Because not only are the local illiterates illiterate, they're uneducated and stupid. That's HOW they became illiterate in their native country, in their native tongue.

Foreign illiterates are only illiterate in English - they're fluent in their native tongue(s), and, given the pool we have to pick from, are HIGHLY educated.

I'll take a highly-educated foreign person that can't speak English over a moron local American every day, and twice on Sundays.

Because I can teach the foreign person English. I can't fix stupid Americans.

And yeah, I had to log in after 5 years to post this COMPLETELY OBVIOUS fact. Slashdot seems to mirror the overall decline in intelligent discussion, with people who can't think through even basic logic.

The 30% Apple fee is ALL APPLE'S. They might incur some portion of other expenses, but nothing that Spotify wouldn't doing the same thing. So it's just Apple wanting a slice of Spotify's business, and punishing them if they don't play by Apple's rules, which, of course, Apple's own competition apps don't have to.

NONE of that Apple fee goes to the Artists. Zero. Zilch. It's Revenue to Apple, and at least half Profit.

Secondly. Spoitfy pays Artists significantly more than Apple does - I used to work at Apple Music, and know what their schedule is. Apple pays about 8% less than Spotify in terms of per-play royalties.

Radio DOESN'T PAY THE ARTIST. Period. They only pay the Songwriter.

Whereas Spotify pays BOTH.

And Spotify pays per-play. Whereas Radio pays based not just on plays, but the size of the audience. You will make a LOT more on streaming than via Radio.

Radio is viewed as essentially free advertising, and the artists don't get compensated for plays with the songwriters getting a smidgeon. Streaming is similar to CD sales, so both get paid, and a LOT more than Radio.

As seen here...

Regardless of whether Nickle to Copper fusion can occur in the conditions that Rossi claims for the Ecat, the input and output of "fuel" isn't in line with what would happen.

That is, given what his input Nickel fuel is, the output "spent" fuel after the run would look radically different than what Rossi has shown.

In fact, his "spent fuel" looks very much like: he went out and put together a fuel rod from commerically-available Nickel and Copper, and didn't bother to do the actual Physics behind what the Isotope ratio should be, then just pulled this "fuel rod" out of the device to "prove" it worked.

Also, as pointed out by the article, if his Ecat worked as he claims, everyone would be dead within 10 minutes of starting the reactor, due to massive Gamma radiation leaks.

One can claim that low-temperature fusion is happening, for some reason we don't understand. But then you can't go on and claim that the actual fusion process is somehow different than all possible combinations using your input and output elements.

Since Rossi's still alive to peddle his snake oil, it's plainly, well, snake oil.

-Erik

You absolutely need to know what's in the black box before validating any claims of the owner.

I can build my own E-Cat with a secretly concealed ICE inside it, and then let you monitor that input and output numbers, and then claim "Cold Fusion!"

The thing is that unless you reveal what the black box contains, there's no way at all to verify what you claim is happening actually does happen. Or even has the possibility of happening.

There might be cold fusion that breaks existing physics. But until the experimental apparatus that "demonstrates" cold fusion can be thoroughly analyzed to eliminate all other possibilities, it's nothing more than fraud. By refusing to allow people to analyze his device for these other possibilities, Rossi displays all the hallmarks of a con-man desperate to prevent his con from being exposed.

-Erik

No, they didn't. (Measure all the inputs).

They looked at the instruments set up by Rossi. One of the biggest suspicions is that the Ampmeter is measuring only the current between hot and neutral leads on the input cable, and that the "earth" line is actually being used to supply power.

Once again: they merely observed a device set up by Rossi. They had to take his word that all the instruments were set up correctly, and that they did what he said they did. Even the new round of "testing" isn't actual testing. So there's no verification that it did anything that Rossi said it does.

It's like trusting David Copperfield that his escape box is merely an "ordinary box".

-Erik

He's tried patenting it in three different jurisdictions:

Italy, the EU, and the US.

The latter two rejected the claim outright, with choice phrases like "seems to violate the understanding of basic physical processes" and "fails to provided enough of a concrete implementation to judge for patentablity", and "application does not describe a workable device".

It got the Italian one, simply because he applied for a non-technical patent, and it was reviewed by someone who merely looked at the form, and didn't analyze the device. It's well-known in Italy that this form of patent is called "God's Gifts", because they're pretty much indistinguishable from miracles in terms of reproducability.

Relying on Trade Secrets for this kind of invention is the #1 indicator of fraud. A proper patent would make him rich beyond his imagination. A Trade Secret is only good for fleecing investors.

-Erik

is indistinguishable from a Rigged Demo. Or in this case, Rossi is counting on the inverse.

We've long been down this road. Rossi refuses to let anyone see how the thing works. He refuses to allow input monitoring (i.e. the Ecat is always plugged into an external power source, and he refuses to allow an ampmeter to be run on it).

He's also never shown the interior of the Ecat, so there's no verification of the fuel being any different between start and finish of the run. In fact, the concentration of Copper isotopes after the run is suspiciously identical to naturally occurring copper.

He's also never explained why there are no gamma radiation dangers, despite the physics which say that if the reaction he claims is going on, anyone within 10 meters for more than a few minutes should die of radiation poisoning.

Really, folks, this nothing more than a charlatan peddling his wares to folks. Any "scientist" who values his reputation shouldn't come with 100 miles of this guy. And shame on Slashdot for even publishing this claim. What, we're next going to entertain claims of people who say they can transform Lead to Gold with only this special black-box machine?

Oh, and ExtremeTech is about as reliable for this kind of reporting as The Daily Mail.

-Erik

Discovery Channel has long since gone the way of the History Channel, and now bears only coincidental moments of truth.

All they care about are ratings, and if lying to the public means ratings, well, obviously, Discovery is all over that.

As a scientist quoted in any of the current Shark Week "dramas" (they don't even rate the "docudrama" label), I'd sue Discovery for misrepresentation and libel. They quoted out of context and stitched together several scientist's different takes (not to mention failing to inform them about the subject being talked about, rather lying to them about the nature of the interview). As a consequence, the "scientist" never said any of the things they were purported to say.

Don't watch Shark Week. Don't watch Discovery/History/TLC or anything like that any more. heck, even NatGeo is bad. It's a shame.

Flying vehicles are expensive: to build, to operate, and to maintain. Probably close to an order of magnitude for each, though the last may be close to two magnitudes.

Cost per pound of cargo in an airborne vehicle is huge. Here's an example: the HondaJet runs around $5m. A comparable Honda Odyssy is $35k.

Flying is a significantly more energy-intensive operation than rolling along the surface. A cheap prop plane like a Cessna has an airspeed around 100mph, and gets 20mpg. The equivalent super-cheap subcompact doesn't have to worry about winds, and gets 40+ mpg. Turbofans (like the HondaJet) which you'd want on a "flying car" get 4x or worse gas mileage than a Cessna. VTOLs (whether helicopter or directed thrust) are getting 6x or worse gas mileage.

The vast majority of aircraft require HOURS of maintenance per hour of flight time. Even the small, simple stuff like Cessna are more than a 1:1 maintenance:use ratio. There's not really any way to avoid this, since flying is significantly more hard on the vehicle than driving. So, for each flight you take, you're going to have to pay several hundred dollars in maintenance fees.

Overall, even with some reasonable improvements and economies of scale, you're looking at a vehicle that costs 10x or more than an equivalent wheeled vehicle to start with, and has an annual operating cost around 100x.

Besides, we already have flying cars. They're called helicopters. Notice how the pricing on those has kept them from be adopted. There's no real way to make a flying car significantly cheaper. And you're still stuck with the 1-6 reasons above.

Asking where flying cars are is only slightly more inane than asking why we don't have personal teleporters, and about the same as asking why personal jetpacks aren't sitting in everyone's closet.

-Erik

Except the 1st doesn't trump the 4th.

Within your own house (or other private area), you have a right to control access to allow for a reasonable level of privacy.

That is, allowing you to walk into my home does NOT automatically give you the right to record everything you see there. As the owner, I retain my personal rights to everything there; your rights don't trump mine, because this is MY private space. This also applies to actions within that space with respect to the guest: the homeowner does NOT automatically gain the right to record the guest WITHOUT permission.

Similar protections apply to all places where a reasonable expectation of privacy exists: bathrooms, private hotel rooms, etc.

A minor level of Prior Restrain is perfectly reasonable here - that is, the owner must show PROOF of permission for photographic reproduction, since the possible harm from an illegal post outweighs the benefits of unfettered postings. That is, documented permission from the participant is NOT an onerous burden on the poster, and, in fact, protects the participants' 4th and 1st Amendment rights, which, in this case, are reasonably seen as being greater than the picture owner's.

Voyager and all the other space probes suffer from a massive problem: they have no (functioning) engine.

They got an initial boost from a chemical rocket to start out their journey. They used up what little fuel they had on orbital adjustments, not propulsion, and then got some velocity boost via gravity-well slingshots.

Any inter-stellar transport WILL have a engine, that continues to function for the vast majority of the trip. Current bets are on some sort of a ion engine, with solar sails being a nice runner-up. Both of them are low-thrust, long-duration engine types that don't require massive amounts of fuel to be stored on the vessel.

In either case, it's well within current engineering reason to presume that your inter-stellar engine can produce a thrust acceleration of 0.01g across several decades, at a minimum. After a year at a constant 0.01g, that means you're moving at about 3.1E6 m/s, or about 0.01 C. Even at that slow-poke speed, you'll cover a light year per 100 years. If you can accelerate for a decade (and decelerate at the end at the same rate), you get up to 0.1 C velocity, which means you cover a light year per 10 years.

You're only off by about 5 orders of magnitude that reasonable tech can provide now.

Nope.

The vast majority of folks employed in IT/computing these days without degrees are the older generation (30+), who got into the fields before it really solidified. I can count on one hand the number of under-30s I know that don't have a degree in something reasonably technical (math, engineering, CS, etc) that work in IT out here. The opposite is true for the older generation: I have to use two hands, but that's about it, to count the number of aged 40+ people who have a technical degree and work in IT.

Silicon Valley companies all want, for an "entry-level" position: (5) years experience OR a degree in something technical. If you have neither, you'll not get past HR or the recruiters, even for that entry-level position, unless you're extremely lucky.

It's darned hard to find an entry-level job out here, with no experience. And without a technical degree, everyone ignores you. As soon as you have several years experience, well, they ignore the degree, but it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem there. And by "experience", they mean fulltime employment, not "I worked at a job while in college/high school".

-Erik

100 tons of water is 24,000 gallons, or about 3600 cubic feet of water.

That's roughly about the same amount as two (2) of the large tanker trucks that fill up a gas station.

Or, in Olympic Pool metrics, about 1/24th of a Pool.

In radiation terms, 230m Bq per liter (for 24,000 Gal = 91,000 L) or 21 Trillion Bq.

A single (average) coal plant puts out about 4 Quadrillion Bq via emissions pollution. So this spill is roughly 0.5% of the yearly output of a coal plant (or, 46 hours of operation of one).

In terms Banana Equivalent Dosage, you're talking about 1.4 Trillion bananas per hour to start with, halving every hour.

And Now You Know.

-Erik

As I pointed out on the story on Israel doing a moon mission last week, the technology and knowledge required to put an (unmanned) 100kg object on the moon (or Mars, or other celestial rock) is very well understood these days, so much so that well-financed private corporations (see the various X-prise competitors) can do it, given $100m or less. All the engineering issues are both well-known, and well-documented as to solutions. This is all out in the open press, so anyone with the capital merely has to hire enough competent engineers, and have enough money to build the resulting design. Rocket science is no longer rocket science.

What remains extraordinarily difficult is for someone to build a long-functioning probe. The knowledge of the practical problems (and their workaround/solutions) has NOT been disseminated, and thus, pretty much everyone has to learn from scratch. Extraterrestrial probe building is still very much a Deep Magic field, with only a select few organizations (mostly NASA, but ESA too) having the experience to do it well. And they're not sharing.

I fully expect the Chinese to get a working lander robot sometime soon. Just like I fully expect that their next one will not work to its design specs, either. In many ways, it's like building a new car from scratch - the first couple of prototypes crash badly, and you have to learn all the tricks by yourself, because nobody else shares their hard-won info with you. Tesla does well because they were able to hire experienced people from Ford, etc. who brought that knowledge with them. The Chinese Space Agency (CNSA) wasn't able to do that, for obvious reasons, so they're going to have to do the whole learning curve themselves. Good news is that they'll do it MUCH faster than anyone else did, if for no other reason that the tech and general science knowledge is more available and understood.

-Erik

The current crop (and the future crops, too) of drugs were NEVER intended to have to recoup costs out of non-developed-world countries.

In fact, pretty much ALL drug research is based solely on the American market. That is, everything else outside the American market is gravy (or, in this case, pure profit). The metrics are driven by how long it takes to recoup money from the USA's market.

The reason why is that the US drug market (due to a combination of large population, and completely unregulated pricing) is so much more lucrative than anywhere else, by an order of magnitude even more than Western Europe. That's right - the USA alone brings in more profit THAN THE ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD for a drug.

Letting India manufacture these domestically (and, heck, the entire rest of the developed world) wouldn't affect drug research and investment strategies one little bit. The big fear from drug companies is reimportation, where drugs manufactured in India are imported back into the USA for sale, without the major patent premium being paid. This is fairly trivially avoidable.

So, yeah, in the end, it's about squeezing that last dime in profits out of people, and not fundamentally giving a damned about anything else.