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Journal Journal: Disappointed by Slashdot in 2020 1

Having participated here for more than a decade, I don't visit that regularly - but when I do, I tend to stay on for many days, remembering the intelligent conversations found scattered in the comment sections. Visiting today, my Karma still says "excellent". But for some reason, I have a handful of past submissions marked in big red letters as SPAM! When I saw that one of the articles was actually posted by Slashdot administrators several hours AFTER it was marked as SPAM!, I contacted Slas

Comment Co-Morbidity under-reporting (Score 1) 309

Start with the premise that "flattening the curve" means that a given number of deaths is spread over a longer period of time (6 months rather than 2 months, so as not to overwhelm health care). The first dozen deaths in my state of Vermont involved "Do Not Resuscitate" patients, average age 80, many with Alzheimers. "Co-morbidity" will eventually mean that causes of death are moved from category A (e.g. COPD, lung cancer, alzheimers) to category B (COVID19)

Submission + - Coronavirus: Why the world will look to India for a vaccine (BBC) (bbc.com)

retroworks writes: USA and India have run an internationally recognised joint vaccine development programme for more than three decades. They have worked on stopping dengue, enteric diseases, influenza and TB in their tracks. Trials of a dengue vaccine are planned in the near future.

"India is among the largest manufacturer of generic drugs and vaccines in the world. It is home to half a dozen major vaccine makers and a host of smaller ones, making doses against polio, meningitis, pneumonia, rotavirus, BCG, measles, mumps and rubella, among other diseases.

"Now half a dozen Indian firms are developing vaccines against the virus that causes Covid-19."

Comment Re:Keep them for the next pandemic... (Score 2) 113

Some African countries only have 3 ventilators for the whole country. So the "no longer needed" in the headline not only fails to consider the value of having them in stock next time (per parent thread), but also isn't considering the same world-scale playing field as the coronavirus is.

Article in The Atlantic ... https://www.theatlantic.com/id...

Comment I watched it (Score 5, Interesting) 230

The subject matter is my career. There is 80% truth told here, but the Paretto Principle dictates the 20% lies will do more damage.

The mining cost is gigantic, and it's good to flag it. But the reuse, repair, and secondary market is ignored. He tries to dodge the OEM class, but winds up cricketting the "no repair no reuse" mantra

Comment Re:The real conspiracy (Score 1) 255

@Voyager529 makes several valid points, however the examples of trust problems pre-internet are not as material because the press (Widely circulated newspaper readership plus CBS Walter Cronkite, McNeil-Lehrer, etc) was economically sound. My dad was a Journalism professor (and grandson of a Missouri publisher) and he always explained that there were 3 sources of newspaper revenue. 1) Subscriptions, 2) Advertising, and 3) Classified Ads. And for most papers, #3 was the most important.

It was in the late 1990s that the newspapers had an opportunity to essentially buy out ebay and keep the classifieds income. They failed to evolve, lost 1/3 of revenue extremely quickly. That led to cutbacks and, as Voyager529 explains, selling resentment opinion because it's less expensive to research than long form journalism, and sells just as many ads.

Comment Like LED and Energy Saving Lamps (Score 4, Insightful) 93

China mass produced them, putting USA energy efficient bulb manufacturers out of business, and everyone complained for 10 years about it. In the meantime the cost of energy efficient bulbs (and LEDs) dropped massively due to the scale of production, and they were adopted by emerging cities, and it was basically much better than if Americans had produced them in smaller numbers at higher costs. That is what the article says is happening to the cost of new solar panels.

WSJ is one of the best researched journalism sources on the planet (though this article swings a bit between euphoria and impossibility of energy storage). But the paper's "comment trolls" are rabid, anything which is pro-solar gets savaged.

Comment Best Mineral Mining Usually Worse than Recycling (Score 1) 108

Long known, but seldom reported. The worst recycling programs ever photographed are better environmentally than the best metal ore mining. Unfortunately, because recycling takes place in cities (urban ore) reporters for the Guardian will run 10 times more anti-recycling stories (because it's easier to fly into a city like Accra, book at a hotel, and take a cab to the city junkyard) than mining stories - which are usually in very remote places (in part because the pollution is too much to operate a cobalt mine near a city).

Comment Liability Collision in Secondhand Markets (Score 2) 95

For some reason, USA and EU law have a fetish over secondhand markets. You can legally procure something made from baby seal teeth (or some other unethical environmental source) unless a specific law is passed stopping you from procuring THAT thing. But anything you sell could come back to bite you. This drives a lot of secondhand sales to places like Africa (where my recycling company operates). We see items that look brand new, pulled from shelves at Walmart or Auchon because of too many complaints / returns, which are sent back to the (often Chinese) manufacturer, who then sends the container to Africa. It has given "new" devices a very bad reputation in Africa, which drives purchases of secondhand "solid state" electronics. Which Europe bans Africans from purchasing, and sentences Africans who buy the use devices for reuse or repair to prison. See UK sentencing of Joseph "Hurricane" Benson in 2014. So more working secondhand goes to scrap as well. See Chapter 3 in Reassembling Rubbish (Dr. Josh Lepawsky) https://mitpress.mit.edu/books...

Comment EV Battery Reuse and Redeployment Ignored (Score 1) 86

The environmental LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) does indeed rank original mining and extraction as the highest cost, and the original paper helped us keep this in mind.

The update does re-incorporate the recycling opportunities for the older batteries. As a previous post mentioned, automobiles now have approximately 85% capture and recycling rate of old lead acid batteries, which greatly reduces the mining and extraction impacts.

What is still missing, I believe, is the reuse market for EV batteries which are pulled because they become too inefficient for a car (which always wants 150km per charge). My company is repurposing 50% efficiency batteries to support solar panel markets in West Africa.

Before the "primitive recycling profiles" erupt, Africa probably has far higher lead acid battery recovery and recycling rates than anywhere else. In Ghana, they are refined and then exported out to the port of Tema, where raw lead ore is also shipped to refineries in India and China. EV batteries will follow the same cycle, we can hope. A slightly dated Lifecycycle Analysis Mining Factsheet (2003) makes the case. https://retroworks.blogspot.co...

Comment Require Gun Insurance, Like Auto Insurance (Score 2) 333

The insurance industry does this very thing. When you require automobile owners to hold liability insurance, the driver winds up paying a lot to be a high risk (multiple DUI, multiple accident). If all gun owners are required to purchase similar liability insurance, the insurers will track 8Chan and high risk individuals rates wil go up. Then the high risk individuals will try not insuring their guns. That creates a pre-crime, someone could be arrested for owning an uninsured gun the same as a drunk who doesn't insure his car can be pulled over. Not perfect, but it would be self funding, somewhat self regulating, and probably work better than anything else I've seen proposed.

Submission + - Elephants In the Shrinking Room: Extinction Policy Under Scrutiny (nytimes.com)

retroworks writes: In today's article "Zoos Call it a Rescue, but are Elephants Really Better Off?" NYT reporter Charles Siebert does much to dispell the idea that zoos are a solution to extinction. In the first half of the article, the cruelty of zoos is in focus. "Neuroimaging has shown that elephants possess in their cerebral cortex the same elements of neural wiring we long thought exclusive to us, including spindle and pyramidal neurons, associated with higher cognitive functions like self-recognition, social awareness and language. "

The second half of the article questions whether any current (expensive) efforts to "save" the elephants offers anything more than window dressing. Privatization advocate Ted Reilly is quoted that, "The greatest threat to wildlife in Africa today is the uncontrolled spread of human sprawl. As far as it sprawls, nature dies. And that’s the reality on the ground. It’s not the nice idea that people cook up and suggest, but that’s the reality. And in my view, an equally important threat, serious threat, is dependence on donor money. If you become dependent on donor money, you will inevitably become dictated to in terms of your policies. And your management integrity will be interfered with. And it’s not possible to be totally free of corruptive influences if you’re not financially independent.”

Does this type of reporting improve the situation, or cause despondence and abandonment of the extinction cause?

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