"Excuse me Dave, but the crown prince of Nigeria requires your assistance immediately. Also, there is a marked amount of concern about your penis size, you may wish to speak with a medical professional."

Agreed - wave wasn't so much a bad idea as a good idea that was badly sold to people. Glad the functionality is still around because it is useful for realtime collaboration.

It should also be noted that MIT just developed a system for solar that can provide up to 100% efficiency, which will blow pretty much every other power source out of the water if it can be scaled up.

Not trying to throw my hat in behind the report, but it does say it's an interim report. So they may still be refining numbers. It's very possible that some director said "have a copy on my desk by tomorrow even if the numbers aren't completely ready, just give your best guess." That happens quite frequently in my job at least.

Part time isn't really the issue that it is made out to be. The major problem it causes is that our current grid infrastructures aren't built to handle bursty loads. So, it means there is a ton of room here for innovation in energy storage (both batteries and capacitor banks). The disruption to wind patterns so far seems to be a non-issue. It may actually slightly lengthen growing seasons for farmers nearby because it appears to hinder the formation of frost. In fact, the only actual legitimate concern about wind that I've seen was that the disruption to wind flows from a substantial wind farm makes it difficult to place farms too near one another.

When I was staying at the Aria hotel in las vegas, about every 10 minutes you'd hear the telltale "thunk!" sound. Nothing else makes that sound.

I had no idea that the bird mortality rate was that high. Is most of that infant mortality?

First, nice low number. Second, "waste" is subjective here. A dead bird at the site of a wind farm will most definitely feed lots of scavengers, be they bugs, foxes, whatever happens to go by. Most of nature won't turn up a free bird dinner, even if it is a little bruised.

Everything in life is a cost benefit analysis.

Pretty much this exactly. People need to understand that online storage is essentially like having a stranger drive up to you in their windowless van, and offering to store stuff for you that you can get back anytime you want. You don't really know him. He promises "industry grade security!" on his van, and sleek curved corners on the van and maybe a recognizable fruit logo. You are taken in, and start storing your photos, your essays, your financial information, etc on his van. Except, what is industry grade security? What industry? How do you know he isn't looking at your stuff? How do you know he isn't parsing your stuff and selling that information? If you started reading warnings about this guy and his storage van on the news and online, would you still use his service? Because guess what - almost every single cloud storage company has had those warnings posted about them. It's not your fault if you fail to vet a service out, and give this guy $50 and he drives away and starts selling your stuff, you're right. But you're a dumbass for trusting someone you don't know blindly with things you don't want out in the public.

That is a fair point. Most of the least harm doctrine studies have pointed towards a 50% approach (at least for Australia). Those studies are a few years old, so it's likely they've had time to do more work since then.

Not at all. The original statement was that we don't need them anymore. I provided a current example of a place where they are needed. You're trying to take that example out of context.

This is actually one place that I have to actually say PETA does buck the trend. Newkirk only makes about 38k a year through PETA as the CEO. Now, that doesn't preclude her from cashing in on lucrative speaking engagements all over the place.

1 hectare of ruminant foraging pasture leads to approximately 7.5 animal deaths (about the number of cattle that can graze on one hectare). 1 hectare of plant producing land produces tens to thousands of animal deaths (depending on the study and what animals are included in it). Essentially, according to most "least harm doctrine" studies, the most ethical approach is in fact to eat MORE meat, because less animals overall are killed in its production.

Shhhhh! Don't ruin the head-in-the-clouds holier-than-thou bubble that they try to live in! That's like trying to tell a vegan that anywhere from tens to thousands (depending on which study you look at) of animals are killed per hectare in the commercial production of vegetables! Not to mention the native species that go extinct due to native vegetation being felled to make room for their kale smoothie ingredients. Tillers aren't too kind to field mice, worms, or bugs they encounter. But PETA (and vegans) only really give a damn about animals they find "cute."