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Comment Just end all Oil Coal Gas tax exemptions (Score 1) 433

by WillAffleckUW (#46749543) Attached to: UN: Renewables, Nuclear Must Triple To Save Climate

You can accomplish the same thing by ending all Coal, Oil, and Gas tax exemptions and below market rate leases for the same on public lands and oceans.

And then use the remaining cash after the deficit is all paid (about 4 times larger than the deficit) to literally provide low cost loans to US consumers and businesses to build solar, wind, and tidal energy nationwide. The main barrier is the capital cost to build these systems, not the operational costs.

Problem solved.

Comment Re:Stopping a billionaire's car (Score 1) 325

by WillAffleckUW (#46730479) Attached to: Can You Buy a License To Speed In California?

Correction, Sweden's fines are fixed.

Only if you sped too much over the limit and you are charged with "reckless driving" (and convicted), you will get a fine based on your income.

So for "Normal speeding", no.

/C

What is the conviction rate for rich people compared to the conviction rate for poor people in the US?

That's the number we need to be concerned with.

Comment Stopping a billionaire's car (Score 5, Insightful) 325

by WillAffleckUW (#46730127) Attached to: Can You Buy a License To Speed In California?

The problem is simple.

Unlike in Sweden or Norway, where your ticket depends on your income, the fine is a small amount to a billionaire.

And that billionaire will make the arresting cop's life miserable and throw lawyers at the "case" like confetti.

It takes a brave police officer to stand up to pressure like that, high risk, low reward, no chance of promotion or contract work ever after you're blacklisted for off-duty security work on all the top tech campus and party locations.

Comment Considering what it cost to put that op on (Score 1) 111

by WillAffleckUW (#46728185) Attached to: $250K Reward Offered In California Power Grid Attack

considering what it cost in terms of training, logistics, coordination, surveillance, and equipment to do this, the reward is not very much.

The op itself cost more than that, all those things considered.

Oh, by the way, no, you're not safe.

Ever.

There is no such thing as safety, only living in fear because you want to believe in magic rainbow unicorns.

Submission + - Chinese Man on Trial for Spreading False Rumours Online (theguardian.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Qin Zhihui, a user of the Chinese Twitter-like website Weibo, has confessed in court to spreading false rumors about the Chinese government in the first public trial under a Chinese crackdown on online rumors. China has threatened criminal penalties against anyone who spreads rumors on microblogs that are reposted more than 500 times, or seen by more than 5,000 users. Qin invented a story that the government gave 200m yuan (US$32m) in compensation to the family of a foreign passenger killed in a high-speed train crash in 2011 in order to incite hatred to the government which gave much lower compensation to Chinese nationals. The Chinese government did have policies in the past to give more compensations to foreigners than locals in disasters, though those policies have been phased out in recent years. Online rumours are particularly pervasive in China, where traditional media is heavily regulated by the government and public trust in the media is low.

Submission + - US takes out gang that used Zeus malware to steal millions (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: The US Department of Justice today charged nine members of a group that used Zeus malware to infect thousands of business computers with Zeus malware and illegally siphon-off millions of dollars into over-seas bank accounts. The DoJ said an indictment was unsealed in connection with the arraignment this week at the federal courthouse in Lincoln, Neb., of two Ukrainian nationals, Yuriy Konovalenko, 31, and Yevhen Kulibaba, 36. Konovalenko and Kulibaba were recently extradited from the United Kingdom.

Submission + - Fukushima, USA (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists elaborates on the recent finding that dozens of nuclear power plants in the US are at significant risk of experiencing natural disasters exceeding their 'design basis,' and the uncertainty that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is willing to do anything about it. Seventy-five percent of the plants submitting recent reevaluations have found the earthquake hazard is greater than the one they were designed to handle, and reactor owners are lagging in their reevaluations of flooding risks, with 11 of 25 missing the March 12, 2014 deadline. Industry representatives argue that the NRC is forcing them to develop mitigation strategies for floods that could never occur. 'To his credit, NRC official Michael Johnson pushed back: “I get a little nervous when I hear people talk about an external event that could not happen."' The similarities to the reported attitude of Japan's TEPCO prior to the Fukushima accident are difficult to ignore.

Submission + - 'weev' Conviction Overturned (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A few years back, Andrew 'weev' Auernheimer went public with a security vulnerability that made the personal information of 140,000 iPad owners available on AT&T's website. He was later sentenced to 41 months in prison for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (or because the government didn't understand his actions, depending on your viewpoint). Now, the Third U.S. District Court of Appeals has vacated weev's conviction. Oddly, the reason for the ruling was not based on the merits of the case, but on the venue in which he was tried (PDF). From the ruling: 'Although this appeal raises a number of complex and novel issues that are of great public importance in our increasingly interconnected age, we find it necessary to reach only one that has been fundamental since our country’s founding: venue. The proper place of colonial trials was so important to the founding generation that it was listed as a grievance in the Declaration of Independence.'

Submission + - GM Names Names, Suspends Two Engineers Over Ignition-Switch Safety

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: GM said it has placed two engineers on paid leave in connection with its massive recall probe of 2 million vehicles. Now, GM is asking NASA to advise on whether those cars are safe to drive even with the ignition key alone. Significantly, individual engineers now have their names in print and face a raft of inquiries what they did or didn't know, did or didn't do, and when. A vulnerability for GM: One engineer may have tried to re-engineer the faulty ignition switch without changing the part number—an unheard-of practice in the industry. Is it a good thing that people who engineer for a living can now get their names on national news for parts designed 10 years ago? The next time your mail goes down, should we know the name of the guy whose code flaw may have caused that?

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