In my experience, events like this point to some petty internal political battle.
Another possibility is that this is the Washington Monument Syndrome. This happens when an agency's budget is reduced, and rather than cutting the least important program, they cut the most visible program, in an attempt to get their funding restored.
So, all we need to do is find three pre-cogs, put them to work and when two of them agree on a scenario we drag the perp in... simple!
This is what I hated about "Minority Report". The point of the movie was that "pre-crime" was a bad idea. But the only negative thing about it was their absurd over-reaction to each prediction. Instead of "dragging the perp in", and incarcerating them for something they didn't do, they could have just prevented the crime, warned the potential perp to be more careful next time, and then let them go about their business. If they had just used the pre-cogs responsibly, it would have been fine, and they would have had a mostly crime free society.
why do all the detractors expect the new systems to be as close to 100% efficient immediately
Of course it isn't going to be "good enough" on the first attempt. But the correct response is to KEEP TRYING, rather than spending billions on subsidies to scale up something that is NOT "good enough". Subsidies for R&D makes sense. But as long as the panels are not good enough to be part of the solution, then subsidizing their installation is idiotic. It is the worst kind of "cargo cult" mentality to believe that if we build lots of things that LOOK like they should work, then that will solve the problem. Meanwhile, actual progress on efficient solar panels is stalling, because we are sidetracked into prematurely scaling up inefficient panels.
The reality is that those governments that fail to invest, will eventually be out competed.
Paying subsidies for installation is not "investing". How is our government going to avoid being "out competed" by paying American homeowners to install Chinese solar panels?
Someone made a computer that's really good at reaction time
It was done awhile ago. By IBM. Watch Watson play Jeopardy, and it is pretty obvious it won mainly because it was much faster at triggering the button. Watson wasn't better at answering the questions, it just got more chances.
Why would Intel pay McAfee? They own them.
The NSA pays them to install McAfee on each computer.
your "traditional" power companies are already getting subsidies
You cannot justify a stupid policy just by pointing out that we already do something else that is even stupider. Each policy should be judged on its own merits.
At least investing in renewables has long term benefits to society.
Investing in scientific research to improve renewables has long term benefits. But subsidies for installation are detrimental, because they encourage the production of inefficient solar panels that are not economically scalable, instead of working toward something that actually makes sense.
Would you rather go to a pay model?
False dichotomy. "No ads" and "ads that pop-up or auto-play without permission" are not the only alternatives. I have no problem with text ads, and I don't mind non-flashing banner ads. Not all marketers are assholes.
The wealthy will be able to afford electricity, and the poor will pedal to power small homemade generators.
"The wealthy" are the people putting solar on their roof, and net-metering pushes costs onto people less well off. So at least in this case, "the fossil fuel industry" is acting in the interests of the little guy. Net metering is just another subsidy for solar, and it is already well known that solar subsidies are one of the least cost effective methods to compact climate change. We could reduce CO2 emissions by ten times as much if the money was spent on attic insulation or LED lighting, and a hundred times as much if it was spent on contraceptives for third world women.
How would we know?
In theory, a star's brightness should fluctuate as it becomes unstable. This may happen over weeks, days, or even hours. We really don't know, because there have not been any close before/after observations. But there would likely be some sign that it is about to blow.
In the event of a global collapse, these people will simply carry on as before.
If civilization collapses, there will be a reason that it collapsed. Such as a pandemic disease, crop destroying volcanic eruption, asteroid impact, nuclear winter, or runaway greenhouse effect. In any of these events, Africans will not "carry on as before". They will be the hardest hit, because they have nothing to fall back on.
But it's so much easier when
The article isn't entirely without substance. For instance, it helpfully points out, twice, that the sun is the brightest object in the sky.
"Yeah, we'll just helicopter into Russia... grab him..."
No need to do that. The bounty hunter can be a Russian. $3M will buy a lot of rubles. There is also no need for a helicopter. The trunk of a car will work just fine, and $3M provides enough overhead to bribe a few border guards.
They do if you happen to be in the US, and they're just fine with your being kidnapped and brought to the US by third parties, they just can't do it themselves.
Indeed. For $3M, some bounty hunter might snatch him and take him either to America or to a 3rd country with an extradition treaty. The wanted poster even provides some helpful hints about where Bogachev likes to vacation. Mr Bogachev should watch his back.
UPS recently paid $40 million dollars because they shipped fake drugs.
They didn't ship fake drugs. They shipped real drugs: prescription drugs from Canada.
Like they were supposed to open all the packages and verify the contents?
They didn't need to open the packages. They already knew what was in them.
If the government did not stop this activity, our health would have been at risk of deteriorating to Canadian levels.
The hardest part of climbing the ladder of success is getting through the crowd at the bottom.
