While desalination is a great use of excess power, this is not an easy thing to do because the places where the water is needed are inland. Obviously it doesn't make sense to pump desalinated water 180 miles uphill from the Gulf of California to Phoenix, what you really want to do is to use desalinated water at the places nearer the coast so they can stop relying on the river water that comes from the mountain west, so the southwest can use more of it (and so the mountain west can keep more of it for our own use). But while you could get some benefit from getting the coastal cities using desalinated water, their use actually isn't that significant. The bulk of the water goes to California farmlands, and those are in a belt 70-100 miles from the coasts, and there are mountains in between. Not terribly tall ones, but enough to make pumping the water challenging.

None of this means what you say isn't a good idea, but it does mean that a lot of infrastructure has to be built to make it work. Big coastal desalination plants, big pipelines from those plants, fed by big pumps, and either additional reservoirs or perhaps large tanks in the mountains to buffer the water supply -- though only after peak supply rises to the point that it exceeds demand. Heh. That's exactly the same situation as with intermittent, renewable power, just shifted to water. Water is a lot easier to store, of course, but you still have to build the infrastructure to store it.

So, this is a good idea, but it's an idea that will take years, probably a decade, to realize... and we have excess power now. Of course, starting by tackling the easier problem of using desalinated water in the coastal cities while the infrastructure is built out and scaled up makes sense.

Yep. This, like many problems associated with regulated utilities, is one where the right answer is also pretty simple: Just make the prices reflect the costs, then let the market sort it out. But the "just" in that statement belies the political challenges of making such changes.

You assume. You should consider that people with an inside view who see what data is actually collected, how it's secured and managed and how it's used, may have a very different perspective on that. I mean, without an internal view you understandably have to assume the worst, but they (we) don't.

Speaking for myself, I very few concerns about Google's privacy violations today. But with respect to the future, you and I are in the same boat, neither of us can know what a future version of the company might do. And on that score I suspect you and I would find ourselves in strong agreement on the potential for serious harm. Where we might differ again is that I see the work being done to limit Google's access to user data so I'm cautiously optimistic that before all vestiges of the old corporate culture are lost and the bean counters take over completely, Google will largely have ceased collecting and using data for advertising and what remains will be easy to limit and make safe.

Re: your subject "Not true", the data doesn't lie. The fact that you're an outlier doesn't change the situation.

Me too, though usually it's audiobooks for fiction and certain types of non-fiction. Being able to "read" a book while mowing the lawn, or whatever, has made chores far less annoying and opened up big blocks of time for reading.

I expect taking a client list from one company to another is illegal even without a noncompete.

Who thought that the tracking device was not being used to track them?!?

Sure, and they should expect that they're putting their jobs on the line for their cause. Without that risk, their protest isn't particularly meaningful. If they were to "win" by getting Google to cancel the contract, they'd actually have little effect because Google is almost certainly right that this contract has little to no effect on the war.

Generating headlines by getting fired from their $500k/year jobs is the most effective thing these Google employees can do for their cause. So, good for them, they succeeded!

If they expect Google's decision to generate significant public or internal backlash, though, I think they'll be disappointed.

KDE has to be a thing for Fedora because there are a lot of KDE loyalists and distros really can't just forgo supporting them. KDE really is very good and its followers aren't going to tolerate Gnome. Canonical tried to kill Kubuntu in 2012, pulling funding and official support. Kubuntu not only survived it's thriving and is the best choice for Ubuntu based desktops today. Then there is SUSE, which has been tier 1 KDE since forever.

It's not morons.

It's people overwhelmed with multiple crisis scenarios that they can't handle. Most of us wish for a stable society and environment because it makes it easier to plan a future. You wouldn't build a house if you're not sure it's still going to be there in five years.

Calling people morons instead of understanding the actual problem is also a way to avoid looking at it too closely, probably because the complexity is overwhelming to you, too. Easier to just call people morons and be done with it.

Climate change is very much a social, cultural and political problem and the scientists have only looked at the meteorological and biological side of it.

We don't.

It's just not necessary in 90% of Europe. We didn't build mega-cities in near tropical climate. A week or two of really hot weather during the summer is not a problem and you wouldn't install an AC just for that.

Maybe some are, but both in my place and where my parents live (1200 km away, that's 750 miles for the metrically challenged) temperatures have plummeted to near freezing at night and single-digits during the day (in Celsius, that's the 35 to 45 range in Fahrenheit for the temperature scale challenged).

I don't doubt climate change at all. But shoddy journalism that creates headlines where those allegedly affected go "what? not at all, why are you lying?" only helps the deniers.

If you look at a weather map of Europe, like this one stuck in the early 2000s - https://www.weatheronline.co.u... - you'll see that at least right now only the very, very southern tips of Europe (in Spain and Greece, that's in the bottom-left corner and the bottom-right corner, no not the very corner that's already Africa, damn where were you in geography?) has temperatures above 20ÂC predicted for today, and that's not unusually hot for those regions.

We did have unusually hot weather 2-3 weeks ago, but they were unusual only for the season and still well below ordinary summer days.

Please get your reporting right, or you're only feeding the trolls that claim climate change is made up.

It's a similar concept to Alternative Minimum Taxes [*], which you probably haven't experienced with your own taxes. Basically, deductions that corporations can normally claim are disallowed and then their taxes are calculated at the lower rate. If the result is more than they would pay with the higher rate and broader set of deductions, then they have to pay it rather rather than the normally-calculated amount. So it doesn't apply to all corporations, or maybe even most, but it extracts additional revenue from those that would otherwise be successful at using extensive deductions and credits (also known as "loopholes") to reduce their tax liability.

In some cases they're already committed to the behavior and won't be able to avoid the tax. But, yeah, in many cases this tax may deter the behavior rather than raise revenue. The CBO's projections try to take that into account when projecting the revenue impacts, of course. But I think the main goal of this part of the IRA is to appease populists on both sides who think stock buybacks are bad, because they don't understand how publicly-traded corporations work.

The grants will also be paid out over time, so it's more like spending money in the future that will be raised in the future.

Yeah, it's probably inflation-neutral. The IRA does contain some inflation-reducing provisions in specific areas, notably healthcare, but it's mostly revenue-neutral and inflation-neutral. I suppose you can say it's inflation-reducing compared to its previous incarnation, the Build Back Better bill, which if enacted would have increased the deficit and potentially stoked inflation.

[*] Note that AMT is slightly different in that for most taxpayers AMT is actually calculated at a higher tax rate, in addition to disallowing a lot of deductions. But AMT also allows a much larger standard deduction (with a phaseout based on income).

I wish, and I would welcome it if they did.

However, as one of the foremost SELinux advocates in its early days, I doubt that the government of all places has the capability to do so. Few sysadmins can configure SELinux halfway decently (i.e. beyond the default policies) and the government (outside the military and secret services) isn't a good tech employer.

Also, MS is far more than the OS. With Office and a bunch of other tools, plus lots of custom software made only for Windows, the entrechnment is really, really deep.

If we were sure that we'll never go to war with China, I'd agree. Right now we're facing a situation where we may end up in another world war, but we'll be on the side fighting against the manufacturing powerhouse. If it weren't for such strategic concerns, I'd be all for dropping all the tariffs (well, we should add some carbon tariffs) and outsourcing all the manufacturing to China. Trading electronic dollars that we invent as needed for hard goods? Hell yeah. I'll take all of that they want to give us.

But I don't think the geopolitical situation can be ignored. I'm not sure that propping up the US auto industry is the best way to maintain vehicle manufacturing capacity, but until a better alternative is proposed we should probably stick with it.