Note: Fortunately the world as a whole is making substantial investments in renewable energy while the US drags its feet. Of course the problem is that we will largely have to import solutions developed elsewhere. We are wasting an opportunity for more energy independence. While renewable/nuclear energy will be produced locally, we will have to import the technology from places that were smart enough to make the investment.

The ozone was being depleted by chlorofluorocarbons. International efforts were able to largely phase them out, and the Ozone layer has recovered.

One of the first predictions of running out of oil was made in 1914 by the Bureau of Mines. They thought the world would run out in 10 years. There have been similar predictions since then. Why haven't they come true? Because huge sums of money have been invested in making sure we don't run out or at least to put it off as long as possible. Billions and billions have been spent on locating more oil, and figuring out how to extract the relatively small amounts of oil that are in places we already know about. Think about some the crazy stuff we do to get oil out of the ground even in the middle of the ocean.

One of the consequences has been that the price of oil has gone up over time. It's slumped back down for now, just like it did in the 90's but it rose after that and you can bet it will again. If in the early 90's you had told somebody that gas would cost almost $4.00 a gallon in a decade, they would have thought armageddon was coming.

In both the case of the ozone layer and oil supplies, the dire predictions didn't happen in large part because we did what was necessary to keep them from happening. Same thing with Y2K. A ton of money was spent updating computers and software.

And we could avoid the problems being predicted as consequences of global warming if we take action and be willing to spend some money. But for some reason, we'd rather just argue about it whether it's really a problem or not and in the meantime the solutions just get more expensive and likelihood of widespread consequences increase.

I agree whole-heartedly that Linus' people-management was the largest factor. But he also got another thing right: There is an old O.S. maxim -- "He with the most drivers wins." GP post says he "diligently kept rolling up contributions", which is the general case, but old O.S. grey-beards know "it's the drivers, stupid". Linus rolled in drivers for everything from everywhere, and had trustworthy lieutenants vetting them.

Linux won because it had a critical mass of drivers that let it run on just about any generic, main-stream hardware. Linus' project and people management caused that to happen.

There is NO "mystery". Health care companies are stealing from customers. There is nothing that limits how much they charge, especially if a customer has no insurance.

The new health care law in the U.S. forces healthy people to pay huge amounts for health care. Everyone must pay an extremely high yearly cost.

It's against the law to drive without insurance. Most insurance has limits on things it will cover. Therefore, it is illegal to drive while doing things that insurance will not cover. The fact that the circumstances of these are based on a private contract makes it hard to enforce, but does not change the legality.

What the hell would be the difference for me or my car for what I use it regarding my liability towards anyone I (might) harm?

Because a professional taxi driver is on the road for 8+ hours a day, not just 1 or 2, So they have more risk. They also tend to spend a large amount of Friday and Saturday nights in the bar districts, which seems intuitively like a place loaded with inebriated pedestrians and other drivers - both risk factors.

Would it surprise you to know that the city you live in also affects car insurance rates? At least in the US...

No one gives a shit about most laws, until they are affected by the negative consequences that those laws were designed to prevent. Wait until an Uber driver smacks into your car, and his insurance refuses to cover commercial activity. Depending on your uninsured motorist coverage, you could be okay. Except, cities without well regulated mandatory insurance for cars tend to have insurance death spirals, so good luck having that 3 years from now.

If you want to call laws outdated and out of place, you have to understand why they were created and how to prevent those same issues from coming about when you repeal the law.

True but this is a little different from your example. There is no fundamental law of physics saying that you cannot build an instrument large enough to observe distant planets. In the absence of such a restriction building that instrument is down to human ingenuity. However there is a fundamental law of physics which says that momentum is conserved.

As a result this force is either due to some interaction with the surroundings that the experiment has forgotten to account for or is due to new physics in the form of new particles/interactions or violation of conservation of momentum - which is an extremely fundamental law of physics. There really are no "loopholes" to squeeze through.

My personal feeling is that it will turn out to be some effect which they forgot to account for although I cannot help but hope that it turns out to be something far more interesting...which is why it is so easy to fool ourselves when doing experiments.

I lived for several years in the US just over a decade ago when MCI was a long distance phone company. They made so many mistakes that it became a joke: there was at least one error every 3 months and it was always in their favour. Even the one time they accidentally credited my bill with someone else's far larger payment they tried to charge me a late payment fee when they corrected it several months later despite acknowledging that I had informed them of the mistake at the time it occurred!

If you contrast this with Canada I don't think I have ever had an error on a bill since I moved here 12 years ago. Even in the UK, where I was moving around more frequently, the only time I had trouble was with either the setup or termination of services which was more understandable. As a result it is hard to believe that the massive rate of mistakes I observed in the US (and not just MCI, although they were by far the worst) is entirely due to incompetence and it seems far, far more likely that it is a deliberate policy of some companies to overcharge and then hope that you cannot be bothered to complain.

That's not quite true - the evidence suggests only that they have a robust system for reporting and recording claims. I've not seen any evidence to suggest that they robustly investigate them and the OP claims that there is evidence of them using unnecessary force and racist language without repercussion which, if substantiated, would be clear evidence of very poor investigation.

I completely agree that having a large fraction of claims refused is not evidence that the system is not working. It does suggest that the system should be investigated to understand why there are such a lot of dismissed complaints because either cops are having to endure a lot of frivolous discipline cases or they are getting away with serious misconduct. Either possibility is bad but the statistics provided do not distinguish between the two cases.

If the lawmakers were treating all countries fairly, then this would not be an issue, as no country would be offended by the deal given to another. Only stinky laws need to be kept secret.

I don't see it on my phone, running 4.1.2. Perhaps the carrier stripped out this option before shipping the firmware update that the phone is running.

Mod parent up!

Reporter: Is that your Crash Helmet?

Jose Jiménez: Oh.... I hope not!