Or some large Western Chinese city, or Japan maybe. What Cringely doesn't appear to consider is that the USA will not be the market that does it first. It used to be that you couldn't introduce a new scheme unless USA the "world's biggest market" adapts first. That's kinda 1990s. He's not using metric.

Oblig i think?

This is my understanding, too - That the observable 3rd dimension is finite, the same as a two dimensional film on a bubble is finite but expanding. A wise leprechaun told me.

NYTimes had a pretty interesting technology article about the undersea "cloud" three days ago. https://www.nytimes.com/intera...

In the Ozarks, your newspaper choices were literally named the "X County Republican" or the "X State Democrat".

May be all Russia can afford.

The weight I've gained at mid-50s takes a bigger toll on my push ups than it takes on my treadmill. I think it's physics.

Or maybe, the summary mixes correlation and causation. A professor who has experienced students whose minds grow becomes more optimistic. A professor whose students are just punching the clock and don't care about learning has a more jaundiced view of students.

Accidentally slipped my mouse and mis-modded this informative comment, posting to reset

As a professional electronics recycler, here's the big secret about battery recycling. The original device (car, bus) requires that a battery be pulled when it reaches a certain inefficiency threshhold - say less than 50% recharge. But those uses are for a very tight spec, maintaining speed on the road and getting from point A to 150km away at Point B. In economics, most of the large batteries never make it to the recycler, because there are plenty of savvy Tech Sector people in emerging markets, who resell the batteries to a use (e.g. backup lights for solar panels) that is more forgiving. If the battery on the solar panel saves enough energy to keep the lights on all night, that's actually pretty inefficient when you go to bed.

Of course, if you are an original battery manufacturer, you look at that kind of like Lexmark and HP looked at ink cartridge reuse. The "gray market" disputes are between legitimate added value reuse, and the risk that an unscrupulous subcontractor repackages the used under50% battery in shiny box to sell as a counterfeit. Expect Planned Obsolescence to tell you how poor children at African dumps are buying the batteries. This Recycling Story gets told over and over again, and the fight in the backroom is always over "market cannibalization" vs "counterfeiting".

As it turns out, it was cheaper to open smaller regional airports (used by Ryanair, Easyjet etc) than to economize the traditional airports using more seats per landing window. The A380 and 747 had Reagan's de-regulation in their rearview mirror. The object was closer than it appeared.

Most ocean pollution comes from litter in fast-growing coastal cities in Asia, Africa and South America. It would make a lot more sense to deal with litter in emerging markets than to tinker with the kind of waste that goes into rich country waste treatment facilities. I say this as a professional recycler and environmentalist. The "grasping at straws" approach makes people (and journalists) feel like their doing something, which can actually result in "moral licensing".

A better approach is "fair trade recycling offsets", which are patterned after carbon trading. Let plastic utensil makers sell to people who want / need them, but let them offset by collecting as much litter from places like Lagos and Jakarta as they produce. It would mean less command-and-control by government, and reduce a lot more ocean waste.

Your snaps disappear, or do they last forever? Which has the worst case scenario?