Pretty sure the Zuckerbergonians sent us the seeds of our doom back in 2004.

Ever since then, humanity appears to have been on an ever accelerating descent into imbecilic click-trollishness.
 

Apple 1997: "Think different"

Apple 2017: "just not overlook rules when you're in the workplace or when you're in school or when you're at home"

I shall use this thread whenever people complain about the quality of my documentation.

I'll say: "Look, if even the omnipotent mega-being that single-handedly constructed the universe and life itself was incapable of writing a clear, readable, consistent and accurate user manual, how the fuck do you expect me to?"

*THIS* should be raised whenever some politician goes "Government must have access to Facebook/WhatsApp/etc. for security"!

In the UK, the current government has been hysterically running around shouting that Facebook is allowing all sorts of nasty illegal content to be disseminated. While that's certainly true, it bears remembering that one country's "illegal" is another country's "cherished freedom".

If the UK government has the right to access it's citizen's Facebook pages for "illegal" content, then you can guarantee Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Somalia, Russia and all sorts of other ghastly states will demand the same right. And then, through the law of unintended consequences, a lot of people (who the liberal west would consider friends), will either wind up behind bars or six feet under.

If we are willing to give our governments access to our data to "keep us safe", we have to accept that governments we may not like will use the same powers to do harm to their own citizens. This is the moral choice that's not raised by the screaming "think of the children" brigade.

The irony of course is that the DUP (who the Tories will tempt into bed with them) have a long history of religious lunacy that makes Tim Farron (Lib Dem leader) look like Richard Dawkins in comparison.

They have recent history of appointing young earth creationists, being vehemently anti-gay and climate change deniers (why worry when God'll sort it out).

Ho-hum :(

Also remember that aid is not some blackhole than money disappears into.

China will say to any number of nations: "Here, have some climate impact mitigation aid money, but you must buy Chinese equipment/services with it.".
The money soon flows back to Chinese companies (after being skimmed for kickbacks and some local handling). These Chinese companies use the money to ramp up production, gaining economies of scale through what in effect is government based support that neatly does an end run around WTO state aid rules. Now, not only has the USA been locked out of these initial deals, it's locked out of the long term contracts (services, maintenance, upgrades), has lost vital mindshare in these new markets and has potentially allowed Chinese companies to undercut US prices because they've had a big whack of state aid.

Sure, you've made some coal miners temporarily happy and sold a few more #MAGA hats, but you've potentially buggered up some juicy long term markets in which America could have competed.

And that's the best case scenario, because if the agreement parties decide that more urgent action is needed, a carbon tariff on non-signatories could really cause headaches for American companies.

Given the Trump administration seems to be getting a kick out of giving the rest of the world the middle finger, I can imagine the rest of the world won't have too many qualms about sticking it to the USA in return.

Some of the potentially most affected people are trying: http://www.rollingstone.com/po...

I'll only start worrying if he changes his name to "Robur the Conqueror".

Then unfortunately, you thought wrong.

http://ar5-syr.ipcc.ch/topic_o... does describe solar irradiance and even puts a figure on the estimated amount it provides to the total radiative forcing. So solar (and other natural forcings) do have something to do with climate change, its just that they are swamped by our activity.

Feel free to use hyperbole, but because this is a site for nerds, when you do, it just makes you sound like a bit of a pillock.

Simple solution to #4: Stop reading.

This solution was brought to you by channelling my inner Pat Robertson.

Closed-loop water usage; large scale solar; on-site recycling. This sounds like an R&D project for SpaceX. No doubt much of the information gained by building and running this will feed back into other Musk projects.

Of course, if they want to practice this in a place without an atmosphere, they could always build Gigafactory 2 in Boring, Oregon - or even it's twin town of Dull, Scotland ;-)

And in a vacuum.

Unfortunately (especially for those of us in the UK), Mr.Hunt has a number of views that appear to be at odds with reality. e.g. https://www.newscientist.com/a...

In the UK, if you speak to many doctors about the minister, prepare yourself for a very, *very* long stream of invective.

I'm not sure filtering out or flagging up bullshit would make much of a difference.

People don't return to Facebook/twitter/etc. for a cognitive fix, they return for an emotional fix. "Trump is a conman!", "Clinton is a crook!" get the emotions going. As any reader here knows, making decisions when emotionally compromised is a bad thing. When we're all riled up, we'll eat up anything that panders to our pre-conceptions. Look at slashdot - the readership here should be skewed to a more analytical type of person, but the comment threads about say systemd are just as ghastly as Mail online threads about foreign benefit recipients.

Today, there's just no break from the emotional stimulus.

Back in the day (presumably when America *was* great), we'd get all hot and bothered by what we'd read in the morning headlines. We'd bang the breakfast table, let of steam by having a good swear and compose a letter to the editor in our heads (and sometimes put it to paper). But then, we'd get on with the rest of the day, never looking back at the paper because the headline and story were un-changing. We'd have time to come down, maybe fire up some deeper thoughts, maybe take a more sceptical view of things and generally come to a rounder decision. Now though, the headline keeps changing, we keep returning to it because it's in our pocket, pinging us with updates. Now, we can send off a comment and receive an emotional buzz with each like, share or reply. There's no escape and no point when we can step back and take a calmer look at things.

Personally, I don't really see a way out of it. Our brains are evolved to think quickly and efficiently, but not necessarily accurately. The constant emotional buzz just trains us to behave in the same way so it becomes self reinforcing. We're just not going to biologically evolve our way out of making poor decisions. Until a generation of people grow up who can limit their self-stimulation (phnarr!) and take time out to look at things dispassionately, then we're stuck - and that sort of change is a societal one.
 

Awesome - I await POKEY THE PENGUIN in 3D!