Fucking retards prepared a "handy" list of times by north american city, and published it as a PDF. Now their webserver has fallen over trying to serve that PDF.

Any other sources?

FUCK PDF

Both fossil fuel and biofuel are essentially vehicles for transfering the sun's energy to a tangible, packageable format. Biofuels are great, and we should continue to develop them, and deploy where economically viable. But biofuels cannot solve the basic problem of what fossil fuels provide: in addition to being incredibly convenient (dense portable energy from a hole in the ground), fossil fuels provide stored sun energy from accumulated years past. Millions of years.

Biofuel can deliver only one year's worth of sun energy per year, whereas mining fossil fuels gives you access to past millions of years' worth of sun energy. So yes, go for more biofuel, but don't expect biofuel to sustain energy consumption habits that depend on every year transfering a thousand past years' worth of ancient biofuel (oil/coal/NG) to this year.

In California it is illegal to use a cell phone while driving. Even while stopped at a traffic light. So tell me again how I'm going to use this parking spot locator service? I guess I could pull off the road into an empty parking spot and pull up the app, um, wait... Even if I did this, glancing down at my phone to follow the map to the parking spot would be illegal. Yes, it's a poorly written law. But there it is.

Main feature here is dynamic upward pricing of parking and more efficient dispatch of meter-maids. The rest is window-dressing.

One little detail omitted is that they plan on (and are) raising the meter rates such that it becomes too expensive for some people to park. The goal is to price things such that "there is at least one open spot per block". (I don't know if that means per street-front block, or per 4-sided block.)

That those rates can go up to $18/hr, coupled with the minimum $50 parking tickets is why some people describe San Francisco as having "a war on cars". There's also the little gem that you can't pre-pay the electronic meters for the next morning--so yeah, it's free from 11PM to 7AM, but you have to be there on the dot of 7AM to beat the ticket-wielding meter maid summoned by the electronic sensor. Makes life a little rough for overnight guests who might like to have some wine with dinner.

Not to mention the scam of "street cleaning", which seems to require clearing the street of cars once a week yet somehow get cleaned at best twice a year. And you guessed it, $50 ticket regardless of whether any street cleaners actually showed up.

So yeah, neat technology. It's practical purpose is to raise money for the city and to provide price supports for off-street parking lots.

Proctogon? PROCTOGON? You are seriously naming this after an all-seeing (panopticon) anal doctor (proctologist)???

It's true. Microsoft couldn't market an iceberg in the sahara. Or maybe it's truth-in-advertising--this file system is going to crawl so far your computer's ass it'll know what you had for lunch.

Where were the robots? They were in the same place as the dosimeters, hazmat suits, geiger counters, breathing apparatus, standby generators, dual remote electrical hookups (Japan has two electrical standards), stocks of boron, reactor model upgrades, structure vents, and so on. In other words, nowhere. All preparation for emergencies was skipped. No doubt a couple decades of management bonuses were paid for keeping costs down.

This is why nuclear power is unsafe. Because you can't trust humans to run systems where a cost cut today doesn't blow up for 10-20 years. This kind of crap happens in all industries, it's just that in the nuclear industry the "oops" consequences are devastating.

Recently Ryan Braun (rookie of the year, Major League Baseball) has been disputing a positive drug test that appears to be the same one Floyd Landis disputes, namely an abnormally high epitestosterone/testosterone ratio. In Braun's case, it appears that MLB's testing protocol involves doing a cheap but prone to false-positives first test, then a more costly and accurate second test if the first is positive. In Braun's case, what has gone horribly wrong is that the results of his first test (positive) were leaked BEFORE the second test was run. Now everyone has lawyered up and the assclowns who run MLB have some explaining to do. This is discussed at length with all available public info here:

Braun Banned for PEDs

What does this have to do with Floyd Landis? Just that epi/natural testosterone comparisons aren't cut and dried, and that the French do like to find winning non-French bikers to be dopers, and under the French Napoleonic code of justice you are guilty until proven innocent.

Personally, I'd guess that a turn signal will convince the AI to allow an intentional lane change.

In addition to informing the AI, it'll also let other drivers know of your intentions. Revolutionary! You could even try putting on the signal BEFORE you turn the wheel instead of halfway through the lane change.

Holy Mod Wars, Batman! The moderation of my parent comment (so far):

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design , has been moderated Interesting (+1).

It is currently scored Normal (2).

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design , has been moderated Underrated (+1).

It is currently scored Interesting (3).

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Interesting (4).

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (5).

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design , has been moderated Overrated (-1).

It is currently scored Insightful (4).

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design , has been moderated Overrated (-1).

It is currently scored Insightful (3).

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design , has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (4).

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design, has been moderated Overrated (-1).

It is currently scored Insightful (3).

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design, has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (4).

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design, has been moderated Overrated (-1).

It is currently scored Insightful (3).

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design, has been moderated Insightful (+1).

It is currently scored Insightful (4).

Re:Progress, posted to NRC Approves New Nuclear Reactor Design, has been moderated Overrated (-1).

It is currently scored Insightful (3).

In other words, ignoring things that happen in the real world, and that even a first-world country like Japan can't get around human nature (laziness) and business imperatives to cut corners and defer upgrades.

Nuclear power would be great, if we didn't have to depend on humans to run it.

Somewhere on the probe, there is a cursor blinking on an small LCD screen ( or CRT, FFS), next to the letters:

STAGE 1 COMPLETE. HIT RETURN TO CONTINUE _

Fukushima had multiple hardware failures, correctable design problems, and crappy management. The failure was not just due to a low seawall.

1. Reactor 1's cooling system likely failed due to the quake, not the failure of the backup diesels. This opinion is based on analysis of the remaining sensors, that indicated the reactor was having problems even while the battery-powered cooling was still running. The existing plumbing and wiring had been embrittled from 4 decades of operation in a quake zone and proximity to, well, a nuclear reactor.

2. Design flaw and hardware failure: locating the backup diesel generators in a basement under the reactors, such that they were guaranteed to flood if water entered the area.

3. Design flaw: locating the spent fuel pools directly above the reactors in the same buildings, such that if the reactor had a little problem (hydrogen explosion, or moderated prompt criticality), said fuel would get blown sky-high, which it did in the reactor 3 explosion.

4. Design flaw: no externally located terminals for "connect portable generators HERE", and no rationalization of Japan's two different electrical standards (it's a fucking nuclear power plant that will blow up if not cooled, so support both standards, guys).

5. Management failure: All reactors should have been flooded with seawater immediately after the quake, as soon as the situation on the ground at the site became clear. This might have averted the hydrogen explosion by keeping the reactors cool enough to not oxidize the zirconium fuel-rod cladding. Local personnel correctly identified the situation, remote management denied permission to flood the reactors with seawater (because that basically ends the reactor's productive life). Eventually a local guy did so anyways.

Um, last time I looked California is the most populous state in the nation. This submitter claim is as bogus as those who try to claim the 9th district court is somehow biased because it decides more cases of X (fill in bias here), while ignoring that it represents most states west of the rockies.

Full quote from interestingly slanted summary:

In true California fashion (being the most litigious state of the nation)

As one of those downmodded for saying that a for-profit nuclear industry will continue to experience "accidents", and that the nuclear industry would cease to exist as we know it should they have to post an insurance bond against future "accidents", thank you for mentioning this.