Coal isn't the smartest tech to develop in the truly undeveloped areas anyway. Cost per kilowatt calculations in the first world assume that a high-voltage grid is already in place. Even with a high-voltage grid in place, solar and wind are close to parity with coal in many parts of the first world now. Lacking the high-voltage distribution, localized solar and wind - and biomass in some places - are overall at the advantage, because they can be used closer to where they're generated. Nobody puts a small coal-powered generator in their backyard, or next to their factory or hospital. On the other hand I have friends with solar in their backyard, and they live normal American lives with it, firing up gas generators only a few dark winter days a year. Most of the third world doesn't have dark winter days.

Valve is, in my brief acquaintance, evil. My 8 year old wanted to get Euro Truck Simulator 2, having seen it on YouTube. So figuring that SteamOS is just going to be a Ubuntu variant anyway, we installed Steam on his Linux laptop, and bought the game from them. They said it ran on Linux. If you're lucky, it might. The game developer doesn't even sell it for Linux. It's just Valve that claims it runs on Linux. The developer says there's a problem with compatibility with the Mesa libs, which they blame on Mesa, and have no ETA for a fix. Valve says tough shit, you didn't buy the game, you just "subscribed," so no refund, even though they falsely advertised it as running on Linux.

Finally after challenging their fraud with my credit card issuer, they backed down. But they're total scamsters. Selling games for platforms where they know the games won't run, or would know if they checked the game authors and their own forums, and then claiming that their bogus click-through contracts mean that they can defraud you just as much as they like, thank you, and suck on it.

Anyway, SteamOS is apparently just going to be Ubuntu, which already has steam debs, plus some hardware specs to help manufacturers build game boxes running it. Big PR, but a smart manufacturer who wanted to could already install Ubuntu + steam on game-capable hardware. If this means that Valve will put resources into improving the Mesa libs so that games they claim work on Linux actually will, that would be cool. But not in line with their character as they're currently displaying it. They clearly don't give a fuck if stuff won't run, as long as they've already pocketed your money.

Building any major energy infrastructure, a huge portion of the cost is labor. Now, if we simply imported Chinese labor, like we did to build the railroads....

Unless you price what it would cost to build here with Chinese labor at Chinese wages, it's apples-to-oranges.

A loan guarantee is not financing. The DOE has provided no money. The financing is from private institutions.

The loan guarantee means the private institutions get paid even if the project fails, true. But why should the project fail? This is proven tech that's cost competitive. It would take some true catastrophe for the loan guarantee to ever be called on.

The many worlds model's absurdity is right in its name. It's the belief that we have no choice, make no choices, but just randomly find ourselves in a world where certain things have happened, while duplicates of ourselves, at each instant where different things might happen, including our own different actions, find themselves inhabiting each of those many worlds. That's to say, the many worlds model requires that the illusion of choice model is the correct one for human agency. And not in the Newtonian sense where it's because there is only one causal destiny. Rather it's a claim that there's no one destiny, but we can't choose among the many destinies, and instead must realize them all, in an endless branching into infinite futures, in none of which will we ever have any real freedom, or real choice.

That contradicts everything we know about human psychology, as well as every possible evolutionary account for the advantage of consciousness. It contradicts evolution itself, since according to many worlds every possibility going forward is realized in one universe or another, even the possibilities which are, in a Darwinian sense, less fit.

So they're working up an Ubuntu variant. When my kid asked me to install Steam on his Ubuntu laptop to play Euro Truck II, which Valve claims runs on Linux, I went ahead, figuring "they're in this space, it should work." Well, almost. Filed a trouble ticket with them Sunday, and as of today, Wednesday, there's no response. I clearly told them which module simply crashes. The game is pretty useless without that working. If they think they understand how to build games for Ubuntu, or want to understand it well enough to succeed, they need to take bug reports seriously. Obviously they don't. So they'll, sadly, fail.

If no response from them by the time a week's over I'll have to ask for a refund and contest it with my credit card company. At least I didn't use PayPal!

Yeah, major drug cartels and especially Iceland have massive data centers that rival what the US has. Right. That must be why so many of the job postings for those with related skills are in Columbia and Iceland.

Look, we know that the NSA hires shills to mock all of us who are concerned with this stuff. You're probably not one of them. You probably just do it for free.

The notion that climate scientists are concerned with pet agendas is idiotic, totally ignorant. I know climate scientists. They couldn't give a shit about socialism, capitalism or other political ideals. They aren't vegetarians, or particularly organic, or anything of the like. They just look at the science and the science leads them to the conclusion that humanity's in serious trouble. They tend to take that not as a call to arms, but somewhat abstractly, philosophically. And then they look at the people who accuse them of cooking the science, and they think something along the lines of "Humanity's not worth saving, especially if it won't save itself."

These are big picture, long-term, wide-angle thinkers. They identify with life and consciousness in the universe, but tend not to be concerned so much with humankind's tragic present. Many aren't too concerned with this civilization, or even this form of life, although they tend to enjoy it intensely. They know that civilizations and advanced lifeforms will arise again. If this one isn't smart enough to deserve to survive, so be it.

Your can configure your HTTPS server to use forward secrecy. Forward secrecy uses one-time keys, generated by between the website and the browser for the single session. Most modern browsers support it. But it generally requires compiling the latest version of OpenSSL and the compiling Apache 2.4.x against that, not using the Apache 2.2.x versions that are standard in most of the Linux distros. More detail also here.

If you set up your webserver this way, and your visitors use the right browsers, they NSA's having good copies of the site's certificates won't gain them much. At least that's what Ivan Risti's saying. On TLS/SSL stuff, there may be no one better.

The power to fly, at the time of the Constitution, belonged only to a small minority of the people: witches. If the founders had been asked whether they wished to extend the power to fly to everyone, what should their answer have been? "Sure, let's all be witches"?

Or would they have affirmed the right of witches to be left alone in the sky without interference? Would they have seen that as the prohibited establishment of a state-supported religion?

Note to the "agencies": I accept piecework mocking the sincere concerns of my fellow citizens for their freedoms, thereby helping diminish their resistance to your superb safe-keeping of our insecurities.

Oh, so Obama = "pure evil" now? Or is he only = "partly evil"? If only = "partly evil," are you proposing we should only vote for someone = "pure good"? If so, please provide one example, not including a founder of any major religion, of someone you would argue = "pure good."

If it is true that all people are somewhat tainted by "evil," would you say we should never vote? We should never weigh the balance of the good and evil in one candidate against the balance of good and evil in another candidate, and make an affirmative choice?

If they have nothing to hide, why are they insisting on the privacy of even the opinions of the court supposedly overseeing their actions?

The 4th's ban ban on general warrants (that's what it means when it mentions "warrants" in its historical context) strongly implies a privacy right. General warrants were authorization from the crown for its agents to search any person or premises they desired to, blanket authorization. The 4th amendment bans that. The government has to have specific cause, evidence already at hand related to a specific person or premise, to search at all.

That the government in general has no right to search means by very strong implication that you have the right to the privacy which results. What else is it but your privacy that the 4th amendment says the government can't intrude on? It's nonsense not to find a right to privacy as a necessary implication of our constitutional protection from general warrants.

To be fair, this program is currently legal. I don't think it will pass Constitutional muster if it ever hit the courts, but that hasn't happened yet. The appropriate course of action would be to challenge this law in the courts rather than releasing classified data.

You're aware that the ACLU and others have repeatedly tried to bring this before the courts, and been shut down by the Obama's people claiming that, since the program is so secret, whoever is bringing suit can't prove that the program specifically harmed them, and so has no legal standing to even make the case before a court? The courts, by accepting the argument that no one has standing to challenge these practices, have avoided having to rule on the Constitutionality of it all.

Your "appropriate course of action" has been tried. It doesn't work, not because the courts rule these programs Constitutional, but because the courts accept Obama's argument that truly secret programs are beyond court review. If your view of the Constitution is that any law that infringes on our rights can be challenged in court, then you must accept that the courts, just as much as the administration, have found ways to slip outside the Constitution's bounds and responsibilities.

So the appropriate course of action, in your view, given this, is ... what?

Personally, I don't buy into the global warming camp or anti-climate change camp. ... Given that it is based upon scientific principles, I'm going to have to plead: I'm human, I have limited resources to deal with the problem presented before me, it is based upon a system of knowledge that I find acceptable (i.e. science), so I accept it.

So if, say, 50% of scientific papers are "intellectually honest," and 97% of scientific papers addressing climate change conclude that anthropogenic factors are the main drivers of variance over the last century or more, then how can you not "buy into the global warming camp"?

Isn't the whole "anti-climate change camp" devoted to the notion that there is such a thing as major, wide-spread actions without consequences, contrary to your major assertion? Because on the level of global climate, somehow man's actions are perpetually too small to effect it, or a deity will counter any potential harm we do, or the planet will magically turn every potential disadvantage to advantage, or the like?