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Comment Re: Plug-in hybrid [Re:Its not about what you need (Score 1) 613

by frdmfghtr (#63671033) Attached to: Is the Obsession with EV Range All Wrong?

I didn't want to go plug-in hybrid because almost all of my driving would be electric, so I end up lugging around a big iron weight that still requires periodic ICE maintenance, and a fuel tank that weights a not insignificant amount. For my use, most of the time they are simply deadweight being carried around for no reason. For others they make more sense.

Comment Re: this is truly why we can't have nice things (Score 1) 125

Years ago this was referred to as the "Frankenstein veto" as it allowed creating new legislation such as this without legislature input. Regardless of political alignment, as a Wisconsin resident I've never liked it and wish it would be removed from the governor's toolbox. Sure it may let you pull stunts like this, but the parts vetoes may have provided positive public benefit and now they are gone.

Now, some may say that the severely gerrymandered districts (I recall that a state that votes roughly 60% Democrat has 30% of the seats in the state legislature) justify this sort of action, but I counter that with "if you are going to do this, it is hypocrisy to call out the other side for doing it." Now the other side of the aisle will just ramp it up next time there's a Republican governor (although the aforementioned gerrymandering may make a Republican governor a rubber stamp for the state legislature).

I have an expectation that my state politicians on both sides of the aisle play fair and ethically; sadly those days are gone.

Submission + - Number of teens who 'don't enjoy life' has doubled with social media (nypost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It’s the new great depression. Since the rise of social media, depression and feelings of hopelessness have skyrocketed among teens.

Nearly half of teens say they agree with phrases like “I can’t do anything right,” “I do not enjoy life” and “My life is not useful” — roughly twice as many as did just a decade ago.

“These are staggering numbers, just enormous increases,” psychologist and generational expert Dr. Jean Twenge told The Post. “And parents are rightfully very concerned about their children's mental health.”

The poll, conducted by the University of Michigan and featured in Twenge's book "Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silents — and What They Mean for America’s Future," is just the latest startling revelation about youth mental health, as rates of teen anxiety and depression have grown.

The No. 1 cause, according to Twenge, is social media and screen time.

And while Twenge says parents should stave off smartphones and social media for as long as possible, she believes more radical solutions are needed — like raising the minimum social media age to 16.

“We’re behind the curve in doing anything about this,” she said. “This is not just a problem of individual families or individual teens. This is a group level problem.”

Submission + - US Supreme Court rejects affirmative action in university admissions (reuters.com)

Submitted by Hmmmmmm
Hmmmmmm writes: The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, effectively prohibiting affirmative action policies long used to raise the number of Black, Hispanic and other underrepresented minority students on American campuses.

In a blockbuster decision that will force many colleges and universities to overhaul their admissions policies, the justices ruled that affirmative action admissions programs that consider an applicant's race in ways like Harvard and UNC did violate the U.S. Constitution's promise of equal protection under the law.

Powered by the conservative justices with the liberals in dissent, the court sided with a group called Students for Fair Admissions, founded by anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, in its appeal of lower court rulings upholding programs used at the two prestigious schools to foster a diverse student population. The vote counts were 6-3 against UNC and 6-2 against Harvard

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that a student "must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual's identity is not challenges bested, skills built or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice."

Universities, Roberts added, may still consider a student's personal essays about "how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise." But, Roberts said, "universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today."

Submission + - National Geographic lays off all remaining staff writers (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by DesScorp
DesScorp writes: The Washington Post reports that all remaining editorial staffers have been laid off at National Geographic, as the iconic magazine continues to spiral downward:

"Like one of the endangered species whose impending extinction it has chronicled, National Geographic magazine has been on a relentlessly downward path, struggling for vibrancy in an increasingly unforgiving ecosystem. On Wednesday, the Washington-based magazine that has surveyed science and the natural world for 135 years reached another difficult passage when it laid off all of its last remaining staff writers. The cutback — the latest in a series under owner Walt Disney Co. — involves some 19 editorial staffers in all, who were notified in April that these terminations were coming. Article assignments will henceforth be contracted out to freelancers or pieced together by editors. The cuts also eliminated the magazine’s small audio department. The layoffs were the second over the past nine months, and the fourth since a series of ownership changes began in 2015. In September, Disney removed six top editors in an extraordinary reorganization of the magazine’s editorial operations.

The famous yellow-bordered print issues of our youth is also an endangered species, as NatGeo also announced that print issues will no longer be sold on newsstands.

Submission + - NASA kills its X-57 electric plane before it ever flies (popsci.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: NASA said today in a conference call with reporters that it would not ever be flying its experimental electric aircraft, the X-57, citing safety concerns that are insurmountable with the time and budget they have for the project. The X-57 program will wind down without the aircraft ever going up into the sky.

The project had previously seen challenges. For example, transistor modules in the electrical inverters kept failing and “blowing up” in testing, Sean Clark, the project’s principal investigator told Popular Science in January. That problem was solved, Clark said.

The problem that led them to scrap the plan to fly the aircraft stemmed from motors that power the propellers. Clark said today that analysis of the issue is ongoing. “As we got into the detailed analysis and airworthiness assessment of the motors themselves, we found that there were some potential failure modes with the motors mechanically, under flight loads, that we hadn’t seen on the ground,” he said. “We’ve got a great design in progress to fix it, it’s just [that] it would take too long for us to go through and implement that.”

NASA said that the reason behind permanently scrubbing the flight is safety and time. “Unfortunately, we recently discovered a potential failure mode in the propulsion system that we determined to pose an unacceptable risk to the pilot’s safety, and the safety of personnel on the ground, during ground tests,” Bradley Flick, the director of NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in California, said in the call. “Mitigation of that failure would take the project well beyond its planned end at the end of this fiscal year, so NASA has decided to end the project on time without taking the vehicle to flight.”

Submission + - Smartwatches are being used to distribute Malware (defensenews.com)

Submitted by frdmfghtr
frdmfghtr writes: Smartwatches are being sent to random military members loaded with malware, much like malware distribution via USB drives in the past.

From the article:

"The Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division, or CID, in an announcement last week warned the watches may contain malware, potentially granting whoever sent the peripherals âoeaccess to saved data to include banking information, contacts, and account information such as usernames and passwords.â"

Recipients are advised not to turn them
In and report the incident to their local security office.

Submission + - Google releases the Pixel Fold (theverge.com)

Submitted by frdmfghtr
frdmfghtr writes: Google has released the Pixel Fold, offering the Samsung Galaxy Fold some competition, even if it's a limited threat in the foldable phone/tablet market. From the article:

"The Pixel Fold is good, with some real advancements for folding phones. But, unsurprisingly, there are a lot of areas where it lags behind Samsung. It turns out that a four-year jumpstart does actually make a difference."

Too bad Google couldn't come up with something better than to copy the name format..."Galaxy Fold" vs "Pixel Fold." Reminds me of the "creativity" of the contactless pay methods: Apple Pay vs Google Pay vs Samsung Pay.

Comment Re:Idiotic design decisions (Score 2) 53

by frdmfghtr (#63629086) Attached to: Are Energy-Saving LED Lights Also Creating Glaring Problems?

"More glare" is caused by morons who design LED streetlights and give priority to "we must show off that this is a LED light" over practical considerations.

Agreed...the problem is not that the fixtures are LED-based, but that they are a bad overall design. Any poorly-designed light is going to generate excess glare, LED or incandescent.

Comment Re: Generational divide (Score 2) 203

âoeAnd you know what? I don't know how younger people ever managed to learn anything with a headset and a webcam in front of a fucking computer screen with the teacher and fellow students appearing in tiny tiles, with the jerky video and unbearable audio lag, but I sure can't.â

I had to watch one of my kids finish kindergarten via Zoom. âoeZoomâ and âoekindergartenâ only belong in the same sentence if youâ(TM)re talking about zooming around a kindergarten playground. The teachers did the best they could in the sudden change in the school year, all the credit in the world to them.

I hope we never have to go through that shitstorm again.

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