The big news to me isn't that they weren't able to invent the tech, but their estimate that even if their most optimistic scenario had come true w.r.t. clean energy tech that it still wouldn't be enough to avoid the "really bad" scenario w.r.t. climate change (if you trust Hansen's models).

One tactic utility companies could use is to just change their pricing structure. Most already have a fee structure where the highest price/kWh is only paid for electricity purchased at the margins. The first kWh purchased may be drastically cheaper than the last, especially if you're a heavy user. So they could simply exaggerate that structure and make electricity "artificially" cheap for the majority of users and then gouge the heavy users on usage over some threshold.

Alternately they could move to a price structure where there's a fixed "fee" to simply be a customer, and then use the revenue from that fee to offset the price-per-kWh and make it artificially cheap.

It's one way. I should have been more specific. "Amount of moderately difficult work completed at a moderate-or-higher level of quality." Another might be, "Ability to complete extremely difficult work at a extremely high level of quality in non-infinite time." Someone who excels at the first might not excel at the second, though generally I'd expect there to be a lot of overlap.

I've been doing software dev. for about 15 years. I'll grant that the level of productivity between "the worst" and "the best" is at least 10x, if not more, because "the worst" are essentially producing nothing. Or, worse, have negative productivity in the sense they're creating stuff that is totally non-functional and will need to be re-written by someone else at a later date.

That said, the difference between "the best" and "the average" is probably not 10x. At least not if productivity is measured in "amount of output produced at some acceptable level of quality". Where "the best" guys excel is in being able to solve problems that average guy is probably never going to be able to solve (well) no matter how much time he's given. On the other hand, those sorts of problems come up less often than most people think.

If, after interviewing somewhere, I end up taking a job for which I'm a poor fit then the fault is mine and not the recruiter's. I view the recruiter's job as getting me interviews at places where I'm likely to be a good fit and where they're likely to be willing to compensate a level I'd be satisfied with.

Don't recruiters, or their employers, typically get paid a sum based on the salary given to the person they placed? So, in theory, they have an incentive to see that the job-seeker gets the highest salary that doesn't price him out of the market entirely.

Where I could potentially see 10x being useful is for guys who are the acknowledged "best in the world" at some particular thing. Like, "tuning huge postgresql installations". Because you're the primary committer on the project, or something. There are employers willing to pay "best in the world" level compensation for these guys to do short-term work. 10x would be useful if it put the devs in contact with these employers and they would not otherwise have come into contact with them. In that sense it's a sort of match-making service, bringing "guys who can charge exorbitant consulting fees" together with "companies willing to pay exorbitant consulting fees".

Why did they spend money on the campaigns of candidates who were already quite likely to win? That seems like a suboptimal way to spend the funds at their disposal. Spend it exclusively on races where it might make a difference.

Matter of degree, but yeah.

I will if you will. Deal?

Yes, it's true. We are currently producing more oil than Saudi Arabia! But we are far from being independent.

Short of state ownership of the oil production industry and/or draconian restrictions on exports and imports the U.S. won't ever be "independent" in the sense that it is unaffected by the global price of petroleum. And that price is only influenced to a small degree by U.S. production.

1. Set standards on gasoline, there are way too many formulas that vary state to state 2. Determine how many refineries we need (haven't built any new refineries for 30+ years). 3. Determine the best locations for the refineries (logistics of incoming raw crude and outgoing fuels)

These sound like tasks best suited to a China-style command economy. You strike me as the sort of person who would find that abhorrent.

You're charging you car using energy from coal so you ain't doing any favors using a toy battery car.

Unless you live in Washington state, where roughly 6.5% of electricity comes from coal. Or Oregon, where that figure is roughly the same. Etc.

...whether you notice changes in the price of gasoline without being notified by the media. If you do then you satisfy a fairly broad definition of "middle class".

If you're too poor to own a car and, hence, don't care about gas prices, then you're not middle class. If you're someone to whom a $1/gal delta in the price of gas is more-or-less meaningless then you're not middle class. If you're someone who lives in a dense, urban environment and doesn't own a car by choice then you're probably also not "middle class".

Well, yeah. The company could be more profitable than it is now if it had better employees. My point was just that they don't seem to compensate by the lack of quality by attempting to force people to work longer hours. They just hire more bodies to pick up the slack.

I, personally, don't work any extra hours. I get my stuff done and. If someone else doesn't and the project suffers then that's on them. At least one of my (competent) peers does work longer hours, but she's the outlier, and I think she's starting to realize it's not worth it. And, no, I'm not willing to say where I work. It's just a small 50-60 person start-up you've never heard of.

Someone really knows how to troll slashdot.