I grew up in a fairly diverse but dominently upper-middle class area. This was the majority opinion among people there, too. Lots of people with get-rich-quick schemes, and people who thought that working long, hard hours at minimum wage pay was for suckers, and they were too good for that sort of thing. Work at McDonalds, or work as a janitor? Fuck no. That kind of work is for losers and idiots.

I have a cousin who spent his teenage years and early twenties as a layabout, smoking pot and hanging around his parents house. He got caught with a little marijuana when he was... I think 18, 19.... the police let him go. Then when he was around 26, he decided to get his life together. His parents sent him to community college and bought him a suit. He ended up with a decent enough (not spectacular, but with a salary far above minimum wage) IT job.

Hell, I know a few kids who spent all their whole high school and college years getting drunk, only to get a job at their daddy's firm, and they make more money than I do.

I don't know where you live, but regardless of any statistic you want to present, we're still cramming 40 kids in a classroom and they don't have books. Teachers have to go out and buy supplies with their own money because they have no budget from the school. So, yeah, if you can locate and eliminate the waste, by all means do it, but let's not pretend that these classrooms are just awash with money.

What, exactly, is your point here? Yes, in the past, we didn't have public schools. Lots of people went uneducated. There were educated people in the past, but they were generally either rich or lucky, or both.

Right, so I guess everything is perfectly fine as long as it's no worse than the treatment of Jews in Europe. By the logic, I suppose you think it'd be fine to murder millions of black people, since... hey, that's not different than the shitty treatment that the Jews suffered.

If that was your intention, it would help if you... you know... said anything that was even slightly relevant.

I think this story is an important one, but perhaps not for the reasons your imagining people care about this. I wouldn't necessarily berate anyone at Facebook for these statistics. Maybe they're not doing everything they should, but maybe they're doing everything they reasonable can do to hire minorities and women.

However, the fact that there's such a huge discrepancy in hiring of black people is an indication that there's some kind of problem. Before we even get into trying to figure out where the problem is, it's just meaningful in that, unless this is some kind of statistical fluke, it's a sign of *something*. It's like when you look at prison statistics, and find that there's a disproportionate amount of black people in prison. We can argue about whether the problem is in lawmaking or education or law enforcement, or some combination of things, but we should all be able to agree that it's a problem we'd like to see solved.

It kind of requires both things, though, right? I mean, yes, having parents who are interested and encouraging, who make sure their kids are doing what they're supposed to, who can tutor them while the kids do their homework-- all that stuff helps a ton. But even if you're a great parent, if you send your kid to an underfunded school with inexperienced, underprepared, and unsupported teachers and 45 kids per class, without good books to teaching materials, etc., then you're still going to struggle to get a good education.

And think about the kids who have to suffer through both sets of problems.

Yes, on that level, they have opportunities. Of course, they might live in an area where there's de facto segregation because it's a poor neighborhood and only black people live there. They might go to a shitty underfunded public school. They might get harassed by the police on a regular basis, charged with a felony in a situation where a white kid would get a slap on the wrist, and have their lives effectively ruined by a criminal record.

It's definitely not as bad for black people as it was 50 years ago, or even 25 years ago, but let's not pretend that they get all the same opportunities, and they get given the benefit of all the same doubts.

Ah, thanks. I misread the quote somehow. For some reason, I thought it was saying it removed 80% of the material by removing nonfunctional material, rather than what it clearly says, which is that, of the nonfunctional material, it removed 80%.

Yeah, but I guess my question is, if it reduces the "nonfunctional material in the structure" by 80%, I'm assuming that's by volume, and that means the battery would take up 20% of its current size to achieve the same results. I'd assume (perhaps wrongly) that would mean thinner smartphones and laptops and whatnot. If you look at Apple's new Macbook (the one with the USB-C connector), the electronics take up very little space, and the device is mostly battery.

I would also guess that the 80% reduction in volume would also make a substantial reduction in weight, which means lighter smartphones, laptops, and electric cars. Or as an alternative, it would mean you could have a device/car with a similar weight and volume, while holding a much longer charge. Correct?

Any of those things seem like a huge deal.

The summary highlights price, but also says, "Using fewer, thicker electrodes, the system reduces the conventional battery architecture's number of distinct layers, as well as the amount of nonfunctional material in the structure, by 80 percent." So I'm left wondering, does this also have a substantial improvement in terms of size/weight of the batteries?

Because from what I remember reading, a big part of the difficulty in engineering electric cars is that batteries are big and heavy. When you add enough batteries to power the car, you've also added a bunch of weight, which means that you now need to add even more batteries to compensate for the energy needed to move the weight of all the batteries you've added.

It can. Theoretically. Just don't install applications or updates, and you might have space enough to run the system and store a few documents.

So they're selling ad space on the side of the equipment-- what's your point here? This is a scheme for providing municipal WiFi. Does the road stop being "public infrastructure" because billboards are setup alongside it? Does the subway stop being "public transportation" because there are ads in it?

Go crawl back in your troll hole.

What you're listing are reasons why it's more difficult than providing wireless usually is, which is probably why it hasn't been done yet. However, it can be done. It should be done. We could debate how quickly and how extensively it should be done, but it should be done.

Sort of like putting signs in the subway station that tells you when the next train is coming. I understand that there are some challenges, and it's great that they have it in a few stations now, but really it should have have been done several years ago.

First, you seem to be missing the point in that your suggested behavior is the behavior of an asshole. This is why we can't have nice things.

But besides that, this news story is about Google taking over LinkNYC, a project to provide free, public municipal WiFi to the NYC. So yeah, we're talking about public infrastructure, even if Google will be the contractor tasked with building and maintaining it.

Your view is, to be honest, myopic if not willfully ignorant. Your "freedom of speech" is not specifically dependent on a particular means. However, saying, "You don't need to have access to the Internet in order to express yourself" is a bit like saying, "You don't need to have access to roads, trains, or planes in order to travel." Yes, I suppose that's true, but failing to have access to that travel infrastructure sure does hinder your ability to travel.

It's also worth noting that the First Amendment specifies "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Now a lot of people assume that "freedom of the press" refers to "the press" as in "the fourth estate". However, at the time, referring to "the press" would also have implied simply, "the use of a printing press". This means that the amendment acknowledges that any "freedom of speech" is inhibited by denying access to the technology to disseminate your message.

But let's set all of that aside, because I'm ultimately not talking about a US Constitutional interpretation, arguing that the Federal government is somehow obligated by the First Amendment to provide Internet access to all citizens. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the "freedom of speech" is not a right granted by the Constitution, but an inalienable right of all people. All people should have the freedom and ability to voice their opinions and views. Regardless of any legal or Constitutional obligations, we have a moral obligation to avoid culturally segregating massive numbers of people, preventing them from speaking their mind in public forums, and preventing them from hearing the viewpoints of others.

And in that sense, and to that end, I think it is a very good idea to provide public Internet access to those who can't afford it. Even if it's not a "free speech" issue in the sense of "The Supreme Court should rule on the Constitutionality of [whatever]", it's a "free speech" issue in the sense of "morally, these people should not be shut out of the conversation."

Great! I can't wait for our public communications infrastructure to be saturated by your random bits because a few jackasses are afraid that someone might catch on that they're looking at porn.