Cell phones, cell phone battery charging cases, laptops, cameras, smart phones, electronics, data loggers, PDAs containing lithium batteries, games, tablets, watches, etc.
Devices containing lithium metal or lithium ion batteries (laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc.) should be carried in carry-on baggage.
The same people mocking ‘An Appeal to Heaven’ flag will never be satisfied so long as you view God and country as our Founding Fathers did.
Syncthing Tray provides a tray icon and further platform integration for Syncthing.
It focuses on GNU/Linux and Windows.
Apple and the satellite-based broadband service Starlink each recently took steps to address new research into the potential security and privacy implications of how their services geo-locate devices. Researchers from the University of Maryland say they relied on publicly available data from Apple to track the location of billions of devices globally — including non-Apple devices like Starlink systems — and found they could use this data to monitor the destruction of Gaza, as well as the movements and in many cases identities of Russian and Ukrainian troops.
At issue is the way that Apple collects and publicly shares information about the precise location of all Wi-Fi access points seen by its devices. Apple collects this location data to give Apple devices a crowdsourced, low-power alternative to constantly requesting global positioning system (GPS) coordinates.
Both Apple and Google operate their own Wi-Fi-based Positioning Systems (WPS) that obtain certain hardware identifiers from all wireless access points that come within range of their mobile devices. Both record the Media Access Control (MAC) address that a Wi-FI access point uses, known as a Basic Service Set Identifier or BSSID.
This slide deck lays out the fundamentals of DNA damage and repair.
It explains why we are so good at repairing radiation damage,
and the importance of keeping the damage rate below the repair rate.
The information in this deck is a prerequisite for all the other
Gordian Knot Group slide shows.
After Harrison Butker’s speech, the left is targeting Latin Mass Catholics. But it will never stop until all Christian morality is banished from the public square. //
Butker’s statements in his commencement speech were no more foreign or extreme than the medieval garb that he and millions of others donned on graduation stages all over the West this spring. Indeed, the left isn’t terrified of the Latin Mass because of its medieval optics. They could not care less about the theological debates that truly divide us in our liturgical practices.
Rather, they want to destroy the family values that undergird the Judeo-Christian West in all its forms. These are not the preserve of Latin Mass Catholics or even Catholics generally. They belong to us all as decent human beings.
Portraying Latin Mass Catholics as a tiny minority diverging from the majority of Catholics glosses over the fact that we are talking about basic biblical principles here. Thou shall not kill. Male and female, He created them. Husbands, honor your wives and, wives, submit to your husbands. Comfort the dying and the sick. Walk in the light of truth.
Sometimes it's baffling why a given government agency does what it does. In one such, the National Park Service - which, as part of the Executive branch, falls under the control of the Biden administration - has denied, for the second year, a permit for the Knights of Columbus to celebrate a Memorial Day mass in Virginia's Poplar Grove National Cemetery: //
This is the second year in a row the religious group has been denied a permit at the Virginia national park where they had been holding the Memorial Day mass for the past 60 years. //
Religious services and vigils have been classified as "demonstrations" since at least 1986, according to the park website, and are prohibited in national cemeteries.
The NPS may have had an argument if they had stopped issuing the Knights of Columbus (or any other group affiliated with any religion) permits when that classification changed in 1986, but the Knights were still issued such permits until 2023. //
Someone decided to end this decades-long practice, and it wasn't for First Amendment reasons; the First Amendment is fine with allowing a Catholic mass in this space, so long as the issuance of such permits is available to all denominations, meaning that if a Bokononist group wished to hold a ceremonial boko-maru on the grounds, they should also be free to receive such a permit.
My words will perhaps seem somewhat vintage in character rather than current or up-to-date. In that context, I admit to being unapologetically Catholic, unapologetically patriotic, and unapologetically a constitutionalist.
[...]
Let me offer you, this year’s graduates, a few brief suggestions about making your deposits in the account of liberty. Today is just the end of the beginning of your young lives, and the beginning, the commencement of the rest of your lives. There is much more to come, and it will not be with the guiding hands of your parents—indeed, they may someday need your hand to guide them. Some of you will most assuredly be called upon to do very hard things to preserve liberty. All of you will be called upon to provide a firm foundation of citizenship by carrying out your obligations in the way so many preceding generations have done. You are to be the example to others that those generations have been to us. And in being that example, what you do will matter far more than what you say.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is one of those organizations that sounds good on paper, but you quickly find out that in the real world, it's another bureaucratic tool that could easily be used for political prosecution.
Lo and behold, it issued a warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes committed in Gaza for war crimes committed against the citizens of Gaza, which fall under the Palestinian Authority, a group that gives the ICC authority to prosecute. //
For one, the ICC is a purely bureaucratic entity with no real oversight. What's to stop it from utilizing its "legal authority" to issue warrants against people for their own political interests? How do we know this warrant against Netanyahu isn't one already?
The Netanyahu warrant already shows that the ICC doesn't seem to understand the nature of war, especially when that war is being fought against a terrorist organization that uses its own people as human shields. Of course, citizens have died...Hamas saw to it. Moreover, it's not like Israel can just choose not to wage this war. Hamas made it clear that the complete destruction of Israel and the death of the Jewish people is its highest priority. Israel is forced to wage this war. //
The ICC should be something that no country ever agrees to recognize because, in the end, the ICC is a direct attack on the sovereignty of a country. If the ICC says a citizen of a country needs to be arrested then the country will have no choice but to give up their own citizen to the ICC, even if the country in question doesn't recognize that their citizen has done anything wrong. //
Because we all know how authority works. A little ceding here, a little authority there, and soon the authority in question is far more powerful than anyone ever intended it to be.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was on fire on Tuesday as he grilled Joe Biden's Secretary of State Antony Blinken before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
This may just be one of the most effective cross-examinations over how bad the administration has been on Iran that you're ever going to see, and how they've helped our enemies while hurting our allies. He really drops the hammer on him at the end. //
"You've funded our enemies and you undermine our friends," Cruz said. "And the world is much much more dangerous as result and Americans are in much greater jeopardy because of it."
Blinken protested saying we weren't "alone" anymore.
Cruz dropped him with a final withering remark, "Remember the Abraham Accords?"
That was a reminder of how we had the area in greater peace under former President Donald Trump and now it's in flames because of Joe Biden.
On Tuesday, a series of tornadoes ripped across central Iowa, dealing an as-yet unknown amount of damage and resulting in multiple deaths.
Tornadoes are nothing new to Iowa residents, especially in this rolling farm country southwest of Des Moines. It's tornado country; it has been since longer than people — any people — have lived in the area, and it always will be tornado country. //
Granted the human cost of these storms far, far outweighs any concern about windmills. But that doesn't preclude us from examining yet another failure of the whole "green" energy agenda. //
Bear in mind that not only have these windmills, installed at great expense, been flattened by what every Iowan could have said would happen sooner or later — a tornado — but the aftermath of those tornadoes, along with the human and property cost, has generated what looks to be a great deal of toxic smoke but also has compromised one leg of central Iowa's electrical generation capacity.
The same issue could easily arise with solar panels. Look at any solar panel field and consider the likely outcome of a tornado — or any other major storm, with high winds or hail.
Last week, leading lights of the global fossil power industry gathered at a conference in Houston, Texas, for CERA, known in the sector as the “Davos of Energy”. They reportedly got the shock of their professional careers.
They had invited the most senior executives from the biggest network owner (Chine State Grid Corp) in the biggest energy market in the world (China). The organisers fully expected their Chinese guest to endorse the “all of the above” marketing pitch, which is underpinning the “keep coal” campaign.
No such luck. Despite prodding by leading oil industry commentator Daniel Yergin, the chairman of State Grid Liu Zhenya reportedly said the “fundamental solution was to accelerate clean energy, with the aim of replacing coal and oil.”
As the network operator builds out its clean power sources, they noted, coal-fired generators could only serve as “reserve power” to supplement renewables.
“The only hurdle to overcome is ‘mindset’,” Liu said. “There’s no technical challenge at all.” //
New data bears this out. In China, thermal power plant utilisation rates (capacity factors) declined from 56.2 per cent on average in 2014 to a record low of just 50.9 per cent in 2015.
“This highlights coal is not ‘base load’, even in China,” Buckley says. “It is the marginal source of supply. Coal-fired power plants aren’t designed to run only half the time, but that is what is happening in China, and increasingly that is occurring in India as well.” //
Indeed, CLP, the Hong Kong-based owner of the Yallourn and Mt Piper coal-fired power stations in Australia, revealed this week that its “flagship” Jhajjar coal plant in India ran at a capacity factor of just 49.9 per cent in 2015.
In Australia, it was even worse. The 1,400MW Mt Piper power station near Lithgow in NSW operated at just 45 per cent of its capacity, even after its neighbouring Wallerawang coal plant had been shut down.
Other black coal generators have been similarly afflicted, so much so that the Northern power station in South Australia is to shut permanently in May. //
A study by energy consultant Energeia suggests that wind energy will become the default “base load” generation in South Australia, and dispatchable power sources – which previously dominated the grid, the markets and the business models – will have to fill in the gaps left by wind and solar. //
The gaps would be filled by flexible plant such as solar towers, or battery storage, or from gas – as long as it can compete with the new technologies.
I observed one of the most remarkable wrong-headed biases I have ever seen. The judge actually threatened to strike all of Costello’s testimony if he raised his eyebrows again.
That of course would have been unconstitutional because it would have denied the defendant his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses and to raise a defense.
It would have punished the defendant for something a witness was accused of doing.
Even if what Costello did was wrong, and it was not, it would be utterly improper and unlawful to strike his testimony — testimony that undercut and contradicted the government’s star witness.
The judge’s threat was absolutely outrageous, unethical, unlawful and petty.
Moreover, his affect while issuing that unconstitutional threat revealed his utter contempt for the defense and anyone who testified for the defendant.
The public should have been able to see the judge in action, but because the case is not being televised, the public has to rely on the biased reporting of partisan journalists.
But the public was even denied the opportunity to hear from journalists who saw the judge in action because he cleared the courtroom. //
There is absolutely no good reason why a trial of this importance, or any trial, should not be televised live and in real time. Allowing the public to see their courts in action is the best guarantee of fairness. As Justice Louis Brandeis wisely said a century ago, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
It costs less energy to get fossil fuels, but we can't use them as efficiently.
It doesn't take a lot of energy to dig up coal or pump oil from the ground. In contrast, most renewable sources of energy involve obtaining and refining resources, sophisticated manufacturing, and installation. So, at first glance, when it comes to the energy used to get more energy—the energy return on investment—fossil fuels seem like a clear winner. That has led some to argue that transitioning to renewables will create an overall drop in net energy production, which nobody is interested in seeing.
A new study by researchers at the UK's University of Leeds, however, suggests that this isn't a concern at all—in most countries, renewables already produce more net energy than the fossil fuels they're displacing. The key to understanding why is that it's much easier to do useful things with electricity than it is with a hunk of coal or a glob of crude oil. //
Focusing on utility makes a substantial difference. Using the 2020 data, the final, delivered-to-end-user EROI of fossil fuels is quite good, at approximately 8.5, meaning you get about 8.5 units of energy out for every one you invest. (This is averaged across all fuels and uses.) Once you try to do something useful with it, however, it drops dramatically so that the useful-stage EROI is only about 3.5. Which, to be clear, is bad—you want to be getting as much useful energy as possible for every unit of energy you put into things.
Different fuels have very different profiles, however. Natural gas has the highest useful-stage EROI at 9.5, coal is at 7.2, and oil products are only 2, meaning we only get about twice as much energy out of gasoline as we put into producing and using it. Most of these values have been largely unchanged for the past 50 years except for natural gas, which has seen a dramatic drop in the EROI of getting it ready to use (possibly due to the energy costs of fracking—the trend is most notable in the 1980s), and a smaller drop in useful-stage EROI.
A large contributor to these values is how these fuels are put to use. For example, the useful-stage EROI for natural gas in heating buildings is about 12, meaning it can be used reasonably efficiently. The value for heating with oil products is only about 5. Oil products used in road and rail propulsion are also terrible, being just above 2 for rail travel and under 2 for roads.
Renewable energy, in this analysis, is focused on things like wind and solar, which deliver electrons to the grid (things like renewable production of methane are pretty minor at this point). Those can be used for things like heating, rail and road transit, and other uses performed by fossil fuels. Many of these uses are extremely efficient—things like heat pumps and electric motors are much better at turning energy into utility than their fossil fuel equivalents. //
chekk Smack-Fu Master, in training
4y
47
A bit confused by the "Energy efficiency and utility" section:
final-stage EROIs, which tracked the energy used to get a unit of energy to where it's ready for use—so, all the energetic costs of extraction, processing, and delivery
and:
The one thing this doesn't include is the energy cost of the infrastructure needed to extract fossil fuels
What about the energy cost of the infrastructures for processing and delivery? Are those included or not?
To put it a different way, what does "all the energetic costs" actually mean? //
SnoopCatt Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
7m
524
Subscriptor
While the energetic cost of getting energy in the hands of people in a form that's ready for use is a "useful" metric, I think we also need to consider the cost of being able to use energy when we need to. For renewables, this means factoring the cost of batteries or other energy storage mechanisms. //
kevbo Seniorius Lurkius
5y
6
Subscriptor++
I'm looking at the paper: I'm not seeing anything about end-of-life disposal costs. That's one of the "renewable feels like it is more expensive" points: turbine blades and toxic solar panels and batteries need to be disposed of. Of course, it doesn't seem to account for disposing traditional power plants either. I don't know what that end of life cost does to this kind of calculation. I wish it was covered. //
jdbosma Seniorius Lurkius
13y
12
Subscriptor++
It's not clear that this study correctly accounts for the difference between work and heat.
Fossil fuels produce heat. Solar-thermal renewables do too, but photovoltaics and wind produce work (electricity).
Heat is energy that moves from one location to another only under the influence of a termperature difference. Work is energy that can (theoretically) be converted to lifting a weight in a gravitational field, among other useful tasks.
Both work and and heat are energy, i.e. measured in Joules. To convert heat to work is possible, using a heat engine, but under typical conditions no more than about 40% of the heat can be converted to work. The theoretical upper limit on heat engine efficiency is provided by the Carnot relation - achievable implementations always fall short of the maximum.
Direct generation of work energy, as performed by photovoltaics and wind power, is more flexible and in most cases preferable to generation of heat. For one thing, work as electrical power is readily transported over long distances by wire. Work can readily be converted to heat with no loss of energy. When the desired output involves moving heat, a unit of work can sometimes move several times its energy value of heat - this principle is applied in heat pumps for space heating.
It does not make sense to compare the EROI for the heating value of fossil fuels against the electrical value of wind power, since a Joule of work is worth roughly 3x a Joule of heat in some applications, and a Joule of work can always be converted to a Joule of heat when that is desired.
To be most useful, the study should separately compare the EROIs for processes where the output is heat vs. work. //
pete.d Ars Centurion
6y
259
Subscriptor
The article doesn't mention nuclear at all. Did the researchers even consider that energy source, or were they strictly comparing fossil fuels with renewables?
There has been a lot of debate, especially lately, regarding whether nuclear energy is in fact cost-competitive with renewables, even ignoring the lengthy construction times involved. It would've been really interesting to see where nuclear fit into this analysis.
Parents cannot effectively remove technology from their children day to day, so we must target the source of the danger itself. //
In the digital age, shielding our children from the pervasive threat of explicit online content has become an urgent concern demanding innovative and effective solutions. //
The singular dependency on individual filters stems from Supreme Court rulings in the late ’90s and early 2000s that ultimately determined that the internet was not so pervasive as TV and radio and therefore not subject to the same regulations. Adults’ rights to pornography outweighed the need to implement protections because the burden of government involvement was too restrictive and a disproportionate response to the problem at hand. The idea was that parents should simply protect their kids on their own dime rather than potentially threaten First Amendment rights.
Here’s the thing: First Amendment rights have never applied to obscenity. And while we might forgive the court for not predicting the future of broadband internet, the fact is it is now much more pervasive than TV and radio. The safety of our children demands action. //
The SCREEN Act, with its requirement for robust age-verification technologies, reflects a pragmatic and narrowly tailored solution to a complex problem. //
The only thing this bill does is ensure that pornography platforms perform the same age-verification checks that are already done by alcohol, tobacco, and gambling websites. This should be a slam dunk.
The docuseries reveals a dark underbelly of abuse, grooming, pornography, and sexual assault in popular kids’ TV shows of the ’90s and 2000s.
UpLateAgain Lightning47
5 hours ago
The raid should NEVER have been authorized. It was total BS. But should the language restricting the use of deadly force have been removed from the op order? Absolutely NOT. The Deadly Force Policy RESTRICTS the use of deadly force. It's not a green light to use it. It specifies the only conditions under which it can be used. Police at every level (including the FBI) are commonly reminded of the department's shooting policy before an action. To remove it would be LEGALLY seen as inviting gun play. //
GBenton Lex Naturae
4 hours ago
As in War Games, the only way to win this is not to play.
There should have been no raid. The language, per se, is not the real issue. Every raid has the language for a reason. But it IS a very big freaking reason why they never, ever should have done this. //
GBenton mikwcas
5 hours ago
yeah, we're witnessing fascism, Communism, and tyranny. And we're parsing whether the use of force order was extraordinary.
We need to make them live by their own rules. They hype up nonsense into crimes. Well, turn around is fair play. They create a scenario for an illegitimate raid that included potential for use of deadly force, they gotta own it.
Tone it down? No. Wrong answer. Shout it from the rooftops. Biden tried to kill Trump if the circumstances allowed. And Jack Smith tried to frame him and set up the hit.
Oh, it's not unique to Trump. SO WHAT?
The entire raid shouldn't have been used in the first place. And this only makes that a zillion times more true. //
GBenton bk
5 hours ago
Good people project their good nature on others. It's hard for some to see that evil is being done intentionally on our soil by our government. Conservatives want to have faith in law enforcement and the legal system. But it's all been perverted.
The bottom line is they are manufacturing fake crimes to persecute Trump and those around him, not to mention Christians, parents, etc.
We should not ever again give these filth the benefit of the doubt. When our side gets back in power, and it will happen some day, odds are, the game needs to change: They need to be prosecuted for their actual crimes and abuse of power.
The Bush/McCain/Romney doctrine of let bygones be bygones is suicide. Only one said plays by the rules so the game is rigged against us.
Or, we could keep taking the high road, not pushing every advantage, and let them basically win by default over time. //
GBenton Susie Moore
4 hours ago
Agree 100% Characterizing it as a "hit" is over stepping.
But that the order made it possible use of force could have resulted in death underscores how wildly irresponsible this raid was in the full context.
There should never have been a raid if that inherently involved a risk of loss of life over documents, etc.
The FBI was authorized to use “deadly force” against former President Donald Trump when the Biden administration agency raided Mar-a-Lago in search of classified documents, according to newly unsealed court documents shared on X by independent journalist Julie Kelly.
Attorney General Merrick Garland personally approved the unprecedented raid on Trump’s Florida home in the summer of 2022, after which special counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents. Notably, President Joe Biden also retained classified documents following his tenure as vice president but was not charged by his own Justice Department because prosecutors said he would likely “present himself to the jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
A newly unsealed operations order reveals the FBI was authorized to use deadly force against the former president if need be, Kelly reported.
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