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Comment The laws are a joke. (Score 1) 172

The laws are a joke by people who apparently flunked "Hello World".

They demand a mechanism, but don't even offer guidance on what mechanism it should be. You can technically comply while having no 2 Linux installs following the same API, making it effectively useless.

A better approach would be a purely optional userspace package (perhaps call it "Californication") that returns 1 dword with the age information encoded in it. Each person installing it gets to decide what that encoding will be.

Yes, it returned 0x0BADF00D, that's the code for 18+.

Someone else might decide 0x0B00B1E5 means 18+.

Comment Re:advice to children (Score 1) 172

Some early adopters of "Here's a complaint one, pretty please use it" included small operations like PGP. Others were small companies then, later to become large.

Not too long after, there was the whole flap around DeCSS for DVDs. The medium itself is nearly dead now, but it was individual efforts that rendered region coding largely a joke. The Chinese vendors whose DVD players didn't give a damn about region codes came second.

Comment Re:Wozniak - the real reason for Apple (Score 3, Insightful) 10

Jobs gets all the accolades and fame but he was just a pushy sociopath in a suit,

Suit? The guy who famously wore a black turtleneck all the time?

Anyhoo. I think people outside tech overestimate the importance of CEOs and people in tech underestimate it. Without Jobs, Woz probably would have been a really great engineer in some company and you'd never have heard of him at all. He wasn't a product guy, and you need a product not just raw tech to sell. Selling stuff being somewhat important for a company.

Steve Jobs also had a functioning reality distortion field, something not all that many people have and that's really important for building a company...

Comment Re:What about tile roofs? (Score 1) 46

The solar compatible meter does a couple of things. First, it allows solar generated power to go back to the grid if on-site usage is below generated power levels. Second, it communicates with the utility company so they can manage the entire grid. Third, I *think* it both prevents consumer-generated power from leaking onto the grid during outages, and notifies the utility that there is on-site power generation. The last point is critical for safety - If your house is "hot" during an outage, that power can't be permitted to leak onto the grid otherwise it would be extremely hazardous to workers that are restoring service.

The balcony solar kits are supposed to monitor grid power and they're supposed to shut off the power if grid power goes out. That's a lot of *should*. A certified solar compatible meter and panel solves that part of the problem, but it's stupidly expensive due to the regulatory requirements for permits and electricians to do the work. A homeowner can't simply ask the utility company to put in a solar meter. There's more to it and it makes the costs skyrocket.

The issue with the meters is some don't have the ability to measure direction of flow. If you install a balcony solar system and it produces more energy than you are using at the time the energy you are putting back into the grid is counted as energy consumed and you end up being billed for it.

A workaround is some balcony kits have CTs you place around the main conductors feeding your panel. The solar inverter will use the CT to ensure no excess energy is exported.

All micro inverter kits have working anti-islanding as a standard feature. Normal PV systems work the same way. This isn't a function of the meter and isn't optional. The grid communicates with grid tied inverters directly by monitoring AC frequency. In certain areas like CA and HI there are specific frequency thresholds used to kick the grid tied inverters offline.

Comment Re:advice to children (Score 1) 172

I can buy alcohol because I don't live in Saudi Arabia. I can have an OS that doesn't know or care how old I am because I don't live in California. That law literally doesn't apply to me. If I make a distro where I am, why should I bother with age verification at all? It's none of my business if a friend of a friend or a complete stranger decides to download it and install it on a machine in California. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

Comment Re:The Underlying Question: Why depressed? (Score 1) 26

You can get fired at the drop of a hat for no reason at all. Bosses blow their top over being 1 minute late. Fill out these forms you just filled out last week and again online before you can see the doctor. IRS knows exactly what you made and what you paid in witholding, and what you owe but YOU need to compute it, better not be wrong! Don't be late! Rent and mortgage take up an ever increasing portion of your monthly income (if any). 23 calls a day, mostly scams. You have health insurance even though it was damned expensive, but somehow you still owe a heap of money you don't have after a single visit to the ER.

Meanwhile, you're getting badgered about your "credit score". If you let it get bad everything gets more expensive and it gets harder to get a job (for some reason).

Yeah, you're less likely to actually die today than years ago, but your place in life is far more precarious than it was even 20 years ago. More things demand your attention.

Comment Re:We're not getting paid for this (Score 0) 56

That was always one of the suspension of disbelief breaking aspects of Star Trek, too. As if anyone would deal with all the responsibilities and risks involved in being a starship crew member when you could just fake the entire experience in a holosuite instead.

Which is more believable? Simulating real life in a holodeck or the Goddess of Empathy?

Comment Re: Looks like a robotic arm on a rail (Score 3, Interesting) 46

Solar panels on deserts are regreening them so they are cooling not heating.

Sand reflects about 70% of solar energy, solar panels reflect about 10% plus another 20% in harvested energy which still leaves you with twice the amount of absorbed energy vs sand.

Greening occurs due to reduced surface temperatures / evaporation due to panel shading.

Comment Re:Will, not could, come to the USA (Score 1) 93

Texas's age check law for porn sites was upheld by the SCOTUS, though. I was following it closely because I'm in Florida and we have a similar law.

On one hand the court argued obscenity for minors is a valid basis for denying 1st amendment protections. On the other hand it struct down the same restrictions decades ago in the CDA due to..drumroll... 1st amendment protections. The court just does whatever the hell it wants no different than the recent pulling of absolute presidential immunity out of thin air.

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The party adjourned to a hot tub, yes. Fully clothed, I might add. -- IBM employee, testifying in California State Supreme Court

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