Exactly. When figuring out the impact of Bitcoin on energy use, don't forget to include all the energy use it displaces, and its potential for load balancing.

In a mature system Bitcoin can actually HELP clean energy by absorbing excess power during peak production. Use it to provide heat at little cost (or even be paid to heat one's home) in polar regions (need to colonize Antarctica, though). Perhaps in the Himalayas too. When there is more wind power than a locale can handle, or more solar power due to a sunny day in one region, absorb excess power by turning on the miners; then turn most of them off again when energy is needed elsewhere. It will help if local electricity is priced according to demand, so that the miners will know when is a good time to turn on and off. Since the network is global, load balancing can occur on a global scale, and allow solar, wind, and other intermittent sources of power to be more profitable.

Also don't forget that current gold extraction not only uses energy but also is often environmentally destructive - and of course, Bitcoin will displace many office workers and allow them to transfer their productivity to non-financial sectors. If Bitcoin can displace gold mining it will be doing the world a favor, and keep in mind that all those displaced office workers use energy too - both at home and at the office.

Damore's memo was not only factual but about as uncontroversial, well-written, and polite as a memo could be. The fact that one of the world's most powerful companies is being managed by emotional infants, that feeling leaders (I won't call them "thought leaders") are pressuring him to recant, and that even on Slashdot there are people attacking him, is pathetic and embarrassing.

If humanity is too emotional to even deal with obvious, mundane, and benign facts, there isn't much to say in favor of humanity.

Maybe the problem isn't with autists, but with the absurdly defective normies.

To begin with, consider the quality of the installation. As others have noted, if what you have is cables run in a crawl space or basement and poking up through holes drilled in the floor by the baseboard, your best bet may be to simply pull it out and seal up the holes. It will be easy to replace if necessary. If you have a properly done system with the cables going into the wall and out through a wall plate, why not keep it? A future owner may like it. You can always put blank plates on the boxes if you find the CATV plates distracting.

Anyway, other possibilities for coax cables:

First, by having coax cables in place, you are already prepared for putting a cable modem anywhere the cable runs. This depends on the house, but if you want to be able to have a central location for a single router (wireless or not), you can put everything together in one spot where it is easy to maintain. For instance, for one of my sisters I found a suitable out-of-the-way spot in the middle of her house where I could have power, cable, ethernet cables, and telephone lines all come together in one spot (she has a VOIP telephone), all together, making it easy to reset anything that needs to be reset without having to go into anyone's bedroom, accessible at any time to anyone who needs to work on it, with a central location for the wifi so one router covers the whole house, etc. This would not work so well if I had simply left the cable modem/router in the corner of the house where the cable comes in.

Second: so, you aren't using the incoming cable for anything - not for cable TV, not for broadband, not for satellite TV - well, do you still have a DVD player or a DVR or something? If you hook this up in a central location, you can just use one for multiple TVs around the house.

Third: I'm not sure what CCTV uses these days, but that might be a possibility if you want to hook up a baby monitor or something.

Finally, as others have said - depending on how this was originally wired, it might be useful to keep the cables in place to pull in something new at a later date. Again, depending on the set up, you might want to leave everything in place, or you might want to cut out a bunch of a rat's nest of wires and just leave sections where it would be difficult to pull in something new.

That might not give you much to work with. The cables themselves are decent signal conductors, but the problem is that there just isn't much in the way of making a good connection to them other than what they were designed for. Otherwise you might be able to repurpose them for anything from a telephone line to a doorbell.

Of course, the first version of Tesla's autopilot reduced actual fatalities by 50% compared to the history of human drivers, and the current version may well be ten times safer than human drivers. At what point do we accept the occasional machine-caused fatality as preferable to the greater number of fatalities caused by human error?

I am more concerned about malicious hacking than accidents, as malicious hacking could target specific individuals or large numbers of individuals. For that, I would like to see a system where at least three computers running separate operating systems and programs computed everything necessary for driving safely, and only operated when all three returned results that agreed within tolerances. If results differed, the incident would be recorded and reported for analysis, and the two computers that were in closest agreement would guide the car safely to a stop.

There has been a lot of technological innovation in agriculture lately:

Vertical and indoor farming
Aquaculture
Robotics - for far more than harvesting
Cultured meat
etc.

These innovations will provide more and better food at lower cost and with less suffering of both humans and animals. It will also reduce pollution, reduce energy use, and improve food security. That seems like a win/win/win to me.

Good to see this happening.

I recall learning, oh, something like 30 years ago, that the Space Shuttle had multiple computers, running at least two different operating systems, managing all vital systems on a space shuttle.

With all the concern about self-driving cars being cracked, or otherwise running into problems, why is no one demanding something similar? The computers themselves are pretty cheap these days - and will be cheaper by the time we start putting this in every car. Just have a minimum of three computers running a minimum of three different operating systems, determining what the car does. One of those computers can have priority for decisions about where to drive and such (with a human override, which could be as simple as changing which computer got priority for these decisions), but the other two computers would monitor every move for safety. If a single computer returned results outside of safety parameters, the car would shut down until the problem could be resolved - and control of safely slowing down and stopping would be according to the majority of the computers.

Cracking the automobile's control system would still be possible, but it would require that at least two different kinds of systems be cracked, almost simultaneously.

Seeing as it is a fundamental principle of law that the law must be public and knowable, I would say that you have no obligation to obey Georgia's laws, nor any laws that are so unclear that no one can be confident in what they say.

Unfortunately, I am not the one enforcing the laws - so I would advise you not to take the above advice. Just remember that everything makes more sense when you think of the government as organized crime.

Is that the same district in Pennsylvania where public school employees were using the cameras on school-supplied and required laptops to spy on children in their own bedrooms, and the courts found that no crime had been committed?

I agree, I wouldn't put much faith in Pennsylvania's legal system.

He may be in jail a long time ... and considering these particular (and unlawful) laws, he is better off being in jail on the contempt charges.

Funny how the law never addresses the fact that many courts deserve nothing but contempt.

Having spent several months on the polar plateau, I say it's humbug. There's not enough room in the nose to warm up air appreciably, and the extra surface area exposed to cold air is more likely to expose it to frostbite (and chunks falling off) than do anything useful. What good will that air-warmer do once it has fallen off?

Also, how could any study of the suitability of nose type to climate fail to include at least one polar people, such as the Inuit, Sami, or Chukchi?

Well said. Overtime should be exactly that - overtime. Something extra when extra effort is needed for short term goals. If you are pushing overtime all the time, then your crew will always be at the edge, and when you really need them for those emergency situations they will burn out and need to be replaced. The company would do better just to hire more people.

As we move forward into an age of automation, number of working hours will need to decrease, in part to ensure that there is enough of a market for what we produce. We are already seeing more of an emphasis on consuming experiences rather than goods. This is a good thing in lots of ways.

So I would be less aggressive than you in increasing wages, but I would start earlier: say, time and a half after 30 hours, double at 40 hours, triple at 50 hours, quadruple at 60 hours. Or perhaps time and a quarter at 30 hours, time and a half at 40, double at 50, double and a half at 60, and anything over 65 at triple wages.

Absolutely. The British did efficiency studies during the First World War and found that not only efficiency but total production declined after 55 hours per week.

Which is to say, employees who work more than 55 hours per week are actually hurting the company.

Now, I am sure there are exceptions - rare individuals who really love what they do and can work 100 hours per week at peak efficiency because their job is their passion. But you shouldn't build company policy on those rare individuals - you should just provide ways for them to get around the rules without destroying the productivity of the normal workers.

The studies done by the British during the First World War found that approximately 55 hours per week provided peak production, though presumably peak efficiency was at some lower number of hours.

But the British were looking at peak total production for their work effort, and they found that 6 day weeks were more productive than 7 day weeks, and that total production peaked at about 55 hours. When workers worked more than 55 hours, their total production was actually less than if they worked only 55 hours.

So it looks like this Japanese company got it right. With very rare exceptions, they should limit work hours at 55 hours per week if they want to maximize production. If they want to maximize productivity, which is slightly different, they may want to restrict work hours even further.

Now, are there rare individuals who can work longer hours and even enjoy working longer hours? Of course. There are exceptions to every rule. But most workers need to rest occasionally.

Soooooo ... No.