Other people in the thread have posted the eu site is malware - not sure about the us variant. the kat.cr is real.

1) An incredibly small population.

Which describes all fracking sites exactly - they are in remote communities.

2) An incredibly dangerous working environment.

No, it does not have to be "incredibly" dangerous. Just MORE dangerous than work in the surrounding area, which if you are in some remote mostly bedroom or farming community is absolutely going to be true for any complex mechanical complex which has frequent shipping and operation. "Hospital visits" is extremely vague and can include something like a small cut which most people would just patch up but which a company has to send to a doctor for examination for legal reasons.

That's controlled for by the randomness of the counties involved - both changes before and after drilling, and with no-drilling areas in the same region as controls

It accounts for the fact that having drilling rigs is going to increase hospital visits because it's inherently more dangerous? I would be surprised if the placement of any drilling rig did not raise the visits to hospitals.

It just seems like a really bad metric as the effects of Fracking, if in fact there were any, would take much longer to manifest.

You make a good emotional appeal, but the reality is that someone just casually sharing a song isn't likely to be subject to these penalties at all.

That's sort of like saying the penalty against burglary would only be used against someone who steals the Crown Jewels.

If the law specifies a minimum offense at all, you can be sure that anyone reaching that minimum is at risk. We've had very many documented civil copyright trolls going after otherwise un-notable individuals, and thus abuse of criminal law is certain.

It would have to be many farads, this isn't a car stereo. The problem is how to gate the power after such a large capacitor. You're right that it could increase the momentary current. But that's also the problem. Their "contactor", a mechanical switch, has had to be upgraded with exotic alloy to deal with heating. And if you try to gate the power before it, you end up feeding what is very close to a short circuit while it charges.

Shamelessly lifted from the comments on the iEEE article, is a link to India using plastic as binder in asphalt.

This seems like a much more practical step towards using lots of plastic in roads, and the article hints that it may help prevent potholes which would mean the road would be usable longer. They've already been testing it on real roads for a year.

I just can't see how the equivalent of potholes in a pure plastic road are anything but disaster - a ton of water gathering in the conduits, and any fragmentation would lead to very sharp shards on the road, or large areas just failing wholesale.

You haven't seen a lot of plastic on fire, and besides that point the point where asphalt catches on fire is much higher than most (all?) plastic.

Finally, a car I can drive straight up the sides of buildings.

I *knew* I shouldn't have partnered with Intel on my line of computer-chip lollipops!

I don't really care if it does. I just want it to taste good. Lots of things that aren't bacon taste good

While that is true, the Uncanny Valley effect apples here as it does in so many other things - the closer something tries to get to tasting like bacon without actually tasting like real bacon, the more disgusting it is because your mind knows what it's trying to taste like, but rejects it wholly.

It would be better if it just tasted delicious in its own way, without any claims to placement in the royal court of the Kingdom of Bacon.

Even Turkey "bacon" does not taste like Bacon, usually these things end up being pretty disappointing.

Doors opening and engine not halting when ignition switched off

Gees, does Range Rover have to include Drivers Seat Extreme Side Tilt as an option in next year's model for people to get the hint? The car has places to go, get out of the damn car and let it have a little space of its own!

If monkeys are people then why can't cars be too? All these people and their bias against steel-based life forms.

Amusing but true, there's already a lot of HTML5 nonsense that goes on in many sites, even on browsers I specifically disallow Flash on.

I think what we need to advance user tech is "click to remove HTML5 element" with memory of what element you removed, that would automatically be scotched the next time you visited the same site. That way you could even allow "tame" ads if you liked, and just stop obnoxious floating elements that blocked content...

Who knows what OTHER kinds of abstractions could get you nicked!

Abstracting the server layer - that's a week in the pound!

Only makes sense that car called the Range Rover would have either an off-by-one or Out of Array Bounds error.