Or equivalently "Graduate students are being exploited."

What you really need is to deal with this anti-intellectualism that's so popular in the culture today, and replace it with genuine curiosity, a joy of discovery, and a delight at learning new things.

Do that, and the rest will naturally follow, and not just in software development.

Gaming typically relies on skill, not chance. If you play most games long enough, you'll be able to consistently beat certain levels. If you win at the roulette wheel, you're no more likely than before to win again. That's the difference. Otherwise, "exploiting pleasure-seeking behavior" could be stretched to describe every last industry in existence beyond the sales of food, water, shelter, and basic utilities.

With the model of directly purchasing the game itself (and no in-game purchases, like standard PC/console gaming) you can at least read about the game and have a reasonable expectation about what you are paying for. The real problem with in-game purchases is that the game is "free" or low-cost in the most technical sense, but after you invest many hours advancing the game you find that you can't really prosper without making additional purchases. It could be construed as a form of bait-and-switch.

The other problem would be that many of these games are aimed at children who make purchases the parents later get stuck with, but this problem begins in the home and should be solved within the home by actual parenting. That's not as convenient as using the tablet like a cheap babysitter but it would certainly be more worthwhile. If you wanted to solve this by government action, that's simple too: declare that these purchases are contractual in nature (the parent agreed to pay charges made to the phone bill or whatever) and that minors who make them cannot be held to a contract, therefore the companies cannot collect money when children make them. *Poof* - end of shitty business model.

You're using very old information. Current generation solar panels are guaranteed to produce 80% of original power after 25 years. The original 'modern' panel is still working 60 years later, and there are lots of evidence they last at least 30.

Though I agree on the nuclear power. I'd be building at least 300 new reactors if I could. It's just that in my original post I was saying that using solar electricity to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere is stupid, especially at those efficiencies. Note that I said 'Even in'; I didn't mean to say that it was the most efficient option.

And yes, synthetic hydrocarbons produced from nuclear power would be a welcome alternative, though I still hold hope for algae based biodiesel/fuel*.

*You can get oil and diesel out of the fats, ethanol or gasoline equivalent out of the carbohydrates.

Depends. I don't mind research, indeed I love it. But research isn't magic; there's a definite 'law of reducing returns' out there in general, especially when we're playing with energy. There are huge numbers of vastly different ways to reduce or sequester CO2.

As for the wolves, very interesting article. I don't think it'll work everywhere, but we can duplicate at least some of it.

Indeed. For the foreseeable future you'll reduce CO2 more by using the panels to displace coal power and even Natural Gas. Only after you've shut ALL of them down and still need to reduce CO2 does this make sense.

Even in ~20 years we'd be better off doing something like use all the retiring EV batteries* to help stabilize the grid and shift solar power to the 7-9 pm peak.

*10 years for EVs to actually reach significant market penetration, 10 years more before people start replacing the batteries in them.

Huh, never heard that. Any citation on Musk saying that?

Tesla's existing cars are actually reasonably priced for their luxury/performance envelope.

Danger to their present business models, you mean.

Personally, I think that Tesla would be an excellent company to talk with. Elon Musk speaks their language.

Which would be odd, seeing as how in US parlance 'fridge magnet' does indeed mean a magnet intended to attach to your fridge, typically containing advertising or cute sayings, or holding things like sheets of your kid's art up.

Per wiki a typical fridge magnet is 5 mt, or .005 Tesla. So this experiment is more like 3000X as strong as a fridge magnet.

This thing is 10X as strong as most of my 'fridge' magnets, but then I like to play with neodymium ones.

Going by my experience, their 'fridge magnets' would hold to a fridge very well without requiring excessive strength to pull off. Most of mine you have to think about it a bit.

Oh, and 16T is enough to levitate a frog.

Reading your kind words is humbling, sir. You honor yourself by being one of the minority who read something like that and try to understand where it is coming from and how it could work, rather than playing the hostile audience and trying your best to tear it down because it opposes a common notion.

Rather than patronizingly talking down to me like this, try to understand where I'm coming from. I'm not talking about crimes that have victims here, like robbery and murder. Preventing those is legitimately within the purpose of having a government and a society. I'm talking about the wrong of trying to dictate lifestyles, of trying to micromanage the way others live based not on crimes but on approval. It's not terribly different from dictating to people what they may read, listen to, watch, and discuss.

American tyranny is what they call a soft tyranny. It's not so much jack-booted thugs waving guns around, demanding compliance. That's hard tyranny. Soft tyranny is when you no longer treat adult people like responsible adults because "you know what's good for them". The only way to have a healthy, long-term viable society is to expect adults to be responsible, to make their own decisions in any instance that does not involve a crime with a victim, and then (importantly) to accept the consequences of those decisions. Any effort to circumvent this will eventually destroy the very society itself.

Slippery slope fallacy. That I support having *limited* government does not mean that I support *NO* government.

Then, like a coffee shop you provide what information you have about those who connected, and move on.

Yes, at some point it's quite rational to decide "this one entity has enough power". He's really very smooth, though. I'll hand him that:

That's a very diplomatic way to go about it. People often mistake that for honesty and openness in fact. It's basically a highly polished way of saying, "if you were educated you would agree with me."

There's nothing more profoundly anti-social than trying to control other people and force them to live only the way that you want them to.

GP has the right idea. "I don't care if you ... " means "I don't care to force my will on you". If you want advice from someone, you're free to ask.