NDA's, and the like. It's a weird mixture of the surreal and the mundane. "Have you invented or researched anything in any domain?;" "What other languages do you speak, and at what level?;" "Do you wish to execute a suicide operation?;" "What objectives would you like to accomplish on your jihad path?;" "Who should we contact in case you become a martyr?" There is nothing so unusual in this world that it does not end up being weirdly mundane. h/t +Andreas Schou and +Sai for these links.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceFrom that article. Note it was posted in 2008. The stakes are even higher in Ukraine. Deeply divided and with a major Russian naval base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, the new state will surely be torn apart if an attempt is made to wrench it from Russia's sphere of influence. The country would become a battlefield, with the great powers irresistibly drawn in. — Site metrics and FP Top 100 Global Thinkers +Eric Enge and I have been continuing our occasional exchange on how to measure discussion site activity, he and I having both made our own semi-infamous stabs at measuring activity on G+ to the extent possible. Among other points raised was this: I'm increasingly inclined to believe that the group of Truly Interesting People online is rather more finite than we tend to estimate -- that the combination of intelligence, communications skills, and sheer interest in engaging with hoi polloi and all the frustrations that entails. The notable mark of the elder blogger / online commentator is in large part their absence from any communications. E.g., Clay Shirky hasn't just stopped posting at Ello, he hardly posts anywhere any more, and hasn't much for years. Likewise for numerous others. Further discussion expanding on those reasons. On which one point I'd like to reiterate: the Great Hope of finding untapped outside the developed / OECD world strikes me as both 1) unlikely and 2) not useful. Unlikely not because there's no native brilliance there (though environmental factors such as crushing poverty, malnurishment, and high levels of childhood stress almost certainly don't help), but because such genius often (though not always) finds a way out. We've even got a term for that: Brain Drain. As to the "not useful", it has more to do with diminishing returns to technology and innovation, and applies equally to OECD-native genius. But that did raise the question of who compiles the official list of public intellectuals. Turns out that's a task assumed by Foreign Policy magazine, and its FP Top 100 Global Thinkers list. As with all such things, it's not perfect and I see signs of political motivation and possible ballot stuffing (Bjørn Lomborg, SRSLY? Barak Obama and Ron Paul's brief 2010 appearances, and Thomas Friedman (well, he's public), off the top). A few others I can think of, say, Richard M. Stallman, are excluded. But as things go, it's not a bad list. The top ten 2014 entries:  1. Noam Chomsky  2. Ashraf Ghani  3. Richard Dawkins  4. Václav Havel  5. Christopher Hitchens  6. Paul Krugman  7. Jürgen Habermas  8. Amartya Sen  9. Jared Diamond 10. Salman Rushdie (Other than Habermas, I've at least heard of all, read or listened to several.) Rounding out the tail:  90. Gordon Conway  91. Pavol Demes  92. Elaine Scarry  93. Robert Cooper  94. Harold Varmus  95. Pramoedya Ananta Toer  96. Zheng Bijian  97. Kenichi Ohmae  98. Wang Jisi  99. Kishore Mahbubani 100. Shintaro Ishihara (None of whom is immediately known to me.) It might also be interesting to pair it with an anti-intellectual global 100 (sadly, queries for that phrase show no discerningly compiled tabulations....). The Karadashians, Deepak Chopra, and Rupert Sheldrake, as well as the whole of Fox News, come to mind. If mention of the FP Top 100 are positives, then the latter would deduct from the score. And painfully so. Might be the final push to finally see widespread adoption of the W3C <irony> tag. So here's one proposal for a club whose willingness to have someone like me as a member might not be an instant disqualification: that it have some participation from the likes of those mentioned above. (Worth mention is that Clay Shriky himself weighs in at #67 for 2010.) That might be either direct participation (preferable) or discussion of. And yes, it could be added to by other generally inspirational types (someone you'd want to sit closer to at a party, but to overhear more than to gaze upon). Authors, possibly a few scientists. A very few politicians (most generally don't make the cut). And yeah, measurement of this sort of thing especially on the basis of content is difficult and painful at best, don't get me started. "Lunch pix" and vague one-liners seem a poor candidate for inclusion. Someone like +David Brin or +Yonatan Zunger who actually wade into comments and engage, (neither make the cut, get your votes in, Geeple), far better. It also helps tremendously if those who really have an interest in engaging get the chance to do so. Much as I enjoy Reddit, one of the disappointments of its AMAs is that they're frequently flooded with not-particularly-interesting questions. Running a good Q&A at scale is difficult (I've had experiences running relatively small ones in front of largely well-behaved crowds and even that was a challenge). And no, I'm not saying that all discussion has to be lead by or about this list. But if none is, or worse, the clue flees rapidly then you've got problems. A criticism of mine of Ello is that it did have a fairly hefty crowd of interesting people who I was really happy to be able to follow online. Sadly, all but a couple are now silent for many months. A standing challenge to the Ello crew from me is to figure out how to win them back. Similar criticisms could be made of G+ as well. https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/qNaGY6s0tStDkT5eaubaLg So, that leaves us with "where are the top 100 global thinkers posting online?" I strongly suspect that many have a Facebook presence. How much that's used is another question. Some (sampling from the top ten) are found on G+, in some form, but don't appear active. My earlier metric of counting search results from various domains might prove interesting, though that would measure discussion, not necessarily presence, and be subject to numerous other biases. But, as with the earlier public posts metric, it is accessible. Curious what thoughts +Yonatan Zunger might have as to applications of this to general relevance and/or credibility scoring this might have.
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Commented on postFood/Health/Disease/Diet is a rich source of woo. My doctor has told me to avoid discussions with some of my friends on these subjects due to it's effect on my blood pressure. Particularly around "fat makes you fat" and "the statin conspiracy". There's a related first world problem that a lot of you have probably experienced, where a friend gets some cancer and some wooniac pipes up saying it's bad karma and could be cured with spinach smoothies. Get into enough of those conversations and the same woo thought leaders keep cropping up but I really don't want to go and track them down again. http://www.quackwatch.com/ does a fairly good job of that.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceThis reminded me of Circlecount, Klout and all those other systems that tried to derive "important/interesting people" algorithmically. And how spectacularly useless they were. I went back and had a look at circlecount and it hasn't got any better with some of the metrics just swamped in spammers. It seems that these lists really do need manual curating and ruthless culling. This also brings to mind the big question about China and online social media. There was a time when I half expected QQ or one of the others to expand into the English language world and become a major force to rival Facebook et al. It never happened and now I don't think it will. Their market is so big, they don't need to go through the hassle. But that combined with Google's algorithmic cultural imperialism means that the net is fragmenting into balkanised states. At least in terms of online communication. There may well be some new important/interesting people that engage online but you'll never see them because they don't speak in English. And it's not just China. French, Spanish, German, Malay speakers are hidden from me as well. — Site metrics and FP Top 100 Global Thinkers +Eric Enge and I have been continuing our occasional exchange on how to measure discussion site activity, he and I having both made our own semi-infamous stabs at measuring activity on G+ to the extent possible. Among other points raised was this: I'm increasingly inclined to believe that the group of Truly Interesting People online is rather more finite than we tend to estimate -- that the combination of intelligence, communications skills, and sheer interest in engaging with hoi polloi and all the frustrations that entails. The notable mark of the elder blogger / online commentator is in large part their absence from any communications. E.g., Clay Shirky hasn't just stopped posting at Ello, he hardly posts anywhere any more, and hasn't much for years. Likewise for numerous others. Further discussion expanding on those reasons. On which one point I'd like to reiterate: the Great Hope of finding untapped outside the developed / OECD world strikes me as both 1) unlikely and 2) not useful. Unlikely not because there's no native brilliance there (though environmental factors such as crushing poverty, malnurishment, and high levels of childhood stress almost certainly don't help), but because such genius often (though not always) finds a way out. We've even got a term for that: Brain Drain. As to the "not useful", it has more to do with diminishing returns to technology and innovation, and applies equally to OECD-native genius. But that did raise the question of who compiles the official list of public intellectuals. Turns out that's a task assumed by Foreign Policy magazine, and its FP Top 100 Global Thinkers list. As with all such things, it's not perfect and I see signs of political motivation and possible ballot stuffing (Bjørn Lomborg, SRSLY? Barak Obama and Ron Paul's brief 2010 appearances, and Thomas Friedman (well, he's public), off the top). A few others I can think of, say, Richard M. Stallman, are excluded. But as things go, it's not a bad list. The top ten 2014 entries:  1. Noam Chomsky  2. Ashraf Ghani  3. Richard Dawkins  4. Václav Havel  5. Christopher Hitchens  6. Paul Krugman  7. Jürgen Habermas  8. Amartya Sen  9. Jared Diamond 10. Salman Rushdie (Other than Habermas, I've at least heard of all, read or listened to several.) Rounding out the tail:  90. Gordon Conway  91. Pavol Demes  92. Elaine Scarry  93. Robert Cooper  94. Harold Varmus  95. Pramoedya Ananta Toer  96. Zheng Bijian  97. Kenichi Ohmae  98. Wang Jisi  99. Kishore Mahbubani 100. Shintaro Ishihara (None of whom is immediately known to me.) It might also be interesting to pair it with an anti-intellectual global 100 (sadly, queries for that phrase show no discerningly compiled tabulations....). The Karadashians, Deepak Chopra, and Rupert Sheldrake, as well as the whole of Fox News, come to mind. If mention of the FP Top 100 are positives, then the latter would deduct from the score. And painfully so. Might be the final push to finally see widespread adoption of the W3C <irony> tag. So here's one proposal for a club whose willingness to have someone like me as a member might not be an instant disqualification: that it have some participation from the likes of those mentioned above. (Worth mention is that Clay Shriky himself weighs in at #67 for 2010.) That might be either direct participation (preferable) or discussion of. And yes, it could be added to by other generally inspirational types (someone you'd want to sit closer to at a party, but to overhear more than to gaze upon). Authors, possibly a few scientists. A very few politicians (most generally don't make the cut). And yeah, measurement of this sort of thing especially on the basis of content is difficult and painful at best, don't get me started. "Lunch pix" and vague one-liners seem a poor candidate for inclusion. Someone like +David Brin or +Yonatan Zunger who actually wade into comments and engage, (neither make the cut, get your votes in, Geeple), far better. It also helps tremendously if those who really have an interest in engaging get the chance to do so. Much as I enjoy Reddit, one of the disappointments of its AMAs is that they're frequently flooded with not-particularly-interesting questions. Running a good Q&A at scale is difficult (I've had experiences running relatively small ones in front of largely well-behaved crowds and even that was a challenge). And no, I'm not saying that all discussion has to be lead by or about this list. But if none is, or worse, the clue flees rapidly then you've got problems. A criticism of mine of Ello is that it did have a fairly hefty crowd of interesting people who I was really happy to be able to follow online. Sadly, all but a couple are now silent for many months. A standing challenge to the Ello crew from me is to figure out how to win them back. Similar criticisms could be made of G+ as well. https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/qNaGY6s0tStDkT5eaubaLg So, that leaves us with "where are the top 100 global thinkers posting online?" I strongly suspect that many have a Facebook presence. How much that's used is another question. Some (sampling from the top ten) are found on G+, in some form, but don't appear active. My earlier metric of counting search results from various domains might prove interesting, though that would measure discussion, not necessarily presence, and be subject to numerous other biases. But, as with the earlier public posts metric, it is accessible. Curious what thoughts +Yonatan Zunger might have as to applications of this to general relevance and/or credibility scoring this might have.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsWas this article helpful? Next Up - Hillary Clinton doesn’t need the media, and it’s driving the media crazy - From condoms to toilets, why good design is essential for improving global health - Why immigration activists are so excited about Hillary Clinton’s latest hire - This was the biggest political science study of last year. It was a complete fraud. - 5 overhyped media trends that turned out to just be a big recession - How to retire in your 30s: save most of your money and rethink your core values --- The "Society of the Spectacle"? — So. It turns out that al-Qaida has a job application form.
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Commented on post by Mike Potter in Google Play MusicFor me this is all about music manager. A folder is just a collection of filenames and I can tell MM to look at a folder and upload all the files. I should be able to tell it to look at a playlist and upload all the files listed in it. It should then create a playlist in GPM that matches the tracks that have just been uploaded. This upload of files and playlists kind of works with iTunes and WMP. Why shouldn't it work with files and folders. If I have a playlist in GPM, I should be able to download the whole playlist and have the individual files created in album folders and with a matching playlist file referencing them. Playlists I've saved out of winamp have metadata as well as filenames. — Please, Google, provide support for uploading m3u or wpl playlists.  I have thousands of songs already organized into play lists and I'm not going to duplicate that time and effort.  m3u format has been around for decades.  No excuse to not support it. I've tried uploading my entire Windows Media Player library (which has playlists) from scratch.  Playlists not uploads.  I've tried synching a directory with m3u files.  No luck.  I've tried dragging/dropping m3u files into the Chrome music manager.  Nope. Your new 50,000 limit is great, but without a way to use my existing organization of those songs, your service is not worth the trouble.  I'd even pay for your service if you supported this.
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Commented on post by Mark Wyciślik-Wilson in Chromecast CentralIn other news, The X Market will be Y Big in Z Years. — Streaming video subscriptions will quadruple by 2019
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Commented on posteg http://imgur.com/jAIvLNp
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Commented on post by Trevor Larkum in Electric Vehicles (UK)Right here. No. ;) — Where is everyone? Is this forum dying?
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Commented on postThey (somebody) should have put those single sentences on motivational posters for additional shits and giggles.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceGood work. I'd spec the font family and prefer font-size: 120%; or font-size: 1.2em; to px. And #333 not #444 But that's nitpicking. Now where's the minimal iOS app that displays the same content? ;) — An even better m☼☼☼☼☼f☼☼☼☼☼g website In the beginning was a motherf******g website. Then came a better motherf******g website. I present Edward Morbius's version of a motherf******g website. What can be done with zero styling, 7 declarations, and 14 rulesets (46 declarations). Style doesn't take much. (Words your mother might or might not approve of may be found at the following links. Fucking deal with it.) http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/ http://codepen.io/dredmorbius/pen/KpMqqB?editors=100
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeCan we believe any of those figures, or trust the analysis of what they mean? — China’s industrial output and thermal power generation are falling while renewable energy sources like hydro, wind, and solar are growing fast. #China #GHGEmissions
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Commented on postAudio/Video that's out of copyright should be free on Google Music. Except of course that nothing's out of copyright, and Google need to make money, not just redistribute it to the entertainment industry. Is there an audio/video equivalent of the Gutenberg project? For audio, use Zippyshare. They have a lax attitude to things like DMCA and links have stayed around for quite a while now. How long do you want the links to go on working?
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Commented on postThat's the Pacific side. What about the Atlantic side? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership
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Commented on postThe bit that's puzzling is when you report a bug, add a report to the issue tracker, get people saying "me too", engage with staff on the support forum, who then copy in senior management, then wait a year. Then remind the support staff on the forum, who copy in (the new) senior management, then wait a year. Then watch the issue tracker continue to grow and add stars and "me too" comments but for none of the issues to ever get fixed. Which I suppose beats sending "feedback" into the black hole. Or reporting a bug or feature request only too be told that you're reporting it in the wrong place and to try over there, repeatedly, until you end up back at the place you first reported it. Except that the first forum has closed down and all the old threads have been discarded. Even the naming, conflated products and associated confusion will drive you crazy. Do Chrome browser bugs get reported in the same place as Chrome-OS if they're running on an embedded Chrome in a Chromecast and exposed by the Chromecast API? Why is Music part of Google Play; Is it an app or a market place or a subscription?
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeAnd yet, Scotland is doing really well. And Scotland is still part of the UK. (just!) http://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/11/scotlands-energy-system-exciting-changes-happening/ — The UK renewable energy industry is concerned that solar, hydro and other low-carbon technologies could see further cuts to financial support – concerns bolstered by recent EU negotiations on green targets. These saw the UK Government fight hard – and successfully – to block European attempts to impose a target for the proportion of energy that should be generated from renewable sources beyond 2020. Britain is committed to generating 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by the end of this decade under a previous EU target and is on course to meet this from existing projects. But by blocking a new EU target there will be no legal requirement for production of  electricity from renewable sources beyond 2020. #UK #RenewableEnergy
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Commented on post by Steban Hernández in Google+ UpdatesI'd like some alternate sort orders on communities as well. — I wish we were able to order collections by alphabet.  I know communities are organized by the last one you visited, which makes sense, but collections would have been made more accommodating if they were organized by their name's respective order in the alphabet.
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Commented on post by mark white in Climate ChangeIt's screwed. Don't mean nothing. Just walk away. And grab whatever pork is available on the way. Back in the dust bowl days, Americans just walked away from the problem and tried to start a new life somewhere else. That seems to be quite deeply ingrained in the US psyche. So what happens when Florida drowns or the Western states run out of water. Will the population just abandon them as being non-viable?
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in Beers of NoteMarston is the Brewery. Pedigree is the beer brand name. "Milk of Amnesia" is the joke! Easiest to find real ale in London is Fullers (Fulller, Smith and Turner from Chiswick on the Thames) and the main brew is "London Pride". They've got a lot of tied pubs. We're narrowing it down, London is big! The hip East End from Shoreditch to Bow/Stratford and from Stoke Newington to The City and the river is becoming full of foodies that obsess over this kind of thing. And it's only a tube ride away. — Via +D. Luria​. I vaguely recall trying this at a UK pub maybe 10 years ago but I have no memory of the beer itself. Speaking of UK, I will be there for most of June and July so I'm seeking recommendations exactly like this one.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich in Beers of NoteIf you get up to the Midlands, anywhere near Burton on Trent, try Marstons Pedigree. The "Milk of Amnesia"! However it''s got to be proper cask conditioned as they do a keg version to travel and it's not the same at all, at all. If you spend time in London, there are a ton of craft and long established small breweries. The Kernel is recommended although they do tend towards the hoppy IPA style. The source of all wisdom on pub beer is CAMRA http://www.camra.org.uk/ Find a free house pub with CAMRA magazines being given away, ask the barman what youn want and what they've got and you can't really go wrong. — Via +D. Luria​. I vaguely recall trying this at a UK pub maybe 10 years ago but I have no memory of the beer itself. Speaking of UK, I will be there for most of June and July so I'm seeking recommendations exactly like this one.
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Commented on postOur good friend Dave Cohen has some things to say about the manifesto. I particularly liked this one. Let me tell you what's going to happen, no matter what anybody says. Humans will strive to expand their global civilization until it becomes physically impossible to do so. http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/05/make-it-so.html
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Commented on postIt's a representative democracy. We did let them. 
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Commented on postSo what we're likely to get is for the new Tory majority to back out of the coalition's reforms (fixed 5 year terms) and do some boundary changes to reduce the size of the Commons to around 600. And of course in the process screw Labour and the SNP. They'll also try and further limit the Lords and stop them from repeatedly getting in the way of Theresa May's particular brand of madness.
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Commented on postOf course we'd also have to find a new way of doing business between elections. The current system is very much dependent on 2 main parties with the party in power able to force through legislation with it's majority vote. A system where complex coalitions and free votes were needed all the time just to transact the business of the commons would be quite a change. It can be made to work more or less as shown by some of the European countries, but it's not the UK way.
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Commented on postBut then UKIP is a joke party that was run by a joke leader that totally failed to turn their support into actual power. That's their fault as well as being the fault of the system.
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Commented on postIt's going to take a while to work out what the hell just happened. And what the implications are. For the moment, we're all just making ironic jokes in bad taste. UKIP getting 12.6% of a 66.1% turnout (3,881,129 votes) is still scary even if it only resulted in one seat.
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeAnother rapid take on the hours old result. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2015/may/08/what-does-camerons-election-win-mean-for-the-environment — With a Conservative government all-but assured in the UK, green groups will need to reassess their engagement strategy. The team at the Oxford-based Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN) have pulled together a guide for talking climate to the centre-right. #UKElection
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeBut, but, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/may/14/cameron-wants-greenest-government-ever Oh. Wait. That was 2010. And where 70% of left-wing voters are likely to accept climate change is caused by humans, on the right it drops to 50%. Is that really true in the UK? — With a Conservative government all-but assured in the UK, green groups will need to reassess their engagement strategy. The team at the Oxford-based Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN) have pulled together a guide for talking climate to the centre-right. #UKElection
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Commented on post by John Hawkins in Mixology 🍸BTW. Waitrose now carry half bottles of Carpano Antica so it's a lot easier to obtain. — This afternoon I went to Gerry's on Old Compton Street in London and told them "I want a really good vermouth for Negroni". They produced a bottle of Antica Formula. I make more Negronis at home than any other cocktail - it's far and away my favourite - but like many other people (I assume) I've always neglected the vermouth a bit, and just used whatever came to hand without really thinking about it much. I used Martini Rosso for a while, but have also rather lazily used white vermouths (Noilly Prat and Dolin). If you follow the standard Negroni recipe, the vermouth is a third of the drink, so it's odd that this ingredient doesn't get as much attention as the other two. Antica Formula is delicious. Particularly for someone like me, originally a whisky lover, and a huge fan of the uniquely medicinal flavour of Laphroaig. Those same kind of cough syrup notes seem to be present in Antica Formula. On the other hand, it is really overpowering, and given that I've got into the habit of making my Negronis with Aperol rather than Campari, I could barely taste anything else. Maybe the quantities need tweaking a bit, and maybe I should go back to using Campari?
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:Most people peak in their music collecting and appreciation around 20 and then pretty much stop looking for and finding new musics. So they suffer from taste freeze and get nostalgic for the time when they were 20. So much so that you could go into somebody's house, check their music collection and predict their age with some certainty.  But this is not inevitable. There are lots of people who go on being actively involved in music. And there's an open question about the extent to which their other style tastes are also frozen at 20 and for which they will also feel nostalgic. — "The Coolness Spiral of Death:" a mathematical study of why people in their thirties don't like that damned noise those kids listen to these days. (For arbitrary definitions of "those kids" and "these days") The graph below was derived from studying Spotify streaming data from users in the US, to try to focus on a somewhat uniform cultural slice. As you move from the center outwards, you move from more popular artists (Taylor Swift, at #1, is at the very center) to less popular ones (e.g., Norah Jones at #1000, Natasha Bedingfield at #3000). As you move clockwise, you look at the ages of listeners, from 14 to 48. The dots show the median musical taste of listeners of that age. What we see is that teenagers have a much stronger preference for more popular music, with tastes gradually becoming more eclectic until the mid-30's, when tastes seem to level out. The researchers say that this is probably a combination of effects: discovering more music over time, personality changes, and "taste freeze," liking the same stuff even as it becomes less popular. The effect is more pronounced for men than for women, as you can see below, but it's even more pronounced for parents: they found that when you look for people with kids (as evidenced by their music streams containing a significant fraction of children's music), tastes become significantly more eclectic, on the whole, and the difference between men and women vanishes. There's plenty more in this article, and it's a great little bit of data mining.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaFor a company so invested in maps, Google seems to really dislike location. Latitude is gone, adding a location to a G+ post or profile is hard to impossible. Over the years, they keep buying location startups and then killing them. It's puzzling. — First thoughts on Google+ "Collections" Over at Ello, largely intended as advice to their team on how not to fuck this up. https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/gdidy2f4MTuS8zpxiUKSGQ
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaI expect David Weinberger has some thoughts on all this. Like, "Everything is Miscellaneous". I begin to wonder how old the Google designers and management are and if they remember anything from the last decade. And in particular tags, http://del.icio.us, semantic web, rdf. Because they seem to want to endlessly recapitulate the same old problems. The only clever thing is they're doing it at scale. Freeform search vs ontological curation vs author categorisation. The real puzzle here for a search company is why G+ search isn't better and what happened to saved searches. And while Collections has appeared, Local and Nearby seem to be disappearing. You have to watch what Google thinks is unimportant as much as they're experiments with New. — First thoughts on Google+ "Collections" Over at Ello, largely intended as advice to their team on how not to fuck this up. https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/gdidy2f4MTuS8zpxiUKSGQ
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Commented on postBe warned. It's properly sweary, in an anglo saxon way. http://www.dontbeafuckingidiot.uk/ 
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Commented on postTo paraphrase a recent post. If you had a £100B of effectively free deficit money to spend on infrastructure, what would you spend it on?
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Commented on post by Clayton Pritchard in Google+ UpdatesThey've confused content and distribution. Again. Why are collections limited to a specific target audience/circle? And why when you create a post can't you specify BOTH an audience and a collection?   — Google+ Collections has officially launched! What is everyone's thoughts on Google+'s newest feature?
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Commented on post by Bob Hewitt in Electric Vehicles (UK)http://www.gizmag.com/jet-fuel-seawater/24287/ It's the Fischer-Tropsch process using energy from a nuclear reactor, dissolved CO2 in sea water and H2O from the sea water to create Kerosene/Diesel. It makes sense as an avenue for research on warships and especially aircraft carriers because they've got a nuclear reactor on board, they're in the sea (duh!) and they need a supply of jet fuel. It's unlikely to scale, but is perhaps a route to a limited supply of liquid hydrocarbon fuels in a post oil world. — Read this. Bit over my head but maybe the hydrogen fuel guys are right?
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Commented on postThis election is all about the horse race and even more than usual. Being in the middle of it is quite distressing. I used one of those http://mysociety.org systems to email all my prospective candidates and asked all the difficult questions about the NHS[1] and TTIP. The only party to respond were the Greens so they'll probably get my vote because they need encouragement even though their leader is an idiot and their policies are all over the place. The most active local party in terms of leaflets are the scary looking people from UKIP hand delivering their own leaflets. The locals all complain constantly about the conservative led council, but will elect them again both in the council and the MP. It seems highly likely that nobody will get a majority, the SNP will dominate [2] and numerous leaders and party people will be hung out to dry. I can't see how Cameron, Osborne, Clegg or Miliband can survive this. Which is going to lead to a summer of chaos and horse trading and a repeat election in the autumn. Oooh look. A royal baby! [1] #WeLoveTheNHS  Please don't destroy it. [2]Now. About these Trident missiles and the independent (heh!) nuclear deterrent. We don't want them. We don't want fracking either.
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Commented on post by James M. in Chromecast+Antonio Myers Just makes me sad that Chrome, Chromebooks, laptops and desktops are treated as the poor relation again. — How to enable Street Art on Chromecast Backdrop: ● Navigate to the Backdrop section of the Chromecast app ● Select the gear icon in the upper right to edit your Backdrop settings ● Choose the Art category ● Turn on Street Art Learn about Backdrop for Chromecast https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6080931?hl=en
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Brief DispatchesReminds me of an old Charles Stross discussion. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/10/trick-question.html Here's the test: the closed ecosystem within the ship has to be able to produce enough beer to satisfy all the beer consumers within the system. What is the minimum number of species necessary in order to produce beer aboard a generation ship? So, "What is the minimum number of species necessary in order to produce a passable Macchiato aboard a generation ship or Space colony?" Does Elon Musk have answers to these? And, yes, "You will go to the moon colony today". — Milestones in Engineering: Today +Samantha Cristoforetti brewed the first espresso in space, and drank it while sitting in the cupola of the ISS. I think I need a better morning coffee routine. 
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Commented on post by Scarfolk Council+1 for "infantile sense of pride in a romanticised national identity which was fabricated by a small to mid-sized advertising agency" — Election week countdown. Poster 2 of 7. 'Watch Out! There's a Politician About' campaign. More here: http://scarfolk.blogspot.com/2015/05/watch-out-theres-politician-about.html
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPSo who's going to punt who off at the last corner? — Here are the qualifying results.  I know I will have fingernail marks in my palms tomorrow!!!!! 
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynSome specs here. http://connevted.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/tesla-reveals-battery-storage-solutions.html 7kWHr daily cycle 350V-450V, 5A Continous, 8.5A peak 2kW Continuous, 3.3kW peak 100Kg 130cm * 86cm * 18cm So, nominal 400v, 17.5AHr, 0.28C Probably Li-NCA as that's what is used in the current Tesla cars. Ac-dc inverter not included ??!! — WHY IS THE DOMESTIC BATTERY SO IMPORTANT? A little thought piece on the announcement from +Tesla Motors  yesterday.
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Commented on post by Lev Osherovich+1 for a range of labels from "legal" through "humane", "free-range", "organic" to "vegan". Part of the problem here is the definition, agreement and standardisation of the labels. And the corruption and politics involved in the bodies that do that standardisation. I'd like to be able to buy a chicken that had a reasonable outdoor chicken life without being stuffed with antibiotics, that was killed humanely and fed on the kind of things chickens like to eat. And I want a label on it that guarantees that is what I'm buying (and paying a bit extra for). Is that too much to ask? — New rules to determine what is Organic The Washington Post reports on the difficulty of determing what is or is not kosher/halal Organic faced by the Sanhedrin/Ulama National Organic Standards Board. Among the dozens of public commenters on Monday were a potato grower who asked the board to approve a chemical to keep his stored spuds from sprouting; a maker of organic lecithin - lecithin is an emulsifier common in many foods - who wanted the board to close the loophole that allows synthetic lecithin; and an organic advocate from Vermont who, speaking for some strawberry farms, wanted the board to preserve the exception for ferric phosphate, a chemical used as a slug and snail bait. The potato grower, Derin Jones, from Chin Family Farms in Oregon, acknowledged that a natural substance, clove oil, can be used to keep potatoes from sprouting. But a chemical known as "3-decene-2-one" or "3D2," works much better, and he showed pictures to prove his point. This reminds me of the contemporary rabbi/imam-puzzler about whether a pig genetically engineered to be tidy, cud-chewing and split-hoofed could be considered kosher or halal. #organic #religion  #kosher #halal
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynIs there any detail of the chemistry and form factor of the component cells anywhere? Are they LiNMC, LiNCA, LiFePo or what? How about C factor of the whole pack; what power can it supply or accept? There's never any damn details in these announcements. Interesting to see suggestions of a parallel 12v DC supply in a house. Why 12v and not 5v (USB) or ~20v (typical laptop)? It's generally current that matters with wiring and since you can always step down voltage when needed, 240v AC makes far more sense unless you're running a datacentre with huge numbers of identical but inefficient power supplies. The E-bicycle community used to scavenge the first A123 batteries from power tools. I hope Musk's/Tesla's work results in a cheap supply of high-C, li-on cells in small form factors that can be scavenged and repurposed. Or perhaps he could do a sideline in cheap 36v-15AHr, 48v-10AHr, 72V-10AHr high current bicycle batteries. And btw:- A plague on political discussions that de-rail threads and all who de-rail them. — WHY IS THE DOMESTIC BATTERY SO IMPORTANT? A little thought piece on the announcement from +Tesla Motors  yesterday.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle Roadracinghttp://www.roadracingworld.com/news/its-official-team-hero-ebr-withdraws-from-fim-superbike-world-championship/ Inevitable, I'm afraid. Bit of a tough break for Canepa. — EBR - GONE What a shame. Just as +Erik Buell Racing start doing well in +WorldSBK they fold. Full details via +Asphalt & Rubber : http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/news/erik-buell-racing-receivership-bankruptcy/ _____________________________________________________ +WorldSBK +WorldSBK  #WSB   #WSB2015   +Erik Buell Racing +hero industrial 
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Media / Tech / SurveillanceWhen http://last.fm first appeared I got excited about their 3 buttons on their radio player "Like", "Skip", "Block". I thought it would be cool to have them on everything. So instead of star ratings, +1/Like/Favourite buttons, I wanted a standard 3 button set on things like banner ads or Amazon recommendations. "Like" = this appeals to me "Skip" = Give me another one "Block" = never show this again I'm sure it wouldn't work, but I think the Ad industry is missing a trick here. Sometimes I'd like to give a bit more feedback than just a clickthrough. And I'd still quite like an RSS feed of adverts aimed at me that I could steer by providing some feedback. — A search revolution: asking about relevance I'm generally pretty skeptical of start-up concepts, and I can see numerous hurdles this concept has, but it does incorporate an idea I find exceptional among search and recommendation systems: It asks the user if results were relevant, removes irrelevant results, and adjusts future results accordingly. This is a concept I've been championing for years now. I've noted that in real life, a search assistant (reference librarian, store clerk, real-estate agent, jobs search counselor) will ask for feedback on the relevance of a given suggestion, and not continue to present obviously unsuitable options. Or, if they do, you'd fire them. Oddly, this concept is almost entirely lacking from online search services, with a few notable exceptions -- dating apps such as Tinder or OK Cupid come to mind. Ideally these are learning and improving suggestions with time. But Web search from any of the major providers fails in this (Google, Bing, DDG, Yahoo, ...), as does, staggeringly, Amazon product search, or Google's YouTube or G+ search (for which specific results may be staggeringly insipid). What's not clear, and does concern me, about Jobspotting's system is what personal information it collects, who it shares it with, and how long it retains that information. In a post-Snowden era, these are all pressing considerations, and my ideal system would provide for anonymized service, not share the data at all, and delete it both on request or after a given time. After all, a store clerk who remembered every time you asked for milk or that vegan dressing from four years ago would be more than slightly freaky. Especially if you knew they were gossipping wildly about your preferences. But at least in concept, an interesting development. http://fixyt.com/watch?v=ObRjppC_hL0
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in InstitutionsI have a lot of freelance journalist friends. They also ride motorcycles. Between this issue and the policy to discourage high performance vehicles and speed limit them, the Greens generated a lot of righteous anger! But unfortunately, the policy quoted above was a mistake. It was supposed to read "Life+14 years" not "14 years". Or at least that's what Green spokespeople now claim. I'm in favour of a return to more or less the original copyright terms. So that's an automatic and free 15 years. And then a single extension of 15 years on payment of a nominal fee to a registration agency and on provision that the work is made available to the general public. So for words, the work must stay in print or be electronically available for it to stay out of the public domain. And screw you, Mickey Mouse and Sonny Bono. — Copyright Reform My addendum: Allow renewals. £1,000 for the first, another 14 years. Double the renewal cost for each further instance. h/t +Alan Cox https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AlanCoxLinux/posts/1JxZYnHJ9ah
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Commented on postMeanwhile, https://news.vice.com/article/nevadas-lake-mead-is-at-its-lowest-level-ever-and-federal-authorities-say-its-going-to-get-worse
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Commented on post by David Friedmanhttps://news.vice.com/article/nevadas-lake-mead-is-at-its-lowest-level-ever-and-federal-authorities-say-its-going-to-get-worse — California Drought—Getting Worse or Getting Better? News stories about the Governor's actions to deal with the water shortage emphasize how low the snowpack is this year. But while some of the water used in California comes from melting snow, more comes from rain stored in reservoirs, and none of the stories...
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Commented on postPerhaps journalists should be forced to learn how to use a slide rule. Then they'd develop the ability to recognise scale errors of multiple orders of magnitude in the breathless hype they're fed by the PR industry.
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Commented on post by James M. in ChromecastWrong community? — Restaurant use of Chromecast described in The Boston Globe article below.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in EnergyThanks for putting me right on shipping containers. I had it in my head that they didn't fit on railcars through the existing infrastructure (like tunnels) and electrical lines in the UK. But now it occurs to me that I simply never see freight cars on UK railways. Perhaps because I simply can't see the railways any more from the roads as they're hidden behind the houses. Re the USA, oil by rail and subsequent accidents is getting some international press. That seems, strange, in a world of oil and gas pipelines. — "Rail vs. Truck Energy Efficiency", David S.Lawyer Is Rail Freight Usually More Energy-Efficient than Truck? Perhaps it is but at present no one really knows for sure. Which mode (rail or truck) is more efficient strongly depends on what commodity is being hauled. Some commodities are more energy efficient to haul by rail, while for other commodities it's more efficient to haul them by truck.... http://www.lafn.org/~dave/trans/energy/rail_vs_truckEE.html
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in EnergyThat's a common answer when this kind of question gets raised. And yet the whole of the East coast from Florida to Canada has never seemed to me to be much less populated than say rural France or Spain. And then there's China, busy building railways all over the place, even through the Himalayas. I know the Mid West is huge and empty, but there are large parts of the USA that are not hugely different to other places in the world where railways are common and developed. Given the great US railway building that happened in the late 1800s, I wonder why it stopped. The answer seems to be more political than geographical. — "Rail vs. Truck Energy Efficiency", David S.Lawyer Is Rail Freight Usually More Energy-Efficient than Truck? Perhaps it is but at present no one really knows for sure. Which mode (rail or truck) is more efficient strongly depends on what commodity is being hauled. Some commodities are more energy efficient to haul by rail, while for other commodities it's more efficient to haul them by truck.... http://www.lafn.org/~dave/trans/energy/rail_vs_truckEE.html
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Commented on postBTW. Who's this Edward Morbis character who's referenced in the article? http://uk.businessinsider.com/what-happened-to-google-plus-2015-4?r=US
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Commented on postI was looking for James Lovelock's comments about Nuclear Power and came across his thoughts on "Sustainable Retreat".  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock#Sustainable_retreat That ties in with my own views on trying to engineer a soft landing where a technological lifestyle survives peak everything. It also feels like * some * aspects of the work being done by the Long Now foundation. Retreat, in his view, means it's time to start talking about changing where we live and how we get our food; about making plans for the migration of millions of people from low-lying regions like Bangladesh into Europe; about admitting that New Orleans is a goner and moving the people to cities better positioned for the future. Most of all, he says, it's about everybody "absolutely doing their utmost to sustain civilization, so that it doesn't degenerate into Dark Ages, with warlords running things, which is a real danger. We could lose everything that way.
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Commented on post by Stewart BrandFrom the article.  After writing two books on the science of climate change, I decided I could no longer continue taking a pro-science position on global warming and an anti-science position on G.M.O.s. There is an equivalent level of scientific consensus on both issues, I realized, that climate change is real and genetically modified foods are safe. I could not defend the expert consensus on one issue while opposing it on the other. There's something here that I've been trying to understand. We have people using science to justify concern about climate change who cherry pick the science around GMOs to argue that they're unsafe. They're doing with GMOs exactly what they complain about in climate change deniers. But it goes the other way as well. There are GMO promoters who are apparently pro-science in that field who deny the science around climate change. One of the criticisms of GMOs is that the debate is skewed because they are promoted by the same astroturfing by big business vested interests as the fossil fuel lobby does in the climate change debate. And often by the same people. — GMO reality in the developing world A fine report by Mark Lynas in the New York Times.
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Commented on postWhat that diagram doesn't show is that the cell is dividing right up in the top right hand corner of the political compass petri dish. The rest of the petri dish is covered with a rapidly growing mold but there's some kind of isolation barrier around the cell.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in EnergyWhy does rail in the USA face different challenges  from Europe, India and China? Is there nothing to be learnt from the worldwide rail industry? Containers completely changed shipping in one generation. Is there potential for a containerisation of railways? Unfortunately, I don't think shipping containers actually fit on existing railways. Meaning that we would need a new standard container or two. — "Rail vs. Truck Energy Efficiency", David S.Lawyer Is Rail Freight Usually More Energy-Efficient than Truck? Perhaps it is but at present no one really knows for sure. Which mode (rail or truck) is more efficient strongly depends on what commodity is being hauled. Some commodities are more energy efficient to haul by rail, while for other commodities it's more efficient to haul them by truck.... http://www.lafn.org/~dave/trans/energy/rail_vs_truckEE.html
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Commented on post by Bob Hewitt in Electric Vehicles (UK)Needs an intermediate gearbox to allow a smaller sprocket for handling. But that adds complexity. — Not much technical info in this fun review of the Lightning electric bike but fun to watch.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastIf you just open http://<your.server.IP>:9000/stream.mp3 in a Chrome tab it works but there's a significant delay (like 45s) between changes on the LMS server and changes in the audio output. AFAIK this is due to the buffering in the Chrome implementation of the <audio> tag. However I've been unable to get the Chrome Devs to accept that this is the case and is a potential bug. You can then simply cast the tab and the same audio emerges from the TV. There's some example code out there (https://github.com/googlecast/CastHelloVideo-chrome) for a Chrome sender that uses the default media receiver. This will successfully cast http://<your.server.IP>:9000/stream.mp3 so that the Chromecast is grabbing the stream direct. However the underlying receiver is using the Chrome HTML5 code and shows exactly the same 45s delay. I've tried reporting this to the Chromecast API devs but the issue gets tagged as "Not API" because it's actually a Chrome issue (even though it's running in the Chromecast). it seems that there might be a way round this writing a custom receiver using the Web Audio APIs but I reached the limit of my patience and ability at that point. Meanwhile I think the Logitech Media Server community are aware of the annoyances and some solution may eventually emerge from there. — I have a bunch of Chromecast Feature requests mostly related to audio. This is all very much related to desktop web on the laptop but may still make sense for mobiles and tablets. PLease note I personally don't have an iOS or Android device so I'm only interested in desktop Windows or Chrome solutions and not  1. A windows app to cast just the audio regardless of where that audio came from. I'd typically use this to cast DirectSound output from winamp. This could play over the default backdrops. I can nearly do this with the experimental "cast entire screen" function but then I get the distraction of screen mirroring as well. 2. Casting from the Logitech Media Server output so the Chromecast looks like a Squeezebox or LMS client. This is just streaming an MP3 stream similar to shoutcast and doesn't require much processing power. I'm guessing there are other similar systems like Sonos that could work in the same way. So the laptop controls the server where the media and queue is managed and the Chromecast is just another output end point being fed content by the server. 3. The ability to Play shoutcast streams directly just by passing it an internet located .m3u or stream.mp3 4. Something that could understand and use a uPNP/DNLA server and then cast the output. I'm not sure the Chromecast has the power to do this on it's own. Unfortunately virtually all DNLA clients seem to be a bit broken and the servers aren't much better. I imagine something like Mediamonkey which can connect to, list and play music files on a DNLA server, but with the audio output being cast. 
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Commented on post by Alex Schleber in Climate ChangeBut is it any good as a scooter? — Interesting concept:
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynThis is a thing that Bruce Sterling is talking about. The people developing the Internet of Things don't seem to have a clue about security. And this seems to be a problem generally with embedded code. It's done in a rush by the lowest bidder who farms it out to uninterested coders. The manufacturer is much more interested in shipping hardware, and the software development is just an overhead. — What's happening to my life! 'My fridge has gone hot, my oven won't turn on, I can't shut my front door, my lights fade up and down all the time, my alarm keeps going off and my car keeps trying to take me to Dusseldorf!' There's nothing like a little bit of cyber-panic to start the day, but the scenario I just painted might not be total fantasy in just a few years. Everything will be linked to everything and the potential in terms of energy efficiency and ease of use is undeniable. However so far, every connected electronic device we have ever experienced has, at some time, been wide open to criminal or state intervention. Why would the internet of things be any different?
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Commented on postGiven the drought, I wonder if basing an organisation for 10,000 years in the Bay Area is such a good idea. /s
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingThing is though, Alex is not that far off the pace under 2015 rules just like Eugene last year. But the bike is unreliable and they can't get the electronics under control. And that's what I lay at Paul Denning's door. — What's up with Suzuki in WSB? Alex Lowes is clearly frustrated and DePuniet seems to have lost the plot completely. They've swapped out the entire electronics 2 races into the season. At what stage does Paul Denning get fired? Because ultimately team problems are his responsibility.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingAnd then SERT win Le Mans. — What's up with Suzuki in WSB? Alex Lowes is clearly frustrated and DePuniet seems to have lost the plot completely. They've swapped out the entire electronics 2 races into the season. At what stage does Paul Denning get fired? Because ultimately team problems are his responsibility.
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Commented on post by Bob Hewitt in Electric Vehicles (UK)A big scooter with a lap cover? The west treats PTWs as leisure devices. So even touring motorcycles that might have developed into what Ian is talking about are designed for the once a year road trip and not day to day use. The biggest markets now for utility motorcycles are in the developing far east. Safety, comfort, weather protection are much less important there than price (both capital sunk cost and running costs) and utility. I think I asked elsewhere if there was a market in the west for small vehicles for one (+1) person and 4 bags of groceries. I still think there might be as things like the Smart aren't a total failure. But then you're encouraging households to have multiple vehicles, which is not necessarily a good thing. — Not much technical info in this fun review of the Lightning electric bike but fun to watch.
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Commented on post by Paul Gunther in Mixology 🍸There's quite a few names missing in that corner of cocktail recipe space. For instance,  X is to Boulevardier as Valentino is to Negroni? — New cocktail recipe (needs a name unless this drink already exists, and if so, tell me!) 2oz St. George Botanivore Gin .5 oz Lillet  .5 oz Cynar Stir with ice and serve up. Finish with one drop orange bitters and squeeze a lemon peel over the top (do not drop it in!)
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaDave Bresbis took over G+ from Vic G one year ago, today. — Denning revisiting Death of G+ and fallout In a follow-up article, +Stephen Denning addresses some of the questions raised, and notes a particular tenor of responses, to his earlier article on G+ user counts as revealed by +Eric Enge (whose methods, again, are based on those I used in a smaller and cruder but substantively similar analysis with like results in January). In particular Denning explains more of his "97% decline" statement regarding brand engagement (not individual/personal) with G+. I'd dug into the +Stephen Denning"97% decline" stat myself a few days ago in an exchange with +Peter da Silva on a post of mine: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/jZvikEXu3dU Yes, it's a measure of brand engagement, not personal interactions. As such, it's not an area of primary interest to me. But, and this is a big but: the same things which make a platform interesting to "brands", which is to say marketing and advertising types, are the ones which tend to make it of interest to those looking for communications, discussion, and ideas exchange: a substantial population of active and engaged users who respond to posts. I'd also like to try once more to address the mistaken assertion da Silva made that I'm "arguing the antecedant", that is, making the case that because G+ performs poorly for brands it therefor is true that it performs poorly for individuals. Clearly and simply, that's not my argument at all. Rather: 1) G+ performs poorly for brands, and, on various measures, does at best somewhat mediocrely for individuals. By looking first at the commercial interest and failure modes we can come up with a sense of 2) whether or not that has a bearing on noncommercial interactions and 3) what other evidence and / or explanations remain. There's also the fact that Google have done brand-outreach, weakening the argument that Google are overtly brand-hostile, though the results haven't been particularly staggering: http://www.google.com/+/brands/ Among the "staggeringly" successful brands from this Mashable article, Burberry, who've since gone from a mere 270k followers to 4.5 million. http://mashable.com/2012/01/09/brands-using-google-plus/ https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Burberry/posts So, back to brand-response and user engagement generally. It's not a perfect mapping. There are platforms which are by design inherently advertising / commerce hostile. Ello comes to mind -- though in part the site looks to plan on supporting itself via its own store. Usenet, Usenet II (a project da Silva had considerable involvement with), and many mailing lists are other examples: many have policies against and generally limit access to marketing types. But, significantly, this is an ingress filter: it's hard to get a message on these platforms. However, if you succeed in doing so, the very high-signal, high-engagement dynamic of the platforms typically means that such posts do generate a high response. That is: the ingress filter keeps out low-interest pitches, but successful and high-interest pitches, which pass those filters, should generate engagement. Since G+ doesn't restrict what's posted, but does play various games with content selection and presentation, doing a mapping of this is a bit tricky. It's possible that Google are employing relevance algorithms to select for more appropriate content (I go through phases in which my suspicions that this is or isn't the case rise and fall, but...). So, you cannot simply look at posts and raw response rates, because the filter location is possibly post submission. But you can look at most-successful posts. Or at content which does succeed in spreading through organic viral interest on various platforms. I've done this a bit informally myself via my own subreddit posts which I share variously across G+, Diaspora (though I've largely abandoned that), Ello, and Hacker news. My single biggest traffic spike came from a re-share of a post to another subreddit. Second was my get-blocked-from-Google-by-using-Tor story, which I'd posted to Hacker News. The shares I make to my ~2,000 or so G+ followers generally create little response, and similarly for Ello and Diaspora. Which suggests a further bit of analysis which might be conducted, with two possible variants. One would be to look at, say, a range of "most viral" posts on various platforms. The top 10, 25, 100, or 1,000 posts of all time, say. This is a case where rather than random sampling you'd explicitly want to look at outliers. The question you're asking is "when we turn it up to 11, just how far does this go?". I'd included some similar outlier analysis on my own sampled profile data looking at followers and views for both publicly active and inactive G+ profiles. Even looking at just the top 20 records from each sample, it's clear that the best non-public profiles do far worse in terms of followers and views than the top sampled publicly-active profiles. Data here, search "I can find followers data for 88 of my 300 sampled" in the post: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104092656004159577193/posts/RhnKkfTNPKR Just the top five of each:     "non-public"     1 53 followers | 21,808 views     2 53 followers | 21,804 views     3 53 followers | 4,793 views     4 34 followers | 21,522 views     5 33 followers | 77,963 views     "public"     1 67,855 followers | 21,088,213 views     2 6,716 followers | 1,213,683 views     3 5,263 followers | 5,476,803 views     4 3,692 followers | 2,438,437 views     5 2,833 followers | 129,194 views None of the "non-public" profiles have more followers than the least of the top-20 "public" profiles. There are six of the top-20 "public" profiles on the list with fewer views than the top "non-public" profile. But the overall trend is pretty clear. A possible (and IMO likely) explanation is of users with either common names (hence turning up frequently in searches), or with some high level of noteriety. The canonical case of this to me is +Mark Zuckerberg,who has 663,000 followers and 2.6 million profile views ... but no public posts ever. I'd have to check the profiles I ended up listing above to sort which they are and what explanations are likely. Another approach would be to look at the data topically. I've previously suggested looking at specific search phrases and analyzing the number of posts, discussion, and if possible, classification of comments (substantive, snide/snark/humor, trolling, disinformation, etc.) that follows. Another alternative is to look at the biggest stories (news, online, social media,...) of the past couple of years and look at the reach and response of those on various social and other networks. Both the keyword and story-reach elements reflect more closely my own interests in any platform or medium: where can I find intelligent, substantive, and active conversation? My own suspicions of the low reach of G+ were initiated by my own general semiformal observation ,verified by periodic searches within my G+ account, logged-out (hence: eliminating block/filter bias), and increasingly, on ohter sites, for topics of interest. One conclusion is that good and substantive online discussion is generally hard to find. The dynamics of effort vs. reward for online participation (and, frankly, information creation generally) are highly perverse. Low-effort contributions are not only easy, but tend to pay off well. Hal Varian noted this in the 1990s writing on collaborative filtering, more recently Drew Crawford has addressed the point in "Hey, programmers, we need to talk": http://sealedabstract.com/rants/hey-programmers-we-need-to-talk/ Hello? Have we looked in the mirror lately? We have literally taken a group of people perfectly qualified to do actual things, that are way cooler, and designed a whole ecosystem that incentivizes them to write witty one-liners on the Internet. Just objectively, that is really stupid. Also, it sounds a lot like Being Evil. But the other conclusion I'd arrived at was that I was already participating in most of the conversations of interest to me on G+. More than that, I was increasingly initiating them. Thankfully, my small-but-curated sampling of connections on this platform has proven fairly interesting, and occasionally valuably informative. Mind I've got pretty high standards -- by informative I mean "having specific expertise in an area of interest". That's gold, though a cadre with whom I can muddle through ideas is also something I value greatly, and have, in general, found. It's taken nearly four years of constant effort, and really didn't start materializing until 2-3 years on G+. Still, throwing up our collective hands and saying "this is inherently unknowable" really doesn't appeal to me. But that's been a large share of the response I've seen to my own analysis, Enge's, and now Denning's commentary. I'm not at all impressed by it. http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/04/23/has-google-really-died
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Systems & ComplexityIt's a thing that Bruce Sterling is talking about. The people developing the Internet of Things don't seem to have a clue about security. And this seems to be a problem generally with embedded code. It's done in a rush by the lowest bidder who farms it out to uninterested coders. — Think this through... See also comments on +Peter da Silva's post.
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Commented on post by Paul Gunther in Mixology 🍸Seems like a variation on the Valentino which is the gin heavy version of a Negroni. 2 Gin, 1/2 red vermouth, 1/2 Campari. It's good. — New cocktail recipe (needs a name unless this drink already exists, and if so, tell me!) 2oz St. George Botanivore Gin .5 oz Lillet  .5 oz Cynar Stir with ice and serve up. Finish with one drop orange bitters and squeeze a lemon peel over the top (do not drop it in!)
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Commented on post by Dun Iti in ChromecastThis reminds me that it would be cool to be able to choose some visualisations to play on Chromecast when casting Google Play Music. At the moment there's only the Google Labs fireplace. — Hi! We've published a new app to help you set a romantic mood with flickering candles on your TV :-) You can pick red romantic candles or a soothing white candle. Available for both Android and iOS ($0.99): Romantic Candles for Chromecast: Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dunitiapps.cast.candles iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/romantic-candles-for-chromecast/id985246028?mt=8
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Commented on postAmused by the first para. Can I have a job for 10,000 years please, rather than just a job for life! ;) I may not be able to help on my own, but my cult can provide a continuous supply of clones on my behalf.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in EconomicsAnd that treaty remains curiously one sided with a whole series of frankly bizarre demands from the US side. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK%E2%80%93US_extradition_treaty_of_2003 — No. There are no proximate causes here. The market's behavior during the flash crash was caused by the intersection of HFT spoofing algorithms, some big, dumb manual spoofing, and a few large banks' quick-but-stupid automated sell triggers. This resulted in a purely automated feedback loop which was beyond the control of any particular market actor, however large. (Or, in this case, however small.) The fact that an unusually dumb spoofing operation was part of the cause simply demonstrates the brittleness which occurs at the interface of complex systems which make different assumptions about market behavior, but -- most importantly -- do not assume each other's behavior. Because they cannot. Because the specifics of that behavior are trade secrets.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in EconomicsPresumably the UK will roll over and wait for it's tummy to be tickled when the USA demands extradition of this particular UK citizen. That sucks, just like it always does. — No. There are no proximate causes here. The market's behavior during the flash crash was caused by the intersection of HFT spoofing algorithms, some big, dumb manual spoofing, and a few large banks' quick-but-stupid automated sell triggers. This resulted in a purely automated feedback loop which was beyond the control of any particular market actor, however large. (Or, in this case, however small.) The fact that an unusually dumb spoofing operation was part of the cause simply demonstrates the brittleness which occurs at the interface of complex systems which make different assumptions about market behavior, but -- most importantly -- do not assume each other's behavior. Because they cannot. Because the specifics of that behavior are trade secrets.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Models & FramesRight. I reddit after commenting. It's an economy of scale thing then. Container ships are vast and travel relatively slowly. Bring back Canal transport! One horse can pull several tons of coal at walking pace which is fine when the coal is part of a continuous stream. — Peter Diamandis is an idiot part 6591 +Simons Mith, whom I generally regard well, has just shared yet another bit of Polyannish tripe from Peter Diamandis. It's typical Diamandis tosh. His top line? "Want to become a billionaire? Then help a billion people." Sorry, no. If riches are your goal that's the last thing you want to do. Global wealth concentration patterns mean that if your only goal is accumulating demand rights, that is to say, dollars or other monetary currency, you're far better off targeting high net worth individuals rather than some arbitrary (and almost certainly sub-mean) wealth subset of the global population. Total global wealth as of October 9, 2013, was $241 trillion. While the _average of that is $51,600 per adult, the richest 10% hold 86%, and the top 1% 46%, of all wealth. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/richest-1-percent-wealth_n_4072658.html Within the United States, the wealthiest 400 Americans have more wealth than the  entire lower half of all Americans. http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/mar/10/michael-moore/michael-moore-says-400-americans-have-more-wealth-/ Oxfam reports that the richest 85 people on the planet have as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion combined. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/20/oxfam-85-richest-people-half-of-the-world So, if your goal is to make a billion dollars, really, your strategy should involve tickling some itch, fancy, or indulgence of the wealthiest 85 people on the planet. Or the Forbes 400. or the top 0.01% (about 710 thousand people worldwide). Which pretty much explains the present luxury goods marketplace. For starters, your total cost of sales will fall markedly. If your real motivation is helping people, I'm afraid you're going to have to look outside the "market" and monetary reward. And that's just the top-line criticism. What of Diamandis's specific proposals? UAV drone delivery: Wonderful -- if all your goods weigh < 2kg and can be delivered within a kilometer or so of your origin point. There's a reason that global delivery relies overwhelmingly on containerized ocean, rail, and trucking freight: efficiency. Per gallon of fuel you can move 1 ton of cargo 500-1,000 miles by ship, 200-500 by train, and about 50-100 by lorry. For conventional aircraft the value is about 10 ton-miles/gallon. This shows up as well in costs, though with some allowances for infrastructure and other inputs: ⚫ Truck: $0.37/ton-mile ⚫ Water: $0.10/ton-mile ⚫ Rail: $0.03/ton-mile ⚫ Air: $4.63/ton-mile Drones may be smaller than 747s, but they're governed by the same aerodynamics (modulo modest benefits from cube-square scaling ratios). http://richardtorian.blogspot.com/2012/01/cost-per-ton-mile-for-four-shipping.html http://business.tenntom.org/why-use-the-waterway/shipping-comparisons/ http://www.salon.com/2008/11/24/freight/ You'd do far better with autonomous ground transport. Or simply a better freight rail systems. Artificial meat: Another long-standing promise, but truth is that a few challenges get in the way: ⚫ Existing synthesis methods are tremendously expensive. The synthetic burger recently created cost €250,000, resulting in little over 100 grams of patty. Even with vast improvement in efficiency, this would have to compete with other low-cost sources of protein, including plant protein, poultry, and even range animals (cattle, sheep, goats, buffalo, yaks, fowl) converting non-utilizable plant growth into human-edible meat, dairy, and eggs. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/05/synthetic-meat-burger-stem-cells ⚫ Insects. Frequently touted, and already on the menu in some places. Plus a great Snowpiercer scene... ⚫ That €250,000 price translates directly into energy and other resources. A barrel of oil results in about $1,000 GDP in the US, $2,000 through much of Europe. The R&D on that quarter-pound patty represents about 5,000 barrels of oil. DNA: If there's been one pervasive lesson as we enter the seventh decade since DNA was discovered, the fourth since recombinant techniques were first commercialized, and the second since the whole human genome has been sequenced, is how little additional control and information DNA actually provides. If anything it's simply opened yet another fractal layer of complexity of phenomena, with few  if any massive payoffs. Recycling: This is useful, but mostly in pointing out our coming resource pinch. Vinay Gupta points out that the total amount of mineral resources available per person on Earth, at present population levels, is frighteningly small. For copper, for example, on the order of a kilogram or so per person. That's your allocation for pennies, house wiring, electric motors, and everything else you claim a share in use of. 9 billion people, about 1 billion tons of ore at 1% copper content, and you get 1 kg per person per lifetime. Yes, higher-priced copper means more total recoverable copper, but we're still looking at 1, 5, 10 kg of copper per human per lifetime. https://vimeo.com/76817252 (2m 9s) http://www.appropedia.org/User:Vinay_Gupta#Gupta.27s_Laws One of the roles of humans is to take free environmental energy to redistribute minerals within the Earth's crust. Made in Space: May I introduce you to $10,000/kg launch costs. Best case: $1,000/kg.  That's SpaceX's goal. Not "present rate", but "goal". Remember our air cargo costs above? Let's say the typical air cargo travel distance is 3,000 miles. That's a roughly $14,000/ton cargo bill (vs. $90 by rail or $300 by ship). For spaceflight you're stuck with your ~200 mile LEO minimum, with costs of $1 million per ton -- and that's the goal. Presently we're working with $10 - $50 million per ton. Space fab ain't gonna do much for the folks back on the farm. http://aviationweek.com/space/low-cost-launches-may-boost-chances-space-solar-power Space flight: making air cargo look sane since 1957. The War on Cancer: Funny thing about healthcare and life expectancy improvements: there isn't much. I explored this in an Ello post, "The Conquest of Pestilence in New York City: 1800 - 2005" https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/MsQfdPAn_0XUdZUoReBfbg the biggest jump in life expectancy in the 20th century occurred in 1910-1920 for women and 1920-1930 for men. From 1940 though 1960, mortality rates actually increased. Since the 1970s, and increasingly since 1990, mostly as a result of 1). decreased environmental contamination and 2) reductions in smoking and drinking rates, we've seen further increases. Earlier detection of cancer largely translates to increased treatment of cancer, but little actual improvement in life expectancy. Survival from the time of first detection increases, but that's largely a factor of earlier detection, not beneficial treatment. Things that did have a huge impact on life expectancy? Municipal waste collection, sewerage, control of typhoid carriers, chlorination of drinking water, milk stations for babies, and pasteurization of milk. Even vaccinations are at best a very modest bump. Knowing about cancer earlier does nothing without being able to do something about it, and in general your payoff at heading it off upstream through improved environment and preventive care is vastly higher. Organ availability: Again, useful to those with a specific need, but it's a small fraction of all medical interventions. InfoPlease provides the count of organ transplants in the US from 988-2008. The total in 2008: 23,288. Of those the largest number, kidney transplants. Kidney failure itself is most frequently traceable to either dietary causes (diabetes) or overuse of drugs (asprin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen/paracetamol/Tylenol). Again: prevention is hugely more effective than heroic treatment. http://www.infoplease.com/science/health/us-transplants-year-1988-2007.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renal_failure By contrast, 16.7 million children in the US live in food-insecure households and are likely to experience some form of malnutrition. Though "only" 845,000 experienced reduced food intake or disrupted eating patterns at some point during the year. http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States#Impact_of_hunger Of leading causes of death, through age 44 they tend to be accidents, suicide, and cancer, all strongly attributable to environmental and social factors. Past age 45, cancer, heart disease, and stroke or other circulatory disease predominante, again, all with very strong environmental / dietary relationships. None of which Diamandis seems to mention at all. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr62/nvsr62_06.pdf Kind thanks to +paul beard for proofreading.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Models & FramesHow are you measuring efficiency? If it's per kilogram of cargo, ocean transport involves huge ships going quite slowly but relentlessly. The opposite end of the scale from aircraft carrying small amounts much too fast. — Peter Diamandis is an idiot part 6591 +Simons Mith, whom I generally regard well, has just shared yet another bit of Polyannish tripe from Peter Diamandis. It's typical Diamandis tosh. His top line? "Want to become a billionaire? Then help a billion people." Sorry, no. If riches are your goal that's the last thing you want to do. Global wealth concentration patterns mean that if your only goal is accumulating demand rights, that is to say, dollars or other monetary currency, you're far better off targeting high net worth individuals rather than some arbitrary (and almost certainly sub-mean) wealth subset of the global population. Total global wealth as of October 9, 2013, was $241 trillion. While the _average of that is $51,600 per adult, the richest 10% hold 86%, and the top 1% 46%, of all wealth. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/richest-1-percent-wealth_n_4072658.html Within the United States, the wealthiest 400 Americans have more wealth than the  entire lower half of all Americans. http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/mar/10/michael-moore/michael-moore-says-400-americans-have-more-wealth-/ Oxfam reports that the richest 85 people on the planet have as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion combined. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/20/oxfam-85-richest-people-half-of-the-world So, if your goal is to make a billion dollars, really, your strategy should involve tickling some itch, fancy, or indulgence of the wealthiest 85 people on the planet. Or the Forbes 400. or the top 0.01% (about 710 thousand people worldwide). Which pretty much explains the present luxury goods marketplace. For starters, your total cost of sales will fall markedly. If your real motivation is helping people, I'm afraid you're going to have to look outside the "market" and monetary reward. And that's just the top-line criticism. What of Diamandis's specific proposals? UAV drone delivery: Wonderful -- if all your goods weigh < 2kg and can be delivered within a kilometer or so of your origin point. There's a reason that global delivery relies overwhelmingly on containerized ocean, rail, and trucking freight: efficiency. Per gallon of fuel you can move 1 ton of cargo 500-1,000 miles by ship, 200-500 by train, and about 50-100 by lorry. For conventional aircraft the value is about 10 ton-miles/gallon. This shows up as well in costs, though with some allowances for infrastructure and other inputs: ⚫ Truck: $0.37/ton-mile ⚫ Water: $0.10/ton-mile ⚫ Rail: $0.03/ton-mile ⚫ Air: $4.63/ton-mile Drones may be smaller than 747s, but they're governed by the same aerodynamics (modulo modest benefits from cube-square scaling ratios). http://richardtorian.blogspot.com/2012/01/cost-per-ton-mile-for-four-shipping.html http://business.tenntom.org/why-use-the-waterway/shipping-comparisons/ http://www.salon.com/2008/11/24/freight/ You'd do far better with autonomous ground transport. Or simply a better freight rail systems. Artificial meat: Another long-standing promise, but truth is that a few challenges get in the way: ⚫ Existing synthesis methods are tremendously expensive. The synthetic burger recently created cost €250,000, resulting in little over 100 grams of patty. Even with vast improvement in efficiency, this would have to compete with other low-cost sources of protein, including plant protein, poultry, and even range animals (cattle, sheep, goats, buffalo, yaks, fowl) converting non-utilizable plant growth into human-edible meat, dairy, and eggs. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/05/synthetic-meat-burger-stem-cells ⚫ Insects. Frequently touted, and already on the menu in some places. Plus a great Snowpiercer scene... ⚫ That €250,000 price translates directly into energy and other resources. A barrel of oil results in about $1,000 GDP in the US, $2,000 through much of Europe. The R&D on that quarter-pound patty represents about 5,000 barrels of oil. DNA: If there's been one pervasive lesson as we enter the seventh decade since DNA was discovered, the fourth since recombinant techniques were first commercialized, and the second since the whole human genome has been sequenced, is how little additional control and information DNA actually provides. If anything it's simply opened yet another fractal layer of complexity of phenomena, with few  if any massive payoffs. Recycling: This is useful, but mostly in pointing out our coming resource pinch. Vinay Gupta points out that the total amount of mineral resources available per person on Earth, at present population levels, is frighteningly small. For copper, for example, on the order of a kilogram or so per person. That's your allocation for pennies, house wiring, electric motors, and everything else you claim a share in use of. 9 billion people, about 1 billion tons of ore at 1% copper content, and you get 1 kg per person per lifetime. Yes, higher-priced copper means more total recoverable copper, but we're still looking at 1, 5, 10 kg of copper per human per lifetime. https://vimeo.com/76817252 (2m 9s) http://www.appropedia.org/User:Vinay_Gupta#Gupta.27s_Laws One of the roles of humans is to take free environmental energy to redistribute minerals within the Earth's crust. Made in Space: May I introduce you to $10,000/kg launch costs. Best case: $1,000/kg.  That's SpaceX's goal. Not "present rate", but "goal". Remember our air cargo costs above? Let's say the typical air cargo travel distance is 3,000 miles. That's a roughly $14,000/ton cargo bill (vs. $90 by rail or $300 by ship). For spaceflight you're stuck with your ~200 mile LEO minimum, with costs of $1 million per ton -- and that's the goal. Presently we're working with $10 - $50 million per ton. Space fab ain't gonna do much for the folks back on the farm. http://aviationweek.com/space/low-cost-launches-may-boost-chances-space-solar-power Space flight: making air cargo look sane since 1957. The War on Cancer: Funny thing about healthcare and life expectancy improvements: there isn't much. I explored this in an Ello post, "The Conquest of Pestilence in New York City: 1800 - 2005" https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/MsQfdPAn_0XUdZUoReBfbg the biggest jump in life expectancy in the 20th century occurred in 1910-1920 for women and 1920-1930 for men. From 1940 though 1960, mortality rates actually increased. Since the 1970s, and increasingly since 1990, mostly as a result of 1). decreased environmental contamination and 2) reductions in smoking and drinking rates, we've seen further increases. Earlier detection of cancer largely translates to increased treatment of cancer, but little actual improvement in life expectancy. Survival from the time of first detection increases, but that's largely a factor of earlier detection, not beneficial treatment. Things that did have a huge impact on life expectancy? Municipal waste collection, sewerage, control of typhoid carriers, chlorination of drinking water, milk stations for babies, and pasteurization of milk. Even vaccinations are at best a very modest bump. Knowing about cancer earlier does nothing without being able to do something about it, and in general your payoff at heading it off upstream through improved environment and preventive care is vastly higher. Organ availability: Again, useful to those with a specific need, but it's a small fraction of all medical interventions. InfoPlease provides the count of organ transplants in the US from 988-2008. The total in 2008: 23,288. Of those the largest number, kidney transplants. Kidney failure itself is most frequently traceable to either dietary causes (diabetes) or overuse of drugs (asprin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen/paracetamol/Tylenol). Again: prevention is hugely more effective than heroic treatment. http://www.infoplease.com/science/health/us-transplants-year-1988-2007.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renal_failure By contrast, 16.7 million children in the US live in food-insecure households and are likely to experience some form of malnutrition. Though "only" 845,000 experienced reduced food intake or disrupted eating patterns at some point during the year. http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States#Impact_of_hunger Of leading causes of death, through age 44 they tend to be accidents, suicide, and cancer, all strongly attributable to environmental and social factors. Past age 45, cancer, heart disease, and stroke or other circulatory disease predominante, again, all with very strong environmental / dietary relationships. None of which Diamandis seems to mention at all. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr62/nvsr62_06.pdf Kind thanks to +paul beard for proofreading.
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Commented on post by Lev OsherovichI think the current Scirocco looks pretty neat and is going some way towards the XL1. I'd like to see it go further with even more emphasis on aerodynamics and light weight. — Petrolicious has this segment on a Volkswagen Scirocco, a punchy little sports coupe from the early 1980's. The owner, an editor at Road and Track, reviews modern supercars all day long then drives home in his beloved Scirocco, which he considers a benchmark for front wheel drive performance coupes. In addition to the lovely San Francisco Bay Area scenery, this video has some good points about what automakers should do to cultivate their loyal enthusiast communities. The Volvo community, which I participate in, is excellent at sharing knowledge and parts for nearly every old model. Let's hope that VW people do the same for their nearly forgotten classics. #sfclassiccars
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynFor kits, batteries and stuff, I've had good results from  http://www.greenbikekit.com/ http://www.bmsbattery.com and http://em3ev.com/store/ is also recommended. For the UK check with  http://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/ — Bosch eBike | Fully Charged A very short term experience with a car or bike is not able to give you anything more than a hint of what the machine would be like to live with. I rode this bike for about 20 minutes (I was booked in for a 5 minute ride) and I'm fairly confident it's the best pedal assist bike I've ridden. And I've ridden quite a few.
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynJon, you absolutely need an electric bike! The trick is finding one that is a good bicycle and has enough assist to take the pain out of the hills. And is not too expensive. Perhaps like this one. https://plus.google.com/+Expedition-bikesCoUk/posts/f9pfRgXepwy — Bosch eBike | Fully Charged A very short term experience with a car or bike is not able to give you anything more than a hint of what the machine would be like to live with. I rode this bike for about 20 minutes (I was booked in for a 5 minute ride) and I'm fairly confident it's the best pedal assist bike I've ridden. And I've ridden quite a few.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingWhat's the best place for news reports? — The 2015 #LeMans24   #EWC  is GO As always, our friends over at +MotoRacingLive Michelin have got you covered. Their Twitter account is updated every minute : https://twitter.com/Motoracinglive Also keep your eyes on the English version of the official feed : https://twitter.com/24hoursmoto You can find live coverage (in split shows) here in the UK via British +Eurosport 1 & 2.  Live Timing is fully covered for all practice / QP / Race sessions here : http://en.motoracinglive.com/Evenements/2015-24-Heures-Motos#ong_live_ranking_5990 Also, MRL update their +Flickr pages throughout the weekend with stunning high resolution photos : https://www.flickr.com/photos/michelin_motorcyle_racing/ Enjoy.
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Diplomacy, Policy, and PoliticsBe careful what you wish for. Perhaps the best thing for major parts of the Islamic world is for the Chinese to invest in infrastructure and trade. A bit of good old capitalist exploitation raising all boats might make the problems and fighting go away if it's bad for business.  And maybe Afghanistan might finally get a railway. Meanwhile, the countries of the Mediterranean should join the EU. Let's rebuild the Roman Empire. Or at least get them to join the Eurovision Song Contest. — From the bottom of my heart, I wish both ISIS and the Taliban profound success in their respective jihads.
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Commented on post by Robert Llewellyn+Mark Talbot UK rules are 250W, 15mph motor cut off. Throttle+pedelec is still allowed unlike the EU, but it's still somewhat confused. There's no real standard for how any of this is measured and 250w is an average electrical input figure. So it seems to be entirely legal (and common) for motors to provide 500w accelerating and then 250w at max speed. And that 15mph cut off is +-10% so often more like 18. For my own use I'd quite like to see something more like 750w-25mph but it's questionable if this would be entirely safe for an unlicensed, unregulated vehicle ridden by inexperienced 14 year olds. The reality is if you look like a bicycle doing bicycle type things nobody cares. We also need more opportunity for electric "Mopeds" (3Kw 30mph) or electric "Light Motorcycles" (10kW-60mph). A big part of the problem at the moment is the difficulty of getting these financed, insured and tested and getting a license. The Bosch system (and Panasonic) is quite neat and high quality but horribly expensive. And OEM bikes built with this tend to have horribly expensive batteries and spares as well. In some ways you'd do better spending £500 on the bike and adding a £500 hub motor kit. Or investigating the Bafang BS02 mid-drive kit. — Bosch eBike | Fully Charged A very short term experience with a car or bike is not able to give you anything more than a hint of what the machine would be like to live with. I rode this bike for about 20 minutes (I was booked in for a 5 minute ride) and I'm fairly confident it's the best pedal assist bike I've ridden. And I've ridden quite a few.
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Commented on postExceptionalism
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeSo build a new corporate headquarters in a hot drought zone, away from a population centre so everyone has to drive there.
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Commented on post by Chris Cox in Chromecast CentralIn one of the comments. I wish Google released a Chromecast audio dongle! This. An official Google HDMI -> Audio out would be good. Or a Chromecast v2.0 with a 3.5mm audio jack. — LG isn't the only company coming out with Google Cast-ready speakers.
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Commented on post by Ecl!pse 88 in MotoGPMarc has learnt how to win championships. Now he has to learn how not to lose them. — Upssst
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Commented on post by eza bell in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)28mph top speed. 52 mile range. $499. Direct drive motor. Standard 36v-10AHr chinese rack battery hanging behind the rear wheel. Sorry but I don't believe a word of it. — The Wave eBike can tackle sand,grass,dirt or pavement. It's a full-package, sustainable transportation solution: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/wave-electric-28mph-bike/
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Commented on post by Jim Jensen in Chromecast CentralThe one thing that would be useful is a bit more control over DNS and extensions on the internal Chrome. Mainly to make it easier to persuade the Chromecast to use a VPN. That sounds like a feature request rather than a reason to try and root the device. Perhaps via some hidden settings in the Chromecast management app.
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle Roadracinghttp://www.crash.net/wsbk/news/217694/1/ebr-confident-it-can-see-out-wsbk-season.html “For Team Hero EBR, nothing has really changed,” Pegram stated. “We are going to be racing this weekend and we plan to continue for the season. All indications are that we are going to be able to do that." ... "It is believed the World Superbike team is safer due it receiving direct funding from its title sponsor, Indian motorcycle corporation 'Hero' – which part-owns EBR -, rather than the manufacturer itself." I'll give them 2 races. — EBR - GONE What a shame. Just as +Erik Buell Racing start doing well in +WorldSBK they fold. Full details via +Asphalt & Rubber : http://www.asphaltandrubber.com/news/erik-buell-racing-receivership-bankruptcy/ _____________________________________________________ +WorldSBK +WorldSBK  #WSB   #WSB2015   +Erik Buell Racing +hero industrial 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MusicNostalgia for retro-futurism — The Future of the Future at Futurefest. As seen from hipster London in Borough Market, Hoxton and Hackney, late Mar 2015. It's also tied in with a series of concerts put on by Convergence. I've got my tickets for Portico+SnowGhosts. I'd quite like to have seen Tricky+Gazelle Twin but missed the tickets and that's probably 20 years too late. I maybe should have done the full Futurefest weekend but £80 is a bit rich for me. The speaker list though is curiously hilarious. Edward Snowden, Vivienne Westwood, George Clinton, Maggie Philbin; Together at last! http://futurefest.org/ http://www.convergence-london.com/ I hope somebody there talks about AD 02100 and the 22nd Century.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Systems & ComplexityAnd by a spooky coincidence, Charles Stross' latest blog is on this subject. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/04/on-the-great-filter-existentia.html My own take is quite simplistic. The great filter is comparatively trivial and we're living through it. - Gravity wells are deep in the kinds of places life appears - Space is extremely hostile to meat puppets - Space is really big. - So it takes an entire planet's resources to get a space faring lifeform off planet so it's space colonisation is self sustaining. - But life gets distracted during it's one shot at using that entire planet so it never achieves take off. — Is Intelligent Life a Shannon Box? http://kk.org/thetechnium/2008/03/the-unspeakable
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyThe good thing about these threads is that they show you who to block. plonk plonk plonk — China exhibits bifurcation between urban liberals and rural conservatives. Not surprised. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2593377#
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyAnd there's absolutely no possibility that researchers from a Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic (WEIRD) background look at a 100k survey and drawing conclusions about the 1B people behind it that just fit their own prejudices. Using terminology that has developed in their own culture and is now loaded with ideological baggage. Are we really supposed to believe that China can be explained by two opposing points in the Political Compass; Social-Authoritarian-Stupid-Old vs Capitalist-Libertarian-Intelligent-New? Or is that what is expected at MIT and Harvard from a social science research paper. Reducing China's vast social complexity to four politically charged words is some excellent comment bait. I salute you, sir. You caught me. — China exhibits bifurcation between urban liberals and rural conservatives. Not surprised. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2593377#
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingGearlink Kawasaki have had a lot of success in SS600 but for some reason they've never clicked in SBK. It's not clear how much of that is the riders just not making the transition (eg Ben Wilson) and how much is the team not being able to get the best out of the bike. If they can give Rutter a few races and grab some of his knowledge and experience then great. But I'm with you that it should be to get the team up to speed so they can bring on somebody new. Look at it as the start of a 3 year plan rather than a solution to an empty seat for this year. If not Rutter then who else? With the 2nd race of the season coming up who's actually available? — Good to see the "Kawasaki Cup by Saga" is living up to it's name. ;) Welcome back, Blade. http://superbike-news.co.uk/wordpress/Motorcycle-News/michael-rutter-set-to-return-to-bsb-with-gearlink-kawasaki-at-brands-hatch/
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Commented on post by James M. in ChromecastIt's the same old lament I'm afraid. It's not clear which of these work on Chrome Web rather than Android or iOS. And I know that  some of them do NOT have cast support in their Plain Old Web version. Tunein is an example here. Their Smartphone apps are Cast aware, their website isn't. So, yes, I can click on each one, look for "cast from website" and then be disappointed when it's not there. We're getting to the point where Chromebooks, Chrome on Windows, OSX and Linux can all run native Android apps with full Cast support but we're not there yet. In the mean time it's important to some of us that there's full Chrome support. And the most obvious entry that's missing completely is Soundcloud. — LG is one of three Google Cast for audio partners shown on bottom of http://www.google.com/cast/audio/ LG Music Flow Player Android app on Google Play http://goo.gl/0QRQK5
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesI wonder if the numbers are referring to posts that have been marked as spam or deleted by the Admins. So they're showing as new in the numbers but hidden when you visit the community. — I'm really, really tired of the little red "new activity" numbers on the all communities view incrementing for no obvious reason. Way too often you go into the community and there's nothing to see. I think this is catching +1s as well as new posts and new comments and I don't think it should. And yes, I have left feedback.
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Commented on posthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renminbi It's only 2 years after the book, but I wonder how out of date it already is. More recently, however, appreciation actions by the Chinese government, as well as quantitative easing measures taken by the Federal Reserve and other major central banks, have caused the renminbi to be within as little as 8% of its equilibrium value by the second half of 2012.[6]
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Commented on post by James M. in ChromecastIt's becoming annoyingly hard to find out what desktop web (Chrome, Chromebook) apps are available that can Cast Audio. And not just by casting a Chrome tab but doing proper Chromecast streaming from the web. Google seems to have reorganised the Cast for Audio site to hide all this. The big one's I'm missing are Soundcloud, Mixcloud, Last.fm and Tunein (or some other generic solution to Shoutcast radio). — LG is one of three Google Cast for audio partners shown on bottom of http://www.google.com/cast/audio/ LG Music Flow Player Android app on Google Play http://goo.gl/0QRQK5
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Commented on post by James M. in Chromecast+Nicolas Paraschos In short. Upload to Google Play Music. See here for a discussion about this. https://plus.google.com/+JulianBond23/posts/SHx7ndo3yzk FAQ: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/chromecast/I7WU0Y3GLac/-eddisYt_lgJ Answer re iTunes: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/chromecast/ewDqB_eGoLo — LG is one of three Google Cast for audio partners shown on bottom of http://www.google.com/cast/audio/ LG Music Flow Player Android app on Google Play http://goo.gl/0QRQK5
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeFor balance. Where the UK Political parties stand on the Environment. As described by the BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/manifesto-guide
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Commented on post by Garry Stonehouse in Electric Vehicles (UK)The more (relatively) silent vehicles there are on the road,  the more pedestrians will pay attention and look out for them. We've kind of seen this with the rise in cycling in London. My perception as a motorcycle rider is that pedestrians are generally a bit more aware of non-car traffic and especially coming at them from slightly odd angles. Look BOTH ways not just for the stationary traffic, but also for the two wheeler filtering. So maybe this will just resolve itself as pedestrians have near misses, tell their friends and start coping with a new hazard. — It's a problem that's likely to get more mainstream media coverage in the coming years. But is it not a case of adjusting to a change in technology, similar to when cars first started appearing on the roads, when a man with a flag had to walk in front of them?
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Commented on post by crocodylus73 in Climate ChangeSo the USA no longer needs to do anything because it's no longer their fault. So that's all good then. Le Sigh. — #China #UnitedStates
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawTalk about the Nile also brings to mind the USSR water diversion efforts that led to the Aral Sea disaster. And now China talking about doing something similar to divert water from the S of their country to the N. That seems hugely ambitious, inevitable and a huge mistake. See  http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21620202-vast-new-waterways-will-not-solve-chinas-desperate-water-shortages-grand-new-canals I'm also curious about the state of the Murray River and Snowy Mountains systems in Australia. I hope that's stable because it fills the same kind of role as California in providing a large proportion of food for the country as a whole. — From earliest history, there has been conflict between people who live upriver and people who live downriver. Someone upriver has the power to seize control of the water supply which is generally the lifeblood of the people further down from them. Survival means that the people downriver must get effective control over their supply, whether it be by treaty, by conquering the people upriver from them, or by being conquered by the people upriver.  Where I live, in California, we are experiencing a slow version of this, as systems of water rights developed over a century ago, when the distribution of both water and people was extremely different, are falling apart under the strains of a worst-in-a-millennium drought. But the situation in the Nile Valley is even worse. Several things contribute to this. The first is the simple growth of population: Egypt now has 82 million people, Sudan 38, and Ethiopia has grown to a full 96 million. To understand this properly, you need to realize that the borders of Egypt shown on a map are almost complete nonsense: Egypt consists of a narrow Nile Valley, ranging from tens of miles wide at its northern reaches to narrow enough that someone strong enough could throw a frisbee across it at its narrowest, in which the entire population lives, along with all the agriculture and industry; beyond that narrow valley is open desert, home primarily to sand dunes and the occasional scorpion. This part of the world is the Nile Valley. The second complex issue is the Aswan Dam. When Gamal Abdel Nasser came to power after overthrowing the monarchy, one of his first promises was to build a tremendous hydroelectric dam to provide the electricity which would modernize the country. As part of trying to get international loans to fund its building, countries asked for feasibility studies; those studies all came back saying that the dam was a terrible idea, as it would interrupt the regular cycle of flooding of the Nile which is the foundation of the richness of the Nile Valley's soil. The dam would work fine for a few years, at which point the soil would start to die, the desert would encroach, and the country would starve to death. Nobody wanted to fund this. But Nasser had made promises, and he needed to keep them, so he sought funding from "alternate sources" -- that is, the Soviet Union, who was quite happy to fund this and get Egypt in their pocket. ("Fund" ended up meaning that Soviet engineers showed up and built everything and then left, incidentally, leading to almost no technology or skills transfer -- but that's another story) And things unfolded almost exactly the way the analyses said: Egypt now  had electricity, but its farmland has been steadily collapsing, the desert encroaching and the valley getting narrower.  This collapse of life along most of the length of the valley has led to almost unimaginable desperation, and to tens of millions of people flooding into the cities of Cairo and Alexandria hoping for a chance at a better job -- leading to some of the most extraordinary slums you have ever seen (did you know that it's possible to build a ten-story high mud hut? The trick is to build a frame of cement and rebar, and then use mud-brick walls for the rest. No windows; the walls aren't sturdy enough to support that) and even more extraordinary unemployment, which was one of the key things that led to the revolutions of the Arab Spring, the subsequent political rise and fall of the Muslim Brotherhood, and our latest Egyptian dictatorship. But the pressure from collapsing agriculture is extremely keenly felt: the government's single largest annual expense is the wheat import which it uses to keep bread cheap enough to avoid mass starvation. Political upheavals in Egypt tend to happen, like clockwork, a few months after something interferes with the wheat harvest. (The original revolution which toppled Mubarak, for example, happened after Russia closed off its entire foreign wheat sales, after a serious drought led to major crop failures in Russia and Ukraine.) You may notice that, as the climate continues to change, wheat harvests become increasingly unpredictable. Further South, Sudan hasn't been politically strong enough to try to wrest control of anything from Egypt since the Assyrians conquered Upper Egypt. But Ethiopia is a different matter: the highland empire has been a political power in Eastern Africa for millennia. As its population rises and it finds itself no longer quite as distracted by the chaos which has overwhelmed it for decades (famines and wars, mostly: the rains in Ethiopia are notoriously unreliable), it has gotten some very different ideas about just how Nile water should be allocated from what its neighbors downstream have historically gotten out of it. This ascent of Ethiopian power in the Nile Valley is important and worth watching. Egypt and Sudan will keep negotiating with it, but their political power is not at its strongest right now, and it's quite possible that this could pass a "critical threshold" beyond which they can no longer really hold back Ethiopian power, at which point Ethiopia may take more of the Nile's resources for itself, further weakening Egypt and Sudan. But at the end of the day, the problems are very fundamental: There are nearly 220 million people living in the Nile's watershed, and it's not at all clear that the Nile has enough water to support them. None of the powers along the valley are in strong enough shape to make huge infrastructural investments to increase efficiency. They might be able to make some. This water is critical for everything from electricity, to irrigation, to soil fertilization, to simply drinking it, as well as holding back the desert. Any failure of this water system can therefore have catastrophic human and political consequences. Political problems in the Nile Valley can spread out along several significant axes. Because of the Suez Canal, Egypt and East Africa have strategic control over sea traffic through the Red Sea, and one of the key transport routes between Europe and Asia. (cf the effect that Somali piracy was having on sea traffic there) Egypt is by far the most populous Arab state, and its cultural and media influence is tremendous: Cairo is the Hollywood of the Arabic language. It's also the gateway between the Middle East and North Africa, and North Africa has a range of influences on Europe, being after all neighbors across the Mediterranean Sea. (Lots of people leaving North Africa would, for example, mean lots of North Africans arriving in Europe) So this is a situation well worth paying attention to over the next decade: the availability of water, electricity, and agriculture in the Nile Valley, and the political struggles between players along the river, will be a major factor shaping our world, especially the band going from East Africa, up through the Middle East, into North Africa and Europe, in years to come.
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Commented on post by Speed Triple & R1200GS in Motorcycle RoadracingWas this the same water that the Moto2 guys were avoiding during their race? — Entrance to turn 16 has sprung a leak,
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate ChangeIt didn't "Explode" so much as "De-rail, Crash and Burn". ;) — The animated map below shows the remarkable rise of trains that ship oil to refineries across the country. There was a 50-fold increase in crude by rail between January 2010 and January 2015, according to the Energy Information Administration, which started to comprehensively track the industry for the first time last week. In 2014, more than a million barrels of crude a day traveled by rail.  #OilTrains #BakkenCrude #Dilbit
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Commented on postThere's a few "industry thought leaders" like that. They post quite often. But they hardly ever engage in the comments and the articles are more like click-comment bait. And they tend not to moderate their comments so they quickly get over-ridden by tards , sorry, idiots.
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Commented on post by Tim O'Reilly3 and a half years later and what's changed apart from a few Google management personnel? — I'm interviewing Bradley Horowitz about Google+ at 1 PM PT today. Any questions you'd like to hear answered?
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Commented on post4 years later and Tim O'Reilly is still posting. ;)
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Commented on post by Chris Collins in ChromecastUm. Yes. So have you tried it? — I've never been able to cast an .avi from Google Drive on chromebook to my TV. I recall hearing it is possible. Is it?
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Commented on post by Chris Collins in ChromecastUm, OK. So has anyone successfully run BubbleUPnP like that? — I've never been able to cast an .avi from Google Drive on chromebook to my TV. I recall hearing it is possible. Is it?
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Commented on postIs coordinated tactical voting illegal in typical first past the post, representative democracies? Can it be? If I choose to vote for my second choice in order to try and keep out the current incumbent, and then tell people that's what I'm doing, how have I cheated the system? What's happening in Scotland is that the major parties recognise that the SNP is threatening to upset the established system by using a special interest issue to force a minority government in the rest of the country and to hold the balance of power. So it's in both Labour's and Tory's interest to keep them out. So the 3rd party in the polls ends up telling their supporters to vote for the 2nd in order to try and prevent the leader from winning. The next stage is to balance the books so that a push for a Labour win in one seat is balanced with a push for a Tory win in another. Where it veers into being illegal is when people with 2 houses vote physically in one place and (by post) in  the other. There's a strong suspicion that this happened in the Scotland Devolution referendum among English people with Scottish holiday homes.
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPSo nearly a huge embarrassment for Honda rescued and turned into triumph by a ridiculously good performance by Marquez. Just completely gobsmacked by how out of control he was on that last flying lap. — Now this is Dedication !!!! LOL I was a crazy person!!!!  Hope everyone enjoyed today! :)
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle Roadracinghttp://www.motoamerica.com/josh-hayes-wins-motoamerica-superbike-opener Wet races. Yamaha SBK #1 and  #2, STK1000 #1 and SSP #1 That's the first major race win for the new R1 isn't it? The big problem for MotoAmerica now is to grow the grids. They still seem to have the old AMA problem of a lack of strength in depth. There's only 3-4 fast guys at the front and the rest really not on the pace at all. Let's hope they can solve this and attract more money, better teams and better riders. — Any news on MotoAmerica at COTA?http://www.motoamerica.com/news Good to see Stuart Higgs and Scott Smart coming on board. That's quite a change to invite experienced people from other countries to help, instead of the old "not invented here" attitude. http://www.roadracingworld.com/news/bsb-director-higgs-former-ama-superbike-champ-chandler-join-motoamerica-race-direction-committee/ [edited to add] Found some of it. Schedule: http://www.motoamerica.com/motoamerica-superbike-championship-texas-schedule Qualifying results: http://www.motoamerica.com/motoamerica-cota-qualifying-beaubier-top 
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Commented on post by Chris Collins in Chromecast+John Faire BubbleUPnP is an Android app and won't run on the OP's Chromebook. Yet. — I've never been able to cast an .avi from Google Drive on chromebook to my TV. I recall hearing it is possible. Is it?
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Commented on postThere's quite a bit of talk starting about tactical voting in the forthcoming UK elections. - Tory-Labour vote swaps in Scotland to try and keep out the SNP. - Green - LibDem vote swaps to try and get Tories out and a few more Greens in. And very occasionally the reverse of Greens voting for LibDems but the LibDems have pretty much burnt their boats with the previous coalition.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius in Plussology & Plexology: Google MetaVic Gundrota left G+ and Dave Bresbis took over a year ago, April 25. What's changed and improved since then? — An old (August, 2011) G+ "what G+ questions would you like to hear answered" post This was from within the first month of public G+ access. What's telling to me are: 1. How many times Real Names / Nymwars came up. 2. The alienation issue:  how Google were (and frankly, have) demolished goodwill with their core tech evangelist community (I used to be one, I no longer am). 3. How lacking Google's first instance of G+ was:  no search.  For reals. 4. Requests that remain unanswered.  Especially subscribable circles / feeds, RSS, and tags. 5. How many names I recognize here.  Many are in my Circles.  A few are long gone. A couple of these have been addressed, but a hell of a lot have not.  Still.  Four years on.
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Commented on post by Aldebaran in MotoGPShortage of track staff delays Moto3 FP1. Then a dog. Come on guys, get it together. — Who Let There Dog Out!
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Commented on post by Nic Jackson in Chromecast CentralThere are apps and extensions for Chrome in the Play store so it's ambiguous, yes? — Livestream just got Chromecast support.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeI can't believe "Drought Denial" is now a thing. Some Americans are just plain weird.
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Commented on post by John Poteet+John Poteet It feels completely inevitable to me. There will be finance available and incentives and subsidies to try and maintain business as usual for as long as possible. While also doing all the renewable stuff via wind, hydro, tidal, solar and so on. And doing all the energy saving. All in the hope of maintaining 3% PA growth, personal political power and 1st world luxuries. I think the end result (1000 year time scale) will be a fall back to 2-500m humans or so rather than extinction. The real question is whether that's a soft landing that retains a technology based lifestyle or a catastrophic return to the dark ages.  Can you just turn the heat back to a gentle simmer instead of the rolling boil please, said the frog. — Coal is on it's way out planet wide. Renewables are just going to be cheaper and more politically acceptable. We'll have to do something for former coal miners and coal mining counties in Appalachia. They can't all grow pot. 
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Commented on post by James M. in ChromecastOn announcements like this, please specify if it's Android, iOS or a POWA (Plain Old Web Application). I'm just a little tired of "You don't have any devices" when following links to the Play Store. ;) — Star Walls game.
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Commented on post by Nic Jackson in Chromecast CentralOn announcements like this, please specify if it's Android, iOS or a POWA (Plain Old Web Application). Just tired of "You don't have any devices" when following links to the Play Store. ;) — Livestream just got Chromecast support.
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Commented on post by John PoteetIt's a new bonanza. We have more coal than we know what to do with so we can power the UK for centuries. Extracting it with steam. https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/fracking-is-for-amateurs/ — Coal is on it's way out planet wide. Renewables are just going to be cheaper and more politically acceptable. We'll have to do something for former coal miners and coal mining counties in Appalachia. They can't all grow pot. 
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Commented on post by Lev OsherovichAbsinthe? — At the Court of the Green Prophetess, San Francisco. 
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Commented on post by John PoteetNice. Needs a motor. Probably a Bafang BS02 mid-drive. I also really think this kind of bike and the potential weight, needs a disk brake. At least on the front. I'd have a use for this but a major problem for me is how difficult it would be to get on it's back wheel to get through the kissing gates. Maybe it's possible but it looks like it might be a bit of a struggle. — My new ride. I picked it up this morning. Yuba Mundo 4.3. For such a giant bike it's amazingly light and nimble.  #cargobike   #cycling  
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Commented on postthe manifest destiny of the refusal to admit to limits But, but, Technology! If the resource constraints don't get you, the pollution will.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)There's a lot of journeys that are under 10 miles, carry only one person or occasionally two and involve no more than 4 bags of groceries.  And where you never get above 40mph. The sensible option is a scooter! But I'll admit that it's not great in winter. A microcar would be just as efficient but more comfortable and you wouldn't need special clothes.  You don't need an SUV for these journeys but if you've already got one, then it works. And maybe that's the issue. If you only have one vehicle (each), it needs to be multi-purpose. Which means that anything else (even a bicycle) is more of a leisure pursuit.  — http://connevted.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/china-low-speed-evs-booming.html Lightweight, cheap, slow, electric cars are selling well in China. So could there be a market in Western cities? Which makes you wonder about the eventual failure of the G-Wiz. What went wrong?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)It was an Indian vehicle underneath the UK branding so probably not available in China[1]. Did it fail in the UK due to the Top Gear effect? The puzzle is that light cars and light vehicles in general have been fairly common and successful in Europe, but get treated as a bit weird in the UK. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REVAi — http://connevted.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/china-low-speed-evs-booming.html Lightweight, cheap, slow, electric cars are selling well in China. So could there be a market in Western cities? Which makes you wonder about the eventual failure of the G-Wiz. What went wrong?
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Commented on postHe's too young to be personally nostalgic for the 70s. So is this a reaction to those who do remember it and have finally turned into their parents? What's curious is that in the revival spiral, 70s nostalgia, revival and re-invention is happening again. http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/mar/31/disco-2015-pulp-charity-shop-chic-common-people-jarvis-cocker-70s-90s http://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a-70s-revival-seen-through-prism-of-90s.html I believe this is turning up in things like the NYT style guide as well. Which makes you wonder if 55-65 year olds are now a target market for items bought with disposable income. I'm not sure we really want to re-visit that decade, or why anyone in the next generations would want to emulate it. What's really irritating about this is the intellectual laziness of compressing a whole load of different major cultural changes into a decade summed up with 3 letters as the "70s". So let's have a bit of specificity. Better to ask, "Was life better in California in 1975".
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Commented on post by Brent Sullivan in Chromecast CentralIt's the Android app that got upgraded. Not the server or any of the other bits. — Plex gets big update! I don't believe anyone mentioned this here, but Plex Android app just got a pretty big update recently.  If you haven't checked out the Plex app maybe now is a good time.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastExcept that TuneIn desktop doesn't yet have Chromecast support. Although Tunein does know about NTS. http://tunein.com/radio/NTS-Radio-s150238/ — So here's the challenge. How would you listen to http://ntslive.co.uk/ via Chromecast?  Dig around and you'll find the listen.pls file. In there you'll find a stream, http://stream-relay-geo.ntslive.net/stream which appears to play in a chrome tab. So you could then cast the tab, or maybe even re-purpose one of the Chromecast API example programs so it actually played in the Chromecast not by being streamed across from the laptop. That's all a bit of a hassle. So is that Google's problem or NTS' problem? What about with Cast For Audio, because playing an internet radio station feels like a pretty strong use case. At which point, I feel like Google should provide an official and supported solution to de facto standards like Shoutcast rather than expecting 3rd parties to support it. At least if I was a middle manager in the Chromecast support group in Google, that's what I would do. ;)  
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Commented on post by Bob Hewitt in Electric Vehicles (UK)Pretty much zero information about this "breakthrough" with the few bits of info in non-sensical units. So just like all the other weekly announcements of a "huge breakthrough in battery tech". Reading between the lines it's currently got about 1/5 of the energy density per weight of today's LiOn state of the art. — This could be good in a few years time?
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Commented on post by Lauren WeinsteinThanks Obama! /s Grains and tubers or grains and pulses? You still need protein. — "All of which sounds staggering until you realize that California is a $2 trillion economy. As many have pointed out, all the calls for urban water conservation seem puzzling. Is it worth squeezing the cities when farms consume 80 percent of the water that people use in California, while they generate only 2 percent of its economic activity?"
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Commented on post by Dana Corbin in Climate ChangeIt's hard to believe but apparently "Drought Denial" has become a thing. And from a resident of Santa Clara no less. https://plus.google.com/108568701262975419501/posts/M7rEFy38Lsy
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Commented on post by David Friedman+Richie Donovan silicone valley LOLZ. You mean the San Fernando valley? — California Drought—Getting Worse or Getting Better? News stories about the Governor's actions to deal with the water shortage emphasize how low the snowpack is this year. But while some of the water used in California comes from melting snow, more comes from rain stored in reservoirs, and none of the stories...
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Commented on post by Scott Greenstone in Hmmm. https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/#apps/%s just went to the inbox for me. It didn't do a search. — How to Search Inbox by Gmail and Gmail  from the Omnibox
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Commented on post by Bill Boyd in Electric BikesSo how many days does it take to charge the battery?
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Commented on post by Mike Potter in Google Play MusicBTW. GPM Playlists limited to 1000 tracks. Here's some people who don't like that.  https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/play/tCEea8gAKvQ — Please, Google, provide support for uploading m3u or wpl playlists.  I have thousands of songs already organized into play lists and I'm not going to duplicate that time and effort.  m3u format has been around for decades.  No excuse to not support it. I've tried uploading my entire Windows Media Player library (which has playlists) from scratch.  Playlists not uploads.  I've tried synching a directory with m3u files.  No luck.  I've tried dragging/dropping m3u files into the Chrome music manager.  Nope. Your new 50,000 limit is great, but without a way to use my existing organization of those songs, your service is not worth the trouble.  I'd even pay for your service if you supported this.
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Commented on postFriedman's style of reasoning seems increasingly common and it's frankly exhausting. It's not so much cherry picking the data as cherry picking the studies to draw conclusions about something else entirely. Done by Sea Lions.  Arguing back feels like a pointless time sink. "I've done this extensive analysis of the Apple industry in California and here's the data to prove it with pretty graphics. Now while it's true that other people say Orange production in Florida is down 50% over the decade, you can see that this is more than balanced by the proven 1% rise in Apple production in California in Sept 2014. So it's clear that overall agricultural production in the USA is probably in good shape and anyone who disagrees is a doomsayer wingnut. Thanks, Obama!"
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Commented on post by David FriedmanYou ignore Lake Mead. Why? — California Drought—Getting Worse or Getting Better? News stories about the Governor's actions to deal with the water shortage emphasize how low the snowpack is this year. But while some of the water used in California comes from melting snow, more comes from rain stored in reservoirs, and none of the stories...
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Commented on post"Drought Denial" is now a thing? Some aspects of the USA are just plain weird.
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Commented on post by Bill Boyd in Electric BikesSadly, this makes no sense!
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Commented on post by Mike Potter in Google Play MusicThis is a pet annoyance of mine and one of the ways that the Music Manager sucks. If you use the Folder source method, it ignores playlists. I've posted feedback to the team repeatedly about this, posted on the support forum and posted here. I tried that Winamp -> WMP -> Music Manager -> GPM route and failed. I couldn't make it work. The only way that worked for me was to import the playlists into iTunes and then go to GPM from there. So that's Winamp -> save the playlist -> iTunes import -> Music Manager upload from iTunes -> Playlist in GPM. I refuse to have anything to do with iTunes and I have to be very very careful that iTunes doesn't screw up my library. And anyway, that's a ridiculous amount of work for something that should be simple. Come on Google. Sort this out. — Please, Google, provide support for uploading m3u or wpl playlists.  I have thousands of songs already organized into play lists and I'm not going to duplicate that time and effort.  m3u format has been around for decades.  No excuse to not support it. I've tried uploading my entire Windows Media Player library (which has playlists) from scratch.  Playlists not uploads.  I've tried synching a directory with m3u files.  No luck.  I've tried dragging/dropping m3u files into the Chrome music manager.  Nope. Your new 50,000 limit is great, but without a way to use my existing organization of those songs, your service is not worth the trouble.  I'd even pay for your service if you supported this.
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Commented on post by Lev OsherovichShades of John Brunner - The Sheep Look Up. There's not enough organic farm land to produce the quantity of organic food required. Or perhaps even what's sold as "Organic". There's merit in some kind of label that guarantees best practice ethical production. But unfortunately all the current labels have been subverted so things like "Organic", "Free-Range", "Fairtrade", no longer mean what you think they mean. And there's quite a few labels that appear to be a guarantee of some kind of quality but are actually just marketing slogans that mean nothing more than "legal". What's worse is when well intentioned approaches drift into proper woo territory. There's a high end co-op supermarket chain in the UK that used to say "Farmers are encouraged to use natural remedies and homeopathy to treat sick animals." but Waitrose have now dropped that nonsense from their FAQ page. It does make you wonder how exactly placebos would work on an animal. — The Wall Street Journal writes about the difficulty of sourcing reliable streams of raw materials for the rapidly growing Organic processed food industry. So much effort and money spent on something with no demonstrable benefit for health or the environment! I predict that 50 years from now, Organic will be seen as one of the great food follies of history.
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Commented on post by Dan Gillmor+1 for filter machines. Just recently had to replace one that was finally killed by the local hard water. We got the cheapest possible DeLonghi. It's cheap, it works, brews fast and makes great coffee just like all the other filter machines I've had. The one thing I'd want extra is an auto-turn off for when I forget. Strangely their website says it does, but the manual makes no mention and it doesn't. That's great for 2-5 mugs of coffee. And for one mug there's an Aeropress. The only thing I haven't really found a good solution for is the desire for the occasional Espresso. The Aeropress ought to sort that but in practice I can't make it do an acceptable single shot.  — A while back I asked for advice on coffee makers. Here's what we decided to buy. Thanks to all who replied.
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeThe point being that Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico share some water supplies with California and also have a severe drought problem. — The countries facing the worst water shortages http://i100.independent.co.uk/image/32515-12gfl9x.png
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate Change+Ian Prowell And that the drought problem apparently stops at the Californian border. — The countries facing the worst water shortages http://i100.independent.co.uk/image/32515-12gfl9x.png
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastYes, you can cast the tab. It can be awkward where the web site pops open a new small window for the player that doesn't have the cast icons on it. And that's not as good as an app that gets the Chromecast to play the stream directly, because it involves the PC rendering the stream and the Cast extension then packaging it to stream it across to the Chromecast where it's un-packed again. It's generally not too bad with audio, but can introduce a lot of lag in video. I've also had some problems with buffering with Shoutcast Audio radio streams which seem to come down to limitations in the HTML5 audio tag. You could try using Tunein, but they don't yet have Chromecast support in their web version.  — So here's the challenge. How would you listen to http://ntslive.co.uk/ via Chromecast?  Dig around and you'll find the listen.pls file. In there you'll find a stream, http://stream-relay-geo.ntslive.net/stream which appears to play in a chrome tab. So you could then cast the tab, or maybe even re-purpose one of the Chromecast API example programs so it actually played in the Chromecast not by being streamed across from the laptop. That's all a bit of a hassle. So is that Google's problem or NTS' problem? What about with Cast For Audio, because playing an internet radio station feels like a pretty strong use case. At which point, I feel like Google should provide an official and supported solution to de facto standards like Shoutcast rather than expecting 3rd parties to support it. At least if I was a middle manager in the Chromecast support group in Google, that's what I would do. ;)  
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Commented on post by Scott Greenstone in Nice. Except that the correct URL is  https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/#search/%s — How to Search Inbox by Gmail and Gmail  from the Omnibox
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Commented on post by Lev OsherovichBefore the oil runs out, can we please have replicas with completely modern mechanicals under a lightweight aluminium body. So that's a 1.4 TSI VW engine that gets 70mpg at 70mph  and has the same power as the original. How about a PHEV version as well. There's quite a few old cars that had huge amounts of style but make no sense now. Like a MkII Jag, or the 30s Citroen french cop car with the suicide front doors. I want the retro style, but with 2015 engineering. — This 1964 Buick Riviera restoration project in Ken's shop has a giant dual four-barrel carburetor that atomizes 1/12th of a gallon of fuel per mile into a monsterous 6.6 liter V8 engine. This was a class-leading personal luxury car in its time, the equivalent of today's BMW M3. The Riviera badge was slapped on to successively lousier cars, ending in the bland eighth generation of Riviera's of the late 1990's. I prefer this original and hope to take it out for a spin one day.  #sfclassiccars  
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastDesktop, not Android. — So here's the challenge. How would you listen to http://ntslive.co.uk/ via Chromecast?  Dig around and you'll find the listen.pls file. In there you'll find a stream, http://stream-relay-geo.ntslive.net/stream which appears to play in a chrome tab. So you could then cast the tab, or maybe even re-purpose one of the Chromecast API example programs so it actually played in the Chromecast not by being streamed across from the laptop. That's all a bit of a hassle. So is that Google's problem or NTS' problem? What about with Cast For Audio, because playing an internet radio station feels like a pretty strong use case. At which point, I feel like Google should provide an official and supported solution to de facto standards like Shoutcast rather than expecting 3rd parties to support it. At least if I was a middle manager in the Chromecast support group in Google, that's what I would do. ;)  
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusIf it hadn't been for that pesky IMG, we would have got away with it. — In your Irony is Ironic moment of Zen:  "We all deal with this annoyance" Q&A on how to stop autoplay video ... has autoplay video So ... I was going to post a set of search results for just how high gripes about autoplay video turn up in search rankings as a pairing with my recent whinge.  But this (the #2 Google result, FWIW), is just too delicious. A +PCWorld article which calls autoplay videos "this annoyance".  And features. Yes.  An autoplay video. Well ... isn't that just annoying as hell, +Lincoln Spector? Anyhow, here's the CSS style fix for that page: http://stylebot.me/styles/9434 Oh fuck me:  you cannot block HTML5 video with just CSS. (At least not that I've been able to work out.) So the "video { display: none; }" rule in the CSS linked here doesn't keep the video from downloading or playing.  It just means that you cannot see it.  Or the controls which let you shut it the fuck up. So I've added the hosting Video CDN, 'http://c.brightcove.net', and for good measure, 'http://admin.brightcove.net', to my /etc/hosts files.  This probably means I'll miss out on a few crappy videos elsewhere from time to time, but really, it's far more than worth it.
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Commented on post by David Powell in Electric Vehicles (UK)There's practicality and the future of personal transportation. And then there's havin' a larf! MotoPed cross Honda C90s with mountain bikes. http://www.motoped-choose-your-adventure.com/ USAians inevitably then take that idea and put TOO MUCH ELECTRICAL POWER into them http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=62040%0A25Kw moped with 3Kwh of battery. — I've never been a fan of the way mopeds look, even the sport styled ones. This one however, looks great.
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Commented on post by David Powell in Electric Vehicles (UK)I was thinking yesterday about the role of solo vehicles that are limited to 30mph, like mopeds. Most cities have in the world average speeds below that. So there ought to be a use for something mid way between a bicycle or even a cargo bicycle and a full size motorcycle, scooter, car or van. There are lots of journeys that are generally solo and don't require more carrying than 4 bags of groceries; Are under 10 miles and where top speed never exceeds 30-40 mph. They could be 2, 3 or 4 wheeled, probably enclosed. and probably electric. That's much more utilitarian than this re-imagined moped which frankly looks like a toy for 14 year olds, not a realistic vehicle. However sensible that idea might be, it has a problem.The cities and towns also have roads that are designed (ahem!) to work with all vehicles at once. Which means that your notional lightweight 30mph vehicle has to share the same road with SUVs, Cars, Trucks, Buses, Construction HGVs, white vans and so on. Which kills people. It kills pedestrians, bicyclists and scooter or motorcycle riders. — I've never been a fan of the way mopeds look, even the sport styled ones. This one however, looks great.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastI wonder if this thing needs a screen? Perhaps you could VNC into it. — With the announcement of the Chromebit, it seems Google really wants to get us to plug stuff into our TVs. So there's now Chromecast, Android, Chrome-OS. So how do you choose? And will you be  able to Cast to a Chromebit?
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusI wrote my own. And have had to add some rewrite filtering to remove autoplay parameters from the common audio and video objects. But autoplay should never have been in the feeds in the first place. It's just another way that the feeds ecosystem is and has been borked for 15 years now. — In your Irony is Ironic moment of Zen:  "We all deal with this annoyance" Q&A on how to stop autoplay video ... has autoplay video So ... I was going to post a set of search results for just how high gripes about autoplay video turn up in search rankings as a pairing with my recent whinge.  But this (the #2 Google result, FWIW), is just too delicious. A +PCWorld article which calls autoplay videos "this annoyance".  And features. Yes.  An autoplay video. Well ... isn't that just annoying as hell, +Lincoln Spector? Anyhow, here's the CSS style fix for that page: http://stylebot.me/styles/9434 Oh fuck me:  you cannot block HTML5 video with just CSS. (At least not that I've been able to work out.) So the "video { display: none; }" rule in the CSS linked here doesn't keep the video from downloading or playing.  It just means that you cannot see it.  Or the controls which let you shut it the fuck up. So I've added the hosting Video CDN, 'http://c.brightcove.net', and for good measure, 'http://admin.brightcove.net', to my /etc/hosts files.  This probably means I'll miss out on a few crappy videos elsewhere from time to time, but really, it's far more than worth it.
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusAnother annoyance. Sites that put autoplaying video and audio in their RSS feeds. I follow a lot of music sites and every so often hit an autoplaying soundcloud widget. — In your Irony is Ironic moment of Zen:  "We all deal with this annoyance" Q&A on how to stop autoplay video ... has autoplay video So ... I was going to post a set of search results for just how high gripes about autoplay video turn up in search rankings as a pairing with my recent whinge.  But this (the #2 Google result, FWIW), is just too delicious. A +PCWorld article which calls autoplay videos "this annoyance".  And features. Yes.  An autoplay video. Well ... isn't that just annoying as hell, +Lincoln Spector? Anyhow, here's the CSS style fix for that page: http://stylebot.me/styles/9434 Oh fuck me:  you cannot block HTML5 video with just CSS. (At least not that I've been able to work out.) So the "video { display: none; }" rule in the CSS linked here doesn't keep the video from downloading or playing.  It just means that you cannot see it.  Or the controls which let you shut it the fuck up. So I've added the hosting Video CDN, 'http://c.brightcove.net', and for good measure, 'http://admin.brightcove.net', to my /etc/hosts files.  This probably means I'll miss out on a few crappy videos elsewhere from time to time, but really, it's far more than worth it.
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Commented on post by Dana Corbin in Climate ChangePhase out fossil fuel subsidies With oil prices low, now is the time to phase out fossil fuel subsidies that encourage waste and discourage low-carbon growth. Nearly $550 billion went into direct fossil fuel subsidies worldwide in 2013 This.
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Commented on post by Zap-Map in Electric Vehicles (UK)This is going to be important when the ULEZ comes in. So what Ultra Low Emissions white vans are available? — UK government extends £8000 plug-in van grant  http://goo.gl/wwFv4y
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Commented on post by Angus Rose in Climate ChangeAnd yet,  https://plus.google.com/103639479411751122506/posts/jAmmuo5HeQV only a minority of Californians support rationing [water] https://plus.google.com/112163175215216596056/posts/1jW4Y6NfuhF Florida’s Climate Denial Could Cause Catastrophic Recession So an international agreement gets everybody off the hook, and assuages any guilt, without actually doing anything.
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusHawkwind, Sonic Attack. A spoken word piece written by Michael Moorcock and performed by Robert Calvert in front of the 1972 band in their prime. It later became the lead track on a whole album with one of the lesser incarnations. It's also been recorded with people like Brian Blessed doing the recital. Lyrics here. http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/hawkwind/sonic_attack.html Has a certain special memory for me because I saw them at Stonehenge with Calvert in full WWII air force flying gear. ps. That poster was a meme generator that existed for a short time. "The MGT" is of course a reference to The Midget, a guerilla ontologist dwarf character in The Illuminatus Trilogy who spent his life leaving official looking but conflicting messages to sabotage the rest of the world that he saw as irredeemably Sizeist. — Leak Your Own Government Scandal With These Templates TERRIFYING GRAPHS INCLUDED! [A]rtist Julian Oliver's latest work comes as a set of slides using the open source program Libreoffice. The Snowden Templates provide a step-by-step guide for creating your own faux governmental conspiracy, including instructions like "reference a team code index like 'B11561-L' suggesting countless other branches scattered in a Kafkian surveillance network employing 1/10 of the U.S. population" and "mention one previously known project with a ridiculous name like TURTLEPOWER or BLEAKINQUIRY." The thought occurs that this may be useful as well to faithful government servants wishing to create authentic government Kafkian surveillance network (or other) scandals. h/t Bruce Sterling (@bruces) on Ello https://ello.co/bruces/post/7nJq2hDQFEXKtKLhfpsmkw http://www.fastcodesign.com/3040613/leak-your-own-government-scandal-with-these-templates#1
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusIn the event of sonic attack, think only of yourself. http://voidstar.com/images/sonic_attack.jpg — Leak Your Own Government Scandal With These Templates TERRIFYING GRAPHS INCLUDED! [A]rtist Julian Oliver's latest work comes as a set of slides using the open source program Libreoffice. The Snowden Templates provide a step-by-step guide for creating your own faux governmental conspiracy, including instructions like "reference a team code index like 'B11561-L' suggesting countless other branches scattered in a Kafkian surveillance network employing 1/10 of the U.S. population" and "mention one previously known project with a ridiculous name like TURTLEPOWER or BLEAKINQUIRY." The thought occurs that this may be useful as well to faithful government servants wishing to create authentic government Kafkian surveillance network (or other) scandals. h/t Bruce Sterling (@bruces) on Ello https://ello.co/bruces/post/7nJq2hDQFEXKtKLhfpsmkw http://www.fastcodesign.com/3040613/leak-your-own-government-scandal-with-these-templates#1
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Commented on post by wonderfunc in Future Club Music"West Coast of Canada" Does that mean you get to see the 1080p and Mood Hut guys live? — Hi everyone! I'd like to introduce myself as a new Deep House & Future Bass Music DJ/Producer from the West Coast of Canada. Check out my Tracks & Mixes on Soundcloud. Hope you like what you hear and don't forget to share if you do:):) More coming soon..
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusIt really got made. It was an official poster placed on the advertising area of London bus stops in about 2002. It's scarily post modern. I can't decide if this is some hipster designer taking the piss out of their brief and sneaking it past some middle management sign off. Or if it's a brilliant piece of doubleplus-good propaganda that works better at inserting the idea into our brain because we laugh at it. — Leak Your Own Government Scandal With These Templates TERRIFYING GRAPHS INCLUDED! [A]rtist Julian Oliver's latest work comes as a set of slides using the open source program Libreoffice. The Snowden Templates provide a step-by-step guide for creating your own faux governmental conspiracy, including instructions like "reference a team code index like 'B11561-L' suggesting countless other branches scattered in a Kafkian surveillance network employing 1/10 of the U.S. population" and "mention one previously known project with a ridiculous name like TURTLEPOWER or BLEAKINQUIRY." The thought occurs that this may be useful as well to faithful government servants wishing to create authentic government Kafkian surveillance network (or other) scandals. h/t Bruce Sterling (@bruces) on Ello https://ello.co/bruces/post/7nJq2hDQFEXKtKLhfpsmkw http://www.fastcodesign.com/3040613/leak-your-own-government-scandal-with-these-templates#1
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusThis kind of article is just clickbait for people who want to hate some aspects of the USA. Isn't it? But then,  I'm not saying it's about the USA, but it's about the USA. 1. The USA is a Police state. 2. The USA is a nation of Finks, (c William Burroughs) 3. Not just the USA, but WEIRD. Can you imagine this happening in say Kuala Lumpur? No, not just WEIRD, N European. Would this happen in a mediterranean country? But then also would this happen in a Scandinavian country? Maybe it's just the kind of finger wagging, nanny state that is the worst part of the UK, French, German, USA control freakery. 4. There's a mind set that says the children are more important than the adults. And if necessary we must take the children away from the adults and put them in care. Does that come from the same kind of place? — On the phenomenon of overzealous police enforcement:  a social auto-immune disease? The question of why societies with reduced risks are so averse to the least risks, and have the strongest risk-management systems (life insurance, pensions, various devices and regulations) has been commented on -- it's a significant chapter of Niall Ferguson's book on money.  I'm wondering if both that and other logics might be an equivalent of an auto-immune disease -- of a defense system that's geared up but has no place to go, so it turns against itself. Mulling that ... Autoimmune disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease "Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?" http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/02/mass_incarceration_a_provocative_new_theory_for_why_so_many_americans_are.single.html "'Help! My Boys Were Stopped Three Times by Police For Being Outside Unsupervised'" http://www.alternet.org/culture/help-my-boys-were-stopped-three-times-police-being-outside-unsupervised
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusYou get layers here. Sometimes it's intentional irony as a deliberate misinformation campaign. Sometimes it's an intern sneaking a joke past their irony-challenged and time-poor line manager. See for instance, the London Met Police and their "secure beneath the watching eyes" CCTV announcement posters. http://www.art-for-a-change.com/News/eyes.htm Or this one about bombs in happy shopping precincts prevented because somebody reported a person studying the CCTV cameras. http://voidstar.com/images/cctv.jpg — Leak Your Own Government Scandal With These Templates TERRIFYING GRAPHS INCLUDED! [A]rtist Julian Oliver's latest work comes as a set of slides using the open source program Libreoffice. The Snowden Templates provide a step-by-step guide for creating your own faux governmental conspiracy, including instructions like "reference a team code index like 'B11561-L' suggesting countless other branches scattered in a Kafkian surveillance network employing 1/10 of the U.S. population" and "mention one previously known project with a ridiculous name like TURTLEPOWER or BLEAKINQUIRY." The thought occurs that this may be useful as well to faithful government servants wishing to create authentic government Kafkian surveillance network (or other) scandals. h/t Bruce Sterling (@bruces) on Ello https://ello.co/bruces/post/7nJq2hDQFEXKtKLhfpsmkw http://www.fastcodesign.com/3040613/leak-your-own-government-scandal-with-these-templates#1
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Commented on post by Beatsuka in Chromecasthttps://productforums.google.com/d/msg/play/kYnvmrMT8go/D6zvoJxFR54J A request for a Labs project to implement a visualisation API for Google Play Music and Chromecast. There's a current labs project to display a fireplace while playing music so it doesn't feel completely impossible. — Is there some way for me to play music while my screen is "idle" on chromecast? Am looking for a solution for my workplace where we would have images in a slideshow - preferably with using backdrop but we would like to have some music play'n while the images are showing. Anyone got a idea how to do this? :)
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Motorcycle RoadracingI wonder what's on his bucket list. Bol D'Or, Daytona, IoM? Actually what we really need is for Stoner, Bayliss, Valentino and Marc to come to Dirt Quake in Kings Lynn. July 19. It's a free weekend in the calendar so why not? I'm sure Gary Inman has got them all in his address book. — It's not April 1, is it? Maybe next year, he'll do the Daytona 200!! http://superbike-news.co.uk/wordpress/Motorcycle-News/casey-stoner-returns-to-racing-in-2015-suzuka-8hr/
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Commented on post by Melissa LuvsPlease in MotoGPSam Lowes = Cal Crutchlow. Extremely fast but he doesn't really know why. Which then makes him prone to throwing it all away. — Moto2 results...THAT was not what I expected!!!! WOW!!
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Commented on post by Zap-Map in Electric Vehicles (UK)This will force the Taxi and Bus industries to upgrade to ULE vehicles, which is a good thing. But for everybody else, it will likely be the same as the existing LEZ and congestion zone that covers the whole of London and not just the centre. It's just an additional business expense or tax and doesn't actually change behaviour. There's a huge amount of construction traffic, light commercial vans and delivery traffic. I have a hard time imagining all those HGV tipper trucks, cement lorries, skip lorries converting. And actually the same goes for the ubiquitous small tradesman's white van. At least us motorcyclists will still be free although that's for Euro-III >2007 motorcycles only which is winding up some people. — Boris Johnson confirms introduction of an Ultra Low Emission Zone starting in 2020 #EV http://goo.gl/YWJgoY
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Commented on post by Prem Ghinde in Electric Vehicles (UK)They have to do this to meet the London ULEZ requirements by 2020. — Finally a step to make one of the two large polluter classes clean. A great boost for Coventry too. Unfortunately a hybrid but changes will come in baby steps I guess.
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Commented on post by Sunwind Design in Electric Bicycles (Bikes)It's kind of a shame that you have to carry your charger with you. But then E-Bike battery types, connectors and chargers are nowhere near standardised enough. — we welcomed probably one of the best electric mountain bike at this time to show how you can charge E-Bike on our autonomous solar charge point  at ENR show - Lyon - France. +Sunwind Design  Thks a lot +rotwildbikes   to we lend this lovely toy... Here are the pictures enjoy ;)
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Commented on post by Ian Dunsford in ChromecastYou've got a potential maker/hacker there. So was the toddler trying to expose the audio-out line? — Toddler 1 Chromecast 0
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Commented on post by Kevin KellyFrom the TFA. If you define “viral” as popularity achieved through social sharing, and audio as sound other than music you can’t skim sound So to sum up. TL;DL. I have the same problem with bad use of video. Give me a management summary in text, then I can skim it.  And there's the problem with both video and audio, that you can't multi-task it. — Why audio has not gone viral. Yet. Informative read. http://digg.com/originals/why-audio-never-goes-viral
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingThe tyres and fuel concessions should go and be the same for everyone. The testing and engine number restrictions should stay but be extended to the Factory teams and be the same for everyone. Ain't going to happen ... — MotoGP QatarGP QP results Very interesting. Time for Ducati to become "full Factory" now. This silly Open advantage is not needed. Yamaha are not happy. Struggling for pace. Full Details here : https://motomatters.com/results/2015/03/28/2015_qatar_motogp_qualifying_practice_re.html Cover Photo of the underside of Crazy Joe's GP15. Very tidy #Moto_Porn  via  +PHOTO.GP aka +Scott Jones C/O +David Emmett's MotoMatters.com Enjoy.
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Commented on post by Alex Schleber in Climate ChangeShame the graphic doesn't compare like with like. How does "provide water for all homes and businesses in California" compare with "Produce all of the almonds in California"?
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusThe problem is not necessarily scientific misconduct, although the lead author going to work for a major manufacturer of the chemical being investigated does raise an eyebrow or two. The real problem though is the government body using a non-peer-reviewed study that subsequently gets discredited by several groups that look at it, to justify policy. Unfortunately the Gov body concerned has a bit of a history of this. So that's the question. How do you encourage government organisations to use evidence based science? Arguably this process of peer review and journalism about the results is the balancing factor that pulls the system back to reality. But it feels like this shouldn't be necessary and should happen before policy is decided, not after. — Biotech Shill Jon Entine Disinformation on the Bee Colony Collapse Neonic Connection "Bees, neonicotinoids and bad science: a tale of caution" was the title +Mirosław Baran added to a post of what appeared at first blush to be a critique of some of the research and findings around honey bee colony collapse: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104778679276099504457/posts/hKNF5eCx19m So I took a look. Just a warning -- this goes on for a while.  I'm spelling out the process by which I went from "OK, possibly interesting article" to "this doesn't smell right" to "well fuck, we've got another case of corporate-backed disinformation going on here". I also take a stab at dissecting what little meat there is in the actual article (it's 5,000 words of meandering, repetitive, sensationalist, largely irrelevant character assasination).  Given the field's entirely outside my area of education and training (though, to be fair, it's outside of Entine's as well), take my comments with a grain of salt, though the outlines should be reasonably valid. Back to our story ... Going in I was already slightly peeved by Mirosław's lack of contextualization or pointing out what specific parts of the report were so all-damned fantastik. So I did what I'm wont to do and began my comment with #unburythelede , and looked for a decent lede paragraph that gave the gist of the story.  That tag, by the way, is one I use with some frequency: https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/unburythelede I had to dive some distance into the article to do that. Because the article was really fucking oddly vague and went on and on and on and on and ... Best I could dig out was this: Although public opinion has coalesced around the belief that the bee death mystery is settled, the vast majority of scientists who study bees for a living disagree—vehemently. Four fucking screens of text into the document.  The full thing runs 27 screens of text, about 5,000 words (roughly 11 pages of typewritten text, single-spaced). At this point the structure of the document's starting to interest me more than its content.  And someone else has spoken up on +Mirosław Baran's post,+Susan Y., asking "is this article saying that bees population has declined or not declined?"  Because it's really a lot less than clear. More from this author I start looking over the page.  What's our title and byline? "Bee deaths and neonics: Inside story of Colony Collapse Disorder, Harvard’s Chensheng Lu’s crusade" Jon Entine | November 25, 2014 | Genetic Literacy Project http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/11/25/bee-deaths-neonics-inside-story-of-colony-collapse-disorder-harvards-chensheng-lus-crusade/ Our Mr. +Jon Entine, apparently has written a bit more for this outlet.  Quite a bit more, actually.  Titles: ⚫ Silence from Bill Nye to Kevin Folta GMO debate challenge ⚫ In wake of GMO debate defeat, antis throw leaders under the bus? ⚫ Battle over Biotechnology: Pro and anti GMO scientists square off ⚫ Genetic Literacy Project Special Report: GMO: Beyond the Science ⚫ Scared about arsenic in your rice? Shouldn't be, but if so there is a GMO fix ⚫ Organic alert: Whole Foods almonds contain potentially 'fatal' natural chemical ⚫ GLP's Jon Entine talks to Ray Bowman on fallout from Oregon, Colorado GMO label votes ⚫ McDonald's mulling embrace of Simplot's bruise-reducing Innate GMO potato ⚫ Frankenfood: A metaphor that has cursed GMOs ⚫ Is Nassim Taleb a "dangerous imbecile" or on the pay of anti-GMO activists? ⚫ $25 million for "Factor GMO" study—Are the results pre-determined? ⚫ Why support erodes for GMO labeling (Hint: It's not because of spending by Big Ag) ⚫ Vermont Rube Goldberg-like GMO labeling law exempts GMO filled natural supplements ⚫ Anti-GMO bungle: Claim GM genes pass from food into blood collapses This is the point at which my mild annoyance at a poorly-written article gives way to suspicion.  This guy's got a distinct slant and an obsession.  Normal bioscience author I'd expect to cover a range of topics, but this guy has a distinct bent for GMO.  Thirteen of his fourteen titles include the initialism.  And it's crystal clear he's taking sides, not reporting from an unbiased perspective. Do we have a bio? Yep.  Down at the bottom of the page: Jon Entine, executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is a Senior Fellow at the World Food Center Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy, University of California-Davis and at the Center for Health and Risk Communication, George Mason University. OK, I've never heard of the "Genetic Literacy Project" (later I'll realize that this is referring to the website I'm reading), or the World Food Center and its Institute.  University of California at Davis is a well-known ag school.  George Mason University sets of alarms again -- it (and particularly its Mercatus Center) are well known to me -- business-friendly, heavily Libertarian, very strongly associated with the Koch brothers, and notorious sources of disinformation and skew in various "research". Entine's Propagandist's File +Pablo Pescador shows up to post: A tale of caution about the writer of this article, Jon Entine: http://www.propagandists.org/propagandists/jon-entine/ The Progagandistss piece drags in a few bits of information I find less than relevant (divorces tend to be messy, the details referenced make this seem like a cheap hit itself), but adds: Jon Entine is a media-savvy corporate propagandist and pseudo-journalist who fronts the opinions and positions of chemical corporations by pretending to be an independent journalist. He has ties to biotech companies Monsanto and Syngenta while playing a key role in another industry front group known as the American Council on Science and Health... It also notes that Entine is a visiting fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, also strongly associated with the Kochs and other disinformation / astroturfing campaigns. UC Davis and the World Food Center As I said, I'm somewhat familiar with UC Davis.  As with many large public universities, it's got a diverse reputation -- there's a lot of cutting edge ecological and sustainable work going on, but, as an ag school, it's also got very deep industry ties.  So the story here could go either way.  I realize that the World Food Center is in fact a relatively new addition to the university and turn up a few articles.  They show strong industry funding, from Mars (the candy maker), and a director with a very strong pro-GMO bias, but DuPont and Monsanto appear to be largely out of the picture, though welcome to participate if they want to: Major funding for WFC comes from Mars, Inc. (the candy maker), $40 million. http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2014/09/17/mars-inc-dedicates-40m-to-uc-davis-world-food.html From Examiner.com (a generally conservative news org as I recall -- SourceWatch confirms it's owned by Philip Anschutz:  http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Examiner.com, "an active Republican donor" according to his SourceWatch bio (linked from above)): "GMO foods research, funding, and UC Davis' World Food Center" http://www.examiner.com/article/gmo-foods-research-funding-and-uc-davis-world-food-center Roger Beachy has been hired by UC Davis to be the director of the new World Food Center, says an October 31, 2013 UC Davis news release, "Roger Beachy to head new World Food Center at UC Davis." He's well-known in the agricultural community for his support of the use of genetic modification (GMO) to produce disease-resistant crops. And: Beachy states, in the Sacramento Bee news article, "If I have a choice between chemicals and genetics, I will go with genetics every time." On Beachy and multinationals such as Monsanto: Will Monsanto have a big presence at the center? It’s hard to tell. The private industry – the large multinationals – have tended to invest in science that serves the very large commodity crops, like wheat, corn, soy and cotton. Those are not major crops in California. I think that the specialties that we have here – the more than 400 kinds of crops being grown – will require a different kind of investor. On the other hand, multinationals like DuPont and Monsanto seed companies, and I think that is important to California, and I hope they come and talk to us. http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article2581499.html#storylink=misearch (Emphasis added.) So ... not involved, but definitely an open invitation from the director. So, where do we stand? ⚫ Long, meandering article. ⚫ Set of questionable associations. ⚫ A clearly stated pro-GMO bias from the UC Davis center's directory.  Though nominally this isn't a story about GMO, which is a bit odd. How about we dig more into SourceWatch? Oh, wait a moment... +Mirosław Baran  Pipes up So, having posted a confused and questionable piece without context on his own part, a rather shameful piece of intellectual laziness, Miroslaw lanches his own petard: I'm sure you will be able to point me to actual inaccuracies and errors in the referenced text. If you can't, your comments will be removed – I'm not interested in a debate in the style of global warming denialists. I welcome references to published research. I will remove references to science denialist websites. Several comments, including my original one to the post (this post is largely based on it) are deleted.  Host's prerogative, but it doesn't speak much to intellectual honesty. Also deleted is a comment from +Ellim Sluouf: "Why Jon Entine’s “trillion meal study” won't save us from GMO dangers" http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2014/15669-why-jon-entine-s-trillion-meal-study-won-t-save-us-from-gmo-dangers ... which, granted, is a anti-GMO site, but gives a detailed critique of an earlier "study" of Entine's. Miroslaw's accusation of "debate in the style of global warming denialists" is all the more ironic as the associations of Entine are the same network of organizations and funders that are behind much global warming denial:  George Mason University, the American Enterprise Institute, and via the Genetic Literacy Project (of which Entine is Executive Director), a group called STATS, which has received over $800,000 in funding from:  "the John M. Olin Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the William H. Donner Foundation. Other funders include Richard Mellon Scaife's Carthage Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation and the Castle Rock Foundation. Media Transparency identifies the group as having gained 34 grants totaling $2,415,000" http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Statistical_Assessment_Service The SourceWatch Files If you haven't already encountered it, SourceWatch (http://sourcewatch.org) is a wiki and resource for tracking influence and bias in media and organizations.  I first came across it tracking down ... climate-change denial references.  So Miroslaw's irony runs deep. Looking through SourceWatch we will find that the people and organizations behind the story you have posted are the very same people and organizations behind global warming denial. Jon Entine http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jon_Entine ... is not only an author for, but executive director of "Genetic Literacy Project" http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Genetic_Literacy_Project which is a sister organization of STATS, the Statistical Assessment Service: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Statistical_Assessment_Service On which we find: From its inception, however, STATS has repeatedly attacked environmentalists, civil libertarians, feminists and other "liberals." The first director of STATS, David Murray, was not a statistician at all. His academic training was in anthropology, but he was often described in the media as a "statistician" when he commented on various topics. On funding: [F]unding for STATS ... come[s] from conservative funders including the John M. Olin Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the William H. Donner Foundation. Other funders include Richard Mellon Scaife's Carthage Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation and the Castle Rock Foundation. Media Transparency identifies the group as having gained 34 grants totaling $2,415,000 (unadjusted for inflation) between 1995 and 2009. You'll find Scaife and Olin among your climate change deniers. Center for Media and Public Affairs is associated with many of the same funders, to the tune of over $2 million, and is strongly tied with conservative viewpoints. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_for_Media_and_Public_Affairs You can also trace Entine's other associations, particularly what SourceWatch has to say on the EIA (another Koche-backed disinformation mill) and George Mason University (dittos): http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Enterprise_Institute David H. Koch is on the American Enterprise Institute's National Council, whose members "serve as ambassadors for AEI, providing AEI with advice, insight, and guidance as [it] looks to reach out to new friends across the country." Between 2002 and 2013, the American Enterprise Institute received a total of $867,289 in funding from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/George_Mason_University George Mason University is a Virginia-based public university near Washington, D.C. A "magnet for right-wing money" [1] and heavily Koch-funded[1], it is notable for hosting over 40 libertarian research centers and affiliates including the Institute for Humane Studies and the Mercatus Center." My own background and biases Just to be clear:  Jon Entine's name had never registered with me prior to Miroslaw's post.  I don't have strong feelings on GMO crops.  Slightly negative, but as much for the economic and control issues as for scientific and genetics ones.  I question overall merits of the research.  I don't avoid them altogether myself, and have done work for companies involved in GMO crop research and production in the past. I do have some familiarity with the Koch / Scaife / Olin / Libertarian disinformation industrial complex.  I've twigged on some earlier instances -- a hit piece put out by Richard "Dr. Evil" Berman last March triggered some similar suspicions.  They proved well justified:  http://redd.it/1znodw And my gripe against the Koch / Libertarian disinformation industrial complex is largely that they are corrupting media, the truth, public discussion, and the democratic process.  I'm a stickler for accuracy and honesty.  And at a base level:  they're dishonest. On the specifics of Entine's article A few more housekeeping tasks. This is a journalistic article not a scientific one.  Entine's academic qualifications are an undergraduate degree in philosophy.  He's worked in broadcast journalism prior to becoming a propagandist. And so ... we've got something which isn't a scientific paper.  It's a journalistic hack piece, with references to "the Dr. Doom of bees" and paragraphs like: To many environmental activists, the pesticide does more harm than good, and they’ve found their champion in Chensheng Lu. It’s been a busy fall for the professor, jetting back and forth between Boston and Washington, with forays around the United States to talk to adoring audiences. He presents himself as the defender of bees, and this fiery message has transformed a once obscure academic into a global “green” rock star, feted at events like last week’s lunch talk at Harvard. ... which is to say:  a lot of verbiage with zero relevant scientific content, but a hell of a lot of personality smearing. Ironically, one of Entine's earlier essays is "When Science is Unfavorable, Attack the Scientist" http://www.realclearscience.com/2011/04/29/when_science_is_unfavorable_attack_the_scientist_240904.html I guess the guy knows his stuff... Eventually, Entine tires of throwing shit (or runs out), and gets to some a few salient points: ⚫ European hive counts are increasing, not decreasing, 1995-2012. ⚫ An Australian survey of the honey bee industry determined that "[T]he introduction of the neonicotinoids has led to an overall reduction in the risks to the agricultural environment from the application of insecticides.", according to Entine.  Sadly, I cannot confirm that quote as the report is presently unavailable with the notice "This publication is under review and will be made available again once that review has concluded."  http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/livestock/honey-bees/overview (the link from Entine's document is 404). ⚫ He claims hive counts are stable or increasing in the US and Canada, 1995-2013. ⚫ He disputes the connections between neonicotinoids and CCD.  He fails to address the bulk of the evidence. ⚫ Claims dosing was too high -- that slightly lower levels are perfectly safe, but that it's incredible that the bees didn't just keel over and die with what Chensheng treated them. ⚫ An irrelevant side trip through Cell Phone land. ⚫ More character slams on biogenetics PhDs (that is, people with far higher educational training, with far more relevance to the topic at hand, than Mr. Entine). Researchers Entine paints Chensheng as the primary driver of the neonic connection with CCD, which might allow for an accusation of tainted science.  But a quick check of Google Scholar finds well over a thousand results when "chensheng" is excluded from search, vs. 17 when his name is specifically included: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=neonicotinoid+colony+collapse+disorder+-Chensheng&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39 http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=neonicotinoid+colony+collapse+disorder+Chensheng&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39 Clearly, Chensheng Lu is not the only researcher drawing this connection (though no, I have not reviewed the 1090 papers in depth). Entine's focus on a single researcher seems oddly misplaced. Colony Counts Entine focuses on highly-aggregated counts over a limited number of years.  The Wikipedia article on CCD discusses both much longer term trends, 1947-present, and localized hive losses: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colony_collapse_disorder&oldid=638721244 The National Agriculture Statistics Service reported 2.44 million honey-producing hives were in the United States in February 2008, down from 4.5 million in 1980, and 5.9 million in 1947, though these numbers underestimate the total number of managed hives, as they exclude several thousand hives managed for pollination contracts only, and also do not include hives managed by beekeepers owning fewer than five hives. This under-representation may be offset by the practice of counting some hives more than once; hives that are moved to different states to produce honey are counted in each state's total and summed in total counts. Non-CCD winter losses as high as 50% have occurred in some years and regions (e.g., 2000–2001 in Pennsylvania). Normal winter losses are typically considered to be in the range of 15–25%. In many cases, beekeepers reporting significant losses of bees did not experience true CCD, but losses due to other causes. Entine's discussion addresses neither case.  His US colony counts though do seem to match the USDA data I checked 1998-2012. I'll also note that while Chenshen is cited in the Wikipedia article, he is referenced in only two of the 179 references in the article.  (The Wikipedia cites here are to the specific version of the page current when I first began writing this response). More "Dr. Doom" and credential attacks Further, despite his own lack of scientific qualifications, Entine has no reservations attacking Chenshen's, while throwing in yet another "Dr. Doom" reference: Who is Chensheng (Alex) Lu, the Dr. Doom of honey bees? He is an environmental researcher with the Harvard School of Public Health with no formal training in entomology. Chensheng has Masters and Doctorates in his field of Environmental Health. Entine's description of the scope and scale of CCD fail to include judging criteria used and established by USDA as detailed in  "Colony Collapse Disorder Progress Report (2010)" http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/br/ccd/ccdprogressreport2010.pdf E.g., "Definition of CCD ... (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2009, PLoS ONE, vol. 4, issue 8) described in detail the field symptoms used to define colonies as suffering from CCD."  This includes behavioral measures beyond simple hive counts. Move Over, Twinkie Defense, We've got the Twitter Defense In attempting to disparage Chensheng's work ... Entine gives us ... Twitter screencaps. This is not how you do science, people. The substance of this dispute is over the dosing of neonics:  135 ppb (parts per billion) vs. what Entine claims is more realistic, 1-3 ppb. Though I find claims of a 100x fold dosing delta, still being measured in parts per billion, and insistence of the safety of the lower bound, somewhat at odds with the quote Entine includes: What’s remarkable, numerous scientists and beekeepers told me, is that Lu’s bees didn’t just keel over in the first few weeks after sucking down what amounted to a lethal cocktail every day. So ... neonics -- safe, or not?  What are the odds of a chance encounter of a dense clump of the stuff on occasion? “It’s surprising those colonies lasted so long given the stratospheric quantities of insecticide [Lu] pumped into them for 13 weeks,” wrote Jonathan Getty on Bee-L Chat, a discussion forum for bee experts. I'll also note, again, that the criticism here is of one researcher, with 17 papers of over 1,000 published on the subject. Makes you wonder if Chensheng is so absolutely crucial to the plot or ... if perhaps by putting the pressure on one researcher others might be discouraged from entering the frey for fear of the heat. If this were coming from a source less clearly biased, it might have some weight.  As it stands, no. Having exhausted his meager vaguely science-related objections, Entine turns again to disinformation.  "It's not neonics".  A handful of carefully chosen experts to support his claims (but no review of the 1,000+ paper literature on neonics -- always focusing on Chensheng).  Insisting that "independent" government researchers are now exploring alternatives.  Hello, boys and girls, today we're going to learn the words "regulatory capture".  Can you cay "regulatory capture"?  Very good, I knew you could! .... Follow the Money, Honey Oh, and what's the incentive here?  How about preserving pesticide sales? Friends of the Earth predicted a disinformation campaign along the lines of the tobacco attacks, back in May: "Follow the Honey:  7 ways pesticide companies are spinning the bee crisis to protect profits" https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/follow-honey-7-ways-pesticide-companies-are-spinning-bee-crisis-protect-profits http://libcloud.s3.amazonaws.com/93/f0/f/4656/FollowTheHoneyReport.pdf Why?  It's a $14.2 billion market. The players:  Bayer, Monsanto (via pre-treated seeds), and Syngenta.  If you don't recognize that last name, it's because the company was only formed in 2000, by the merger of Novartis Agribusiness and Zeneca Agrochemicals. The tactics "Follow the Honey" identifies: ⚫ Divert attention from pesticides ⚫ "Bee Care" PR buzz ⚫ Buying credibility ⚫ Company videos masquerading as news ⚫ Blaming the farmer ⚫ Spinning science ⚫ Attacking regulators ⚫ When all else fails, go to court This piece is definitely part 1, and a bit of 6 & 7. Organic Consumers also have plenty of background on Jon Entine: https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/biotech-front-man-jon-entine-part-shameless-gang-propagandists-and-character-assassins This is a continuation from Part Three of a comprehensive investigative report revealing the untold story behind Jon Entine, biotech shill, character assassination operative, Forbes.com writer, American Enterprise Institute fellow and George Mason University research fellow. Entine also has ties to Monsanto and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And, finally, to pull my own Twitter Proof, Nassim Taleb: This is a reminder that Mr, Jon Entine is a charlatan, GMO corporate shill paid to terrorize scientists and skeptics on the web  @JonEntine https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/542343904113487872 (Update:  I see that Entine and Taleb have a prior history, see Entine's article list above accusing Taleb of being a shill ... a rather frequently occuring card in Entine's playbook.) So:  no, I'm not an entomologist, biologist, or even scientist.  Just a concerned, aware, and conscious citizen of Earth (presently residing on Altair IV).  But then, neither is Jon.  He's got a track record of corporate shilling going back decades.  I scream at Google every so often.  Would it do well for someone with a science background to look at this?  Probably.  Necessary?  Given the situation, not particularly. #Disinformation   #ColonyCollapseDisorder   #neonicotinoids  
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusTime to resurrect this thread. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/26/uk-drew-wrong-conclusion-from-its-neonicotinoids-study-scientist-says The UK Government (DEFRA) bases its strategy on Neonics on one study that wasn't peer reviewed, by a group (UK’s Food and Environment Research Agency, FERA) headed by somebody who has since left to join Syngenta.  And now another scientist working in the same area (Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex) has analysed the data and conclusions from the FERA study and claims that they reached a conclusion 180 degrees from the facts in the same study. Sometimes the bullshit piles up so high you need wings to stay above it! In a democracy, how do you stop this kind of thing from happening over and over again and ensure that public policy is actually evidence based, rather than corruption based and controlled by vested interests? I'm not at all surprised that there are industry funded bodies devoted to misrepresenting science for the benefit of the industry across all kinds of fields. But it's infuriating that they can then get this turned into public policy. — Biotech Shill Jon Entine Disinformation on the Bee Colony Collapse Neonic Connection "Bees, neonicotinoids and bad science: a tale of caution" was the title +Mirosław Baran added to a post of what appeared at first blush to be a critique of some of the research and findings around honey bee colony collapse: https://plus.google.com/u/0/104778679276099504457/posts/hKNF5eCx19m So I took a look. Just a warning -- this goes on for a while.  I'm spelling out the process by which I went from "OK, possibly interesting article" to "this doesn't smell right" to "well fuck, we've got another case of corporate-backed disinformation going on here". I also take a stab at dissecting what little meat there is in the actual article (it's 5,000 words of meandering, repetitive, sensationalist, largely irrelevant character assasination).  Given the field's entirely outside my area of education and training (though, to be fair, it's outside of Entine's as well), take my comments with a grain of salt, though the outlines should be reasonably valid. Back to our story ... Going in I was already slightly peeved by Mirosław's lack of contextualization or pointing out what specific parts of the report were so all-damned fantastik. So I did what I'm wont to do and began my comment with #unburythelede , and looked for a decent lede paragraph that gave the gist of the story.  That tag, by the way, is one I use with some frequency: https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/unburythelede I had to dive some distance into the article to do that. Because the article was really fucking oddly vague and went on and on and on and on and ... Best I could dig out was this: Although public opinion has coalesced around the belief that the bee death mystery is settled, the vast majority of scientists who study bees for a living disagree—vehemently. Four fucking screens of text into the document.  The full thing runs 27 screens of text, about 5,000 words (roughly 11 pages of typewritten text, single-spaced). At this point the structure of the document's starting to interest me more than its content.  And someone else has spoken up on +Mirosław Baran's post,+Susan Y., asking "is this article saying that bees population has declined or not declined?"  Because it's really a lot less than clear. More from this author I start looking over the page.  What's our title and byline? "Bee deaths and neonics: Inside story of Colony Collapse Disorder, Harvard’s Chensheng Lu’s crusade" Jon Entine | November 25, 2014 | Genetic Literacy Project http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/11/25/bee-deaths-neonics-inside-story-of-colony-collapse-disorder-harvards-chensheng-lus-crusade/ Our Mr. +Jon Entine, apparently has written a bit more for this outlet.  Quite a bit more, actually.  Titles: ⚫ Silence from Bill Nye to Kevin Folta GMO debate challenge ⚫ In wake of GMO debate defeat, antis throw leaders under the bus? ⚫ Battle over Biotechnology: Pro and anti GMO scientists square off ⚫ Genetic Literacy Project Special Report: GMO: Beyond the Science ⚫ Scared about arsenic in your rice? Shouldn't be, but if so there is a GMO fix ⚫ Organic alert: Whole Foods almonds contain potentially 'fatal' natural chemical ⚫ GLP's Jon Entine talks to Ray Bowman on fallout from Oregon, Colorado GMO label votes ⚫ McDonald's mulling embrace of Simplot's bruise-reducing Innate GMO potato ⚫ Frankenfood: A metaphor that has cursed GMOs ⚫ Is Nassim Taleb a "dangerous imbecile" or on the pay of anti-GMO activists? ⚫ $25 million for "Factor GMO" study—Are the results pre-determined? ⚫ Why support erodes for GMO labeling (Hint: It's not because of spending by Big Ag) ⚫ Vermont Rube Goldberg-like GMO labeling law exempts GMO filled natural supplements ⚫ Anti-GMO bungle: Claim GM genes pass from food into blood collapses This is the point at which my mild annoyance at a poorly-written article gives way to suspicion.  This guy's got a distinct slant and an obsession.  Normal bioscience author I'd expect to cover a range of topics, but this guy has a distinct bent for GMO.  Thirteen of his fourteen titles include the initialism.  And it's crystal clear he's taking sides, not reporting from an unbiased perspective. Do we have a bio? Yep.  Down at the bottom of the page: Jon Entine, executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is a Senior Fellow at the World Food Center Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy, University of California-Davis and at the Center for Health and Risk Communication, George Mason University. OK, I've never heard of the "Genetic Literacy Project" (later I'll realize that this is referring to the website I'm reading), or the World Food Center and its Institute.  University of California at Davis is a well-known ag school.  George Mason University sets of alarms again -- it (and particularly its Mercatus Center) are well known to me -- business-friendly, heavily Libertarian, very strongly associated with the Koch brothers, and notorious sources of disinformation and skew in various "research". Entine's Propagandist's File +Pablo Pescador shows up to post: A tale of caution about the writer of this article, Jon Entine: http://www.propagandists.org/propagandists/jon-entine/ The Progagandistss piece drags in a few bits of information I find less than relevant (divorces tend to be messy, the details referenced make this seem like a cheap hit itself), but adds: Jon Entine is a media-savvy corporate propagandist and pseudo-journalist who fronts the opinions and positions of chemical corporations by pretending to be an independent journalist. He has ties to biotech companies Monsanto and Syngenta while playing a key role in another industry front group known as the American Council on Science and Health... It also notes that Entine is a visiting fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, also strongly associated with the Kochs and other disinformation / astroturfing campaigns. UC Davis and the World Food Center As I said, I'm somewhat familiar with UC Davis.  As with many large public universities, it's got a diverse reputation -- there's a lot of cutting edge ecological and sustainable work going on, but, as an ag school, it's also got very deep industry ties.  So the story here could go either way.  I realize that the World Food Center is in fact a relatively new addition to the university and turn up a few articles.  They show strong industry funding, from Mars (the candy maker), and a director with a very strong pro-GMO bias, but DuPont and Monsanto appear to be largely out of the picture, though welcome to participate if they want to: Major funding for WFC comes from Mars, Inc. (the candy maker), $40 million. http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2014/09/17/mars-inc-dedicates-40m-to-uc-davis-world-food.html From Examiner.com (a generally conservative news org as I recall -- SourceWatch confirms it's owned by Philip Anschutz:  http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Examiner.com, "an active Republican donor" according to his SourceWatch bio (linked from above)): "GMO foods research, funding, and UC Davis' World Food Center" http://www.examiner.com/article/gmo-foods-research-funding-and-uc-davis-world-food-center Roger Beachy has been hired by UC Davis to be the director of the new World Food Center, says an October 31, 2013 UC Davis news release, "Roger Beachy to head new World Food Center at UC Davis." He's well-known in the agricultural community for his support of the use of genetic modification (GMO) to produce disease-resistant crops. And: Beachy states, in the Sacramento Bee news article, "If I have a choice between chemicals and genetics, I will go with genetics every time." On Beachy and multinationals such as Monsanto: Will Monsanto have a big presence at the center? It’s hard to tell. The private industry – the large multinationals – have tended to invest in science that serves the very large commodity crops, like wheat, corn, soy and cotton. Those are not major crops in California. I think that the specialties that we have here – the more than 400 kinds of crops being grown – will require a different kind of investor. On the other hand, multinationals like DuPont and Monsanto seed companies, and I think that is important to California, and I hope they come and talk to us. http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article2581499.html#storylink=misearch (Emphasis added.) So ... not involved, but definitely an open invitation from the director. So, where do we stand? ⚫ Long, meandering article. ⚫ Set of questionable associations. ⚫ A clearly stated pro-GMO bias from the UC Davis center's directory.  Though nominally this isn't a story about GMO, which is a bit odd. How about we dig more into SourceWatch? Oh, wait a moment... +Mirosław Baran  Pipes up So, having posted a confused and questionable piece without context on his own part, a rather shameful piece of intellectual laziness, Miroslaw lanches his own petard: I'm sure you will be able to point me to actual inaccuracies and errors in the referenced text. If you can't, your comments will be removed – I'm not interested in a debate in the style of global warming denialists. I welcome references to published research. I will remove references to science denialist websites. Several comments, including my original one to the post (this post is largely based on it) are deleted.  Host's prerogative, but it doesn't speak much to intellectual honesty. Also deleted is a comment from +Ellim Sluouf: "Why Jon Entine’s “trillion meal study” won't save us from GMO dangers" http://www.gmwatch.org/index.php/news/archive/2014/15669-why-jon-entine-s-trillion-meal-study-won-t-save-us-from-gmo-dangers ... which, granted, is a anti-GMO site, but gives a detailed critique of an earlier "study" of Entine's. Miroslaw's accusation of "debate in the style of global warming denialists" is all the more ironic as the associations of Entine are the same network of organizations and funders that are behind much global warming denial:  George Mason University, the American Enterprise Institute, and via the Genetic Literacy Project (of which Entine is Executive Director), a group called STATS, which has received over $800,000 in funding from:  "the John M. Olin Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the William H. Donner Foundation. Other funders include Richard Mellon Scaife's Carthage Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation and the Castle Rock Foundation. Media Transparency identifies the group as having gained 34 grants totaling $2,415,000" http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Statistical_Assessment_Service The SourceWatch Files If you haven't already encountered it, SourceWatch (http://sourcewatch.org) is a wiki and resource for tracking influence and bias in media and organizations.  I first came across it tracking down ... climate-change denial references.  So Miroslaw's irony runs deep. Looking through SourceWatch we will find that the people and organizations behind the story you have posted are the very same people and organizations behind global warming denial. Jon Entine http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jon_Entine ... is not only an author for, but executive director of "Genetic Literacy Project" http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Genetic_Literacy_Project which is a sister organization of STATS, the Statistical Assessment Service: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Statistical_Assessment_Service On which we find: From its inception, however, STATS has repeatedly attacked environmentalists, civil libertarians, feminists and other "liberals." The first director of STATS, David Murray, was not a statistician at all. His academic training was in anthropology, but he was often described in the media as a "statistician" when he commented on various topics. On funding: [F]unding for STATS ... come[s] from conservative funders including the John M. Olin Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the William H. Donner Foundation. Other funders include Richard Mellon Scaife's Carthage Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation and the Castle Rock Foundation. Media Transparency identifies the group as having gained 34 grants totaling $2,415,000 (unadjusted for inflation) between 1995 and 2009. You'll find Scaife and Olin among your climate change deniers. Center for Media and Public Affairs is associated with many of the same funders, to the tune of over $2 million, and is strongly tied with conservative viewpoints. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_for_Media_and_Public_Affairs You can also trace Entine's other associations, particularly what SourceWatch has to say on the EIA (another Koche-backed disinformation mill) and George Mason University (dittos): http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Enterprise_Institute David H. Koch is on the American Enterprise Institute's National Council, whose members "serve as ambassadors for AEI, providing AEI with advice, insight, and guidance as [it] looks to reach out to new friends across the country." Between 2002 and 2013, the American Enterprise Institute received a total of $867,289 in funding from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/George_Mason_University George Mason University is a Virginia-based public university near Washington, D.C. A "magnet for right-wing money" [1] and heavily Koch-funded[1], it is notable for hosting over 40 libertarian research centers and affiliates including the Institute for Humane Studies and the Mercatus Center." My own background and biases Just to be clear:  Jon Entine's name had never registered with me prior to Miroslaw's post.  I don't have strong feelings on GMO crops.  Slightly negative, but as much for the economic and control issues as for scientific and genetics ones.  I question overall merits of the research.  I don't avoid them altogether myself, and have done work for companies involved in GMO crop research and production in the past. I do have some familiarity with the Koch / Scaife / Olin / Libertarian disinformation industrial complex.  I've twigged on some earlier instances -- a hit piece put out by Richard "Dr. Evil" Berman last March triggered some similar suspicions.  They proved well justified:  http://redd.it/1znodw And my gripe against the Koch / Libertarian disinformation industrial complex is largely that they are corrupting media, the truth, public discussion, and the democratic process.  I'm a stickler for accuracy and honesty.  And at a base level:  they're dishonest. On the specifics of Entine's article A few more housekeeping tasks. This is a journalistic article not a scientific one.  Entine's academic qualifications are an undergraduate degree in philosophy.  He's worked in broadcast journalism prior to becoming a propagandist. And so ... we've got something which isn't a scientific paper.  It's a journalistic hack piece, with references to "the Dr. Doom of bees" and paragraphs like: To many environmental activists, the pesticide does more harm than good, and they’ve found their champion in Chensheng Lu. It’s been a busy fall for the professor, jetting back and forth between Boston and Washington, with forays around the United States to talk to adoring audiences. He presents himself as the defender of bees, and this fiery message has transformed a once obscure academic into a global “green” rock star, feted at events like last week’s lunch talk at Harvard. ... which is to say:  a lot of verbiage with zero relevant scientific content, but a hell of a lot of personality smearing. Ironically, one of Entine's earlier essays is "When Science is Unfavorable, Attack the Scientist" http://www.realclearscience.com/2011/04/29/when_science_is_unfavorable_attack_the_scientist_240904.html I guess the guy knows his stuff... Eventually, Entine tires of throwing shit (or runs out), and gets to some a few salient points: ⚫ European hive counts are increasing, not decreasing, 1995-2012. ⚫ An Australian survey of the honey bee industry determined that "[T]he introduction of the neonicotinoids has led to an overall reduction in the risks to the agricultural environment from the application of insecticides.", according to Entine.  Sadly, I cannot confirm that quote as the report is presently unavailable with the notice "This publication is under review and will be made available again once that review has concluded."  http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/livestock/honey-bees/overview (the link from Entine's document is 404). ⚫ He claims hive counts are stable or increasing in the US and Canada, 1995-2013. ⚫ He disputes the connections between neonicotinoids and CCD.  He fails to address the bulk of the evidence. ⚫ Claims dosing was too high -- that slightly lower levels are perfectly safe, but that it's incredible that the bees didn't just keel over and die with what Chensheng treated them. ⚫ An irrelevant side trip through Cell Phone land. ⚫ More character slams on biogenetics PhDs (that is, people with far higher educational training, with far more relevance to the topic at hand, than Mr. Entine). Researchers Entine paints Chensheng as the primary driver of the neonic connection with CCD, which might allow for an accusation of tainted science.  But a quick check of Google Scholar finds well over a thousand results when "chensheng" is excluded from search, vs. 17 when his name is specifically included: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=neonicotinoid+colony+collapse+disorder+-Chensheng&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39 http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=neonicotinoid+colony+collapse+disorder+Chensheng&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39 Clearly, Chensheng Lu is not the only researcher drawing this connection (though no, I have not reviewed the 1090 papers in depth). Entine's focus on a single researcher seems oddly misplaced. Colony Counts Entine focuses on highly-aggregated counts over a limited number of years.  The Wikipedia article on CCD discusses both much longer term trends, 1947-present, and localized hive losses: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Colony_collapse_disorder&oldid=638721244 The National Agriculture Statistics Service reported 2.44 million honey-producing hives were in the United States in February 2008, down from 4.5 million in 1980, and 5.9 million in 1947, though these numbers underestimate the total number of managed hives, as they exclude several thousand hives managed for pollination contracts only, and also do not include hives managed by beekeepers owning fewer than five hives. This under-representation may be offset by the practice of counting some hives more than once; hives that are moved to different states to produce honey are counted in each state's total and summed in total counts. Non-CCD winter losses as high as 50% have occurred in some years and regions (e.g., 2000–2001 in Pennsylvania). Normal winter losses are typically considered to be in the range of 15–25%. In many cases, beekeepers reporting significant losses of bees did not experience true CCD, but losses due to other causes. Entine's discussion addresses neither case.  His US colony counts though do seem to match the USDA data I checked 1998-2012. I'll also note that while Chenshen is cited in the Wikipedia article, he is referenced in only two of the 179 references in the article.  (The Wikipedia cites here are to the specific version of the page current when I first began writing this response). More "Dr. Doom" and credential attacks Further, despite his own lack of scientific qualifications, Entine has no reservations attacking Chenshen's, while throwing in yet another "Dr. Doom" reference: Who is Chensheng (Alex) Lu, the Dr. Doom of honey bees? He is an environmental researcher with the Harvard School of Public Health with no formal training in entomology. Chensheng has Masters and Doctorates in his field of Environmental Health. Entine's description of the scope and scale of CCD fail to include judging criteria used and established by USDA as detailed in  "Colony Collapse Disorder Progress Report (2010)" http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/br/ccd/ccdprogressreport2010.pdf E.g., "Definition of CCD ... (vanEngelsdorp et al. 2009, PLoS ONE, vol. 4, issue 8) described in detail the field symptoms used to define colonies as suffering from CCD."  This includes behavioral measures beyond simple hive counts. Move Over, Twinkie Defense, We've got the Twitter Defense In attempting to disparage Chensheng's work ... Entine gives us ... Twitter screencaps. This is not how you do science, people. The substance of this dispute is over the dosing of neonics:  135 ppb (parts per billion) vs. what Entine claims is more realistic, 1-3 ppb. Though I find claims of a 100x fold dosing delta, still being measured in parts per billion, and insistence of the safety of the lower bound, somewhat at odds with the quote Entine includes: What’s remarkable, numerous scientists and beekeepers told me, is that Lu’s bees didn’t just keel over in the first few weeks after sucking down what amounted to a lethal cocktail every day. So ... neonics -- safe, or not?  What are the odds of a chance encounter of a dense clump of the stuff on occasion? “It’s surprising those colonies lasted so long given the stratospheric quantities of insecticide [Lu] pumped into them for 13 weeks,” wrote Jonathan Getty on Bee-L Chat, a discussion forum for bee experts. I'll also note, again, that the criticism here is of one researcher, with 17 papers of over 1,000 published on the subject. Makes you wonder if Chensheng is so absolutely crucial to the plot or ... if perhaps by putting the pressure on one researcher others might be discouraged from entering the frey for fear of the heat. If this were coming from a source less clearly biased, it might have some weight.  As it stands, no. Having exhausted his meager vaguely science-related objections, Entine turns again to disinformation.  "It's not neonics".  A handful of carefully chosen experts to support his claims (but no review of the 1,000+ paper literature on neonics -- always focusing on Chensheng).  Insisting that "independent" government researchers are now exploring alternatives.  Hello, boys and girls, today we're going to learn the words "regulatory capture".  Can you cay "regulatory capture"?  Very good, I knew you could! .... Follow the Money, Honey Oh, and what's the incentive here?  How about preserving pesticide sales? Friends of the Earth predicted a disinformation campaign along the lines of the tobacco attacks, back in May: "Follow the Honey:  7 ways pesticide companies are spinning the bee crisis to protect profits" https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/follow-honey-7-ways-pesticide-companies-are-spinning-bee-crisis-protect-profits http://libcloud.s3.amazonaws.com/93/f0/f/4656/FollowTheHoneyReport.pdf Why?  It's a $14.2 billion market. The players:  Bayer, Monsanto (via pre-treated seeds), and Syngenta.  If you don't recognize that last name, it's because the company was only formed in 2000, by the merger of Novartis Agribusiness and Zeneca Agrochemicals. The tactics "Follow the Honey" identifies: ⚫ Divert attention from pesticides ⚫ "Bee Care" PR buzz ⚫ Buying credibility ⚫ Company videos masquerading as news ⚫ Blaming the farmer ⚫ Spinning science ⚫ Attacking regulators ⚫ When all else fails, go to court This piece is definitely part 1, and a bit of 6 & 7. Organic Consumers also have plenty of background on Jon Entine: https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/biotech-front-man-jon-entine-part-shameless-gang-propagandists-and-character-assassins This is a continuation from Part Three of a comprehensive investigative report revealing the untold story behind Jon Entine, biotech shill, character assassination operative, Forbes.com writer, American Enterprise Institute fellow and George Mason University research fellow. Entine also has ties to Monsanto and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And, finally, to pull my own Twitter Proof, Nassim Taleb: This is a reminder that Mr, Jon Entine is a charlatan, GMO corporate shill paid to terrorize scientists and skeptics on the web  @JonEntine https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/542343904113487872 (Update:  I see that Entine and Taleb have a prior history, see Entine's article list above accusing Taleb of being a shill ... a rather frequently occuring card in Entine's playbook.) So:  no, I'm not an entomologist, biologist, or even scientist.  Just a concerned, aware, and conscious citizen of Earth (presently residing on Altair IV).  But then, neither is Jon.  He's got a track record of corporate shilling going back decades.  I scream at Google every so often.  Would it do well for someone with a science background to look at this?  Probably.  Necessary?  Given the situation, not particularly. #Disinformation   #ColonyCollapseDisorder   #neonicotinoids  
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Commented on post by Bill Smith in Climate Changehttp://shift-magazine.org/magazine/see-no-evil-the-morality-of-collapse/ Some common reactions to the problem. The technotopian one is a bit scary if it's used as an excuse to do nothing and just continue with business as usual. — Americans concerns about environment near record lows: Americans care less about environmental issues now than they have in the past—and they’re no more worried about global warming than they were decades ago, a new poll shows. The Gallup survey released on Wednesday shows Americans were more concerned about the environment in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but interested dropped off in the early 2000s. h/t +Carbon Brief​ #USPublicOpinion #GallupPoll 
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Commented on postI'd argue slightly differently. If it's possible to have a Secure OS, then it must have been open source. That's something of an article of faith. And I suspect it's not possible because all programmers write shitty code with bugs in it. (c Dave Winer!). Meaning that even a "secure" OS will have undiscovered exploits. And occasionally those will inevitably be discovered and exploited before they get fixed.
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Commented on post by Pete M in Google Play Music All Access+Guillermo Sanchez Is that on Android or iOS?  Because I don't see one on Desktop Chrome. — Is there any music player that will sync or play my GPMAA account thru it? My problem is the lack of controls with GPMAA. I want to have songs on playlists start at a certain point, while others end at a specific time too. Also an equalizer would be nice. Is there anything like that out there, or do we have to patiently wait for more updates from GPMAA?
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Commented on post by Shinji Mikami in MotoGPSo what will be Dani's reason for coming 2nd or lower this year? — (September 2012) -Casey: "Hey Dani, i won't ride anymore. I go home. You will be the next world champion next season, you will see" -Dani: "Sure, Marc will be in troubles in MotoGP...."
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in I've done that for specific sources. But I don't want to do that for the 1&1 relay server because that will white list all the real spam as well. — Can anyone suggest a good way of reporting excessive spam false positives to Google? My main email address is with 1&1 but I route it all via GMail. In the last few days, GMail has decided to blacklist the main 1&1 email server so any incoming email that's not specifically white-listed via my filters and contact list is getting lost in the spam folder. Obviously I've reported this to 1&1, but I'd like to be able to report it to Google since it's fairly obviously an excessive setting in the Gmail algorithms. As ever it's quite hard to know where to report it. I've sent feedback via the GMail settings button but like all Google feedback buttons it's a bit of a black hole with no hope of a direct response.
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Commented on post by James M. in ChromecastSorry, +justin happel was that sarcastic or are you agreeing with me? ;) You'll just have to excuse my British acerbic attitude and I'll try hard to keep it under control. But it's born of frustration that so much of Chromecast support is Android first, iOs mostly, and Chrome occasionally. I just find it downright ridiculous that there's still no way to control Backdrop from a desktop computer. — How to enable Street Art on Chromecast Backdrop: ● Navigate to the Backdrop section of the Chromecast app ● Select the gear icon in the upper right to edit your Backdrop settings ● Choose the Art category ● Turn on Street Art Learn about Backdrop for Chromecast https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6080931?hl=en
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Commented on post by James M. in ChromecastIs there an equivalent with HDMI in, HDMI out and Audio out? IMHO, Google should  a) Put a 3.5mm jack on the side of the Chromecast and/or b) Sell an official HDMI pass through connector with an audio jack on it, and/or c) Sell an official or recommended HDMI -> 3.5mm jack with no HDMI out so a Chromecast can be hooked straight onto a home stereo and emulate a Cast for Audio device. And the Chromecast setup app should have a checkbox for "This Chromecast has no display and is only for Cast for Audio". — Chromecast, not just for TV anymore. How to (English language) video shows how to turn your Chromecast into a networked audio adapter! Play music via wifi from a device to Chromecast dongle to a wired speaker. Please note: Purchase and install adapter at your own risk. Google only supports Chromecast when connected to a HDTV via HDMI.
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Commented on post by James M. in ChromecastSo how do you do this from desktop Chrome or desktop Chromecast app. Or on a Chromebook. Oh. You can't. Well that sucks! — How to enable Street Art on Chromecast Backdrop: ● Navigate to the Backdrop section of the Chromecast app ● Select the gear icon in the upper right to edit your Backdrop settings ● Choose the Art category ● Turn on Street Art Learn about Backdrop for Chromecast https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6080931?hl=en
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusI miss the days when computers were full of fireworks that could be ignited by feeding the computer the Cretan Liar paradox. — Static and Line Noise +Andreas Schou just commented on why his G+ profile gives his education as Awesome Skeleton Hell University and major as in Extreme Death -- as a final response to "the automated microaggression of the popup that kept asking me whether I went to CMU, Stanford, or Harvard". https://plus.google.com/+AndreasSchou/posts/MHCrEDbYdXB There are similar rationales behind my attendance at Krell Independent Study, Church of Titanium Sporkism, Krell Power Systems Unlimited, and Altair IV. Demand input and you shall receive input.... Which gives pause to think. So, one of the theories behind dreaming, hallucinations, and sensory deprivation is that our minds are data organizing systems which demand sensible inputs.  And when we don't have sensible inputs, we'll read the line noise and static and try to make sense out of them. You could, say, try staring at static for ten hours:  http://fixyt.com/watch?v=t0I4mTEdAf8 Which makes me wonder what happens to a huge data snarfing system (Google, Facebook, NSA, Amazon's pricing systems, modern Weaponized Viral Clickbait media, Wall Street computerized trading systems) when you simply feed them random data, perhaps through induced demand. See also: Anomalous Experiences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_experiences "Sensory deprivation can produce hallucinations in only 15 minutes" http://phys.org/news175504269.html
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Commented on post by Planet Experts in Climate ChangeI found this breakdown of California water use interesting. California water use is roughly 50% environmental (mostly isolated in the North), 40% agricultural and just 10% urban (of urban I believe culinary drinking water is just 30% of that, so less than 3% of all water usage) http://www.ppic.org/main/publication_show.asp?i=1108 Which makes the water rationing and approach to the problem hugely political among powerful vested interests. And not it's the whole of the SW affected, not just California. If the big reservoirs run dry, communities in Nevada, Arizona will be affected as well. What kind of state is Eastern Oregon in? — As Drought Continues, California Is Running Out of Water - Planet Experts In a recent op-ed for the LA Times, NASA senior water scientist Jay Famiglietti warned that California’s ongoing drought has left it with only a year’s supply of stored water. Click the link below to learn more. #drought  
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Commented on post by Jason Phan in Motorcycle RoadracingAnd WSS turned out exactly right. — The WSBK Chang International Circuit inaugural race recap! Can anyone stop Jonathan Rea this season?! #WorldSuperbike #WSBK #ChangInternationalCircuit   https://jasonphan.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/chang-international-circuit-race-recap/
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Commented on post by Paul Gray in Developing with Google+An issue that's harder to deal with is the spam +1. That then increments the "new activity" counter on the Communities page. Which then leads you to view the community only to find nothing new there. ps. Do all communities eventually host a meta thread discussing the nature of the community? It seems to be one of those Internet scale rules like Godwin's. — Leaving this group as it is not my job to flag up spam after spam that could easily be picked up by google and at the very least more easily dealt with. Fact that it is getting worse and is not how one wishes to spend ones time, hence I shall be leaving this group immediately. If google manages to fix there problem then give me a poke, but until then this is another group leaving because of the relentless spam.
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusI also worship at the Church of the Titanium Spork. It's one of my most treasured possessions. If it ever breaks, I expect the experience will finally release me from my attachment to the material world and the illusion of permanence. — Static and Line Noise +Andreas Schou just commented on why his G+ profile gives his education as Awesome Skeleton Hell University and major as in Extreme Death -- as a final response to "the automated microaggression of the popup that kept asking me whether I went to CMU, Stanford, or Harvard". https://plus.google.com/+AndreasSchou/posts/MHCrEDbYdXB There are similar rationales behind my attendance at Krell Independent Study, Church of Titanium Sporkism, Krell Power Systems Unlimited, and Altair IV. Demand input and you shall receive input.... Which gives pause to think. So, one of the theories behind dreaming, hallucinations, and sensory deprivation is that our minds are data organizing systems which demand sensible inputs.  And when we don't have sensible inputs, we'll read the line noise and static and try to make sense out of them. You could, say, try staring at static for ten hours:  http://fixyt.com/watch?v=t0I4mTEdAf8 Which makes me wonder what happens to a huge data snarfing system (Google, Facebook, NSA, Amazon's pricing systems, modern Weaponized Viral Clickbait media, Wall Street computerized trading systems) when you simply feed them random data, perhaps through induced demand. See also: Anomalous Experiences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_experiences "Sensory deprivation can produce hallucinations in only 15 minutes" http://phys.org/news175504269.html
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in EnvironmentThanks for that. "landscaping irrigation" is an interesting use of words! It feels to me like at least to start with this is a political problem balancing vested interests. Agriculture is huge and concentrated in relatively few players that are already being squeezed on prices and profits. Conversely, urban interests are rich and varied probably with more collective political power. And because agricultural use dominates the water usage to such an extent but represents such a small proportion of GDP, dramatic reductions essentially solve the problem for everyone else. So agribusiness gets squeezed and encouraged to die and leave. And to some extent this can be made to happen simply by market pricing. Double, quadruple (or whatever) the cost of water and the farmers will simply give up. Assuming somebody somewhere can impose that policy on the water companies. — I wonder if anyone appreciates how serious, how close and how inevitable this is. Are the answers really: "extremely", "24 months" and "totally"?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Environment there is near zero risk to culinary water (i.e. cities and so on) so to clarify that is not the issue. Um. Not trying to be cute, but: "citation needed". How low do the reservoirs like Lake Mead have to get before the consumer taps start running dry in places like Palm Springs? Of course it's not just California but the whole SW states region. — I wonder if anyone appreciates how serious, how close and how inevitable this is. Are the answers really: "extremely", "24 months" and "totally"?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in EnvironmentI really haven't seen anyone talking about making any realistic preparations to deal with this. And I suspect that the US laissez faire approach to this kind of environmental disaster is to just let it happen and let market forces sort it out. So I have an awful fascination with wondering exactly what happens when the taps run dry for more than a day or two. Here's a hint for Californians. Forcing restaurants to ask customers if they want iced water before putting it on the table isn't going to be enough. — I wonder if anyone appreciates how serious, how close and how inevitable this is. Are the answers really: "extremely", "24 months" and "totally"?
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Commented on post by Jaana Nyström in Google+ Tips & AdviceThis only really works if you have an unusual name. My problem is that I get posts and comments about the famous US politician mixed in with mine. - Google Plus should have an extra tab on profiles that showed just my comments.  - G+ Search should support a commenter:ID keyword (and an author:id keyword) - G+ Search should include the sort order in the URL so you can save it and bookmark it. — Find posts with your comments If you have a Custom URL: "Jaana Nyström" -inurl:+Jaana Nyström If you don't have a Custom URL: Replace my name with yours and also the Google+ user ID. You can find that by right clicking on your name on any post, copy the link, paste it and cut the 21-digit number. "Jaana Nyström"-inurl:107742059751171695340 Paste that in the search bar of Google+. You get to choose between Best and Most Recent posts where you have commented. #Jaanatip     #Search     #Comments     #Googleplustips  
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Commented on post by Christopher Newsom in Google Play Music All AccessIs this actual duplicate tracks, or is it bad metadata? Because I've had a small problem with what is actually a single album with 8 tracks or so, spread across 2 or 3 albums due to just slightly incorrect labeling on some tracks. I haven't found anything better than just eyeballing the collection and working through updating the tags. Thankfully it was only very old items in my collection and relatively few of them. — I can't believe there is no way to easily select and delete duplicates in your GPM library. Searched the web thoroughly with no success. Any suggestions?
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Commented on post by Will Dailey in Google Play Music All AccessWhat you need is an iPod! — I listen to google play music at work threw my headphones for like 8hour day. And now my Data is being increased big time. Can anyone help me use google music like off line and save data.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)If SInclair had gone ahead, they would never have managed to build and sell at a profit at that price. £1575 maybe but £575 was always a fantasy. — The Sinclair E-Bike prototype built by Ben Wilson Design was just gorgeous. Such a shame the idea was dropped. It needed a fair bit of work to productionise it and had some flaws that needed working out. But as an idea for a semi-enclosed recumbent e-bike it's lovely. Now can somebody else please make something like this. http://ridethemachine.tumblr.com/post/114106470980 http://www.sinclairzx.com/spec-x-1.html http://www.benwilsondesign.co.uk/
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Commented on post by David Salmon, Consultant in Google Play Music All AccessYou have to do this the other way round. Maintain a local library of music, sync it to the iPod. And also upload/download it to GPM. Music Manager upload/download to iTunes works reasonably well. However, while it will sync from iTunes to GPM, you can only download all of GPM in one go or individual tracks. It doesn't auto sync GPM updates back to iTunes. Perhaps it should. There's still a lot of iPods and iPhones out there. Perhaps Google Play Music should play better with them. — I was looking at buying an iPod Nano but want to use Google Play Music with it.  Any idea if and how I can do this?
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Commented on post by Morgan Roney in Google Play Music All AccessI used to be a big fan of http://www.last.fm/tag/chillosophy And this is why Google should recreate http://last.fm's crowdsourced tagging. It would mean you could also get things like http://www.last.fm/tag/cocktails%20at%20sunset Commercially defined Genre names don't cut it and aren't nearly fine grained enough. Also. If you like Chill  with an Electronic-dance-club flavour check out anything from this label and anything their artists have released elsewhere. It's all good. http://www.discogs.com/label/211527-Auxiliary Which then raises the point that Google ought to recreate or work with Discogs. It's THE definitive source. — I'm trying out Google Play All Access and created my first playlist.  One of my favorite genres is Chill and there doesn't appear to be a lot of playlists or radio stations dedicated to that here, so I thought I would contribute.  I'll keep growing it.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric BikesFully faired, electric assist, trike, velomobiles are another thing entirely. And kind of awkward legally, because even with a small motor they're capable of much more speed than is legal in even the most enlightened jurisdictions. — The Sinclair E-Bike prototype built by Ben Wilson Design was just gorgeous. Such a shame the idea was dropped. It needed a fair bit of work to productionise it and had some flaws that needed working out. But as an idea for a semi-enclosed recumbent e-bike it's lovely. Now can somebody else please make something like this. http://ridethemachine.tumblr.com/post/114106470980 http://www.sinclairzx.com/spec-x-1.html http://www.benwilsondesign.co.uk/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)More pics. https://wilsonbrothers.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/research/ https://wilsonbrothers.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/big-bucks/ And art car. https://wilsonbrothers.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/in-the-wild-2/ — The Sinclair E-Bike prototype built by Ben Wilson Design was just gorgeous. Such a shame the idea was dropped. It needed a fair bit of work to productionise it and had some flaws that needed working out. But as an idea for a semi-enclosed recumbent e-bike it's lovely. Now can somebody else please make something like this. http://ridethemachine.tumblr.com/post/114106470980 http://www.sinclairzx.com/spec-x-1.html http://www.benwilsondesign.co.uk/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in ChromecastFrom desktop Chrome? Because I can't see any cast button. Yes you can cast the whole tab, but that's not quite the same and doesn't take advantage of a media receiver in the Chromecast playing the stream direct, the way Youtube, GPM and the mobile versions of Tunein work. I've logged a support call/feature request with Tunein, but nothing yet. — Google Cast For Audio. http://www.google.com/cast/audio/ If you scroll down to their content partners, do any of them actually work, from the desktop, in the UK, cast to a Chromecast? Because the only one that seems to do all that is Google Play Music. Not impressed.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)I think that's probably curable if it turned out to be a problem. I think you'd probably need to have an open space behind the rider's head for a start. — The Sinclair E-Bike prototype built by Ben Wilson Design was just gorgeous. Such a shame the idea was dropped. It needed a fair bit of work to productionise it and had some flaws that needed working out. But as an idea for a semi-enclosed recumbent e-bike it's lovely. Now can somebody else please make something like this. http://ridethemachine.tumblr.com/post/114106470980 http://www.sinclairzx.com/spec-x-1.html http://www.benwilsondesign.co.uk/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Electric Vehicles (UK)There's some video here of the prototype being ridden in London. Doesn't look too bad, although you're right it's not as maneuverable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5C_PJy5MIhc Recumbents in traffic always look really scary to me, but I imagine electric assist really helps. Forget the fairing for a minute. These long wheelbase semi-recumbents are quite popular, especially in the USA. And there are lots of places where they would work fine as a general utility bike just a bit away from the crazy UK town traffic with it's tipper lorries, buses, HGVs and aggressive BMW SUVs. The fairing just adds a bit of weather protection and storage space. And one thing in particular, it makes you a lot more visible. There'd be no excuse for "sorry mate I didn't see you". More likely is that you cause incidents with all the rubber necking of "WTF is that?" ;) — The Sinclair E-Bike prototype built by Ben Wilson Design was just gorgeous. Such a shame the idea was dropped. It needed a fair bit of work to productionise it and had some flaws that needed working out. But as an idea for a semi-enclosed recumbent e-bike it's lovely. Now can somebody else please make something like this. http://ridethemachine.tumblr.com/post/114106470980 http://www.sinclairzx.com/spec-x-1.html http://www.benwilsondesign.co.uk/
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Commented on post by D.B. Clay in Climate ChangeThis should also examine the costs to society related to subsidies funded by taxpayers and government debt. Not enough is made of the fact that Non-renewables are hugely subsidised either directly or via preferential tax breaks for non-renewable R&D. 
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Commented on post by National Geographic+Luc Ansoms Paul A Young, William Curley, Charbonnel and Walker, Hotel Du Chocolat,  Artisan du Chocolat, Rococo, etc, etc http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/londons-best-chocolate-shops Then there's our fine tradition of Hot Chocolate houses that date back to the 16th century and pre-date the Coffee house. The http://www.worldchocolateawards.com/ are based in London. The best little Chocolate blog is based in London. http://www.chocablog.com/ I rest my case. — Brace yourselves: a chocolate shortage is predicted to hit within the next five years—a result of climate change, disease, and rapidly growing demands in China and India. Genetic engineering may be able to help—the question is, do we want it to? #FutureofFood
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Commented on post by MyUtilityGenius in Climate Changehttp://www.energylivenews.com/2015/03/19/osborne-slammed-for-barren-energy-efficiency-budget/ Mr Osborne’s failure to deliver on other clean energy technologies also attracted criticism from green groups. Greenpeace UK Executive Director John Sauven said the UK’s renewable industry needs a “long-term strategy not just a belated wink to green voters”. “This eleventh-hour move hardly makes up for six budgets of business bungs for fracking, tax breaks for oil giants and neglect for the green technologies of the future,” he added. The Chancellor’s package of support included tax breaks worth £1.3 billion to boost North Sea oil and gas. — Will George Osborne put long-term prosperity over part politics? Could we see further announcements on fracking or North Sea oil? And will the Chancellor mention renewable energy at all? Follow the 2015 Budget live with edie.  It's election year - so despite all the talk of no gimmicks or giveaways, we're likely to see some election politics today.   Elections are not won on environmental policy. That is the accepted wisdom. But sustainability professionals are, by their nature, an optimistic bunch, and have been vocal in laying out their demands for Wednesday's budget - the last of the current Parliament.  http://www.edie.net/news/6/Budget-2015-live-blog-business-energy-environment-key-points-reaction/
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Commented on post by National Geographic"Brugge, Belgium, which is considered the capital of chocolate" Actually, London is the capital of Chocolate. — Brace yourselves: a chocolate shortage is predicted to hit within the next five years—a result of climate change, disease, and rapidly growing demands in China and India. Genetic engineering may be able to help—the question is, do we want it to? #FutureofFood
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Commented on post by Gilles Bourdin in Climate Change"Brugge, Belgium, which is considered the capital of chocolate" Actually, London is the capital of Chocolate. — This is something people will now hopefully appreciate and understand.
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Commented on post by Leon Nicholls in Google Cast DevelopersNot an SDK issue. But there's an obvious feature here which is an official Chromecast to audio jack/Phono converter to allow a Chromecast to be plugged into a stereo. And (maybe) a checkbox in the Chromecast setup to say that this Chromecast is audio only. — Google Cast SDK Release 2.6 We have released various updates for Google Cast developers: http://goo.gl/Al3H9Q These include: • Android SDK • iOS sender SDK • Receiver SDK • Media Player Library (MPL) We have also added a new section in the Google Cast developer site detailing support for Google Cast for audio:  https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/audio The new section explains how to enable/disable support for audio devices using the Google Cast Developer Console and how to take the device capabilities into consideration. Note: Your app must use device filtering by app ID in order for it to properly show or hide discovered audio-only devices according to your app registration status.  The Google Cast Design Checklist has also been updated to ensure proper volume and playback control in the sender apps: https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/design_checklist#sender-control-volume The reference receiver app has been updated to support audio devices: https://github.com/googlecast/Cast-Player-Sample Happy Casting! #googlecastsdk #googlecast #chromecast #androidtv
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Commented on post by Brent Sullivan in Chromecast CentralSo how do I use these to provide a Backdrop style gallery on the Chromecast? By using a laptop/desktop. — Tons more artwork to cast to the Big Screen!
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Commented on post by Peter FelthamThe 1.8" drives and cards all run on 3.3v so just chucking a 2.5" drive on will require a separate 5v power supply. But I can just about see how a 2.5" disk could be hung off the side of an open case. The good side is that quite a lot of reasonably modern cars have an iPod dock that will interface with the steering wheel and radio controls. Good project. — This looks very useful to repurpose an old iPod into a controller for a massive music collection for a vehicle. Nice share by +Julian Bond - thanks
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Commented on post by Lisa Bennett in Climate Change1st world problems! Go North, young man. — My son may is the most optimistic person I know but, eventually, he too will have to reckon with the reality that skiing in California is changing -- and not in ways skiers dream of. So, what does a parent do when you know your child's greatest love -- the thing he imagines designing his future around -- feels like it is slipping away because of something as seemingly out of our control as climate change? New post via HuffPo.
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Commented on postAs ever, "Classical Liberal" seems to mean something different in the USA to the UK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_(UK) is the tradition of John Stuart Mill, Keynes, Asquith, Lloyd George Beveridge and more recently the centerist Labour party spin off, Social Democrats. When Classical Liberalism split into Social and Neo, the UK liberal party stayed much closer to it's social welfare roots while Neo-Liberalism and Libertarianism was swallowed by the right wing Tories. That Social Democratic, strong welfare, mixed economy, centrist position is what we think of when we say "Liberal". Which is why the current Liberal-Tory coalition is destroying the Liberals again as they leave in disgust at the watering down of their ideals. So what happened to Social Liberalism in the USA? I'm thinking that ought to be well to the left of the Democrats and so has pretty much disappeared.
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Commented on post by Hannibal Swift in Google Play MusicAnd support uploading and syncing industry standard .pls and .m3u files — Okay, so the GMusic uploader doesn't recognise smart playlists in itunes. That means the majority of my playlists will never be able to be uploaded. That's weeks of work to replicate them in GMusic and Google's playlist creator is buggy and unreliable to say the least. Come on, Google, give us a smart playlist creator so we can build them by year or genre or musician.
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Commented on post by Dennis M in Motorcycle RoadracingI was referring to the organisation, not the racers. — A nice post-race interview after the 74th #Daytona200  . I like the way these men spoke of the events as they went down during the exciting closing laps. You can tell these guys have been racing each other for many years, and the racing showed how much trust was there between them. I was particularly glad to see Josh Herrin ride the way I knew he could. This is the kind of thing that will help him put last year behind him for good. Way to go, Josh!  I know that many felt that the event was a bit amateurish, and it's true that maybe it didn't have the polish that other big-name series has. Yes, some improvements in procedure and safety equipment are needed, but these are the kinds of enhancements that MotoAmerica can bring to the show should things work out and they take control of this event next year. With their help this race has the potential to be great again. At the end of the day the racing was very good all over the track, the finish was fantastic and the fans got a very good show.  I hope Mr. Rainey was watching so he could see how much potential there is here.  #MotoAmerica  
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Commented on post by Jin Ha Lee in Google Play Music All AccessFilling this in made me think about why I don't actually use GPM much. For me it's become just a backup of my music collection, and a very occasional source from when I can't access it directly. - GPM UI and feature set sucks compared with desktop music apps. - GPM -> iPod sync is long winded and pretty much unusable - GPM playlist support is broken. It's too hard and long-winded to upload or download to industry standard .pls and .m3u files. - GPM's knowledge base isn't a patch on http://last.fm+discogs At least partly because GPM is dependent on 3rd party metadata suppliers and doesn't allow crowd-sourcing of the data. - GPM search and sort only works on Artist-Album-Title and ignores all the other MP3 ID tags. And so on. I got my 3 months free GPMAA with a Chromecast. I won't be paying when it expires. — If you listen to music and have a cloud music service that you prefer, would you please help us by participating in a survey? Our research team at the University of Washington Information School are conducting a study to learn more about how people use cloud music services to store, organize, and listen to their musical collections.  This will take about 20-30 minutes to complete. In return, you may choose to have your name entered into a raffle with a chance to win one of ten $20 Amazon gift cards. All individual responses will be kept confidential. Thank you for your consideration!
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Commented on post by Ben Jones in Google Play Music All AccessI'd love to be able to search on Year as well. In fact any and all of the MP3 ID tags and metadata. The lack of search and sorting on the metadata beyond, Artist-Album-Title is a major issue, I think. I've left feedback. — I would love to be able to make searches by record label. Is this possible?
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Commented on post by Dennis M in Motorcycle RoadracingI was there about 20 years ago. It was amateur hour then and it's still the same old, same old, amateur hour. It would be nice if Daytona became as respected as the TT, Suzuka 8 hour, Bol'd'Or, NW200 or one of the other last remaining classics but it's not going to happen, is it. — A nice post-race interview after the 74th #Daytona200  . I like the way these men spoke of the events as they went down during the exciting closing laps. You can tell these guys have been racing each other for many years, and the racing showed how much trust was there between them. I was particularly glad to see Josh Herrin ride the way I knew he could. This is the kind of thing that will help him put last year behind him for good. Way to go, Josh!  I know that many felt that the event was a bit amateurish, and it's true that maybe it didn't have the polish that other big-name series has. Yes, some improvements in procedure and safety equipment are needed, but these are the kinds of enhancements that MotoAmerica can bring to the show should things work out and they take control of this event next year. With their help this race has the potential to be great again. At the end of the day the racing was very good all over the track, the finish was fantastic and the fans got a very good show.  I hope Mr. Rainey was watching so he could see how much potential there is here.  #MotoAmerica  
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusIs there a Godwin equivalent for mentioning the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee ? — Koch Industries refuses to comply with US senators' climate investigation: Investigation by Senate Democrats involves whether company has funded groups that deny climate change ...On 25 February, the three Democratic senators – each a ranking member of committees that oversee environmental affairs – sent letters to 100 fossil fuel companies and thinktanks “to determine whether they are funding scientific studies designed to confuse the public and avoid taking action to cut carbon pollution, and whether the funded scientists fail to disclose the sources of their funding in scientific publications or in testimony to legislators.” “Corporate special interests shouldn’t be able to secretly peddle the best junk science money can buy,” [Senator Edward] Markey said at the time. The senators asked for 10 years’ worth of information, including lists of affiliated foundations, funding recipients and copies of grants and contracts. Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell are among the other companies sent letters by the senators. The libertarian Koch-founded Cato Institute and conservative Heritage Foundation were also sent letters. The senators’ investigation was prompted by documents obtained through a freedom of information request by Greenpeace (http://www.greenpeace.org/), the environmental group. The documents revealed a prominent Harvard-Smithsonian Center scientist had accepted more than $1.2m from the fossil-fuel industry. The scientist, Wei-Hock Soon, has espoused on television and before Congress alternate theories of climate change, including a discredited theory that the sun’s energy explain global warming.... Considerable reddit discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableTech/duplicates/2z9gqr/koch_industries_refuses_to_comply_with_us/ http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/mar/13/koch-industries-refuses-senators-climate-investigation
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusNo Daily Mail? Can I please have an /etc/hosts file for my eyes, activated in the checkout area of supermarkets. I really don't need to see the front page of the UK right wing papers, like the Mail, Express, Telegraph. Doctors find miracle drug that cures fat, Alzheimers, and climate change and works 50% better than Statins by sending 16 year old, benefit cheat, Muslim immigrants back to the EU. — Dear NewsPubs:  enough with the fucking clickbait headlines already I'm not even going to bother naming the publication.  I'm also genericizing the headlines. This shit is not informative.  It's contemptuous as hell.  It's annoying. The <verbing> of <Place> was already really bad. It just got worse. Your <appliance> is wasting a lot of <noun> while you’re not using it. This <noun> went viral in <place>. Then it was <verbed>. It won’t be <verbed>. Your <appliance> is wasting huge amounts of <noun> and <noun>. Here’s what you can do about it. What do I do with stuff like this? 1. I flag it as spam when it shows up in my G+ stream. 2. I uncircle people who repeatedly post crap like this. 3. I add the source sites to my /etc/hosts file with a null (0.0.0.0) route.  Which means I won't ever see another article from that location (or at least not without some hoop jumping). 4. I add the sites to whatever blocklists and spam filters I can, including at the subreddits I moderate. In the instant case, we're talking about a major news organization with a good history, and a reporter whose stuff I tend to like.  I've not added it, but I'm itching fingers away from doing just that. The sites I have already blocked:   http://knowd.com, http://www.greenmedinfo.com, http://www.heavy.com, http://freepatriot.org, http://www.uproxx.com, http://tcr.tynt.com, http://slightlyviral.com, http://pro.moneymappress.com, http://pro1.moneymappress.com, http://weknowmemes.com, http://www.shareable.net, http://www.thisblewmymind.com, http://www.tsu.co, http://www.upworthy.com, http://www.distractify.com, http://news.distractify.com, http://www.evwow.com, http://evwow.com, http://perezhilton.com, http://www.wimp.com, http://www.enjoythemusic.com, http://livelol.me, http://www.scoopwhoop.com, http://www.radionews.us, http://bustle.com, http://www.bustle.com, http://www.tickld.com, http://www.zmescience.com, http://www.addictinginfo.org, http://www.dose.com, http://www.unfriendable.com, http://www.smartphowned.com, http://smartphowned.com, http://www.givesmehope.com, http://givesmehope.com, http://www.philosoraptors.com, http://philosoraptors.com, http://www.lolbrary.com, http://www.omgfacts.com, http://notsafeforwallet.net, http://sex.omgfacts.com, http://www.itsamememario.com, http://www.whenuseeit.com, http://memes.mugglenet.com, http://www.mugglenet.com, http://www.memeslanding.com, http://www.pokestache.com, http://www.ragestache.com, http://www.sixbillionsecrets.com, http://smartphowned.hollywood.com, http://www.hollywood.com, http://www.tasteofawesome.com, http://www.thatssotrue.com, http://unfriendable.hollywood.com, http://love.givesmehope.com, http://www.tutorvista.com, http://vista.tutorvista.com, http://security-law-osgomeiq.in, http://www.leanrightamerica.org I'm more than happy to add more.
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Commented on post by Sandy Dechert in Climate ChangeWe need to be very careful with reports that claim Economy–Energy-CO2 Decoupling or things such as "CO2 output flatlining". Especially if they end up just encouraging business as usual. So we also need to be questioning about the sources of these articles. There are two big problems. The first is that these stats are the result of self reporting by people, companies and countries with a vested interest in giving a positive impression. There's at least one conclusion here which is that if the rate of CO2 production and energy use has not increased then neither has the global economy in which case, claims of 3% growth are inaccurate. The second problem is that maintaining output at a record level is not a success. Ok, it didn't get worse and keep accelerating, but it certainly didn't get better. — Lately, you've heard about the decoupling of economic progress and CO2 emissions. This article explains why it's only part of a bigger picture.
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Commented on post by Fabrizio Pelosi in Google Cast DevelopersWhat platform do you want to use this on? There's an outstanding issue for the Windows case. https://code.google.com/p/google-cast-sdk/issues/detail?id=277  — Hi, I want to develop a native application which uses the Cast Sender API, but the only supported platforms are Android, iOS and Chrome...  Is there a plan to opensource or to publish the Sender API specs? Thanks :)
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Commented on post by Brian Gauspohl in Climate ChangeIt was pretty good. And did a pretty good job of explaining for the layman how climate science works and how it's done. — BBC Documentary: Climate Change By Numbers season one episode one air date March 9, 2015 video on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqhpDKj3tGY&t=74m49s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqhpDKj3tGY AND http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02jsdrk global warming extreme weather science #BBC   #Climate   #Science  
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Commented on post by Trevor Larkum in Electric Vehicles (UK)Note also: Islington Parking Permits for electric cars are free. http://www.islington.gov.uk/services/parking-roads/parking/parking_permits/Pages/resident_permit.aspx?extra=9 — http://fuelincluded.com/2015/02/london-council-brings-in-parking-surcharge-for-diesel-vehicles/
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Commented on post by Dennis M in Motorcycle RoadracingSome of those back markers were dangerously slow. Isn't that the story of AMA road racing for years and years, in all classes. But then there's wet BSB races at Brands Hatch Indy. ;) — This turned out to be an entertaining race after all. Given that the MotoAmerica talent pool wasn't there, It was pretty easy to predict who was going to challenge for the front, and there were 4 red flags during the race, which all but negated the pit-stop strategy. But the stops still made things intriguing, and it did make for an interesting last 24-lap dash to the checkers. Would anyone gamble on having enough fuel to make it to the end?  The bikes performed well and racing was good, dominated mostly by Eslick, Herrin, Geoff May and Steve Rapp. But Rapp suffered a late-race penalty which took him out of contention. that set the stage for the 2 old-time rivals Danny Eslick and Josh Herrin to settle things. Eslick pulled a fantastic last lap move to cross the line first, a mere .086 seconds ahead of Herrin.  Big-time Props to Fanschoice.tv for putting the deal together at the last minute to stream the race.   #Daytona200  
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Politics, Society, and the LawThis blog is entertaining as an alternate viewpoint. And this post in particular. https://deepresource.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/poland-adding-fuel-to-ukrainian-fire/ Clearly Poland is gearing up to invade and annex western Ukraine. If Ukraine can't join the EU by choice we'll damn well make them join by force! And that bit of satire points at one long term result. EU eases down on the EU-USA links and eases up on the EU-Russia links as protection against China. But also protection against US empire building. Let's see the EU stretch from the Atlantic to the Urals and include European Russia. With the whole ruled by a Putin+Merkel+Hollande trifecta. That should wind up everybody in the UK on every side, from UKIP to the SNP. Interesting times. But at least with global warming, Europe is not quite so dependent on Russian gas each winter. — Apparently, there has been a sharp rise in membership in paramilitary organizations in Poland, ever since the USSR Russia invaded the Crimea. I can't say as this seems ill-founded to me; Putin has made it fairly clear that he is not only opposed to European involvement in what he sees as his sphere of influence, but that he is quite willing to go to war to achieve that. (Or rather, "recognize that the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine wants to fight off opp..." oh, nevermind, I can't put together proper Official Sentences to explain how the Russian forces in Ukraine aren't really Russian at all, they just look Russian and happen to be wearing uniforms and bearing arms that were in Moscow not long ago) I would estimate that the risk is highest in places where there are significant ethnic Russian minorities -- especially areas like Kaliningrad, and the Baltic states where Stalin made sure to move lots of Russians (like he did in Ukraine) for precisely this sort of purpose. Of course, Poland has the classic problem of geography: it's big, flat, and between Russia and Germany, so rather than forming a natural barrier it's often seen as the area that various sides need to control "for their own safety." I don't expect war in Poland or in the Baltics in 2015, but under the circumstances, I wouldn't say that it's insane for those countries to start drilling and preparing for trouble pre-emptively. Sometimes clear military readiness is a good way to avert wars, too. [Cue arrival of furious Russian apologists calling me a Ukrainian shill or a Western shill, furious Ukrainian apologists calling me a Russian shill, and probably furious Mongol apologists calling me a Khwarezmi shill. Seriously, you would think that by now, given the number of articles I've put up on which every side was absolutely convinced that I was being paid by the other side, someone would get kind of suspicious of these hypotheses.]
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Commented on post by John PoteetA lot of people want to talk about Libertarian-Capitalism, Authoritarian-Capitalism, Authoritarian-Communism. But nobody wants to talk about Libertarian-Cooperation. — This is very much worth reading. Cooperation isn't "communism" it isn't unusual and it's not new. It was the norm before industrialization.  via +Sakari Maaranen 
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Commented on post by Brian Snyder in Google Play Music All AccessI thought I'd go and listen to some dub techno radio. (http://www.last.fm/tag/dub%20techno) but even though that's quite a substantial genre in dance/club music, GPMAA doesn't understand it. And starting from somebody like Deepchord radio, it quickly veers out of genre. And that's the problem with a system that is curated via a commercial music system rather than crowdsourced. Which leaves me disappointed again in GPM. http://www.last.fm/listen/globaltags/dub%20techno works quite a bit better. — Question: Hi all. I've only been a member for a few days now and I love it.  But I do have a question / feature suggestion.  I see how you can add an album to your library - I think it would be great if you could do the same with an 'artist/band'.  This would be a great way to say subscribe to a favorite artist... then if a new album comes out the system could auto-add to your library and/or at least notify you.  Is there a way to do this that I'm missing?  Thanks!
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Commented on post by Brian Snyder in Google Play Music All AccessGood point. I routinely use 1sec cross fade between tracks in Winamp. I've never really felt the need for sound leveling. Maybe because most of what I listen to is recent and maxed out anyway. — Question: Hi all. I've only been a member for a few days now and I love it.  But I do have a question / feature suggestion.  I see how you can add an album to your library - I think it would be great if you could do the same with an 'artist/band'.  This would be a great way to say subscribe to a favorite artist... then if a new album comes out the system could auto-add to your library and/or at least notify you.  Is there a way to do this that I'm missing?  Thanks!
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Commented on post by Brent Sullivan in Chromecast CentralIt was this. http://www.bbcamerica.com/orphan-black/ S3 should be on BBC3, maybe. But maybe not. No announcement yet. And I won't be able to watch it officially online from the UK due to reasons. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04210v9 — The following article has a list of Chromecast sports apps.  From what I can gather it is for the UK.  If you are from the UK, is this a good list or do you have any apps that should have been added or maybe one on here that should have never been included?
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Commented on post by Andreas Schou in Ethics, Race, and GenderI'm fairly sure that everyone that disagrees with me are just non-player actors. What's puzzling though is that some of the non-player actors agree with me. — Reshared because, unfortunately, this has recently become relevant again.
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Commented on post by Lev OsherovichThe ironic edges of Neologistic dance culture are kind of fun. Or at least they were in May 2011. eg:- Witch House, TriangleCore, Post-Whatever, Vaporwave, ChillGaze. xXx▼▲▼xXx are so M▲INSTRE▲M they're pronounced "Yacht". — Youth culture was confusing even when I was young (I was a hippie). Even more so today, with the proliferation of ephemeral microcultures in electronic media steeped in irony.  It's hard not to be struck by the sensation that, emos and metalheads aside, what you might call the 20th-century idea of a youth subculture is now just outmoded. The internet doesn't spawn mass movements, bonded together by a shared taste in music, fashion and ownership of subcultural capital: it spawns brief, microcosmic ones. h/t +Joerg Fliege 
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google+ UpdatesPossible, but I think it's too quick for that. And If I refresh the page, the numbers should drop back or disappear, right? — I'm really, really tired of the little red "new activity" numbers on the all communities view incrementing for no obvious reason. Way too often you go into the community and there's nothing to see. I think this is catching +1s as well as new posts and new comments and I don't think it should. And yes, I have left feedback.
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusWillful ignorance, Plausible deniability (denyable plausibility!), Deliberate stupidity. Are these just various mechanisms of corruption? Of course, willful ignorance in an audit department and the auditors they employ is a bit of a problem. But internal affairs is usually a political tool rather than an actual police force. — Sadly, Hodge's comments to HSBC seem to apply quite widely Why is it that so much corporate (and government) behavior seems to be explicable only through corruption or incompetence?  And which is the more likely explanation?
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Commented on post by Brent Sullivan in Chromecast Central+Mike Gallagher I do kind of agree. So it irks me when I can't access BBC America, when if it wasn't for our license fees, BBC America wouldn't even exist. — The following article has a list of Chromecast sports apps.  From what I can gather it is for the UK.  If you are from the UK, is this a good list or do you have any apps that should have been added or maybe one on here that should have never been included?
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Commented on postTech journalist turns his personal blog into an online news site that runs for 14 years. You won't believe what happened next.
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Commented on post by Zap-Map in Electric Vehicles (UK)Perhaps if they increased the amount of carbon black in the tyre, they could make them conductive and pick up energy from the solar powered road surface. http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Department-of-Transportation-Official-Discusses-Solar-Roadways /s But mostly, just another bit of tech PR fluff endlessly repeated by the usual news outlets that makes NO SENSE AT ALL. — Goodyear unveils concept tyre with #EV charging capabilities http://goo.gl/bxhZXR
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate ChangeChart from http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ via http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ — Sea Ice extent, comparing 2011 and 2012 and 2014 with where we are this year by March 8
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Commented on post by Brent Sullivan in Chromecast Central+Chris Maubach Tricky that. There's no Tor, VPN or DNS control on the Chromecast itself so you've got do it from the outside in the router. Your DHCP needs to provide a gateway IP that points at a device that routes outgoing to a VPN that surfaces in the UK. Does BBC iPlayer work on Chromecast when accessed from the USA?  — The following article has a list of Chromecast sports apps.  From what I can gather it is for the UK.  If you are from the UK, is this a good list or do you have any apps that should have been added or maybe one on here that should have never been included?
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Commented on post by Tim Elliott in Google Play Music All AccessUse the Music Manager app. I've uploaded, 30k tracks since the announcement in background while using the laptop at the same time. I don't use iTunes or Windows Media Player so I just pointed it at my z:/music/library folder on the home NAS where all the music lives. Music Manager seems to have no great problem remembering where it's got to when the laptop is turned off overnight, or when the application is closed down and restarted.  — Any tips for uploading my music?  I have a large library so automatic uploading of everything won't work.  I tried to drag and drop a bunch of stuff but it it doesn't seem to remember everything if it doesn't upload in a single session.  We need an upload tool that will let me checkmark what folders to upload and it will just keep uploading till it's done.  Is anything matched to the online music library or does all music have to be uploaded?
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Commented on post by Robert LlewellynPerhaps if they increased the amount of carbon black in the tyre, they could make them conductive and pick up energy from the solar powered road surface. http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Department-of-Transportation-Official-Discusses-Solar-Roadways /s  — Fascinating. The BHO3 recharging tyre
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in TechOne of the amazing things about FF was that you could stand in the full stream and watch snippets of the global conversation float past every 5 seconds or so. It's also reminded me about a long standing FAQ about G+. The Profile.About.Links YASN-Roll really ought to grab the content and feeds from those links and present them somehow. Not by auto-generating posts but perhaps filling another tab on the profile. It's still a missing piece in the Apps puzzle to aggregate all the posts and all the comments and conversations across all the platforms. The Buzz problem (and FF problem) was the potential for spammy abuse. So the answer is to make it private to the profile pages so you only get to see it if you specifically go and look. The other challenge is that when FF was built everybody, but everybody, produced RSS/Atom feeds so there was generally something to pick up and aggregate. But then location apps like Foursquare stopped doing it. And shortly after, the major platforms stopped as well, requiring authentication, went to custom formats and generally stopped playing ball. In some ways, FF was the peak of the Web 2.0 dream of open common formats before the tide rolled back. — Well that's a bit sad. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/09/facebook-is-killing-off-friendfeed-on-april-9/
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Commented on post by Brian Snyder in Google Play Music All AccessThis where we look at all the features in http://last.fm and then wish they were in GPM. eg - Recommendations - New releases - Listen to "Friend's radio" - Links to concerts and events - A wiki for each artist and album - Real time viewing of who's listening - Stats on your listening history And so on. in fact Google should just buy http://last.fm. Except I'm glad they haven't yet. I'm beginning to think now that GPM's greatest use is actually as an automatic backup of my home collection.  — Question: Hi all. I've only been a member for a few days now and I love it.  But I do have a question / feature suggestion.  I see how you can add an album to your library - I think it would be great if you could do the same with an 'artist/band'.  This would be a great way to say subscribe to a favorite artist... then if a new album comes out the system could auto-add to your library and/or at least notify you.  Is there a way to do this that I'm missing?  Thanks!
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in TechI think it came from the same kind of place as Buzz. Aggregating feeds fro a lot of different places into a single stream where people reading the stream could then comment on them. So you'd get a Blog post from Scoble generating a comments thread on Friendfeed. The innovation was to have real time updates appear on screen using javascript, with real time search as well. So you could do a search query and then watch the flow of posts about that query from numerous sources. They also put quite a bit of effort into making it easy to define all the services and social networks you were on and to grab any available feeds from those services. — Well that's a bit sad. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/03/09/facebook-is-killing-off-friendfeed-on-april-9/
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Commented on postMaybe they think we should go back to voting only being allowed for Male Land Owners. Well, given "No taxation without representation", they can just stop taxing the rest of us then! The positive side of Right-Wing-Authoritarians (RWA) is a kind of benevolent patrician guidance out of a strong sense of duty. Their arguments are often phrased like this even when the negative side is actually in play. And the negative side is "I want to tell you what to do for my own personal benefit".
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Commented on post by Rahul Sarraf in Google Play Music All Accessactual desktop application for Google Play Music How do you imagine this working? A plugin for VLC perhaps? Or for Plex/LogitechMedia? Or as an actual stand alone app from Google? That last raises the question. Google doesn't really do stand alone apps for desktops any more. All the development seems to be Chrome browser based.  — How do you sign up for that $3 for 3-month subscription for new subscribers? I can't seem to find the specific promo link, and I know the offer expires on March 17th... Also I hope to see an actual desktop application for Google Play Music, instead of only app support and browser support!!
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Commented on post by Larry Frazier in ChromecastIs there a good option for desktop web? Does Pockets Cast web do Chromecasting? — I am looking for an Android 4.44 app or Windows 8.0 that I can cast audio podcasts with. I own the full version of DogCatcher which allows me to cast video podcasts but I am unable to cast my audio podcasts.  I would like to find a way to cast any audio podcast, but barring that I am looking to cast WTF with Marc Maron.  Any help would be appreciated.
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Commented on post by Susan Stone in Climate Changehttp://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2015/mar/08/climate-change-protesters-march-parliament-ahead-paris-climate-conference-video
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Commented on postSkype's chat groups are long lived and more akin to G+ communities. It's just that the distribution of messages is much more Peer 2 Peer. You have to join a group and stay in until you leave, even if you don't visit. This is different from the kind of session limit you have with Hangouts or group video chat. The biggest neat feature compared with IRC is that when you login, connect and open the chat window, Skype syncs all the messages that happened while you were away. There's an idea that surfaces every so often for a formalised democracy based on Dunbar numbers. A street of 150 people. A town of 150 streets. A region of 150 towns. A country of 150 regions. With each level nominating a representative to the level above. People tell me it could never work, but could you apply that to Social Network design?
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Commented on postHoward Rheingold's precepts:  "Assume Good Intent" and "You Own Your Own Words". The second is also interesting. If the other party doesn't understand you, or misconstrues your meaning it's your fault, not theirs. So take responsibility for what you say, not what you think you said.
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Commented on postSkype group chat was limited to about 125 for a long time. I got them to increase this to 250. I think this was an architectural constraint to do with P2P sync issues with an arbitrary limit to keep the sync messages under control. It was quite rare to hit the limits bu a couple of communities demanded aggressive culling of inactive members. And that prompted the development of 3rd party tools to track attendance and activity. Even when there's no hard limit, those kinds of tools are useful to mods. I don't mind lurkers, but I'd quite happily auto-remove people who don't log in or read messages for 3 months at a time. Having publicly readable archives (for public groups) solves a lot of those problems as well. The big question is what you expect to happen when a successful community hits the limit. Do you force a fork? Or auto-trim and remove inactive accounts?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Politicsnuclear arsenal as a defence against Russia. I've heard this as a comment on my posts elsewhere. It seems to me that it only takes a moment's thought to realise it's completely absurd as an argument. I'm more disturbed by the apathy and lack of interest. And it's not just disarmament, but a whole range of political issues that were once hugely important. I feel quite strongly that this is a result of the Blair government's reaction to the Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrations. It was made very clear to us that the politicians would discount, downplay and ultimately ignore popular sentiment. That leads to a feeling that there's no point in arguing back because they'll simply ignore us. This is especially true of things like Trident, Cruise missiles (remember those?), foreign wars and so on. So why bother. — When will the world properly achieve nuclear disarmament? 1-10-100-1000-10k years? And what's stopping us? http://blog.longnow.org/02015/03/05/richard-rhodes-twilight-of-the-bombs-02010-seminar-flashback/ Why isn't Trident and UK nuclear disarmament an election issue in 2015? The Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP are against Trident. Everyone else, including the LibDems, are pro-Trident. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/11/the-trident-test/ https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/04/clegg_must_stan/
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Commented on post+Per Siden  studying other countries and stealing some of the best ideas, adapted for the US, could be a way forward From the outside it looks like the US has a bad case of "not-invented-here syndrome" so I doubt that will ever happen. ;) Something I do find puzzling is that US, English language, internet discussions (around social policies especially) often revolve around trying to argue from first principles. As if there was no prior art or experience. And as if you can arrive at the truth of something like the best way to fund health care or such like by sheer force of argument. So we get "Unions are bad" because "Free Market" rather than an exploration of how worker's conditions improved between 1850 and 1950 at least partly due to collective worker organisation and struggle.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google Cast DevelopersAnd in that forum, I'm told to post feedback for the plugin. But what plugin? So I post feedback for GPM and for Cast for Chrome. But those are black holes. — Feature Request: A visualisation API for Google Play Music being played to a Chromecast. This idea started with the GPM labs Fireplace which displays a fireplace while casting music. I wanted instead the Chromecast Backdrop with a text display in the corner of currently playing track and track position. But then I thought it would be cool to have a more general visualisation API like those in Winamp or Windows Media Player. Because this would be tied to GPM, I'm guessing it would have to be a GPM lab project and would have to come from Google. First would this be do-able or is there some obvious gotcha why it would be impossible? And 2nd where should the suggestion be fed back to Google?
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in MusicHeh. Nope, just a bunch of old Arts geezers. — Gah! I really hate it when you find out about events 2 days after they happen. This time it was via TheWire's facebook page and their weekly newsletter. http://www.fvu.co.uk/programme/detail/stay-where-you-are-jem-finer-and-ben-rivers I've got a bit of a fascination going on for Jem Finer's work, especially around Trinity Buoy Wharf and the LongPlayer project. And also a fondness for the Whitechapel Gallery. Oh well. Maybe next time. https://www.facebook.com/The.Wire.Magazine http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/ http://www.trinitybuoywharf.com/ http://longplayer.org/
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Developing with Google+Variant, yes. The rest of it may still be broken. Thanks for reminding me. The main issue with 407 was attachments that were completely missing, but in the comments other people are reporting attachments that are incomplete or unhelpful.  — This one's a bit obscure. I've got a post which is a share of an album from Google Play Music. When you view the post, it's a complicated attachment containing "Listen", "Buy" links and so on. But when you grab the post via the SDK, all you get is a title, an image of the album cover and a link. Basically the SDK attachment doesn't really reflect the post very well. The attachment type is "objectType": "audio". Now I guess you could say the same thing about Youtube. But this means that somebody using the API needs to be aware of and build a representation of every possible attachment. Post: https://plus.google.com/106416716945076707395/posts/YhLavWoi9Qy Post ID: z12vhzkjrue3etjxx04ccnti2wb4ejnxysk0k Returned:  "attachments": [      {       "objectType": "audio",       "displayName": "Rye Lane Volume One",       "url": "https://play.google.com/music/playpreview?preview=AE9vGKq9bZV1vP2JUhloXCtqm09d63mts1p_kwNro89uJH7V1vXzSLAzZ9GsdU6eOHKF_-IXrP8T5TOdU3l9Q2SP5uRtUzWOxyaiYzFii6fwAVblzgQnxZg%3D",       "image": {        "url": "https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/HTuBpdf2SAvpcUxl5x_oN6mWr0Fld4MpprrMsXrWR0xuMbc8pD6gwf9z1nW9QxC9iNvmibmd",        "type": "image/jpeg"       }      }     ]
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google Cast DevelopersI thought this might happen. I posted there and got "notSDK. This would be a feature request for Play Music and not Chromecast. Please direct your request here: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!categories/play." So I've posted in that forum instead. — Feature Request: A visualisation API for Google Play Music being played to a Chromecast. This idea started with the GPM labs Fireplace which displays a fireplace while casting music. I wanted instead the Chromecast Backdrop with a text display in the corner of currently playing track and track position. But then I thought it would be cool to have a more general visualisation API like those in Winamp or Windows Media Player. Because this would be tied to GPM, I'm guessing it would have to be a GPM lab project and would have to come from Google. First would this be do-able or is there some obvious gotcha why it would be impossible? And 2nd where should the suggestion be fed back to Google?
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Commented on post by Yonatan Zunger in Today I Learned:When you realise you spelt "their" as "there" in a comment and the system doesn't let you go back and edit. — In which several notable linguists, including +Gretchen McCulloch​​, opine on the rise of the standalone subordinate clause on the Internet, a proposition about trends in grammar is raised, and the passive voice is used somewhat unnecessarily, but to excellent dramatic effect.
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Commented on post by Raul Sobon in ChromecastSorry, but that is absurd. I've got ~37k tracks in GPM, and I'm not about to convert them or find them all in YouTube so I can put a pretty back drop on the TV. I don't want to be rude but do you even understand the original question? Go into Google Play Music, go to Settings, Labs, enable the "Fireplace" option. Now use Google Play Music to play music and cast it to your Chromecast. Your playlist will play though the TV but the TV will show a fireplace. The OP (and me) are asking for more display options while using GPM. We're NOT asking for a way to cast Youtube music videos. — I wish Chromecast would have more playmusic visualizations, the one fireplace is too little,I want dozens of choices, or even let me choose a custom youtube url or do webgl fancy 3d stuff.
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Commented on post by Yonatan ZungerIf matriarchical Orca pods and Elephant communities are so clever, how come they didn't invent writing and the printing press? Eh? — Some things seem so natural to us that we forget to ask why they happen. One of those is "old age:" in most species, creatures continue to produce young their entire lives, and by the time they can't, they're generally dead. In humans, on the other hand, elders serve extremely important roles, especially in preliterate societies: they act as central repositories of knowledge. For rare but catastrophic events like major droughts or storms, which may happen once in 50 years or more, the difference between having someone who has survived such an event before around and not is often the difference between life and death for the entire tribe. Very few species share this with us: for elders to act as a store of knowledge, they must be able to communicate and share that knowledge, which requires complex social minds.  According to this new study, orcas are apparently one of those rare species: they live well beyond menopause, and these elders become critical group leaders, especially when food availability becomes unusually low. So when you encounter these apex predators -- some of the most intelligent and fearsome hunters in our world -- realize that they have acquired their sophistication not just through individual intelligence, but through profound social and intergenerational links.
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Commented on post by Green Transportation Examiner - David Herron in Climate ChangeYou might also ask why goods trains are de-railing in the USA so often. Does this happen with trains carrying nuclear waste? How about trains carrying bulk chemicals? And the next question. When it happens with crude oil containers, why do they split and why do they catch fire?
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Commented on post by Raul Sobon in ChromecastYebbut, that doesn't let you view the aquarium while listening to music in Google Play Music. The only available one under labs is fireplace. I've posted a feedback request for a lab to display the Chromecast default backdrop but with the currently playing track (and track position) in text in the corner. And yes, there should be more options. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure this would have to be programmed by Google until they offer some kind of visualisation API for GPM+Chromecast. Which they should do! — I wish Chromecast would have more playmusic visualizations, the one fireplace is too little,I want dozens of choices, or even let me choose a custom youtube url or do webgl fancy 3d stuff.
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Commented on post by Spencer Ashby in Google Play Music All Access[mutters] Coldplay? Like U2, they can't even give it away. ;) — Free on play store.
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Commented on post by Yonatan ZungerThe world needs more "Grandmotherly Kindness". So as PJ O'Rourke said many moons ago. "Never travel to places where the old women carry guns". — Some things seem so natural to us that we forget to ask why they happen. One of those is "old age:" in most species, creatures continue to produce young their entire lives, and by the time they can't, they're generally dead. In humans, on the other hand, elders serve extremely important roles, especially in preliterate societies: they act as central repositories of knowledge. For rare but catastrophic events like major droughts or storms, which may happen once in 50 years or more, the difference between having someone who has survived such an event before around and not is often the difference between life and death for the entire tribe. Very few species share this with us: for elders to act as a store of knowledge, they must be able to communicate and share that knowledge, which requires complex social minds.  According to this new study, orcas are apparently one of those rare species: they live well beyond menopause, and these elders become critical group leaders, especially when food availability becomes unusually low. So when you encounter these apex predators -- some of the most intelligent and fearsome hunters in our world -- realize that they have acquired their sophistication not just through individual intelligence, but through profound social and intergenerational links.
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Commented on post by Julian Bond in Google Play Music All AccessI was wondering where you were seeing this sort order. But then went into a single artist and realized the albums for that artist were in reverse release date order. Yes, that's good, but even there I can't change the sort order to alphabetical. And yes, I really want this on the global album view, not inside individual artists. A long time ago, I got my library properly tagged. I've been obsessive about correcting and updating tags on all new music before it gets put into the main file store ever since. So pretty much all my music has the Year tag filled in. — Alternate sort orders and search criteria I'd really appreciate some alternate sort orders, especially in the My Library, albums view. And especially sorting in reverse date order of release date. Are there any tricks for searching on specific metadata fields? Like say year:2014 I also don't seem to be able to search on just my library.
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Commented on post by Lynn H in Climate ChangeThere's a good chance they'll see 2100 then. So it's time we started creating stories about the 22nd century. "22nd Century Schizoid Man"! (with a nod to Bruce Sterling) — The number of people affected by river flooding worldwide could nearly triple in the next 15 years, analysis shows. Climate change and population growth are driving the increase, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI). In the UK, about 76,000 people a year could be at risk of being affected by flooding if defences aren't improved, it says. The yearly cost of damage to urban areas could reach more than £1bn. The centre says this is the first public analysis of all world data on current and future river-flood risks. It demonstrates some 20 million people are at risk of being affected by flooding, and it costs almost £65bn in GDP.
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Commented on post by Lynn H in Climate ChangeNote, 2030 is only 15 years away now. No longer the distant future.  — The number of people affected by river flooding worldwide could nearly triple in the next 15 years, analysis shows. Climate change and population growth are driving the increase, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI). In the UK, about 76,000 people a year could be at risk of being affected by flooding if defences aren't improved, it says. The yearly cost of damage to urban areas could reach more than £1bn. The centre says this is the first public analysis of all world data on current and future river-flood risks. It demonstrates some 20 million people are at risk of being affected by flooding, and it costs almost £65bn in GDP.
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Commented on post by Spencer Ashby in Chromecast CentralI'm sure it's a good thing. But what does it have to do specifically with Chromecasts? — Transformers the movie is free on Google play today!
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Commented on post by Wiggysan Wiggysan in Motorcycle RoadracingSo can Shakey win with one hand tied behind his back? ;) I really hope this doesn't affect the championship. I hate it (like last year) when it's injuries that make the difference. — Looks like Shakey is slightly more then bruised ...... Broken left hand for the 5 times British Champion. Off for an operation tomorrow. Good Luck Shakey #67. Source : https://twitter.com/67Shakey/status/572833660291977216  _________________________________________________ +Official BSB +Big Ed +Big Ed  #BSB   #BSB2015   +britishsuperbike +British Superbike Championship  #PBM  +Kawasaki Motors +MCE Insurance +MSVR 
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Commented on post by Edward MorbiusAs you're talking about Usenet, there's Google Groups. Which swallowed Deja News which kind of swallowed Usenet. Is Google Groups part of "Streams"? It's another community discussion system that's in a neglected backwater of the evil empire. It's also another Google product that has spent it's life re-inventing the market leader (in this case Yahoogroups) without ever actually matching any of the key features. Just as GChat always seemed like a poor copy of Skype, Googlegroups feels like a poor copy of Yahoogroups. It's main use these days seems to be to host (badly) some (but not all) of Google's user and developer support. The tech press never talk about it, so I guess it's probably safe from being closed down. It's a product so presumably under Sundar Pichai, but I wonder who owns it below him. — RIP Google+: Google Inc. (GOOGL) Has Started Digging The Grave A somewhat hyperbolic headline, though much of the meat seems pretty solid.  The article also uses my numbers for G+ interaction (though doesn't compare them properly vis-a-vis Facebook's actives), and +Kevin Anderson's Sankey visualization (again:  that "wall" to the far left isn't a border, it's the total G+ Profile count). Message is loud and clear; Google+ is pivoting as it has failed to uproot any of the competitors from the social networking space. Pay attention to one of the words used by Sundar in the above statement – Was. This clearly indicates that the fate of Google+ has been sealed and it’s just a matter of time before Google comes up with an official statement to announce the demise of an ambitious project. For Google it may not be a big deal though, as the internet giant has a big graveyard of in-house developed products and startups it acquired once; Google Buzz, Orkut, Google Wave to name few. h/t Private share. http://dazeinfo.com/2015/03/03/rip-google-google-inc-googl-started-digging-grave/
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Commented on post by Reed Social Media Group LLC in Google+ Updates"Streams" is G+, Blogger, News and a couple of other things. If there's anything happening here it may only be Photo being spun back out of the core G+ product. However, Google is doing a spectacularly poor job of explaining all this. So who's running Communications? Which is not just Hangout, but Voice and a few other things as well. — Why Google+ is splitting into photos and streams. The way it's being framed internally and perhaps in the public going forward appears to be shifting.
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Commented on post by Dmytro Zuyenko in Google+ UpdatesBeing contrary, but |I do not want nested comments. But I approve of an "In Reply To" link. — Google should add one more level to Google+ comments. Nothing more. Not sorting, not embedding media content, not even a link to a comment. Just one additional level deep, so everything that's related to a comment would be there. That will stop situations when a comment number 489 is answering to a comment that with number 13.
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Commented on post by Edward Morbius+Jeremy Nixon _The problem is, people don’t deal well with the notion of client software. They want it to be a damn website._ Unless it's a CleverPhone App downloaded from an App Store. With subtly different and often degraded functionality from the desktop web version. — RIP Google+: Google Inc. (GOOGL) Has Started Digging The Grave A somewhat hyperbolic headline, though much of the meat seems pretty solid.  The article also uses my numbers for G+ interaction (though doesn't compare them properly vis-a-vis Facebook's actives), and +Kevin Anderson's Sankey visualization (again:  that "wall" to the far left isn't a border, it's the total G+ Profile count). Message is loud and clear; Google+ is pivoting as it has failed to uproot any of the competitors from the social networking space. Pay attention to one of the words used by Sundar in the above statement – Was. This clearly indicates that the fate of Google+ has been sealed and it’s just a matter of time before Google comes up with an official statement to announce the demise of an ambitious project. For Google it may not be a big deal though, as the internet giant has a big graveyard of in-house developed products and startups it acquired once; Google Buzz, Orkut, Google Wave to name few. h/t Private share. http://dazeinfo.com/2015/03/03/rip-google-google-inc-googl-started-digging-grave/