Eh. Don't oversell the old gold standard. For starters, a gold standard was typically a steady and persistent malaise of deflation, as economic output increased more steadily than the money supply.

Yeah, anyone advocating returning to the gold standard needs to read some economic history to really see what things were like when we were on the gold standard. 1800-1933 saw 33 recessions/depressions - every 4 years on average - with declines in business activity or GDP of 10%, 20%, and even 30% common.

Since going off the gold standard, we've had 13 recessions in 82 years, or every 6.3 years on average. And aside from the recessions following the Great Depression and WWII, none of them has seen GDP shrink by more than 5%.

Zero inflation/deflation in a currency happens when the amount of currency floating around exactly matches economic productivity. With a fiat currency, a legit government tries its best to expand the money supply to maintain that balance. With a gold standard, whether you get inflation or deflation depends entirely on the ratio of economic productivity to how much new gold is mined. And don't even get me started on how disastrous it is to set a finite limit on the amount of currency you can mine, like Bitcoin does.

Being on the gold standard doesn't mean you have solid monetary policy based on a physical good. It means your "policy" is effectively determined by how much gold people are finding and mining at any given time - its based on luck and good/bad fortune. Yes it prevents abuse by the government printing too much currency. But it avoids that potential abuse by completely removing the economy's rudder, leaving you adrift and completely at the mercy of how lucky gold miners are that year.

The true fundamental currency is productivity. Whether you use dollars, euros, gold, or bitcoin, avoiding inflation/deflation means increasing the supply of physical/virtual currency to exactly match increases in productivity.

And believe me, on a long trip that difference is critical. He's done several trips (and I've been on one with him) where a 200 mile range just wouldn't have cut it.

I've been saying for years now that unless there's an order of magnitude breakthrough in battery charging technology, using an electric car on a long trip is going to remain stupid. It's telling that the solution closest to working thus far (that doesn't involve stopping for 30+ minutes every 2.5 hours) is swapping the battery pack (all 1200 pounds of it on the Tesla S).

That's a large part of the reason I don't think electric cars will catch on. Not that they couldn't. They could catch on right now if we can break free of environmentalists' pipe dream of all cars being electric. If you can convince people to use an electric car for their daily driving, and rent a gas/diesel car for their few times a year long trips, then EVs become completely viable today. Those long trips probably only represent about 10% of your annual drives, so we could potentially reduce our gasoline consumption by 90% right now.

But environmentalists' penchant for insisting that anything short of a 100% green solution is unacceptable is going to be their undoing. Just like with hybrids when they were first introduced - environmentalists initially hated hybrids because they generate all their energy from burning gasoline. They tried to block approval for hybrids as a way to meet California's LEV and ZEV standards, in hopes of forcing automakers to develop EVs.

I'm not sure if Force Touch enough to convince an Android user like myself to switch, but there are definitely some interesting possibilities for app developers.

Why would it make you want to switch? Android apps have been doing it since at least 2011. Android's touch API communicates sufficient information to implement this if you wish.

But this being Apple, they will give it a fancy name, everyone will think they invented it, and they will pretend like they invented it. Just like Siri, which came out after I'd been doing searches, sending texts, and starting apps by voice on Android for at least a year.

While the planetary alignment was convenient, it isn't exactly necessary on RTG-powered spacecraft. Pioneer 11 visited Jupiter, then flew to almost the opposite side of the solar system to visit Saturn. Longer travel time (and greater chance of equipment failure during that time) is the only drawback.

Another factor working against a Pluto encounter was the lack of sunlight that far out. During Voyager 2's encounter with Neptune (which was slightly further away from the sun than Pluto at the time), sunlight was so dim that NASA had to reprogram the cameras to take longer exposures than they were originally designed. Then someone calculated that Voyager 2 would be moving so fast that the photos of Neptune would be blurred just by the changing parallax between the spacecraft and Neptune. So they programmed the spacecraft and cameras to rotate slightly during the exposures, effectively panning the camera to cancel out the changing parallax.

All this happened so quickly they got just one shot at it, and they had to do it blind. By the time the first near photos reached Earth, if they had turned out to be blurred, any correcting instructions sent to Voyager 2 would have arrived after the spacecraft had passed Neptune. So NASA wasn't even sure if the closest Neptune and Triton photos would even be aimed correctly. Heck, they weren't even sure they were going to make it to Triton (Voyager 2 flew less than 5000 km over Neptune's North pole to get to Triton). But as it was the last major destination and they'd recently discovered an atmosphere on Triton, they figured what the heck and rolled the dice. As it turned out, they got everything right, and Voyager returned some spectacular Neptune and Triton photos.

A Pluto encounter would've run into the same problem. Except Pluto is a much smaller target than Neptune, whose mass (and therefore gravity) is much less accurately known so properly aiming the camera is even trickier. Even New Horizons (with newer, more sensitive cameras) is going to have to use the same panning trick Voyager 2 used at Neptune. New Horizons is moving fast enough it could cover the distance from the Earth to the Moon in less than 8 hours, so all the close-up photos and measurements of Pluto are going to be over in a matter of hours. And it's basically guiding itself - providing the most accurate measurements we have of Pluto's mass so we can fine-tune its trajectory as it approaches Pluto.

This seems like one of those cases where the FCC rules limiting frequency interference take a back seat for the greater good. Put noise generator aboard the firefighting planes which jams the control frequencies commonly used by hobby drones and RC aircraft (any drones used by the firefighters can be adapted to use a different frequency - probably military). After these idiots lose control of their precious drone and watch it fall into the fire, they'll learn pretty quickly not to fly them around firefighting equipment.

The security team says that SSDs are the only solution, but the org won't approve SSD purchases. It seems most disk scanning could take place after hours and/or under a lower CPU priority, but the security team doesn't care about optimization, summarily blaming sluggishness on lack of SSDs. Are they blowing smoke?

The security team is right. SSDs are the single biggest performance improvement you can add to a computer (even an old computer). If your company is upgrading computers after they get 5-7 years old, but refusing to buy SSDs, they're wasting money. In particular, if they're upgrading management's high-end machines while the low-end machines are still being used by the rank and file, they're doing it completely backwards.

The problem is most people focus on the high-end numbers. How many GHz does the CPU run at? How many MHz does the DDR3 memory run at? Improving the high end doesn't help as much to improve productivity. It's already fast, meaning you're waiting a very small time for it to finish. Making it twice as fast just means the very small wait period shrank a tiny amount and is now twice as small.

If you're serious about improving performance, you get the biggest return by upgrading the slowest components. The slowest part of a modern PC is the HDD. When reading small files (not sequential reads, which really come into play only when copying large media files from one drive to another), they max out at about 1 MB/s. In contrast, the next slowest component - system RAM - is currently on the order of 10 GB/s. In other words, in terms of wait times a 1% improvement in HDD speed will have the same impact as a 100x increase in RAM speed. Now, consider than a SSD will get you at least a 30x improvement in read speeds for small files (about 30 MB/s seems to be average) and there is absolutely nothing you can do with the RAM or CPU which comes anywhere close to the amount of time you'll save by replacing the HDD with a SSD.

If you've got old computers, you should be upgrading them with a SSD instead of replacing them with new computers (with a HDD). Continue to use the old computers + SSD for a few more years, then upgrade them and transfer the SSDs to the new computers. The only exception is if the computer is so old you can't install enough RAM to run modern applications. (Another rare exception would be Northwood and Prescott-era P4 CPUs, which burn so much electricity you'll actually make back the cost of upgrading them via lower electricity bills in a couple years.)

On top of that, SSDs can actually look up small files faster than the computer can request them. So if you've got a virus scan running on a SSD, you can continue using the computer like normal with almost no impact on performance. In fact I usually run my weekly virus and two malware deep scans simultaneously on my SSD laptop, and I can still use it for web browsing or office tasks. When a virus scan runs on a HDD, the HDD has to spend all its time reading files the scan is requesting. As a result anything you try to do with the computer which requests data off the HDD will bog down.

What? People have been flying remote control hobby aircraft for well over half a century. And between companies like Blade and DJI alone, people are buying over 200,000 of the devices per month.

Yup, and indeed there have been a handful of minor injuries along those lines. Statistically what amounts to zero, of course, compared to the number of people who are actually killed attending motor sports events as spectators, or while skiing, or while commuting to work... or while flying as actual licensed pilots in vehicles excrutiatingly regulated in their form, maintenance, and use by the federal government.

Or, people could simply follow existing laws, and stay under 400', away from airports, and use a simple app on their phone to be made aware of FAA NOTAMs so they no when specific areas are off limits. And people who don't care about laws and rules? You're not going to be able to do anything about them (unless you can catch them after the fact of having done something stupid) than you are about people who illegally parachute off of tall buildings, or illegally drive their ATV off-road in parks, or operate their boats too fast in a no-wake zone.

Really? There are literally millions of them. Are all of them idiots? People driving cars have a wildly worse track record when it comes to deaths. For that matter, licensed media helicopter pilots have caused more deaths. and there are merely thousands of them, not millions. What's your point?

Yeah! And what's it going to take before these idiots who start the fires in the first place come to their senses! We should definitely regulate matches, hot catalytic converters, hibachis, and magnifying glasses. Oh, right, it's already against the law to start wildfires. Just like it's already against the law to interfere with firefighting operations. We don't need new regulations (since that won't stop idiots from being idiots anyway) - we need substantial penalties for being a jackass. Like we already have. Enforce the laws we've got, problem will be reduced as much as it can be.

I think it's legit. Net neutrality is one of those least common denominator things where everyone has to do it, or it doesn't work. If Charter had decided to honor net neutrality, while Comcast, TW, Verizon, etc. were being double-paid for traffic by their customers and by websites like Netflix, then Charter would've had to charge their customers higher prices in relation to the other cable companies just to provide the same level of service. That would've put them at a competitive disadvantage. Not directly due to the local franchise monopolies used in this country, but when time came to renew that franchise contract, another company could've waltzed in and said "we can offer the same level of service at a lower price for your customers." The higher real price of their service having been shifted instead into higher prices for services like Netflix (which customers are still paying for).

So as long as some companies were allowed to be evil, all the other companies would've felt compelled to follow along just to remain competitive. Just like hard drives used to be labeled 1 MB = 2^20 bytes. Until one company (Maxtor?) decided to label their drives with 1 MB = 10^6 bytes. At which point all the other companies had to switch to the new definition of MB, lest they lose customers who were being fooled into thinking they were getting a better deal with the mislabeled drives.

Now that the FCC has firmly established that everyone has to abide by net neutrality, that sets a level playing field. Not at the level Comcast, TW, Verizon had wanted, but still level. Companies are now free to set their pricing with net neutrality built in, knowing that other companies will not be able to undercut them by not honoring net neutrality. (This is why I said an alternate solution to net neutrality if the FCC hadn't acted was for Netflix to charge Comcast, TW, and Verizon companies a higher monthly fee - exactly offsetting the bandwidth charges the cable companies were collecting. All they had to do was prominently label it "Verizon bandwidth surcharge" on their monthly Netflix bill, so the customer would know exactly why they were being charged for it.)

Why? All they did was stop Gore from employing cherry-picking and capricious unequal-protection-under-the-law methods to spin a manual count his way, something a politicized Florida court was trying to help him do. Putting a stop to that is exactly the sort of thing the SC is supposed to do, because that sort of behavior at the state court level is counter-constitutional.

This current ruling is, you're right, deeply flawed. Because it's very clear that the language in question was deliberate, and that the one-party legislative action that rammed the law through didn't contemplate the prospect of a number of states standing up to them and refusing to play ball. As Gruber pointed out, the wording of the law was intentionally meant to strong-arm the states, to essentially extort their participation in the absurd manifestation of that legislative train wreck. This was an opportunity to trash it and start over with a law that wasn't based on lies, sold with lies, and which resulted in essentially the opposite of everything its con-artist cheerleaders promised.

You're aware the Tesla S weighs as much as a SUV? 4647 lbs, vs 3655-4028 lbs for a Jeep Cherokee, 4432-4882 lbs for a Ford Explorer, 3358-3624 lbs for a Honda CR-V. The Tesla's high weight is primarily due to the 1200 lb battery pack - a full tank of fuel in these vehicles only weighs about 100 lbs by comparison.

Any weight they can shave off the battery pack will result in noticeable improvements in range, handling, and longevity (due to reduced wear and tear on the suspension).

The bigger deal IMHO is going to be in boats and ships. Unlike cars which can change gears based on their speed, boats are effectively stuck with a fixed prop pitch regardless of the speed they travel at. Consequently, a prop which is efficient at high speed is not very efficient at low speed, and vice versa even if you design/gear the engine to operate efficiently at both those speeds. An electric motor for pushing the boat at lower speeds combined with using the gas/diesel motor at high speeds is a good solution, but the weight of even Li-ion batteries has been a huge impediment. Any fuel you save at lower speeds is lost by the additional fuel burn caused by the extra weight at high speed. Lighter batteries could be a game changer for marine applications.

Instead of quibbling about a flag that some people find offensive, why don't we work to fight actual racism.

That's what baffles me about the hubub over this. I can't believe how many people I know who firmly supported burning of the U.S. flag because "they have their right to freedom of expression," and "it's just a symbol, a piece of cloth, not the country itself" have suddenly flip flopped and now believe people shouldn't have the right to express their opinion with a flag, and that a flag is suddenly more than a mere piece of cloth and should now be the focal point of an issue.

If you truly believe the flag (whether it be the U.S. or Confederate) is just a symbol, then what happens to the physical flag is meaningless. Displaying it or burning it is merely a form of expression. If you ban the Confederate flag without addressing the underlying problems which cause it to be offensive, that is literally the same thing as sticking your head in the sand - you're pretending the problem doesn't exist because you can't see it anymore.

Yes, and I'm sticking with my point. If he's not offering something valuable enough that he can charge enough for his time to tolerate not being paid for a week here and there, then he needs to become more valuable, or find a customer that can afford him. Just as true for contractors as it is for traditional employees.

You've got this completely backwards. The market is working - it's establishing a value for the skills in question, and the GP isn't liking that value precisely because there's too much of a supply and not enough demand. He needs to go to someone who has demand, or go where it is, or offer something that's more in demand. If he does, he'll find the market works for him, just like it's supposed to.

Still the market, working as expected. If he values those things more than he does bringing home more money, than he can't complain - he's the one establishing the priorities. Why should someone else make it their priority to match his goals, rather than their own? Especially when there is indeed a huge supply of people willing to do the same work, many of them who aren't putting other priorities first. It's a value analysis for everyone involved.

It is if you want more money. If you value staying put for your kids' sake, then you've just made a value judgement, period. That's reality, working.

Think about that.