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Comment Easy solution: (Score 1) 61

PJM commits to keeping existing residential and business grids stable, and not increase their prices.

"Excess" users like AI data centers, crypto miners, etc. must bid once per day with a max price/kWh they're willing to pay. As long as there's no shortage, everyone pays normal rates, and it's fine. If they run out of capacity, then the excess users are shut off from lowest to highest.
For example, five AI data centers bid 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50c/kWh today. If capacity is low, the 10c DC gets shut off, and the rest pay 20c/kWh. If it's still not enough, the 20c/kWh is shut off, and the rest pay 30c/kWh, etc. Ties are not broken - everyone bidding the same gets shut down at the same time, even if it's not strictly necessary (this is to prevent collusion).
Then the ones causing the problem are the only ones that suffer, and the ones that can't make it economically will go somewhere else.

Comment Re:Who thought this service was a good idea? (Score 1) 117

I can see a service where you can send a satellite message to disable your car/brick it. But a system where if you lose satellite communication for enough time it bricks itself automatically?

I can see a hundred ways this can go bad - starting with what actually happened.

Horrible business plan.

No, it's a great business plan. Add a feature that means the car is undrivable if the customer disables or blocks your location-tracking-for-sale device. Bonus! Make it an additional option they PAID for!

Comment 300 billion in circulation? (Score 1) 186

Not really - they're sitting in people's coin jars.

We've been trying to get rid of our giant jar of coins for years, but banks won't take them unless we spend hours rolling them up, and things like coinstar charge outrageous fees - so tons of coins just sit around because we literally can't reasonably put them back in circulation.

Comment Re:Is the workplace itself toxic? (Score 1, Flamebait) 187

What might be starting to happen is that there are increasing numbers of these "snowflake" employees that are offended by everything, can't take a joke, etc. For them, "normal" people are toxic because OMG! they occasionally make a slightly off-color joke, or something, then go straight to HR. So they think the workplace is toxic because they're forced to be exposed to that. Normal people then have to carefully watch every word that comes out of their mouths, can't have any fun or relax, so they consider the snowflakes toxic. So basically, everyone thinks it's toxic, and it really only takes one snowflake per office to make it like that.

Comment Re:Public sector issue: salaries (Score 4, Insightful) 61

Any organization that knows what it's doing will have parallel promotion tracks for management and non-management.

In the specific case of my company, I "Sr. Solutions Architect" have a job grade roughly equivalent to a director, and above that of anyone called "manager", "supervisor", or the Sr. versions thereof. The "principal architect" I work with is equivalent to the sr. director that manages the whole team. I think the individual track tops out around VP/SVP level here. And yes, a non-sr. director can be managing an SVP-level non-management employee.

Comment Fun civil rights lawsuit! (Score 1) 120

The next human driver cited for this should file a civil rights lawsuit claiming racial discrimination. Since there's apparently video evidence of "we don't/can't ticket robots" (rather than a hard to prove "officers have discretion" type thing), it might stick, especially if it goes before a jury.

Comment Re:This is so funny (Score 1) 377

In my neighborhood, every house has a garage. I would say, 1/3 of these garages are filled with junk or exercise equipment and the cars are parked outside. I see Tesla wall chargers on the *outside* of the house (in the elements) because these people don't put their car in the garage.

The problem is that garages have been shrinking to the point that you can barely put two cars in a "two-car" garage and still be able to open the doors. This means that there's no room to put things like yard equipment, etc. that can't go in the house without leaving at least one car in the driveway. Add the shrinking lots, and you can't build a shed, either, because there's no space left inside the build lines and setbacks. The newer homes I've been in have next to no storage space inside, either.

Comment Re:Simple... (Score 5, Insightful) 199

Came here to say this, as well. The useless amber alerts (and silver/blue alerts) from 600 miles away are the number one reason I and most people I know turn them off.
The reality is that basically all amber alerts are "false alarms" in that people can't do anything with them in most situations:
- At home? Useless unless the abductor is breaking into your house with the abductee.
- At work? Basically same as above. Office workers won't see them, and retail/similar employees probably aren't allowed on their cellphones to get the alert.
- Driving? You shouldn't be getting out your cellphone to check an alert while you're driving.

We all know what happens when people get useless alerts: they turn them off or just ignore them.

Fortunately, you can usually turn of JUST amber alerts on phones, but not all radio devices.

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