WIth the way that European country economies are shrinking, we'll get to 40% carbon reduction with no trouble at all.

The thing I hate the most in the world is stupid lines making people physically wait and waste their time for something. Especially when there don't need to be lines, and the problem is caused by dumb behavior, not genuine lack of resources (aside from intelligence).

Have a look at this video, which shows how Toyota helped apply pretty simple principles to reduce the wait for food after disaster hit with Hurricane Sandy in NYC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

You start understanding that the average person in charge of group processes generally have no idea how much of people's time they're wasting. Which could be avoided with some simple steps, and very little additional cost.

When the people and organizations in government demonstrate trustworthiness, we will trust them to keep the keys.

The Slashdot audience is probably contributing less than average to the environmental problem of antiperspirants being used.

Not to say that there isn't lots of money and influence-making behind the scenes, but a key problem with policies that are desired by corporations but disliked by individuals is that the corporation can and will pay for evidence to be created supporting their position.

Evidence has a loose definition, of course, and a responsible regulator will do their homework to tell the difference between shoddy evidence and strong evidence. But when evidence is submitted that explains how a policy decision plausibly leads to [xyz] effects, that wins real points.

What is sure is that on the other side, even millions of people getting together won't produce hard evidence that a court/rule-making body can rely on. In the end, even millions people's opinions will only amount to a few soft statistics.

Filling this gap on the "people's side" is somewhat the role of academia/thinktanks/non-profits to fill, but in a fast moving industry they are unlikely to move faster than a corporation that wants to back something.

Oh, so you mean they weren't actively deciding which 20 out of possible 100 stories to show you, before the experiment?

Forgive me for raising a stupid question, but what expectation / right do we have to expect that Facebook is a certain way, or behaves in a certain way? Or shows you content without adulteration? It's not a fundamental government service, or anything we even paid for, after all.

For all we know if could be designed as a parody website, and shows us things that our friends looked at, modulated by some sarcasm filter.

Everything that Facebook shows us is an experiment. And you object because they adjusted the experiment slightly? You don't have to approve every time when your homepage feed loads up, showing you stories that were determined by some algorithm,so why should Facebook seek your approval when something slightly different is shown? Because they adjusted the thresholds for displaying stories by 5%?

Stop trusting other people's websites so much, and expecting anything from them, for that matter. When Facebook is declared to have a public service obligation, maybe then you can demand these things.

I think the line is: "what has an octopus ever done for you?" Not much, by most reckoning.

In the name of equality and giving people the opportunities they deserve, I think that we should also be crusading to improve the balance and representation of Asians, whites, and Northern Europeans in the NBA and NFL.

Also, females make up an unacceptably low proportion of prison inmates. That needs to increase.

Kind of hard to believe Facebook really is trying to protect the integrity and reputability of its users, and applying rules to people equally. Mark Zuckerberg's dog has a fucking account -- tell me how that's ok?

"...CPU tester modules in a semiconductor manufacturing line at the plant were retrofitted with sensors. They then sent data to Mitsubishi Electric C Controller gateway devices powered by Intel Atom chips. After some filtering, the data were then processed using software from Revolution Analytics. Putting the data results into practice resulted in a reduction in component failures, increased equipment uptime and productivity, according to Intel....."

Could someone who actually knows something about what they did write the fucking article please? I have no idea what was improved using this technique by reading these sentences which are the only concrete part of the entire story linked.

It is rather pathetic that in the first year of operation, 1967, the shinkansen achieved speeds of 137 mph while here in the US 45+ years later, we have yet to approach this average speed on our fastest line (Northeast corridor).

Admittedly, Japan benefited from a dedicated, grade-separated track, and new-build greenfield infrastructure that made efficiency and continuous improvement possible. As well as concentrated population centers with good local feeder public transport systems that could support expensive high speed rail. And ownership of the rails that allowed them to route and sequence traffic in a predictable and orderly way.

Ok, I admit that's a lot of favorable conditions that helped.

But still, you come back home to the US and wonder how we are still #1 with such shitty, shitty public transport systems, and public policymakers who care so little / are clueless about what it takes.

You take the shinkansen in Japan, or even a suburban line in Munich for that matter, and you have such a fast, quiet, vibration-free ride that you come back embarrassed about USA infrastructure. Try to take public transport to your flight at La Guardia, or the Amtrak Coast Starlight (SFO-LAX, which sometimes involves a bus), or the Boston Green Line squealing like a pig under Park Street like it's being tortured, or run away from the Chicago CTA crashing into O'Hare, and you get a sense of what it's like to be in last place among first world countries. Or for that matter, Chicago selling off it's public street parking infrastructure for 99 fucking years to the highest bidder. What moron was in charge of that one? I would hardly bet on what 5 years from now looks like, and they sold it off for 99 years.

It makes you disappointed in how dim is our current shadow of the earlier greatness that built this country.

I didn't think it was. Interisland/commuter terminal has similar levels of security, despite the fact that the planes couldn't do damage to anything of importance if they wanted to...

Are you willing to pay $15 on your ticket to fund the small airport screening process then that has to be staffed and trained fully, just for 4-5 flights per day?

I will say though, that I credit Australia for having some rational procedures regarding security.

For example, there are some regional flights that arrive into Sydney from airports that cannot support full security screening. (on regional jets or turboprops) Instead of causing US-style security craziness and cost, after arrival they dump those passengers directly out into the non-sterile terminal public area (and then make them go back through security if connections are needed).

This in contrast to US security, which cannot be compartmentalized, and forces everyone in every small podunk airport to be screened, at huge cost and bureaucracy / apparatus / unionized idiot workforce creation.

Of course, this is partly because Australia has a few international / regional airports versus the US which has airports and connections galore. But still, you would think that in a place like Hawaii, for example, the US could try this approach and be more sane about applying various levels of rules.