Ok, let's go back to basics: why is money laundering illegal? Why are banks required to report transactions over $10000; and why is structuring (making multiple transactions just below this threshold) illegal?

These are all laws designed to make the job of law enforcement easier. There's nothing inherently wrong with depositing $9999 into your back account, but do it twice and you may be up on charges even if your transactions were perfectly innocent. Similarly laws against money laundering are vague, and trip up more innocent people than guilty ones. All money laundering mean, at its root, is having a series of transactions: Buy yacht, trade it for a diamond ring, sell the ring. There's nothing wrong with that series of transactions, but because they are hard for the government to track, it is somehow your fault.

Three links of possible interest, concerning "The Archive AG" - mostly in German:

Company information

Article in the Handelszeitung

Web site

The address appears (on Google maps) to be more than just a mailbox. The two people running it are Germans - it's not clear why their company is in Switzerland. Downloading in Switzerland is legal, by the way, justified by the fact that we all pay these surcharges on empty media.

For anyone who has been threatened by The Archive AG, the article in the Handelszeitung includes a reference to an IT attorney who is apparently advising many people in this case.

Here's one Swiss hoping we can vote FATCA down a black hole.

Our government sees itself in a difficult situation: we are very dependent on open trade agreements, not least because we are physically surrounded by the EU. So our government rolls over any time open trade is threatened. Many of us think they need to take a harder line. For example, the agreement with the EU requires us to accept essentially unlimited numbers of immigrants - what sovereign country would ever sign away the right to determine its own immigration policy. Now we that we have the issue with FATCA, there is at least a chance that the population will tell the government that it has gone too far.

It all comes down to user interface design. A good interface will grab you attention only when it has something important to say. And it will avoid false warnings. A lousy interface *is* distracting. So is an interface that screws up, by grabbing your attention with incorrect or irrelevant information.

Just as an example: my current car has a very distracting audible and visual warning when it detects ice on the road. The problem is: this warning delivers 99% false positives (in fact, it seems to be triggered simply by the thermometer crossing a temperature threshold (3C), in either direction). So - yes - it is a dangerous distraction. However, if the manufacturer had actually gotten it right, it would have been very valuable.

As far as issuing commands, it is really the same thing: poor design. Is the interface reliable enough that you can trust it to do what you say? Does it give positive confirmation, or leave you wondering?

Not only are many (most?) academics fed up with the big journals, we are also generally fed up with publication pressure. Our school is just now going through a review. The accreditation people want number of publication. It doesn't matter what you wrote about, or whether you had anything useful to say, it's just numbers.

Who read about the University of Edinburgh physicist: He just won the Nobel prize, and has published a total of 10 papers in his entire career. As he said: today he wouldn't even get a job.

I understand that school administrations want some way to measure faculty performance. But just as student reviews are a dumb way to assess teaching quality (because demanding teachers may be rated as poorly as incompetent teachers), number of publications is a dumb way to assess research quality.

The cops have nothing better to do with their time? They have so many funds that they can buy special vehicles just to enforce this one traffic law?

Poor baby, he didn't get his way.

The musuem director said that the "Science Cafe" was the wrong forum, but that they would consider showing the film as part of a larger project.

This film is an advocacy film for one particular viewpoint, being pushed by one particular organization. The musuem rightly sees that showing this film alone, with no context or alternative viewpoints, may not be the best way to present a balanced viewpoint on a difficult and controversion subject.

According to the article, Tesla disabled the "sleep" mode of the onboard electronics, because it was buggy. As a result, they are running 24/7. Apparently, Tesla hasn't managed to fix the bugs with the sleep mode yet.

This is a perfectly explainable problem - no need to go all vampiric about it. It's a software (or possibly firmware) problem that they will undoubtedly sort soon enough.

It's true enough that the world doesn't revolve around you or me. "Government" is a lovely, abstract concept. The problem is: governments are made up of people. Individual people who can make mistakes or take deliberately evil actions. Like spying on ex-lovers, harassing disliked colleagues, or causing problems for companies that they don't like.

The NSA overreach means that tens of thousands of people have access to data that should never have been collected. Can you be sure that you, your family and your friends - that no one you care about has ever pissed off any of those tens of thousands of people? That no one you care about ever will?

It's bad enough that the government has access to this data, which might be misused officially. However, the real problems arise from the fact that the data exists: it can, will and already has been misused by individuals.

Three things:

- I am making an effort - both privately, and for the companies I consult with, to move away from US-based services. This is a long-term strategy, as changing company infrastructure can take time.

- Encrypt everything. It take a bit of work, but you can set up encryption so that it is transparent to the casual user. Just as an example, with EncFS you can automatically and transparently encrypt data you store in the cloud. The user sees the unencrypted version, but the encrypted version is synchronized with the cloud.

- Teach people about password managers like KeePass. Get people to use long, cryptographically difficult passwords. Bonus points: copy-paste out of a password manager eliminates over-the-shoulder observation, keyloggers, passwords written on post-its, etc.

According to the information I find about Arizona net metering, the power you generate offsets your bill (at retail rates) until your bill is zero; after that you are paid wholesale for any excess:

"Net metering is accomplished using a single bi-directional meter. Any customer net excess generation (NEG) will be carried over to the customer's next bill at the utility's retail rate, as a kilowatt-hour (kWh) credit. Any NEG remaining at the customer’s last monthly bill in a calendar year will be paid to the customer, via check or billing credit, at the utility’s avoided cost payment. "

If this is really true, then the utility is making a profit reselling the power you generate. So what's the basis for this fee they want to charge?

This, of course, it pretty much the way it ought to be, at least for current employees: Retirement benefits fully funded, instead of vague promises.

Of course, since this money is paid to the government, instead of being put in an independent fund, the government will just steal it and replace it with IOUs

In order to really be useful, Germany would have to store at least gigawatt-hours of power. This huge solar peak they have during the daytime needs to be distributed at least into the evening hours, and ideally into the morning of the following day.

Distributed solar makes sense, at least partically because the loss of efficiency due to zillions of small power generation points more-or-less balances out with the gain in efficiency because the power is consumed near where it is generated, thus eliminating transmission losses.

Distributed power storage makes a good bit less sense. Charging and discharging batteries is - depending on the situation - somewhere between 60% and 80% efficient, dropping as the batteries age. The batteries will have to be replaced every few years, which further decreases the efficiency. Gigawatt-hours of batteries - we are talking - rough estimate - around 20,000 tons of batteries per GWh. That a lot of nasty chemical, not to mention manufacturing and recycling costs.

Frankly, Germany would be better off selling excess electricity to the Swiss, who then pump their lakes full, and then buying that electricity back when needed. This is around 70% efficient, and a hell of a lot friendlier to the environment.

How do you figure that a college education is a good bargain? Tuition prices have vastly outpaced inflation, mainly due to permissive government loan programs (throw money into a system, watch prices rise, economics at work). Meanwhile, because a college degree is the new high school diploma, the college offerings in - let's be blunt - useless fields have expanded. Here is some data from DOE:

Degrees with, um, limited employment prospects, change since 1985
- Visual and performing arts: up 150%
- Interdisciplinary studies: up 175%
- Recreation, leisure, fitness: up 620%
- Liberal arts, general studies: up 120%
- Family science (wtf?): up 50%
- Social science & history: up 80%

Meanwhile, technical degrees with good employment prospects, again since 1985
- Mathematics: no change
- Engineering: down 5%
- Computer science: down 5%

The only real exception seems to be in medicine and healthcare, which is eminently employable and is also up quite a lot. Otherwise, our colleges seem to be producing more and more well-qualified hamburger flippers.

p.s. I didn't mention business, although that is the most popular degree by far. Up 50%, whichever category you care to place it in.

There are two groups arguing here - I think both may be missing the point.

Group 1: The passwords belong to your employer, turn them over. It's his fault, because he refused.

Group 2: He may have been paranoid, but he was really just following policy: don't give passwords to unauthorized people.

Regardless of which side you are on, ask yourself this: How would this scenario have played out if he worked for a private company? Consider that, in the end, he *did* hand over the passwords to the mayor, i.e., the "big boss". What would a private company have done?

- They wouldn't be claiming $1.5 million in damages - an absurd figure.

- They wouldn't try to prosecute him and throw him in jail. Bitter firings happen, life goes on.

- The *only* likely retribution would be: "don't use us as a reference".

Sending the guy to jail and suing him for more than his net worth? It takes a government to waste resources on that sort of idiotic vengeance.