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Comment SLAPP - what a HAPPY sound ... (Score 1) 64

On Thursday, in a unanimous decision, a four-judge New York Supreme Court appellate panel ordered the case to continue, keeping the Dendrite issue alive and also allowing us to proceed in seeking damages based on New York's anti-SLAPP law, which prohibits "strategic lawsuits against public participation."

Hmmm...

I wonder if we'll see SLAPP actions by Trump, Giuliani, or Fox News if they win an anti-defamation suit or appeal of one?

Comment Re:That's Nifty, but consumer? (Score 1) 133

Most states and towns in the USA do not have building codes for residential off-grid battery storage.

I thought that was in the National Electrical Code (NEC) section on solar, at least if they're on the 2017 version (or some earlier versions). Most jurisdictions adopt some version of the NEC (and occasionally move to a later version - my county is on 2017 as of a year or so ago) and then maybe add a few changes, rather than write their own electrical code.

Main remaining downsides, if you want to keep your fire insurance, are finding listed (by an NRTL such as UL) systems (there are a few, even some that are rated for elevations over 1,500 meters - about 79 feet short of 5,000) and that the code now requires a cert for solar systems installers, so if you want to install it all yourself you have to drop a couple hunderd bux on a short online course or hire a pro to make the major connections and maybe do some of the design for your install.

Comment Re:The actual problem (Score 1) 50

Problem is that gas is often byproduct of oil extraction, and very difficult to transport since it's a gas and disperses, unlike oil that is a liquid and can be stored in a simple container.

So use a thermoacoustic liquefier. Bunch of plumbing and a burner regulator on a par with a water heater, which contains the only moving part. Burn off 30% of it and use the heat energy to turn the rest as liquefied propane (LP) Gas, ready to haul away. One model, about the right size to haul in on a flatbed semi, can output 500 gal per day at that efficiency.

Comment Re:Not surprising (Score 1, Informative) 180

Both violent and property crime rates, overall, in the United States, have dropped significantly in the past 30 years. It's always possible to cherry pick a large statistical set for outliers, as you're doing, but the overall statistics say otherwise.

Police budgets have grown, not shrunk. While some people have advocated for the defunding of police, that doesn't make it so. Police budgets continue to grow at a staggering rate.

Comment Re:Not surprising (Score 1) 180

There is an increasing public perception that law and order is circling the drain, especially in urban areas. The rise of vigilante behavior isn't particularly surprising when there are a large number of people who don't feel like the government is doing an adequate job of protecting them from criminals.

Why do you suppose people feel this way, when crime rates have been dropping in most of the United States for years, especially in urban areas?

Comment Re:Buybacks signal there is nothing better you can (Score 2) 35

Buybacks signal there is nothing better you can think of doing with all your cash.

Or that you have a lot of cash and other assets and a market mob madness has depressed your stock price to where it's a really good deal to spend some of the cash to take some of the stock out of circulation and concentrate the company's value in the rest of it.

Possibly it's even such a good deal that some rich outsiders could buy up controlling interest, sell off the non-money assets, take that and the cash pile, and come out ahead. That leaves the current employees out of a job and with their unvested options worthless. Better to spend the hostile-takeover bait making the rest of your stock more valueable now, and keep the company running, than wait until the hostiles are buying and screw up the company and its stockholders with poison pills and the like.

Comment Sympathetic (Score 2) 54

If you can't make useful predictions within the parameters of your model, you can't test the ideas. Ergo, the shut up and calculate side does have a good argument.

Previously, in physics, there has been a three-way dance between theorists who develop the mathematical description, theorists who develop the mechanical description, and practical physicists who carry out observations both to test the theories and to apply them in practical terms. This dance kept everything moving.

This may or may not be the correct way to approach quantum mechanics. The rules are very different in that domain.

On the other hand, it's easy to spot the hostility between the groups and it's obvious that the anticipated new physics isn't getting found. New models are rare and are struggling. The dance hasn't completely stopped, but it is definitely in trouble.

But, of course, that might equally be down to the increased competition, the need to publish trivial results quickly rather than do anything profound, and the greatly reduced investment in blue sky science.

I'm going to suggest it's a mix of stuff. We need a lot more funding, a lot less aggro, and we either need to get the mechanical description partner back on their feet or we need to find an alternative to them if that sort of description just doesn't work in this arena.

But I think the science dance needs three sides. I think we're going to find that the calculate lobby can't advance a whole lot further on their own, and that they cannot produce a theory of everything without some idea of what an everything is.

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