AlanS

I don't think there is a problem with the Internet itself, so much as the despots and regimes of this world that hate freedom, are learning how to manipulate the Internet for their benefit. We have been slow to respond. The source of the blame does not lie with silicon valley, it lies with the governments of Russia and China primarily, and despots that are learning from them like Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea (of course), Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. If their is a company within Silicon Valley that deserves direct blame, it is McAfee which runs the filtering systems for the governments of Iran, and Saudi Arabia through its, Secure Computing Corporation which it acquired in 2008. Beyond that, I'm very angry at Apple for caving in to China when is stopped supplying VPN software to phones running in China about a year ago. Right now, Russia and Iran are trying to cripple the use of Telegram within their countries by blocking IP address ranges. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-22/putin-s-turf-war-with-telegram-escalates-as-russia-blocks-ips

Actually it's not hard to argue that China is much freer and open now than is was then. So I would say that the premise has been proven correct. Although I do think we would both agree that there is a trend in China to resist further freedoms. So if you want to debate whether or not China has become more open since the days of Nixon and Kissinger you will probably find that you are the one with the incorrect theory. China did not gain access to the WTO (over the objection of many human-rights and labor groups) until the 1990s, so I think the fair comparison is between the early 1990s and now. Not the 1970s, since China didn't have much trade at all during the 80s. Does anyone remember the Goddess of Liberty (自由女神; zìyóu nǚshén), in Tiananmen Square? It is very hard to make the case that China today is closer to being a democracy now than it was then. See attached photo to refresh you memories. Immediately before and after Tiananmen Square in 1989, the Communist party of China had a dilemma with it's own citizen demanding more freedom. The reason they wanted to join the WTO is they bet that if they gave them economic freedom, but continued to deny them human rights or political freedom they could placate their populous and maintain control. The reasoning then President Clinton used (over the objections of human right and labor groups) was to let them into the WTO is once the population of China gained economic freedom, they would demand more freedom of information and free speech and thought etc. For a while things were heading (very slowly) in that direction. But then China built the Great Firewall, and erased within it walls all history of Tiananmen Square. Over the past 10 years it has fine tuned how it controls information and now it is reaching the point that the Internet within China rather than allowing for the free flow of information, is becoming the instrument by which George O'Wells 1984 is slowly coming to life. All Chinese citizen are now tracked in a database, and are rated (i.e given an social credit score) based on loyalty to the government. And this score determine if you can travel, or even leave the country and if you get harassed by the authorities or not. In my mind we lost the bet, regarding more trade with China bring more freedom to it's citizens. The Goddess of Liberty will never stand in Tiananmen Square. A small replica of this statue now stands only in a forgotten corner of Portsmouth Square in San Francisco. The experiment is over. It is time to shut it down.

Revenge? Do you have trouble reading? Do me a favor and at least debate people in an honest way. My reasons are clear in that post. They were just a few lines down. Do I need to repost it for you? The original premiss for trading with China was to encourage it to be more free. That premiss has turned out to be false further more. If they help denuclearize North Korea I could change my mind. That is the bargain I would make. No nukes in N. Korea = trade with us. Nukes in North Korea = no trading with us. Ten years ago ... it was unclear which way China was going, there were signs that things would improve, but from my observation the progress has regressed. Xi is now dictator for life, China is creating a "social credit" system to monitor and mold the behavior of all of it's citizen. Religious freedom, a measure of freedom in general is going in the wrong direction. I'll provide this news article as just one example. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/world/asia/china-bans-bible-sales.html Look at how they are slowly strangling democracy in Hong Kong. They have jailed book store owners for selling books critical of the government. People that speak out in support of democracy in Hong Kong are harassed by thugs from the government in Beijing. The once free press in HK is now starting to self censor. Do you support this? From my perspective, the experiment is over. I support shutting it down. We should build our own iPhones.

I'm all for this trade war. It was never free and fair to begin with. The original premiss for trading with China was to encourage it to be more free. That premiss has turned out to be false and they are taking advantage of us in some many ways. I'm skeptical that North Korea could have built nuclear weapons and the rockets to deliver them to our shores without some tacit help from elements within China's govt. It is time to shut down trade with China. If they help denuclearize North Korea I could change my mind. That is the bargain I would make. No nukes in N. Korea = trade with us. Nukes in North Korea = no trading with us.

Parties increase (cause) the tribalism of our politics. Group-think takes over and instead of considering issues on their merits. People vote the party-line to prove loyalty to their party (tribal) affiliation. In that environment, it is impossible to acknowledge that "the other side", might have some legitimate concerns than should be considered.

Lets just get rid of all political parties; everyone justs runs as the person that they are & what they stand for. Jerry Baumchen Agree on all counts. In addition I think we need to drastically improve our Presidential primary system. Ranked voting so, similarly centrist candidates don't dilute the voting leaving an extreme candidate with 20% of primary votes the winner.

I really despise both CNN and Fox, and much of the media. I feel these networks have devolved into nothing more than feeding the confirmation bias of the target audience they are after. If you are CNN that target audience leans left and Fox it leans right. It is perfectly symmetrical.

I don't watch many movies, but I'm looking forward to this one. Got tickets for the first showing of the movie in my area.

Here is an article about China's social credit scheme. Chinese Citizens With Bad 'Social Credit' to Be Blocked From Taking Planes and Trains https://gizmodo.com/chinese-citizens-with-bad-social-credit-to-be-blocked-f-1823845648

Well even if the rules of the after life said they could go to heaven, I think they should refuse to go just on principle. What good are you if you don't stand up for your principles. I personally wouldn't mind if Stephen Hawkins is allowed in, but if Richard Dawkins, or Christopher Hitchens show up I'm starting a petition to them kicked out. Mostly though, where ever Stephen Hawkins is I hope he can ditch that wheel chair and go for a walk and stretch for a bit.

Damn, and he just did the latest Hitchhikers Guide to the Gallery Well in early March he was saying he know what happened before the Big Bang. https://mashable.com/2018/03/05/stephen-hawking-video-before-big-bang/#0ZuEb9IP3aqP

Well, given our own behavior, especially in the Middle East and South and Central America, that would be more than 'just a little bit' hypocritical. And I'm not just talking in the "distant past", I'm talking in the past 50 or 60 years. Or less. I'm in 100% agreement on that statement. In the past and in the present. By not pay up front for supporting our principles, and not supporting freedom we all pay a cost later. It takes decades, but eventually we pay. Our buying oil for Saudi Arabia paid for the very schools in places like Pakistan to teach and spread radical islam, displacing more moderate islamic people and fueling the terrorism we are fighting now. That is the cost we are paying now for the sin of supporting a radical country like Saudi Arabia. Right now, we are turning our back on the Kurds and other minorities in the ME that want democracy, but are currently under the thumb of more tribal societies. Someday we will pay a price for that. And for China, we have made a foolish bet, that trading with them will bring more freedom to that region. Instead the rulers in Beijing, are slowly tightening noose around democratic institutions in Hong Kong. And the Chinese leadership with the "Great (Internet) Wall of China", citizen databases and soon facial recognition software for crowds, is create the tools for autocrats to control their own populations. Are they setting the template for autocratic leaders to rule? In the next two decades will they start to export this technology to other autocratic rulers like in Iran and Russia? In a worse case scenario over the next two decades they could start exporting that technology to other autocratic rulers, solidifying the control of autocrats in the world. Democracy and freedom are in slow retreat right now. I don't see what is going to reverse that trend. Feel free to disagree with me.

I quite frankly think we should tie our tariffs to a countries "freedom house index" or at least I countries willingness to make improvements on giving it's citizens more freedom. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2018 China (with it's elimination of term limits for President Xi, and it's walling off it's citizens from the internet) has been regressing, for that past decade. Our tariffs with China need to reflect that reality.

Over simplification. The generators on a power grid (for the most part) are mechanical and the AC frequency (for the most part) comes from the speed of the rotors (RPM) in the generator. If everything is perfectly balances the power-in == power out. The frequency is spot on what it should be. 60 Hz US, 50 Hz Europe. When the load increases above power-in, then the speed these generators rotate can drop since they are encountering more resistance than they can handle. That is when someone (i.e. a plant operator) needs to step in and and fire up an other generator to balance the load, and get everything back in balance. Maybe someone else can explain it better.

While I do not know, I would think that the bridge project would have been a state level project. As to 'odder still,' not really. They quite often simply do not have the budget to send people to where the materials are being fabricated; the job that I did for 30 yrs. Also, any inspection upon arrival quite possibly would have been merely a cursory inspection. They probably found the problems during the construction phase. Jerry Baumchen This is article talks give some details about how CalTrains failed to do the proper inspections, and how the on site inspectors were ignored by both the Chinese company/workers and CalTrain's management that "didn't what to hear, what they didn't want to hear", and re-assigned any inspectors that told the truth when they found the work was not up to proper standards. http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/bay-bridge/article2589402.html

Of course, what kind of stupid statement is that? Yes! Specifically in Shanghai, and large parts were floated across the Pacific ocean. This According to the New York Times. See the headline. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.html I'll even quote the first paragraph for you.

One example. The new Bay Bridge is made of steel from China and they skipped some important QA step which forced CalTrans to do some expensive retrofits. In the end CalTrans didn't save any money and we exported those jobs needlessly to China. I didn't vote for Trump, but as long has he focuses tariffs on the unfair trade practices of China, I'm for it.

I'm all for free trade with countries that treat their citizens fairly and have reciprocal trading rules with us. I want free trade with Europe, Canada, Mexico, Central America, most of South America, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Kenya, Nigeria, etc... China on the other hand is an exception to that rule. They don't give their citizens the right of free speech or any choice in who rules them. They don't give us the same access to their markets as we give them. Their use their citizens as cheap labor and don't follow the same environmental protection rules to undercut U.S manufactures. The countries regularly steals intellectual property from our companies. China looked the other way as North Korea shipped the chemicals and high-tech machinery needed to the build nuclear bombs and rockets that now can reach our shores. China currently doesn't follow the same rules. So I'm all for putting tariffs on products from China until they they treat our companies the same as we treat theirs, and they give their citizens more freedoms. China exported $506 billion to the U.S. while accepting only $130 billion in imports. That isn't free and fair trade. So tariffs on imports from China? I'm all for it.

Russian Troll factory hacked, documents downloaded and about to be released. https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-secret-documents-from-russias-election-trolls-leak

From what else I've been told, this is actually a viable number. Meaning, we have to keep power plants online and running continually, because it burns more fuel and costs more to fire them up "when needed," for example at night, or during storms when the panels don't collect nearly enough sunlight (again, that's as I understand the process -- I know I'm over simplifying it). I was also thinking of it like this: if I could have solar panels that ONLY provided power to my A/C unit (the A/C unit would pull from there first and get any other needed power from the grid), then my solar panels would be off-setting the cost to power my A/C when the unit would need to draw the most power anyway. And if I had any other panels, they could be helping the "grid" during the time of day most of the energy is being used (I might consider powering an electric car that way as well, assuming the technology comes along to store the energy at least for a day so it could be diverted into my car. However, we would (should) never think we could replace all of our power needs by renewables anyway. We'll always need a back-up, so we should plan for the most cost-effective/fuel efficient course of action (like keeping the generators always running). But a cut of fossil fuels used for the power grid by nearly half? Then add power generated by windmills and hydroelectric plants (damns), and increase efficiency of appliances -- yeah, I think we'd be doing a good thing for the planet to reduce the fossil fuel requirements by such a significant amount. Yep. I agree with most of this. To the extent possible all homes should have roof solar, and a battery to store the excess. When electric cars become affordable, they can be the 2nd car for the commute to work. Base power (which runs all the time, and won't be less than 50% for the for seeable future), is both coal and nuclear. We should close all the coal plants and replace them with nuclear power. Then update our power grid, so power can be transmitted over long distances. With this we can place large nuclear power in remote locations to deal with the base load, and move power created in windy places like North Dakota to the coastal cities. Then locally have smaller natural gas plants to handle the local fluctuations in power demand, that exceed the base power generation and the local variable power generated from solar. We could do this now if we had the will.

Putin created these efforts when saw the "color revolutions" rolling though Eastern Europe and the old soviet republics and how they were using the internet effectively to organize. Rather than seeing it as an opportunity to integrate Russia into the western order - which would have been good for all Russians both economically and politically - Putin saw it as a threat to his own personal rule. Putin's goal became to neutralize the internet. He does this by amplifying political debates online to make them more polarizing and caustic in nature so that normal people in these societies would not want to participate and are confused by the noise. To the extent that we ourselves - giving in to our emotional sides more than our logical sides - and making these debates hyper-partisan and more extreme we are helping him.

Putin's toll factory is at this address in St. Petersburg. 55 Savushkina Street https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ulitsa+Savushkina,+55,+Sankt-Peterburg,+Russia,+197183/@59.984051,30.272087,3a,75y,343.67h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1skwfAlinuvZZKaacFOTOEaA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x469636a703f1053d:0xa49ad8ba66d0d988!8m2!3d59.984332!4d30.271929 According to the interview about 300 to 400 workers working around the clock in two, 12 hour shifts. Other sources say 1,000 working if you include off-site workers. Interview with former troll. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/17/a-former-russian-troll-speaks-it-was-like-being-in-orwells-world/?utm_term=.c438e5c3dc9b A blogger's quota is ten posts per shift, each post at least 750 characters. A commenter's norm is 126 comments and two posts per account. Each blogger is in charge of three accounts Other's assigned to commenting on news stories had ... 50 comments under news articles per day. Each blogger has to manage six accounts on Facebook, post at least three posts every day, and participate twice in the group discussions. Other employees have to manage 10 accounts on Twitter, publishing 50 tweets every day.

An unfortunate side-effect of the press coverage of the Mueller investigation is, it only scratches the surface how how Russian agents have been/are trying to interfere with (not just American) but all western democracies. The media didn't seem to follow it, but Russia was active during the presidential primaries acting against candidates like Mario Rubio. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/political-pulse/os-rubio-russian-target-trolls-20170330-story.html Well before this election, his trolling organization was going after Sen. McCain who is another opponent of Putin. Based on the coverage and comments from people here (some of whom should know better) you would think Russian interference had just one purpose which is to get Trump elected. Even if Russia did prefer one candidate, their aim is much broader, which is to use freedom of speech and the internet to polarize the societies in western democracies with the goal undermining them. Russian twitter bots, and the troll farm located in St. Petersburg have taken both side of many controversial issues. They amplified the "CalExit" tweet and online presence, created many inflammatory tweets/posts on both sides of the "black lives matter" movement, and did the same for the "NLF anthem" controversy. On any issues where Putin can create division wether political, racial, class-warfare, he has directed his trolling organizations to do it. Any thing that will create divisions within western societies he is chipping away at. Creating this instability is Putin's primary goal, because it legitimize his authoritarian rule of Russia. This "shit storm" is nothing compared to what could have happened and if we don't get prepared can still happen in a future election. The one card Putin could have played but DIDN'T in the last election was corrupt the election results making the election out-come uncertain. Russia successfully hacked in the election databases of 30 states. They download voter registrations for many of places and could have if the chose modified the databases. Russia right now has the full voter registration information for 10s of millions of US voters. We need to be prepared for that attempt in the future, but my worry here is the two parties are so intent on sticking it to each other that we won't fix the flaws in our election processes and secure those databases.

A Solar Panel on Every Roof, Here Are the Numbers. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/a-solar-panel-on-every-roof-in-the-us-here-are-the-numbers/ This is worth reading. Hear is a summary of the major points. A description of the methodology. (Science in action... summary below) Summary of conclusions. Some details. Results would vary for different parts of the country.

I think they've had 19 landing successes in a row for the Falcon 9 rocket before the center stage missed the barge. Saw an interesting site explaining the difference between the center booster and the outer boosters. Will link it here if I find it later.