In Wisconsin, electric companies almost doubled fixed charge "transmission" rates to get more money from people who are shipping electricity back into the grid.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=psc+solar+rate+increase

In other words, they were frightened enough to attack one of the main financial benefits of distributed solar.

>> Sometimes I'm just reading the menu

And sometimes I'm reading it - fascinated even - to avoid talking to (or intentionally annoy) my companion(s).

Oh wait, this isn't passiveagg.org?

>> How is abortion still an issue?

It's used both on the right ("pro life") and on the left ("war on women") as a wedge issue.

>> Who are these people that lay awake at night worrying about whether someone will have an abortion?

Mostly "base" voters who are almost assuredly going to vote for either the right or left for other reasons, but who are cynically motivated to get off the couch by "pro life" or "war on women" advertisements full of BS. You can call people who buy into this stuff dumb, but it works (or neither side would do it). /karmawhoring>

>> Is the irony of Sony being hit by malware lost on people?

At Sony, we just call it "software."

>> The use of Korean could strengthen theories that the destructive cyber attacks have links to North Korea

Are you f***ing kidding me? It's just as likely that it was written by an English-speaking American using a pirated copy of Windows he got from a SOUTH Korean warez site.

America's modern left often argues that portions of the US Constitution can be safely ignored because it's old and was written by white dudes. Here's a (fairly calm) piece that explores that argument. (Also look up "constitution living document".)

"Is the Constitution Still Relevant?"
http://consortiumnews.com/2013...

Unfortunately, this isn't just a fringe belief: in 2010 a USA Today poll showed that 1 in 4 people no longer though the Constitution was "relevant"
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...

1) Thank you for not using the term "Big Data" in the summary.

2) How do you permanently disable the crappy "Slashdot Deelz" ad that always appears now, even if you click its "Fuck Off" link?

I just moved my family to the Virgin "pick your plan" - 3 phones sharing a plan for about $30 total per month (with 250 minutes, limited text and data, but since everyone mostly uses wireless anyway...).

Eggbeaters, is that you?

A Russian, an American and an Italian all walk into a space station.

As soon as the shuttle that dropped them off reenters the atmosphere they discover that a fire has started in the living quarters. They crawl into the module with the escape capsules but discover that there are only two of the one-man crafts available. The Russian immediately dives through a door shouting "for the motherland!" The brave American offers the last capsule to the Italian, but the Italian politely refuses. He says, "Nah, let's both take one - I only wish we could be here when the Ruskie gets out of the shitter."

>> so please watch the video(s)

Um...the summary makes it sound like some guy's going to read you some Wikipedia pages.

Quick - can someone find an editor (maybe borrow one from TheRegister) that can make this sound at all interesting? To anyone? (e.g., "Rare Earth Expert Says (Shit You Would Not Believe)" or "Which 3 Rare Earths Will Be Exhausted in 10 Years" or "Is It True that Garbage Dump Mining Is a Good Way to Get Rare Earth" or...)

>> How would you tell?

Highest FTW* ratio. * = Finger to window.

Let's see...for $50K...I could probably write up a quick mobile app ($1K) that feeds microphone input into a streaming acceptance service on a server ($3K), that chops it up into wav files for Mechanical Turk processing. Fund that long enough to pass the POC stage ($2K), ride some odds (25%) and cash the check before the tech collapses = $6K for possible $12.5K win = $6.5K possible profit? Er...still no.

>> "encrypts its communications with the C&C servers, making the traffic indistinguishable from legitimate SSL, SSH or VPN traffic"

Um...if you think simple transport encryption stops a determined analyst (who can hone in on source/destination IPs, initial traffic patterns, traffic volume, local signals or can use an attack proxy for some MITM action)...think again.

>> they will provide a sense for the first time which Netflix shows are the most popular

Umm...wouldn't Netflix already have this information at its fingertips in its own logs?