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Comment Re:The users of fossil fuels release the carbon (Score 5, Insightful) 158

It's an argument of not hiding externalities. By requiring the producers to take care of cleaning up (part of) the pollution, the clean-up cost will get factored into the price (so the competition is not at an unfair disadvantage) and you ensure it actually gets done. That said, at least until now the carbon capture implementations I have read about haven't exactly had stellar results. See e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/en... or https://reneweconomy.com.au/do... (although I admit I haven't followed it recently, so maybe massive strides forward have been made since then)

Comment Re: Concern trolling (Score 1) 183

So, you really can't discern the difference between having to track the original costs and eventual yard sale selling price of possibly hundreds of items across years of your life ... and having to pull out your ID every couple of years when you vote?

This sort of hyperbolic false comparison says more about your need to our elections sloppy and unaccountable than it does anything about having to do paperwork to prove you don't owe income tax when you unload some old furniture. Trying to use this as a distraction in the interests of preserving a highly abusable voting system sure is predictable, though.

Comment Article is badly wrong on stuff (Score 1) 64

That Politico article talks about how many people get around their drone's NFZ/Geofencing features, and then demonstrate how easy it is by linking to a walk-through of using DJI's native waiver process to allow their drones to operate in restricted areas. But: DJI's process will NOT let you work around the restrictions on the very air space the article is about (the DC NFZ). Go ahead, article author, give it a try (which they obviously didn't do, and didn't actually ask anybody to try to do in support of their point on this).

If you're going to fly any relatively recent DJI drone in the DC FRZ, you need to do a pretty profound hardware hack, or have well out of date firmware which has been hacked. None of the user-accessible features in an off the shelf DJI drone nor in either their self-service or manual contact waiver-generating mechanisms allow this to happen, despite what the article hand-wavingly asserts. Those casual tourist types aren't buying a Mavic 3 and flying it over the Pentagon or the Capital or anywhere in a 15-mile radius around it.

Comment Moar Regulayshuns! (Score 1, Troll) 128

I keep seeing people trying to make the case that this is an example of why regulations are good. In this case, the fact that a lot of financial activity IS regulated served to lull witless investors/users into a stupor of zero curiosity and diligence. Followed by, "Hey, isn't somebody else supposed to make everything I do perfectly safe for me, especially when it comes to me getting lots of money?" New laws/regs passed in the wake of this won't stop scammers any more than new gun laws aimed at law-abiding people ever stop criminals who simply ignore those laws and hold up a liquor store anyway.

Comment Re:Has censorship ever been right? (Score 0) 455

The Biden Laptop censorship debacle wasn't the political hit job you think it was.

Yeah, it was WORSE.

It was a mistake, and it was rolled back as soon as it was realized that it was.

No, it was entirely deliberate, and every party involved knew exactly how much of a lie the "this is Russian disinformation" narrative was, but carefully kept the NY Post's well documented article from being seen (or even searchable!) until after the election. The FBI went to FB and TOLD them to suppress it - you couldn't even link to it in a private message. Twitter knew perfectly well that preventing people from seeing it by shutting down NYP's account was in keeping with the Biden campaign's desperate need to keep the information out of circulation in the weeks before the election.

Social Media companies saw the story as fitting well with the pattern of disinformation injected into their streams during the 2016 election to polarize the country, and responded accordingly.

No, they didn't. They saw a well-written article about material that had been confirmed as legitimate by multiple sources - including people corresponded with in material found on the laptop. The salacious crap highlighting Hunter Biden's idiotic lifestyle wasn't germane (other than we all pay the Secret Service to chase around and clean up after his messes), but the ample documentation of Joe Biden's direct involvement in influence peddling and the movement of millions of dollars of Chinese money into shared Biden accounts, that was (and very much still is) the real issue. And of course Joe Biden had just stood there in a debate and repeated his lie that he had absolutely no knowledge of his son's international entanglements, while his son's own words showed that Joe Biden was knowingly, deliberately lying - he was WELL aware of his son's dealings, personally enjoyed lots of cash from it, helped facilitate it while he was VP, and is very likely in criminal jeopardy from all of that.

All of that was plain from an even casual review of the material on the laptop that third parties (involved in their activities!) confirmed, with documentation. The FBI/DoJ knew that when they sent agents to Facebook to tell them to clamp down on it. Every other media outlet knew about it and - with only a few exceptions - acted in lock step to prevent the Biden family's substantial corruption from being know to voters when it mattered to know it. Multiple polls of people who voted for Biden NOT knowing this now 100% confirmed information show that over 15% of them would have reconsidered and likely changed their votes if they'd know he was looking them in the eye at that debate and lying about it. That would have completely changed the outcome of the election, every other factor not withstanding.

Comment Re:Oh, *now* they are concerned (Score 1) 192

You did not in any way explain how the quantitative easing/stimulus/whatever-you-want-to-call-it of the past couple of years is causing the current inflation spike. You really think everyone saved up that money and is now using it to buy gas and oil, thereby driving up demand and prices?

Comment Re:Oh, *now* they are concerned (Score 4, Insightful) 192

When a government that directly control their central bank spends money, they have their central bank create it out of nothing. When they tax, the money they collect gets destroyed again. It's not useful to think of them as a household budget with "a certain amount of trillions", because not a single household can create its own money supply, force others to use it, or tax it back.

While it's absolutely true that such governments cannot create an infinite supply of money without massive causing inflation, nor get rid of taxes at will without causing inflation (hi Liz Truss), it's much less simple than "bigger money supply = more inflation" (as the past couple of years have shown). The current inflation is not driven by too big a supply of money causing massive spikes in consumer demand, but by high energy prices (Russian/Ukraine war) and still not fully recovered supply chains and production after covid.

Furthermore raising interest rates is what is more likely to trigger a recession than not: it will make more people default on their mortgages and unable to pay other bills, which will have a domino effect on other spending and businesses. Inflation has that effect as well, but central banks cannot fight this kind of inflation in a meaningful way by raising interest rates. It's not going to stop Putin, reduce energy prices (although I'll grant you that kicking people out of their houses and business shutting down will reduce demand for electricity and gas on those premises), or fix supply chain problems.

A more in-depth explanation: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk...

Comment Did she do the crime, or not? (Score 2) 188

How is this different than what would come from interviewing a witness about her having been raped, who - in the course of talking about THAT case - says, "Yeah, I know her. I met her when she robbed that store liquor store down on Main Street." Why wouldn't the police follow such a lead?

Comment Re:Interesting - but obviously biased (Score 3, Informative) 55

Half of twitter's staff have access to that information so that they can potentially use it. Security dude was security dude and tried to restrict access to that information. Company said no.

There's more to it than that. Engineers can romp around in the production system - generally without leaving a trail that could get them in trouble - while doing a LOT more than just looking at web server log files. For example, he pointed out that half the company (some 4000 people) could send tweets from user accounts AS that user, and leave no trail. Multiply egregious stuff like that times dozens of other examples (like .. high level system engineers allowed to work remotely, directly in the production systems, without having to use devices/computers that are patched and up to date, security-wise).

Comment Re:Yays 50 and Nays 50... (Score 2) 401

Sigh, this country needs to abolish political parties and career politicians. And lobbyists. and...

Which means abolishing the First Amendment. It guarantees that people can assemble into groups as they see fit (like, say, political parties). It guarantees that you can pay someone to speak on your behalf if they're better at it than you, or can do so on behalf of a larger group in order to be more effective (like, say, lobbyists).

If you think freedom of speech and assembly is no good, all you have to do is get a federal supermajority in the legislature to see your point and kill the entire Bill of Rights (it can't be picked apart on amendment at a time), and then get 37 states to ratify that alteration to the Constitution. Should be no problem.

Or ... you could explore how to get kids a decent education featuring things like critical thinking skills so they aren't as vulnerable to getting their entire world view and their eventual voting patterns set by under- and mal-informed people throughout the media/entertainment complex, to say nothing of higher education's toxicity on this topic.

Comment Re:Do people really believe this crap (Score 4, Interesting) 214

have amassed hundreds of interactions on Facebook and Twitter.

A conspiracy theory with "hundreds of interactions" on Facebook and Twitter sounds like something on the fringe of fringes. The only agenda here seems to write a random fluff piece, or in the best case a hook to get people to read something about important science.

Or it could be another instance of Discordianism's Operation Mindfuck, one that will hopefully be less successful than the one attributing everything that's wrong with the world to a hidden cabal of Illuminati.

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