You could argue that it is a case of wealth being held away from the pockets of the people who would be willing and able to spend it on researching and inventing. Most of the major brilliant moments of discovery and invention in the past were works of single humans funding (at least in part) and carrying out their own endeavours. Now wealth is held by large corporations who restrict the kinds of people who in the past might have been the inventors to specific paths, and overall this leads to little genuine new thinking in the industrial fields.

Isn't the wider problem that no one has "Money that didn't have to be spent" on their balance sheets? If people regularly claim on their health insurance (I assume that's how it works? UK resident here) won't their cover suffer in some fashion down the line even if the times they picked to claim where 100% right decisions that removed the need for much more expensive future claims?

This is the least informed comment I have ever read on /.

"We now have four rectors that needs to be cooled down, built in and kept under close watch for a couple of hundred thousands of years"

That doesnt even bear any resemblance to anything that is actually happening or going to happen at that plant.

If it allows banks, utilities and other real world important billing and information emails to be able to be considered trustworthy then I can see a lot of value.

the physics of greenhouse gasses seems to be quite well established

In isolation yes, but we really have little to no idea of how all the various mechanisms will interact with our input. We have been in a relatively stable era in Earths history in terms of global weather fluctuations (for 10k years or so), so our "normal" is not really very normal in the history of the planet, where normal is fairly brutal extremes and feedback loops.

Other than for control of masses ideas of what is and isn't possible Russia and China should not be seriously disccussed as Communist societies. Both used the veneer or Communist ideals to garner grass-roots support but then actively destroyed any traces of worker controlled industry when they got into power. That is just Totalitarianism.

Infact the practicalities of worker controlled industry were even taking off in northern Italy after the WWII but clearly that was unacceptable incase it worked, so was actively destroyed.

It could be said that the way Capitalism has been approached by western powers is closer to a religion, full of interollerance and crusades. I'm not sure we even have a large scale real example of Communism to use as an example.

This was kind of the point I was going to make, but I wasn't going to turn it into a reply that would get downvoted straight away as bait.

The assumption in the story was that it was going to melt anyway, if that is the case then using it for energy is of course a big win. But the obvious question is whether it was actually going to melt. I assume the deposits are old enough to have gone through an number of global temperature changes, so why would it all suddenly melt in the next 90 years?

I always take issue with statements like this. Given enough time and situations there is a probability of 1 of stones with that shape occurring and human brains (and cognitive bias) are fantastic at reading into things that aren't there. I grant you it may well just be shorthand by specialists in the field when talking in general public though.

Which is not to say these aren't the real deal.

With regards to the torture thing, we do tend to get these unusual rulings in the UK around election time when there are points to score. I wonder if the ruling would have gone the same way had it happened in June when everyone was still waiting to see which way the wind was blowing.

Jesus it's just a tall building dude. Now I'm crying too... I mean I've got something in my eye.

I don't even know why anyone would even read emails from any bank. They tell you that any important messages are sent to the in-account message system and at the very least, in the UK anyway, if anything is so wrong with your account that a bank deems is necessary to get in contact with you instead of the other way round then they will gladly sent you a letter that costs you £25.

It amazes me at the level at which people can't even stop and think.

Could there be anything more middle class than paying to use a service to download things you refuse to pay for?