Have you ever had personal experience of working for some time at a commercial station?

Not specifically, but noScript + flashblock ends up blocking many adverts.

I installed NoScript several years ago, due to security concerns. I noticed most ads went away by accident. It makes Firefox much faster than stock Chrome.

For technical users, NoScript is a godsend. Pages load so quickly, and the pages are uncluttered with garbage "functionality". I wish there was some way to give it to non-technical users, but there really isn't, it's just too complex.

No, it really isn't. It's about getting viewers, selling newspapers, and getting clicks. And the best way to achieve that is by using strong emotion, usually negative. Fear, hatred, disgust, anger.

I'm not sure how a democracy is supposed to work, when the people voting are being given bad information on such a massive scale.

There are so many important areas when what people believe and what is true are miles apart.

"The best way to achieve that is by using strong emotion, usually negative. Fear, hatred, disgust, anger."

Take those topics and add a heavy dose of celebrity trivia and you've described the UK Daily Mail perfectly.

It crashes my browser

There's a lot more to an earthquake than its magnitude on the Richter scale.

Their destructiveness can be increased by many factors, such as the type of ground that buildings are on and the depth of the earthquake.

With any new industry there's bound to be bugs in the system. Most other industries have laws regulating them going back decades or even over a century. You're not gonna get it perfect from day 1.

Seems kind of funny to describe The Oldest Profession as a "new industry". Prostitution laws have a history much longer than one century.

Politicians often don't have a clue about many subjects, but that's not necessarily too bad a thing.

Politicians should be generalists not specialists. What they should do is surround themselves with experts is specific fields, and consider the advice they give.

Unfortunately, in many nations the politicians more frequently listen to the distorted scare and panic the media has created that week and base their policies on that instead.

> What they should do is surround themselves with experts is specific fields, and consider the advice they give.

The problem here is that it's all too easy to pay off experts to give advice that isn't necessarily "correct" but is what a special interest wants for some reason.

Further many of these experts are also allowed to remain anonymous (or effectively so) which means that they aren't even selling their reputation on a one-time transactions where afterwards they will be publicly humiliated or shamed. They are allowed to do this over and over.

I agree with your statement in principle 100% but in practice I'm not sure it's terribly effective.

And this is why we landed on the moon.

Seriously. The Manhattan project involved 130,000 people at its peak and lasted four years, and it leaked.

The Apollo program involved 400,000 people at its peak and lasted eleven years.

Ditto for all conspiracy theories that require massive numbers of people to be involved. Notably many 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Would 9/11 really need that many people to stage? The actual plot was executed by a fairly small number of people; surely faking it wouldn't take more than an order of magnitude more, especially when you control much of the process of investigation.

I don't believe it was a conspiracy, but I also don't think that there's a fundamental reason why it definitely couldn't have been.

I remember an estimate was that it would require 7,000 people.

The Japanese by contrast never developed truly effective airborne radar during WW2, so actually did select the pilots with the best night vision to fly their night fighters.

That percentage will probably be even worse than that, since windows aren't at the best angle or position for solar panels.

You guys are missing the fact that current windows are losing all of the energy incident on them. 5% is infinitely better than 0%.

It's only infinitely better if the cost of installing these systems is zero. It isn't zero.

Just about the only situation it would make economic sense to do this would be if it were almost the same cost of regular glass, and you already had a PV system set up with virtually all the wiring & inverters necessary already in place (these are a significant cost - roughly 50% of a regular PV installation).

Otherwise the cost simply wouldn't make it worthwhile.