US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2971

A North Carolina coalition of parents, teachers and students has called on the state’s school districts to start using solar power amid a nationwide trend of schools adopting the renewable energy source.

North Carolina schools could potentially save millions of dollars on utility bills in the coming decades if they install solar panels, according to Hannah Mitchell of Repower Our Schools, a nonprofit organization that promotes solar installation in the state’s schools. But North Carolina is one of just five states that still have significant barriers to financing solar projects, including the prohibition of third-party financing for solar energy, Mitchell said.

"We've seen an increasing demand on the part of community members, parents and teachers wanting renewable energy options in our schools," Mitchell said. "If we were to have changes to statewide policy like explicit legislation of third-party energy sales, the schools could save a lot."

At least 26 states plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico allow third-party financing for solar power, according to data from DSIRE, a renewable energy information group operated by the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center at N.C. State University (NCCETC).

Third-party financing is the primary method U.S. schools are using to go solar, experts say, because it helps lower the upfront costs. With this financing, a customer leases the solar equipment and makes monthly payments.

Nearly 4,000 U.S. schools had installed solar panels by 2014, according to Steve Kalland, executive director of NCCETC. But he said North Carolina’s lack of third-party financing options means schools won’t receive the same savings.

Repower Our Schools commissioned NCCETC to research how North Carolina school districts Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) and Durham Public Schools (DPS) might benefit from solar energy.

With the allowance of third-party energy sales and upgrades to net metering policy, the nonprofit environmental group Greenpeace estimated that CMS could save $54.6 million and DPS could save $16.3 million over 25 years.

On February 20 2016 22:50 oneofthem wrote:
are you reading that from some conspiracy site? the icloud was not reset by the fbi.

http://gizmodo.com/the-san-bernardino-terrorists-icloud-password-was-accid-1760158613

Update, 6:31pm: In an interesting twist, some tech reporters just had a call with unnamed Apple executives. Gizmodo was not invited to the call. The resulting stories (like this one from Buzzfeed) tell the same basic story as this post, except that they imply the FBI mishandled and accidentally reset the iCloud password remotely.

Buzzfeed’s news article repeatedly uses the word “government” without specifying the specific branch. According to today’s filing it was the local Health Department in San Bernardino (again, the technical “owner” of the phone) that mishandled it. So yes, it was technically a government entity that mishandled the phone. That government entity was the terrorist’s employer. But with Apple’s anonymous conference call, they clearly want the public to assume it was the FBI’s fault.

On February 20 2016 23:40 puerk wrote:
Do you really think the Owner of the phone would have reset the icloud password, if the FBI told them to not do it? I mean come on, it was an extremly high profile case, the FBI was in active talks with the owner about the phone and what they can do with it, and now we are to believe that they went totally rogue and said "fuck you FBI we block you out after telling you that we will help you"

seriously?

On February 20 2016 23:48 Acrofales wrote:

Oh come on, lets apply Hanlon's razor here: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. It's completely plausible that the owners got the phone and tried to access it. Through sheer incompetence they wiped the password instead of accessing it.

This could have been as per FBI instructions or on their own initiative. We have the FBI claiming one thing, and some unmentioned Apple execs claiming the other. But there's really no need to suspect the San Bernardino department of malicious intent: sheer incompetence suffices just fine.

On February 21 2016 00:09 zeo wrote:
https://twitter.com/decisiondeskhq/status/701046163139526659

Does this mean people are hyped to vote in large numbers or they just can't be bothered going to the voting station?

On February 21 2016 00:31 Mohdoo wrote:


Isn't a lot of Trump's support from people who don't normally vote?

On February 20 2016 22:50 oneofthem wrote:
are you reading that from some conspiracy site? the icloud was not reset by the fbi.

http://gizmodo.com/the-san-bernardino-terrorists-icloud-password-was-accid-1760158613

San Bernardino County reset the password on the iCloud account at the request of the FBI, said county spokesman David Wert.

On February 21 2016 00:09 zeo wrote:
https://twitter.com/decisiondeskhq/status/701046163139526659

Does this mean people are hyped to vote in large numbers or they just can't be bothered going to the voting station?

On February 20 2016 23:29 oneofthem wrote:
read the court filing it clearly stated owner.

Hillary Clinton continued to resist calls to release her transcripts of paid speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs and other banks, saying she would hold onto them until Bernie Sanders and other rivals for the U.S. presidency released theirs.

Sanders, her populist rival for the Democratic presidential nomination who has surged in polls with his furious rebukes of Wall Street and its role in the 2008 recession, said on Friday he had none to release because he does not give paid speeches to banks.

Clinton's reluctance to reveal what she privately told banks and other organizations has become an increasingly heated issue ahead of the election this November as she fights suggestions by Sanders and others from their party's more liberal wing that she is too cozy with the U.S. financial industry.

"I am happy to release anything I have whenever everybody else does the same, because everybody in this race, including Senator Sanders, has given speeches to private groups," she said on Thursday night in a televised 'town hall' event with voters in Nevada. Nevada is the third state to vote for the Democratic Party's nominee in caucuses to be held on Saturday.

Clinton has earned more than $20 million for 92 paid speeches since leaving her job as U.S. secretary of state in 2013, according to records disclosed by her campaign, including $675,000 for three closed-door speeches to New York-based investment bank Goldman Sachs. Her husband, Bill Clinton, has earned even more since he stepped down as president in 2001. She says this income has no influence on her policies and that she would increase Wall Street regulation.

Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, last gave a paid speech in 2004, according to his Senate financial disclosures, when he spoke about social activism at the California Institute of Technology in an event that was open to the public. He earned $2,000, according to his disclosures.