You're assuming they are using the physical imprint of your palm. I couldn't find details of how the system works, but they do say "multi layered" about why they use a palm print, which suggests they are using palm vein patterns, like Fujitsu's system does. I am familiar with that one, and it requires blood flow to work, so you don't need to worry about the "cutting off the victim's hand" scenario, since it's faster and simpler to just take the whole person and super glue the back of their hand to a board or something, instead of rigging up some sort of complex fake circulation system. Or, just beat them until they give up their PIN.

I'm one of those people who "can't be bothered" to organize my photos (and spreadsheets and presentations and word processing, etc.) into folders. Because folders are a metaphor for the physical filing systems we use to store our papers and it's a stupid thing to adhere to on a computer. How do I organize photos? By date? By subject? By who is in it? By the project it was taken for? What if there is more than one subject? Do I need a folder for every possible permutation of subjects? And people? And if I want to find all photos taken of subject A and B, on any date? Tags handle that with ease. Whether we need a new filesystem is another question, but to suggest that there aren't any "real" problems being solved is a little simplistic. The deep integration of tags into the OS is the only thing that keeps me on MacOS these days.

For some people, environmentalism is a religion. Does that help make sense of the letter?

That said, I do believe the wealthiest nations (one of which I reside in) should bear the brunt of the costs of cleaning things up, both for moral and pragmatic reasons.

So ... about 2% of the peak worldwide annual production of motor vehicles (~95 million in 2018)?

Producing enough of these is simply a matter of will. I don't have the information to determine if they are a net benefit, but production isn't an insurmountable issue. I don't completely trust the numbers from the supporters or the detractors since both have a horse in the race, but if I was forced to bet on something, it would be that some type of human-made carbon-capture technology is going to be a significant part of the solution.

I actually volunteer with the local school system trying to work out how to get a better start time for high schools students. It's not that they don't want to, but you have the parents who don't like change, are concerned about elementary kids being out in the dark, are worried about time for high school sports, etc. Then the teachers, with many of the same issues. Then there are the budget issues. And traffic patterns. And ensuring equal access to education regardless of economics (== where you live), race (often == economics). It's a nasty optimization problem. And the people who control the resources (i.e. money) are often disconnected from the on-the-ground issues. So it isn't that nobody wants to change things, or that they aren't aware of the studies, but they are often up against strongly entrenched forces who don't understand the problems, or have pre-conceived notions about the trade-offs (school athletes actually perform better when high school start times are shifted later, contrary to the fears of parents and coaches. And school boards who are afraid to make bold decisions in case it doesn't work out and they don't get re-elected. Or they are only talking to the high-achievers at the schools, who of course don't see any problem because it's working for them.

The Covid Tracking Project from The Atlantic actually recommends using absolute numbers to report deaths, rather than per capita, because that's too confusing to people: https://covidtracking.com/abou.... Because Florida's ~2K deaths (out of 22 million population) are directly comparable to Louisiana's 2.5K deaths (4.6 million pop). But I don't disagree with how they came to that conclusion.

That's after recommending using normalized values at the top of the same document.

But the 504 that gives them that accommodation is most definitely not just for college-bound students. It does, however, require navigating the school system bureaucracy, which, while not actively discouraging you from asking for one (because that would be illegal), doesn't go out of it's way to make it easy. To really get the best results you need to hire an advocate, and you need to be able to devote a significant amount of time to it, including meetings that will invariably be scheduled during school hours (a.k.a. work hours). That right there tells you everything you need to know about why fewer poor people have those accommodations for their kids: time and money.

I'm not sure that drug dealers are carrying weapons to intimidate the police. Otherwise, I'm sure the psychological factor is still a major consideration.

Perhaps because this is news to Hollywood? To those us us who long-ago discovered non-US entertainment, yeah, it's not news.

That's the point. I didn't do anything to them that I haven't done to the ones that I've had for 3 years and are still in good shape. And for the record, it was sitting in a office chair, sitting on a train seat, walking to the train, walking to the office... you get the idea. I wasn't using them as the bearing material for a ship's propeller or something like that.

Actual data:

• $30 Gap jeans (2 pairs) - 6 weeks = $5/week
• $90 Banana Republic jeans (also 2 pairs - I hate shopping for jeans) - 3 years (so far) = $0.57/week

That's what? An order of magnitude difference? Pretty close to the 1/11th you claim is bunkum.

The best comedy is based on uncomfortable truths.

And yes, I'm aware Banana Republic and Gap are the same company.

The Fujitsu palm scanners do just that (look for blood flow that is), or at least claim to. When I worked with those scanners, I always idly wondered just how difficult it would be to take the image, use a 3d printer to make a fake hand with veins and then pump some sort fluid through it to fool the system.

I also wondered about verifying the blood flow thing, but was never able to verify due to lack of access to a supply of corpse hands.

It's to the point that when I was researching internet-only plans when the provider I eventually went (Frontier) with told me the price was $30, I said, no, really, what's the total after taxes and fees and they said "$30" and I said, really, what about after all the "taxes" and "fees" and they said "$30" and I still didn't believe them. I went ahead anyway because they were the best price and service and I figured the other guys (I have a choice of 3-4 providers) would have similar fees so it wouldn't matter. Then the first bill came and it was $30.

I don't personally know either of the grad students, but I've corresponded via email with Sebastien, and I can say he seems like a decent, thoughtful guy who does in fact understand all the issues. If you had bothered to RTFA, you'd see that they ran their program multiple times with multiple criteria (thousands of times to be exact). The reality is, people just don't like change, even if you can demonstrate that a) the systems (jobs, businesses, etc.) will adjust to accommodate and b) things will be measurably improved after. It really was a political failure -- the program did exactly what it was required to do. The people who ordered the results failed to get the required buy-in from the public to implement those results.

Well, the reason the parent's schedule is the way it is is because the school schedule is the way it is. When school systems shift their schedules, the rest of the system tends to adapt to it.