This is the ongoing story of Microsoft since it started.
I questioned the methodology as soon as I learned that Seattle was even in the running.
Fine people here. But, smartest? mmmffff
How many times did people vote YES on a monorail? How many times did their votes get ignored?
The city doesn't care what people think. As with everything, the public argues about the options for 10 years. Then, after noone cares any more, it does whatever (someone we never see) wanted anyway.
I was in the tunnel, not the steam pipes running through the tunnel.
Microsoft said its update wouldn't install on Linux devices. It did anyway.
![“Something has gone seriously wrong,” dual-boot systems warn after Microsoft update](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/dd92fbf9-df6a-41b9-8f6a-317376c68a3d.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Already got you? this article tells you how you can fix it.
I have a browser extension for that. When I open a page and a 'subscribe' popup hides the text, I click on that button, and it shows me the URL it's going to block, and I click OK. The next time I get tricked into going to that page, it tells me it's blocked.
Pretty sure there are no 'monopolies are legal' clause in the Constitution. Whereas Congress has created several anti-monopoly Acts.
Why heck, darn it, they've even offered to sell a dozen or two of their lower-performing stores if that would clinch the deal.
The steam tunnel system under that big midwestern university. Once in, it led underneath most every building on the campus. There are many other mysteries hidden in the underground -everywhere-.
Wow. I can't believe it took me so long to learn about that. And no tour needed. Interesting, thanks!
An acoustic experiment reveals that spooky forest sounds may come from above.
![How the Night Sky Speaks to Us](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b14795d3-6489-4d07-b33c-014a02f3734a.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
An acoustic experiment reveals that spooky forest sounds may come from above.
That's a lot cheaper than the laughable $1 + 45 cents per minute Lime is charging for their bikes where I live... $28 for the first hour. HA HA
That is one of the drawbacks of not having to carry a dictionary around ... ever again!
It wasn't that long ago that the 'It Gets Better' movement showed up. (Dan Savage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IcVyvg2Qlo )
It's still out there! (More info here, e.g.: https://itgetsbetter.org/
Top left corner: Get Help )
Being also old, I decided only to be on the death lists of people that didn't just want something from me. So, it may go unnoticed.
It wasn't just scientists who were worried, but Congress, the White House, and even Sports Illustrated, newly unearthed documents show.
![The lost history of what Americans knew about climate change in the 1960s](https://slrpnk.net/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgrist.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F08%2F0805_CleanAir.jpg%3Fquality%3D75%26strip%3Dall&format=webp&thumbnail=256)
"Oreskes knew that scientists had been working to understand how carbon dioxide affected the global climate since the late 19th century. So she set about writing what she thought would be a short paper to correct the record.... Her paper ballooned into an 124-page analysis, soon to be published in the journal Ecology Law Quarterly."
[Edit: the 1958 Frank Capra animation mentioned in the article ... 'Unchained Goddess' is on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqClSPWVnNE ]
Legislators this year already are trying to tackle the rising costs of electricity.
Considering CA's widespread use of the now-cheapest sources of electricity, it's more than ironic that costs to consumers are rising. Somebody needs to take a -very close- look at that.
Another question for CA: are data centers required to be carbon-neutral or else ? Will they thriving on the savings created by people driving EVs? Will their demands result in higher prices for everyone?
Some Washington utility officials might face a daunting choice: violate a state green energy law limiting fossil fuel use or risk rolling blackouts.
![Data centers threaten WA climate efforts by guzzling power](https://slrpnk.net/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.seattletimes.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F07%2F07182024_tzr_tzr_150055.jpg%3Fd%3D1200x630&format=webp&thumbnail=256)
For very long-time, high-probability safety, the surface of the Earth is constantly being re-shaped. Whole mountains can disappear in a few million years. Floods, earthquakes, ice, weather alone.
Because you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time ... and they've been at it for a very long time.
Svalbard's a 'seed vault' only, there must be something for extinct animal species. Another question I thought of: if stored on the moon, who among the finders will know enough to even know that they're looking at? let alone to make purposeful use of it?
The vault would rely on its remoteness from human-made disasters and the Moon's naturally low temperatures to cryogenically preserve animal skin samples.
![Scientists Propose Lunar 'Noah's Ark' to Preserve DNA of Endangered Species](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/99cda7d2-5bb6-4c88-9ec5-dff38b3b523d.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
An idea worth pursuing I guess. My first question: in case this gets forgotten about in the distant future, how could it be marked so there's a good chance of being found?
(Link to the AIBS journal article which inspired the question: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biae058/7715645?login=false )
Looks like a lousy bet.
"Hydrogen can be produced by several means. Most hydrogen produced today is gray hydrogen, made from natural gas through steam methane reforming (SMR). This process accounted for 1.8% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2021. Low-carbon hydrogen, which is made using SMR with carbon capture and storage (blue hydrogen), or through electrolysis of water using renewable power (green hydrogen), accounted for less than 1% of production. "Virtually all of the 100 million tonnes[5] of hydrogen produced each year is used in oil refining (43% in 2021) and industry (57%)"
... Wikiipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy
Once again, the impact of subsidized industries is accidentally underestimated.
"We made a promise we had no idea how we were going to keep. But it seemed like good PR at the time. And people kept flying in our planes."
![](https://slrpnk.net/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FuhbDfi7Ee7k%2Fmaxresdefault.jpg&format=webp&thumbnail=512)
YouTube Video
Click to view this content.
This Incredible Tool (preventing insolation) That Our Ancestors Used To Keep Cool In The Summer.
Yeah, they cost money. So does installing air-conditioning. But they use no energy ( that'd would be bad for fossil energy-producers).
Go ahead and send me ads, and I'll just block your site ... never go there except when someone tries to trick me into it, and then my SITE-BLOCKER will refuse for me. Our now and future business IS OVER.
"But why don't you just trust us?" Because I've been online for 30 years and it's been downhill ever since.
Joby Aviation believes its VTOL could zoom travelers from Nashville to New Orleans or Boston to Baltimore.
![A hydrogen-powered air taxi flew 523 miles emitting only water vapor](https://slrpnk.net/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.popsci.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2024%2F07%2FJoby_Hydrogen-Demonstrator-lead2.jpg&format=webp&thumbnail=256)
"Joby took a pre-production prototype of one of its battery-electric aircraft and outfitted it with a liquid hydrogen fuel tank and fuel system. The modified, hydrogen-powered VTOL was able to complete a 523 mile flight above Marina, California..."
Cheap, low-energy evaporative cooling devices are keeping water, food, people, and even whole buildings cool across India.
![This Ancient Technology Is Helping Millions Stay Cool](https://slrpnk.net/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.wired.com%2Fphotos%2F6672c421e0704c563b4e7b77%2F191%3A100%2Fw_1280%2Cc_limit%2FGettyImages-80973767.jpg&format=webp&thumbnail=256)
It ain't how much you've got, it's how you use it.
A Fortune investigation has found that U.S. state and federal officials do not currently monitor, or have any process for checking, exactly what data Chinese self-driving cars are collecting and what happens to the data after it is collected.
![Chinese self-driving cars have quietly traveled 1.8 million miles on U.S. roads, collecting detailed data with cameras and lasers](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/02b754cf-2fad-490d-a52e-31c207cc40c5.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
The Supreme Court doesn’t want you to have clean water, safe air, or the guarantee of uncontaminated foods.
![The Supreme Court Just Deregulated America](https://slrpnk.net/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcompote.slate.com%2Fimages%2F6092aacb-0d7d-4e3d-9588-b48455a86e27.jpeg%3Fcrop%3D1560%252C1040%252Cx0%252Cy0%26width%3D1560&format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Between now and 2050, climate change–driven sea level rise will expose more than 1,600 critical buildings and services to disruptive flooding at least twice per year.
![Looming Deadlines for Coastal Resilience](https://slrpnk.net/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ucsusa.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fstyles%2Flarge%2Fpublic%2F2024-06%2FScituateHarbor-SLR-Coastal-Deadlines-Thumb.jpg%3Fitok%3DpkhY8jX8&format=webp&thumbnail=256)
While the report is focussed mainly on the U.S., its detailed perspectives, timelines and responses apply widely.
Chose a title that reflects what the article actually discusses!
They hold the keys to new physics. If only we could understand them.
![Neutrinos: The inscrutable “ghost particles” driving scientists crazy](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7a17501d-af37-4997-87e7-71396a4c158d.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
We haven’t pinned down the masses of any individual neutrino, and we don’t even know which ones are heavier than the others. When it comes to our ability to collect raw data, neutrinos present a triple threat: they’re incredibly lightweight (even the electron weighs over 5 million times more than all the neutrinos combined), they shift their identity as they travel (and their rate of flavor oscillation changes as they travel through different substances, so there’s no one-size-fits-all solution), and they barely interact with anything in the first place...
Research is uncovering the key role that fungi play in getting soils to absorb carbon.
![The world’s largest fungus collection may unlock the mysteries of carbon capture](https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/d89c005e-a8cd-4378-926e-cbd07f368ee6.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
Soil is a huge reservoir of carbon. There are around 1.5 trillion tons of organic carbon stored in soils across the world—about twice the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Scientists used to think that most of this carbon entered the soil when dead leaves and plant matter decomposed, but it’s now becoming clear that plant roots and fungi networks are a critical part of this process
Too expensive, slow, and risky for investors, and they're taking focus off renewables, say IEEFA experts
![Energy researchers say SMR promises don't match reality](https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/fb4f0974-e280-4880-9727-6aeb0f08e4e6.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
With a few SMR projects built and operational at this point, and more plants under development, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) concludes in a report that SMRs are "still too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning away from fossil fuels."
During a visit to Texas, Bill met with some of the remarkable innovators building America’s clean energy future and fighting climate change.
![I’m in Texas to see the future](https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/a2228027-e761-4c34-a028-a61dd9b60585.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
"If you want to see what the cutting edge of next-gen clean energy innovation looks like, it’d be hard to find a place better than Texas. Amazing companies are breaking ground not just here in Southeast Texas but across the state. Each one represents a huge boon for the local economy," - Bill Gates
Star Trek legend Walter Koenig looks back on the good, the bad, and the hilarious after 57 years of the franchise.
![Walter Koenig on the Lean Years After Star Trek: TOS – ‘The Phone Didn't Ring’ - IGN](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7ad5f68d-5dae-4791-aa7d-6d9ff941aa94.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
“Everybody thinks if you're an actor, and certainly if you're an actor and on a television series, you must be doing very well,” Koenig said. “Well, I was barely making more than minimum the first season. The second season I was on the show … I had a contract. I was paid a week's wage whether I worked a day or a week. So I made a little bit more. Whereas I made $10,000 for the whole year in 1967, I made $11,000 in 1968. Well, that'll only go so far.”
PFAS chemicals, which contaminate water forever, can be broken down after all.
![Scientists find a simple way to destroy 'forever chemicals' — by beheading them](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/fb069e85-c420-4dd1-b73e-1c188be68ff0.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=256)
the chemicals may interfere with the body's hormones, raise cholesterol levels, affect fertility and increase the risk of certain cancers, according to the EPA."