If washing your hands takes 2 liters of water, isn't that an environmental problem if it could be done using just 1/10th that amount?

Perhaps, but is that a problem? If that amount of water costs $100: probably. If that amount of water costs $0.01: probably not.

I know so-called externalities can blur the picture, but in general the cost of things reflects how much effort was needed to produce them. So if Bitcoin mining is profitable, that probably means a produced Bitcoin is worth more than the effort it took to produce the required energy. No doubt Bitcoin market developments, and efficiency improvements (FPGA / ASICs) will change the actual numbers here.

Problem much, why? There are so many human activities that require energy, and (often) don't produce results that would be considered useful or valueable. So if you spend (for example) $10 worth of energy to find (is that the correct description?) $100 worth of Bitcoins, you could have spent that energy worse.

Btw: article would do good to report how many/what worth of Bitcoins were mined using the stated amount of energy.

Using whatever is at hand, in MacGyv^H^H^H^H Mythbuster style, and make stuff that goes boom! (among other things)

I salute thee, mr. Booth!

Equal treatment under the law? But yes, absolutely! No matter who you are, what you believe, or where you're from, an equal amount of justice for every dollar you have. How's that not fair?

Given the overall level of detail, the stupidity in this chapter "Power considerations" kind of amazed me. Calculations look correct btw, result just doesn't hold up when you draw up to 1A.

Probably the person(s) who figured out most of the info, person writing this chapter, and person putting everything together, must be different people. Otherwise this chapter would surely have been re-written.

Pics or it doesn't exist.

a plane that isn't heading anywhere near US airspace.

Nothing wrong with airport security, but it should be proportional to the threat. Yes terrorists can bring down a plane with hundreds of people in it, but how often does that happen even with little security? Probably a similar number of people die every day in traffic accidents. Or from disease XYZ. Or as a result of gun crime, drug overdose, etc, etc.

Then why focus so much resources on safety in the air? Hell, as long as you make sure people fly on the same plane as their luggage, any successful takedown of a plane takes out those terrorists too. And many incidents have been hijackings or hostage events, where (no matter how scary for those involved) passengers have a good chance of walking away. A 747 flying into a skyscraper is the exception rather than the rule. But what do I care how stupid the US behave, I'm not going there.

Parent has a very valid point:

@ First sight you might think a cyclist taking food as fuel, is very environmentally friendly. But chances are that multiple fossil fuel-derived calories were used to produce each food calorie. Especially with modern, processed foods like your put-into-oven pizza, microwave dinner, or that ready made sandwich you pick up on your way to work. And the human body has its own fuel efficiency, just like a car engine.

If it were possible for humans to eat fossil fuels, cycling could be equally bad as pouring gasoline in your car. If that food was grown in the cyclist's back yard & eaten as is, cyclist would have the edge.

And then there's the whole issue of how much mass you drag around (driver + 1 tonne vehicle vs. cyclist + 12 kg. bicycle), and the amount of power it takes to do so. FYI: a 100 kW car engine is pretty normal, human power is measured in hundreds of Watts.

If that involves -likely expensive- medication: go tell that to the many HIV-infected people in 3rd world nations. Something tells me they won't be impressed. Apart from having to take that medication regularly. Better than dying from AIDS, but a 'cure' in any sense of the word? Nope.

This case could be a great step forward in the fight against HIV, if researchers can unravel the mechanisms involved. But that is big if, and a sample size of 1 may not say much either.

So true. If it's not possible already, you could hire a (physical) storage space online. Then buy goods online, and have them delivered to that storage space. So you're never bothered by all that junk you bought cluttering up your house.

One day, you may loose the need to ever visit that storage space, or use the junk that's stacked up there. So why not buy virtual goods then, so you can save on shipping & storage? And not have the bother of getting rid of that stuff... And when all the goods are virtual, replace that physical storage with a virtual one.

Hire virtual space online, buy virtual goods to store there, never actually touch all that junk... heaven?

Oh wait... done.

Maybe I'm oldfashioned then... I wouldn't even consider buying jeans without first trying it on. Even if it were "buy online, try it on, sent it back if it doesn't fit, free shipping". Simply not my kind of shopping. For many other items: why not? Online shops cut a lot of the cost of brick & mortar, which is ultimately good for consumers. Just not for everything, or every occasion.

No need to assume anything here. It's explained nicely in this FAQ: The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ - section 6.2

After 3.0, 3.2, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7 series? (and some more development versions in between)

Glad to see you crawled out from under that rock, though.

"Web development" is a rather vague job description. If it's about graphics design, web page layout, UI look & feel etc, then yes it's more "art". Tacking a CS degree onto that seems waste of time.

If it's about programming PHP, JavaScript (or whatever the popular web programming language is this month), database backends etc, then a CS degree doesn't seem out of place. But perhaps original poster could do better by taking targeted courses in the direction / languages he wants to add to his skill set.

Wikipedia has this: the jetBook Color
Wouldn't know if that's for sale already, haven't seen such a display in real life. So if anyone has some hands-on experience with this or similar device: please share.

And original poster's question remains very valid. From an ergonomic p.o.v., plasma/LCD/LED simply is not the same as E-ink. What's best in one situation, may not be optimal in another situation. True, LCD or (probably better) LED will consume less power than a plasma display, but E-ink even less since it's static and doesn't produce light itself.

None of that may matter to most consumers, but that doesn't mean there's isn't a market for color E-ink displays. The tech was shown a while ago, so where are the products? Had a look around shops myself a while ago, there were a couple of e-readers with color display, but again: those were LED or LCD/backlight technology, real E-ink devices only in b/w.

They mean Blu-Ray movies?

Hmm... strange. If you Google a bit for a list of banks in Luxembourg, PayPal does not appear on any of those lists. Can't find a BIC for PayPal either. Which is not surprising, really.

If a (Dutch) bank where I have an account folds, my government guarantees the money in my account. At least up to a big minimum, in the order of 100k Euro or so (perhaps more, I dunno). Example: when Icelandic banks folded, the Dutch government covered losses for Dutch account holders. Perhaps except a few that had very large sums of money parked in those banks, but I'm not even sure about that. And that wasn't even Dutch banks folding.

I don't know what the rules in Luxembourg are, but you expect similar guarantees to hold for your PayPal account? Think again. And in fact, there's a number of stories around of examples where PayPal f**ked a customer, and they had essentially no recourse. Also I can directly transfer money from my bank account to any other bank within the EU (and outside EU too, with a little more patience), for any amount I like. Not so with PayPal.

So I guess the above statement doesn't mean what you think it means, and in any case doesn't mean the same as "bank". PayPal provides a service, that service deals with money, and to many it's a useful service. But that's all, it's not what we normally refer to as a "bank".