A new online product called the Edison Lost Generator Plans has been gaining a lot of attention lately, with advertisements claiming it can help people build their own power generators to reduce or eliminate their electricity bills. However, many people are questioning the legitimacy of these plans and wondering if it is actually a scam designed to take advantage of consumers. //
The advertisements for the Edison Lost Generator Plans appear online through social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. They often begin with a video or image of an elderly man claiming to have built his own generator which allows him to stop paying electricity bills.
Other actors appear and make exaggerated claims that the plans will allow consumers to build generators that can produce free, unlimited energy. The ads claim the instructions are being sold for a one-time low payment of $59 or less. //
Once purchased, customers gain access to a set of online articles that barely pass as generator plans. They consist of vague, generic information and lack the specific steps, diagrams, and part lists that would actually be needed to construct a working generator.
Often, the instructions simply mention general components like “battery system” or “charge controller” without any directions on which parts and brands to purchase. There are no schematics, wiring diagrams, or adequate explanations for how to convert energy sources like solar, wind, or kinetic energy into electricity.
this is a final moment of shame for what is now inarguably the worst presidency in modern history. He has deeply abused his power to protect people from the repercussions of the law while repeatedly claiming to be "defending democracy." Does handing out pardons like candy for unspecified crimes while claiming the recipients didn't do anything wrong sound like defending democracy to you? This is the move of a third-world dictator, not a President of the United States. //
polyjunkie
an hour ago
Posted elsewhere but germane here:
What FJB has just set precedent for is utterly corrupt and may bring down our Republic.
Consider this: Now a President’s minions can do anything he wants them to do and be pardoned for it. For example, a future president could order the assassination of political rivals, then pardon the assassin. If there are objections by Congress or the Courts, a few more assassinations and pardons will solve that problem. FJB has just set the stage for a future president to end his political opposition because he is effectively untouchable. Now executive branch members are effectively above the law. They can lie to Congress, the Courts, the public, and there are no consequences.
FJB, you despicable a$$hole. //
jester6 polyjunkie
an hour ago edited
This is several orders of magnitude worse than the presidential immunity ruling in Trump v. US that the left freaked out about.
And it's not just that Biden did it, it's that a significant part of the country supports it. Politics is the art of the possible. The scenario you describe above is not only possible, it is more or less likely at this point. //
Ed in North Texas anon-shh5
an hour ago
Not at all a precedent. Been done before, will be done again. Pardoning people who have not been criminally charged goes back to George Washington and on to Ford's Nixon Pardon (Nixon had not been criminally charged, not even with an Article of Impeachment introduced or passing the House).
Quite honestly, I don't see the case for not grinding ByteDance's commie face in the gravel. It has already said divestiture is off the table. If it would let TikTok, which is worth billions of dollars, die rather than sell it, that tells you the real purpose was never to make money. It is equally difficult to see how a company that Trump castigated this way in 2020:
"TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage."
becomes better without changing the underlying problem;
In the ever-evolving landscape of energy logistics, Russia is exploring an unconventional approach that could redefine the transportation of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Imagine this: massive nuclear-powered submarines quietly carrying LNG beneath the icy waters of the Arctic, bypassing traditional shipping routes and geopolitical hurdles. This ambitious idea, proposed by Russian experts, might seem like something out of a science fiction novel, but it reflects a bold strategy to navigate a challenging economic and political environment. //
The proposed submarine model would weigh a staggering 180,000 tons and boast a draft of under 14 meters, making it capable of navigating areas that conventional LNG carriers cannot. The ability to traverse beneath the Arctic’s frozen expanse presents a tantalizing opportunity to shorten shipping times and bypass traditional chokepoints. //
The design isn’t just impressive—it’s revolutionary. Equipped with three Rhythm-200 nuclear reactors, the submarine would rely on 30 MW electric propellers, allowing it to reach speeds of 17 knots (about 31.5 km/h). At 360 meters long and 70 meters wide, the vessel’s size rivals that of the world’s largest oil tankers. More importantly, its operational capabilities would cut transit times between Arctic gas fields and Asian markets from 20 days to just 12.
This innovation isn’t solely about speed. These nuclear-powered giants could safely operate year-round, including during the harsh Arctic winter months when sea ice renders many traditional shipping lanes impassable. //
Russia’s largest LNG producer, Novatek, recently announced plans to acquire 16 ice-class LNG carriers. Yet sanctions and technological barriers have stymied progress, highlighting the difficulties of expanding Arctic shipping routes. By turning to nuclear-powered submarines, Russia hopes to sidestep these roadblocks while reinforcing its sovereignty over the Arctic.
CNN was found liable on Friday for defaming U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young.
Following roughly eight hours of deliberations, jurors found CNN both “committed defamation per se” and “committed defamation by implication.”
Jurors awarded Young $4 million in economic damages and $1 million in emotional damages and agreed that punitive damages are warranted, prompting phase 2 of the trial. Punitive damages will be awarded to Young to dissuade CNN and other networks from doing what CNN did.
The case arose after CNN aired a segment in November of 2021 on “The Lead with Jake Tapper” that falsely framed Young as exploiting Afghans by offering evacuations from Afghanistan on a “black market.” A court later found Young did nothing illegal. Young alleged the segment “rendered Young permanently unemployable” because the use of the term “black market” in the chyron implied Young was engaged in illegal conduct — something his defense contracts expressly prohibited.
It’s conservatives who don’t want the government to restrict our speech or gas-powered vehicles or Covid therapeutics. So why are we up in arms over what, according to the “science,” could be a fairly innocuous synthetic color additive made from petroleum, chemically known as erythrosine?
A better question may be: Why was this chemical with zero nutritional value put in our food in the first place? The artificial food coloring was added to make unhealthy food options attractive to kids. The ingredient is often found alongside sugar in foods such as candy, cereal, and juices. Removing the chemical does not deprive anyone of a positive good. Taste will not be sacrificed, simply one tactic to market junk food to kids. Natural ingredients that lack harmful effects, such as beets, are the alternatives to color foods in other countries where the dye has been banned. //
Furthermore, the debate also highlights the difference between conservatives and libertarians. Conservatives are not opposed to government intervention. We’re opposed to ill-defined government intervention, wielded by an unelected bureaucracy captured by corporations, that lacks the support of those who are supposed to have the ultimate say: we the people.
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, was illegal but stopped short of allowing a nationwide injunction issued by a federal judge in Texas to go into effect. The three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit ruling on the case restricted the scope of the injunction to Texas to allow further appeals.
DACA is, in my opinion, the toughest part of the illegal immigration catastrophe facing the United States to solve. DACA enrollees arrived in the United States as very young children when their parents or guardians illegally immigrated. They are culturally American and frequently can't speak the language of their home country and have no family or social ties to it. There are an estimated 580,000 DACA enrollees. //
DACA started out as a 2012 memorandum signed by Obama DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano. It was never an executive order. It never went through the rule-making process required by the Administrative Procedure Act. It has never been enacted into law by Congress. Ordinarily, any memo by a cabinet secretary ceases to have validity when they leave office, not so with DACA. When President Trump’s DHS secretary rescinded the DACA memo based on the advice of the Attorney General of the United States, the Supreme Court held, in a 5-4 vote (guess how the Chief Justice voted), that the Trump administration was required to follow the Administrative Procedure Act to withdraw a memo that was never subjected to that act, ... //
The case is headed back to the Supreme Court, minus the rather stupid issue of whether a single memo by a cabinet secretary can masquerade as the law of the land.
Sir, why did you pause LNG exports? Liquified natural gas is in great demand by our allies, why would you do that? Cause you understand, we just talked about Ukraine, you understand you're fueling Putin's war machine?" And he looked at me, stunned, and he said, "I didn't do that." And I said, "Mr. President, yes you did, it was an executive order like three weeks ago." He said, "No, I didn't do that," he was arguing with me.
That's where things get even crazier. Biden went on to admit he signed an executive order, but he told Johnson that believed he had only authorized a study on the effects of LNG.
JOHNSON: I said, "No you're not sir, you paused it, I have the terminal, the export terminal in our state, I talked to those people this morning. This is doing massive damage to our economy, to our national security."
I thought, "We are in serious trouble." Who's running the country?" I don't know who put the paper in front of him, but he didn't know. //
It wasnt me WesW
8 hours ago
I like Johnson, but imagine if he had walked out of that meeting to cameras outside the White House and repeated that in January of 2024.
And said, "Who lied to the President about what was in the EO?
If someone didn't lie to him Why doesn't he recall what was in it?
What other decisions was the President deceived about?
How can we be sure?". //
Charlie the Deplorable
9 hours ago
I originally planned to write a comment ripping the Speaker for not taking more forceful action somehow. And then I thought through his options. Impeachment requires “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Although there’s probably some bribery somewhere along the way, nothing impeachable seems relevant to the case. His other alternative is the 25th Amendment. But he would need to convince the VP and cabinet to stick out their necks and affirm his disability. They already were covering it up such that I wouldn’t have presumed they could be convinced to act. His third option would have been to go public, hoping for the press and the people to pressure him to resign. Yeah, good luck with that one. So I don’t see any path for him to have done anything about it.
And even if he had succeeded, we would’ve been left with VP Harris in the Oval Office. Which many could argue would be worse.
This episode points out the need for a vigorous, multi-sided press. RedState readers knew of his vegetative state somewhere in 2020-2022 depending on what you believed. That simply wasn’t enough to force a compliant democrat party to act. And that is why I’m a VIP Platinum. We need a fervent press, with both left and right having a strong voice.
it’s past time for Republicans to provide a pithy answer to counter the Democrat’s deceptive question.
As I explained last year when the legacy media hounded then-Sen. J.D. Vance to say Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, there is a fundamental flaw in the question: “The query includes an undefined term — ‘lost’ — which holds a different meaning to Trump supporters and to the anti-Trump inquisitors.”
“If ‘lost’ merely meant Biden is the president of the United States, then that’s an easy answer: Yes, of course, Trump lost, as Biden was inaugurated,” and he is currently nearing the end of his four disastrous years in the Oval Office. But that’s not what those demanding an acknowledgement that Trump lost mean by “lost,” and yesterday’s hearings confirmed that reality, for Bondi repeatedly and expressly attested that, yes, Joe Biden is the president of the United States.
What Durbin, Blumenthal, and pretty much everyone else demanding a “yes” or “no” answer to whether Trump lost the 2020 election seek is a concession that Trump’s election challenges were frivolous, unfounded, or wrong. Democrats inject such concessions into their meaning of “lost.”
That’s why Bondi answered Durbin’s question as she did, by stating both that she accepted that Biden is president of the United States and that she saw firsthand issues in Pennsylvania’s election.
In other words, it depends on what you mean by “lost.”. //
“If asked whether Trump ‘lost’ the 2020 election, meaning that if all legal votes were counted and all illegal counts discarded — and the counting was done legally pursuant to controlling election law —” the answer should be a resounding, “I don’t know.”
As I wrote last year: “No one can possibly know the answer to that question because in 2020 there were too many election laws violated or ignored, and too many illegal votes counted. But the lawsuits challenging the election outcomes were tossed as moot once the votes were certified, so there was never a determination on the validity of the tallies, leaving uncertain the accuracy of the election results.” //
So, here’s a simple, soundbite for the next Trump nominee cornered with the query, “Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?”
“It depends on what you mean by ‘lose.’ Joe Biden is the president of the United States. But Biden did not win a free and fair election, and the country has suffered the devastating consequences for the last four years as a result of the Biden presidency.”
And the 2020 election was not free and fair: Not when the FBI pre-bunked the Hunter Biden laptop story, causing social media companies to censor the evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s pay-to-play scandal; not when the Biden campaign’s senior advisor, Antony Blinken, “set in motion” the release of a public statement signed by 51 former intelligence agents that falsely framed Hunter’s laptop as Russian disinformation; not when there were “systemic violations of election law” which “disparately favor[ed] one candidate,” and “allow[ed] for tens of thousands of illegal votes to be counted;” and not when illegal drop box were placed in Democrat-heavy precincts and Zuckbucks were used to get out the Democrat vote.
The late great FOSTER BROOKS roasting DON RICKLES in 1974.
NEW: During a one-on-one meeting, Speaker Johnson asked President Biden why he paused LNG exports to Europe, says Biden was completely unaware he had done so.
The United States hasn't had a president for four years.
Johnson says Biden was completely unaware of an executive
The researchers began by testing a glass formed from a mixture of boron, sulfur, and lithium (B2S3 and Li2S). But this glass had terrible conductivity, so they started experimenting with related glasses and settled on a combination that substituted in some phosphorus and iodine.
The iodine turned out to be a critical component. While the exchange of electrons with sulfur is relatively slow, iodine undergoes electron exchange (technically termed a redox reaction) extremely quickly. So it can act as an intermediate in the transfer of electrons to sulfur, speeding up the reactions that occur at the electrode. In addition, iodine has relatively low melting and boiling points, and the researchers suggest there's some evidence that it moves around within the electrolyte, allowing it to act as an electron shuttle.
Successes and caveats
The result is a far superior electrolyte—and one that enables fast charging. It's typical that fast charging cuts into the total capacity that can be stored in a battery. But when charged at an extraordinarily fast rate (50C, meaning a full charge in just over a minute), a battery based on this system still had half the capacity of a battery charged 25 times more slowly (2C, or a half-hour to full charge).
But the striking thing was how durable the resulting battery was. Even at an intermediate charging rate (5C), it still had over 80 percent of its initial capacity after over 25,000 charge/discharge cycles. By contrast, lithium-ion batteries tend to hit that level of decay after about 1,000 cycles. If that sort of performance is possible in a mass-produced battery, it's only a slight exaggeration to say it can radically alter our relationships with many battery-powered devices.
What's not at all clear, however, is whether this takes full advantage of one of the original promises of lithium-sulfur batteries: more charge in a given weight and volume. The researchers specify the battery being used for testing; one electrode is an indium/lithium metal foil, and the other is a mix of carbon, sulfur, and the glass electrolyte. A layer of the electrolyte sits between them. But when giving numbers for the storage capacity per weight, only the weight of the sulfur is mentioned.
Still, even if weight issues would preclude this from being stuffed into a car or cell phone, there are plenty of storage applications that would benefit from something that doesn't wear out even with 65 years of daily cycling.
There is renewed talk of a coal power comeback in the United States, inspired by Donald Trump’s return to the presidency and forecasts of soaring electricity demand.
The evidence so far only shows that some plants are getting small extensions on their retirement dates. This means a slowdown in coal’s rate of decline, which is bad for the environment, but it does little to change the long-term trajectory for the domestic coal industry.
In October, I wrote about how five of the country’s 10 largest coal-fired power plants had retirement dates. Today, I’m revisiting the list, providing some updates and then taking a few steps back to look at US coal plants as a whole. Consider this the “before” picture that can be judged against the “after” in four years.
Some coal plant owners have already pushed back retirement timetables. The largest example, this one from just before the election, is the Gibson plant in Indiana, the second-largest coal plant in the country. It’s set to close in 2038 instead of 2035, following an announcement in October from the owner, Duke Energy.
But the changes do not constitute a coal comeback in this country. For that to happen, power companies would need to be building new plants to replace the many that are closing, and there is almost no development of new coal plants. //
The United States had about 176,000 megawatts of coal plant capacity as of October, down from about 300,000 megawatts in 2014.
The coal plants that do remain are being used less. In 2023, the average capacity factor for a coal plant was 42 percent. Capacity factor is a measure of how much electricity a plant has generated relative to the maximum possible if it was running all the time. In 2014, the average capacity factor was 61 percent.
The upper stage, meanwhile, appeared to fly normally until a telemetry display on SpaceX's webcast indicated that one of the ship's six engines shut off more than seven minutes after liftoff. The display then showed more engines failing, and the data stream froze.
In an update posted on SpaceX's website later Thursday evening, officials said ground teams lost contact with the spacecraft approximately eight and a half minutes into the flight. At the time, information on SpaceX's live video stream showed the vehicle was traveling at about 13,246 mph (21,317 km/hr) at an altitude of about 91 miles (146 kilometers).
"Initial data indicates a fire developed in the aft section of the ship, leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly with debris falling into the Atlantic Ocean within the predefined hazard areas," SpaceX officials wrote in the update.
The falling debris caused air traffic controllers to divert or reroute commercial flights over the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Air traffic controllers have the ability to activate a "Debris Response Area" if a spacecraft experiences an anomaly with debris falling outside of identified closed aircraft hazard areas, where the FAA notifies pilots in advance about the risk of reentering space junk. Activating a Debris Response Area "allows the FAA to direct aircraft to exit the area and prevent others from entering," the statement read.
This is what the FAA did Thursday evening. Air traffic controllers closed a swath of airspace between the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico to commercial air traffic for more than an hour, causing some passenger airline flights to enter a holding pattern, return to their departure airports, land at alternate airfields, or delay their takeoffs.
Given the number of people working for tech startups (6 million), the failure rate of said startups (90 percent), their usage of Google Workspaces (50 percent, all by Ayrey's numbers), and the speed at which startups tend to fall apart, there are a lot of Google-auth-connected domains up for sale at any time. That would not be an inherent problem, except that, as Ayrey shows, buying a domain with a still-active Google account can let you re-activate the Google accounts for former employees.
With admin access to those accounts, you can get into many of the services they used Google's OAuth to log into, like Slack, ChatGPT, Zoom, and HR systems. Ayrey writes that he bought a defunct startup domain and got access to each of those through Google account sign-ins. He ended up with tax documents, job interview details, and direct messages, among other sensitive materials.
You have to close up shop, not just abandon it
Reached for comment, a Google spokesperson provided a statement:
We appreciate Dylan Ayrey’s help identifying the risks stemming from customers forgetting to delete third-party SaaS services as part of turning down their operation. As a best practice, we recommend customers properly close out domains following these instructions to make this type of issue impossible. Additionally, we encourage third-party apps to follow best-practices by using the unique account identifiers (sub) to mitigate this risk.
Google's instructions note that canceling a Google Workspace "doesn't remove user accounts," which remain until an organization's Google account is deleted.
Notably, Ayrey's methods were not able to access data stored inside each re-activated Google account, but on third-party platforms. While Ayrey's test cases and data largely concern startups, any domain that used Google Workspace accounts to authenticate with third-party services and failed to delete their Google account to remove its domain link before selling the domain could be vulnerable.
Random US Citizen bintexas
12 hours ago edited
Well, if you can turn a man into a woman just by saying it's true, certainly you can turn an unratified amendment into a ratified one...
One of the things that makes it clear that our society continues to deteriorate is the almost Medieval level of superstition we're seeing almost every day. Saying something makes it true (this amendment was ratified). Naming a thing allows you to control it (western medicine widely contains this superstition) A magical belief that behavior can effect nature (climate change). The belief that words can cause physical/spiritual harm (conservatives talking is the same a violence). Belief that a person is the incarnation of the devil (Trump)
Western civilization isn't dead yet, but it certainly is ill.
mikwcas
3 hours ago edited
All I saw [in these videos] was, well, you're fired you're fired you are too, and you and you and you. And so on and so forth.
And I'm not talking about Milley, Yellen or Garland. Talking about all the clapping seals. See ya'.
There's an old joke that goes, "How can you tell if there's a vegan at your party?" The answer: "They'll tell you."
The entire issue of health factors and ethical matters around diet has been battered endlessly. "Ethical vegans," the most strident of the lot — and the most fact-challenged — make all kinds of outrageous claims about animals, their nature, the biology of humans, and how a "vegan" diet somehow causes "less harm" to animals than a diet that includes meat — a claim that they cannot back up.
That's the extreme end of the spectrum, though. There are plenty of people who forgo meat for reasons of their own without being self-righteous about it, and that's fine; live and let live. But there are matters of science involved, especially where pregnant women are concerned. We've known for some time now that excessive alcohol use by pregnant women can damage a developing fetus; this is what Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is. However, a recent study indicates that forgoing animal protein in the diet may be more damaging than moderate alcohol use. //
Realistically, while any cell mutation can happen any time, you are unlikely to get cancer caused by an occasional drink, but US culture always has pregnant women and new mothers on blast, so they are told to abstain from alcohol, coffee, too many foods to count, etc.
What we should really be cautioning pregnant women about is vegetarian diets. While some epidemiological data on alcohol can be critiqued on merit, people who believe claims about PFAS in water, GMOs, pasteurized milk, vaccinated chickens, Scotchguard, or cancer-causing spatulas absolutely cannot deny the risks of a vegetarian diet. This is far more rigorous than any of the epidemiology in those claims. //
It's important to note that the paper cited is not original work; it's what is called a "meta-analysis," an examination of previous peer-reviewed studies. That doesn't make the study any less credible, especially given the size of the data sets that were examined; eight studies, taking in 72,284 participants.
If you understand biology and the human digestive tract, though, the study isn't necessary. This isn't new information. It's been known for literally all of the history of humankind; that women who have a well-balanced diet have healthier babies. //
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589936824000707 //
Eeyore1953
4 hours ago
How is it possible that Baby Boomers were born, with their mothers smoking and drinking through the pregnancy? And how is it that the French even exist?
Elon Musk @elonmusk
·
Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity.
Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and… Show more
8:14 PM · Jan 16, 2025 //
Elon Musk @elonmusk
·
It’s harder than it looks
Ryan Saavedra @RealSaavedra
CIA Director Nominee John Ratcliffe yesterday: “There's only one country in the world that can parallel park a 200-foot rocket booster. The Chinese can't do it. The Russians can't do it. We do it.”
Embedded video
2:05 AM · Jan 17, 2025. //
anon-9s7n
10 hours ago
Explosions in tests can be just as useful as non explosions. Sometimes more so. The success of a test flight is whether you learned what you needed to change to make it better and safer. I'd say this was successful.
The debil
10 hours ago
Unfortunately, it takes failure to have true success, no matter what the endeavor.
If you do not learn from failure, you are on the path to greater failures. //
Random US Citizen The debil
8 hours ago
Thomas Edison: “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work”