As I recall, my comparative religion professor only touched on it, explaining essentially it's like Shinto without the spiritual components or rituals. That was 30+ years ago though.

Credit card company revenue comes from a number of sources but interest / fees are a large component.

My point was more, by definition continuous 30-60 days interest free periods (loans) aren't 'free' and there's cross-subsiding going on.

The business model is built on selling a highly overpriced product to consumer A, so you can sell an underpriced one to consumer B.

This is pretty far from the capitalist ideal of companies competing and continuously innovating to offer consumers the best product.

In the US, I believe that component in CRTs is called a "horizontal oscillator" instead of a "flyback transformer" (but could be that they are distinct yet related things). I've always been easily able to hear those, but am not usually bothered by them anymore since CRTs are fairly rare at this point. But this video proves that my 36 year old ears can still pick it up.

I feel like my hearing is bad -- I always want TVs louder than other people so I can make out what is being said, and in normal conversation it always seems like people are mumbling if there is any background noise at all. And I'm one of those annoying loud-talking Americans, especially if I'm talking on the phone (fortunately I don't get/answer many phone calls when I'm in public). But my hearing range pitch-wise seems to be exceptionally high, and not diminishing much with age (yet).

There's a fun easter egg for people like me at the end of that video. He put pulses of that CRT horizontal oscillator pitch where you can see the "Things You Might Know" text on the red background. I recognized it as Morse code, but couldn't decipher it even though I have an Amateur Radio license (I don't do code). In the comments at YT, people are claiming that the code translates to "never gonna give you up" -- so I guess he's Rickrolling people who both A) still have young enough ears to hear that 15kHz range *and* B) are old school enough to know / recognize Morse code. That's a pretty small target audience for an easter egg!

I understand where you're coming from, but I stand by my previous posts.

Full disclosure, I never got professionally employed as a programmer / coder / software engineer. However, my Bachelors Degree was in CS, and I have many friends working in the field.

In the show Silicon Valley, Richard Hendriks is working for a large corporate entity but has an idea / personal project that he ends up spinning into a new company. He is trained as a software engineer (CS), NOT with any business or management background (MIS), yet he becomes sort of the de-facto boss / CEO (at least early in the show). He hires a small team to help him develop his product.

Given that scenario, I think the show portrays things very accurately or at least completely plausibly. He's a coder, not a manager. Programmers may understand the importance of formatting and style standards, but at least tend to not have the correct personality type to be comfortable with formally dictating those standards to a team (an activity which would generally be more in line with an MIS background).

Also, his company is small -- just a few other programmers. They are all specializing on different components of the product. So they generally aren't working on each other's code. Standards for function arguments / helper functions / etc. would have to be agreed upon to get their individual components to interact, but that is a separate issue from tabs vs spaces. It would be wise to set a style and naming convention standard and have everyone conform to it, I agree completely. But Richard isn't built for the manager / CEO position, so he either fails to recognize that or doesn't feel comfortable dictating standards to his team.

One more thing to consider is that he (Richard) essentially is the product. He's the keystone piece, the central figure. He's John Carmack, Linus Torvalds, or Steve Wozniak. Even in a very large team / corporate environment, I'd wager that more often than not the style standards that end up getting set tend to fall in line with whatever those key guys want them to be. Don't touch an id Software graphics engine without conforming to Carmack's way, or the Linux kernel without conforming to Torvald's standards. Especially if they are building something new from scratch -- which is again true in the Silicon Valley show scenario.

The show isn't a documentary on how to properly run a startup company in the real Silicon Valley, but it is generally accurate enough that it has a lot of nuances that people with a programming background can pick up on and be entertained by (even people that don't actually work professionally in the field like me). And more important, the general feel of the show can be entertaining even for people that know absolutely nothing about programming.

Another thing to consider about solar and wind being cheaper (per kWh) is that both have quite a bit of economy of scale working for them. They will continue to get cheaper as we build and use more of them, but not a whole hell of a lot.

Modern nuclear, on the other hand, has pretty much zero economy of scale going for it at this point. If we bought in, not only could we completely eliminate coal (still gotta have something in times / areas that don't get a lot of sun or wind), but the costs would go down a LOT between 1st prototype components and stuff that settles out as standard before the thousandth one built.

Coal is responsible for many orders of magnitude more deaths and radioactive emissions than all nuclear incidents combined. But people don't care about simple things like facts or numbers. Talking about renewables when a significant portion of baseload power is still produced by coal is pointless. Let people have their feel good green tech (made in China, powered by a lot of coal of course ; ), but replace coal with modern nuke.

Denying the place of recent generation nuclear power as a viable strategy of supplying cleaner baseload power is much like denying man made climate change. Fucking moronic.

Thorium salt reactors do produce waste, but it's incredibly safe compared to breeder/lwr reactor byproducts. In fact, you can introduce older reactor waste in to the liquid mix in small amounts and the LFTR will break it down to less harmful components by accelerating decay in the core.

http://lftrnow.com/

"LFTRs can also burn radioactive “waste” we are currently storing, made from the LWR units of today. We could actually reduce our radioactive waste using LFTRs and other Molten-Salt Reactors (MSRs) (more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1fqB6p9pgM)."

So LFTR is a strategy for both power supply and cleaning up existing waste storage. Who'da thunk it??

That's pretty damn nice, but when I saw the thumbnail I thought the core component of a T-bird transmission was the 'Lament Configuration' puzzle box from Hellraiser.

That would be so cool.

Where do you get a scale that has stones for a unit? I want one of those.

Also, I wouldn't have reported it. Too much hassle. I'm sure there is gold involved in a tank's construction somewhere. So, you know, it's just a component.

It's probably stamped. Probably belongs to a Kuwaiti bank. Nah, too much hassle.

Yeah, I don't see how they can fit any significant component of the 2nd GiG season in a movie, let alone any philosophical depth. Stylistically they seem to be on the right track, although Hollywood has never been short of pretty visual effects.

Have to admit the Major suit does look a bit silly as almost like a fat suit, but I understand that they couldn't have done it any other way without CGI. Whatever, as long as it's a stylistic action flick that doesn't butcher the story it will have met my expectations.

"Offended" is different from "harmed". The SJWs need to learn that lesson fast. Harm in this context means put in physical danger of injury, which a stampede or riot would fall under and why you can't incite either.

If one is truly "harmed" by offensive words, that's an extremely odd personal mental problem that should not be inflicted on the rest of us, please just avoid the public and stick with your similarly afflicted group.

Your TV point is good, change the channel or turn it off.
Your college point is terrible, IMO. College is, in large part, intended to expose you to new and differing ideas and mindsets and teach you how to interact with those holding them. Interpersonal communication was a requirement where I went. If that's something people are uncomfortable with, they don't belong in colleges. Period. If someone wants to start a school where those ideals (safe space, regulated speech, trigger warnings, etc) are reinforced, fine, but it shouldn't be accredited because, no matter how good the classes and students are, it's missing a key component.
The boss being offensive, there's a clearly defined legal line, if they cross that line you can sue, if not, grow a pair and realize two of the most important lessons my parents taught me...."life's not fair", and "what you want and what you need are two different things, and knowing which is which can be the road to contentment, while not knowing is always a road to ruin". I feel like a lot of kids today have never heard either.

I have to assume what they made @9:36 was just made for showing off what was possible with the Lathe. I want it so much to be an actual component for something really cool.

There are CBD (cannaboid) strains with very low THC (the "high" component, mostly) that don't get someone as high---bred for medical use.

Also---very nice video.

The technology to load shift is available, but getting it developed and implemented is one of the components that is missing from the overall power strategy in Aus.

Energy companies, like Ergon (Queensland) are actively trying to limit input, with a hard cap of 5kVa input for residential, and sometimes even as little as 3kVa in some more remote areas.

And while technology like liquid vanadium battery cells (long life, expandable by adding extra tanks of liquid electrolyte) exist, they are still prohibitively expensive.

There are plenty of solutions, but little appetite from the companies and governments, and very little knowledge among the end users. So while we're throwing cheap Chinese panels on rooves with gay abandon, I think it's a little early to brag about what a rampaging success Aus solar is because "lots of panels yo!".

Awesome. To me, only slightly reading between the lines, it sounds like he is suggesting exactly what I feel is the right track here.

Let Trump do whatever it is that he is going to do. If individual elements / components of his policy suggestions are good, help him with them. And if/when he suggests dangerous, counterproductive or bigoted things, call him out, dig in your heels, and do everything you can to raise awareness and stop him.

Let Trump dig his own grave trying to fulfill all of his contradictory promises to a large angry mob.

But in the meantime, don't obstruct good things simply because they came from the "wrong side". That has been the Republican modus operandi -- show the people there is a better way. Trump talked about rebuilding infrastructure in his victory speech. FDR's "New Deal" did a lot of that with the Tennessee Valley Authority and other projects. That created a LOT of jobs and helped pull the US out of the great depression. Any infrastructure / public works stuff that Trump pushes for that would actually have positive results while creating jobs? Sign off on that shit!

Trump's Wall could be a fulcrum point. Pointless and somewhat offensive in premise, but some good could come from trying to build it or even actually succeeding (which I find highly unlikely). I think the appropriate response to Trump's Wall for Democrat legislators would be to vocally point out that tax money would probably be better spent elsewhere, but otherwise playing along to a certain extent. That wall is going to be a big millstone around Trump's neck -- no need to work overly hard to help him try to wriggle out of it.