"Local politics are a bigger problem for renewable energy growth than competition from fossil fuels," warns a Bloomberg columnist: It's getting harder to get permission to erect the turbine towers. Local regulations are getting stricter. Bavaria decided back in 2014 that the distance between a wind turbine and the nearest housing must be 10 times the height of the mast, which, given the density of dwellings, makes it hard to find a spot anywhere. Wind energy development is practically stalled in the state now. Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, passed a law this year demanding that wind-farm operators pay 10,000 euros ($11,100) per turbine each year to communities within 3 kilometers of the windmills. Wind projects are also often rejected or stalled because they're deemed to interfere with military communications, air traffic control or broadcast radio stations. Besides, local opponents of the wind farms often go to court to stall new developments or even have existing towers dismantled. According to the wind-industry lobby BWE, 325 turbine installations with a total capacity of more than 1 gigawatt (some 2% of the country's total installed capacity) are tied up in litigation. The irony is that the litigants are often just as "green" as the wind-energy proponents -- one is the large conservation organization NABU, which says it's not against wind energy as such but merely demands that installations are planned with preserving nature in mind. Almost half of the complaints are meant to protect various bird and bat species; others claim the turbines make too much noise or emit too much low-frequency infrasound. Regardless of the validity of such claims, projects get tied up in the courts even after jumping through the many hoops necessary to get a permit. Another reason for local resistance to the wind farms is a form of Nimbyism: People hate the way the wind towers change landscapes. There's even a German word for it, Verspargelung, roughly translated as pollution with giant asparagus sticks... This nasty political and regulatory climate creates too much uncertainty for investors, just as the German government prepares to phase out wind-energy subsidies... Without technological breakthroughs -- for example, in energy storage, which would make fewer new turbines necessary -- Germany, and then other countries that try to build up renewable energy generation as it has done, will be hard put to push production to the level required to reach climate goals.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Local politics are a bigger problem for renewable energy growth than competition from fossil fuels," warns a Bloomberg columnist: It's getting harder to get permission to erect the turbine towers. Local regulations are getting stricter. Bavaria decided back in 2014 that the distance between a wind turbine and the nearest housing must be 10 times the height of the mast, which, given the density of dwellings, makes it hard to find a spot anywhere. Wind energy development is practically stalled in the state now. Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, passed a law this year demanding that wind-farm operators pay 10,000 euros ($11,100) per turbine each year to communities within 3 kilometers of the windmills. Wind projects are also often rejected or stalled because they're deemed to interfere with military communications, air traffic control or broadcast radio stations. Besides, local opponents of the wind farms often go to court to stall new developments or even have existing towers dismantled. According to the wind-industry lobby BWE, 325 turbine installations with a total capacity of more than 1 gigawatt (some 2% of the country's total installed capacity) are tied up in litigation. The irony is that the litigants are often just as "green" as the wind-energy proponents -- one is the large conservation organization NABU, which says it's not against wind energy as such but merely demands that installations are planned with preserving nature in mind. Almost half of the complaints are meant to protect various bird and bat species; others claim the turbines make too much noise or emit too much low-frequency infrasound. Regardless of the validity of such claims, projects get tied up in the courts even after jumping through the many hoops necessary to get a permit. Another reason for local resistance to the wind farms is a form of Nimbyism: People hate the way the wind towers change landscapes. There's even a German word for it, Verspargelung, roughly translated as pollution with giant asparagus sticks... This nasty political and regulatory climate creates too much uncertainty for investors, just as the German government prepares to phase out wind-energy subsidies... Without technological breakthroughs -- for example, in energy storage, which would make fewer new turbines necessary -- Germany, and then other countries that try to build up renewable energy generation as it has done, will be hard put to push production to the level required to reach climate goals.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The NYT says the NBA is not much fun now. I get it. I tried watching the Nets v Rockets last night. Preferred the Knicks v Celtics. The Knicks are more interesting this year. A mix of young and old. And a sensational rookie. The boring part of the NBA are the corporate players like Kyrie and KD. Mercenaries. Oh we'll occupy the Nets so we can take cheap shots at the Knicks. Wow. Brilliant. No one cares about the Nets. They get their paycheck and they'll move on to humiliate another team next year, until fans get tired of it. Thing is most of the fans already are. Ask Toronto. You know the players must think we don't know it's about teams. We really don't care about them so much. Make good teams and we'll be happy. That's why we like the Celtics, the Bucks, Philly, and guess what the Knicks look okay this year. Someone put some care into creating this team. I think that's what the Knicks have been missing. Someone who cares about them. But the Knicks would've said yes to Kyrie, I'm glad they didn't get the chance.

Website, which had hundreds of thousands of followers, had its accounts on Twitter removed.

haaz (Slashdot reader #3,346) tells us that history has just been made as part of the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals annual online game-playing fundraiser, Extra Life: A man from Milwaukee, Wisconsin is trying to play pinball long enough to break the standing Guinness World Record for Longest Marathon Pinball Play of 30 hours 10 minutes. He's using Extra Life's gaming/DIY fundraising site to webcast his attempt and raise money for Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. He gets a five minute break every hour, and yes, he's wearing an adult diaper. Just minutes ago on Twitter, the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin announced he'd beaten the record. And lots of other fundraising game-playing marathons are happening around the world today, including one in Canada -- and many of them are being streamed online. The event began in 2008, and over the last four years has raised close to $10 million each year. As one gaming site put it, "Let's help the future programmers of our cyborg overlords fulfill their mission by streaming some video games for the kids this weekend!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

haaz (Slashdot reader #3,346) tells us that history has just been made as part of the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals annual online game-playing fundraiser, Extra Life: A man from Milwaukee, Wisconsin is trying to play pinball long enough to break the standing Guinness World Record for Longest Marathon Pinball Play of 30 hours 10 minutes. He's using Extra Life's gaming/DIY fundraising site to webcast his attempt and raise money for Children's Hospital of Wisconsin. He gets a five minute break every hour, and yes, he's wearing an adult diaper. Just minutes ago on Twitter, the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin announced he'd beaten the record. And lots of other fundraising game-playing marathons are happening around the world today, including one in Canada -- and many of them are being streamed online. The event began in 2008, and over the last four years has raised close to $10 million each year. As one gaming site put it, "Let's help the future programmers of our cyborg overlords fulfill their mission by streaming some video games for the kids this weekend!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We're erecting a Maginot Line, getting ready to re-fight the Battle of 2016, ignoring that the enemy already controls our capital. We should be innovating, but we're not. We're defending against Nixon with lots of Woodsteins. I have a weird feeling we should let Zuck and Jack do what they want, and help them, because our current response is a loser, totally inadequate.

There's a make-believe story that Trump is "president." It's not true. Reality is there was a media battle in 2016 betw the US, a self-governing country, in theory -- and Russia, an autocracy. They won. They occupy our capital.

"In a message to the OpenJDK community, Bruno Borges announced that Microsoft has now formally signed the Oracle Contributor Agreement and has been welcomed to the Java community," reports JAXenter: He went on to reaffirm Microsoft's commitment to Java and that the team is looking forward to giving something back to the Java community. However, the team will not just barge in with a heavy hand, but will start with smaller bug fixes and the like so they can learn how to be "good citizens within OpenJDK." Borges, himself a former Oracle developer, is Principal Product Manager for Java at Microsoft. He presents Martijn Verburg as the Java engineering team lead who will be working together along with other partners in the Java ecosystem. Verburg is also CEO of jClarity, a leading AdoptOpenJDK contributor acquired by Microsoft in August this year, so presumably he will stay true to form and continue to contribute to the Java world, only now with Microsoft at his back... Microsoft's acquisition of jClarity was just the latest in their efforts to gain a foothold in the Java community. There are many Java developers and Java champions who now practice their trade under Microsoft's banner... At JAX London a few weeks ago, Program Chair Sebastian Meyen opened the conference by giving a speech in which he said "Microsoft is now a Java shop". He sees this as a great development, as "it's always good when industry giants stand behind Java."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Laith Abu Zeyad's travel ban by Israel is a 'sinister move' designed to silence critics of the government, Amnesty says.

"I heard the 'pop!' from my living room as a brand-new pack of Amazon batteries spontaneously exploded on the kitchen counter, oozing a gritty black substance in fits and spurts," reports the staff writer for Medium's new tech site, OneZero. But that was just the beginning of a larger mystery, according to their article (shared by Slashdot reader peterthegreat321): The small, unassuming item is one of Amazon's most popular "in-house" products sold under the AmazonBasics label. With nearly 20,000 customer reviews, its popularity dwarfs that of most other AmazonBasics items, which include electronics, homewares, and random odds and ends. The batteries are also highly rated -- had I received a defective set? I scoured the comments page for the alkaline battery for reviews containing the word "explode," revealing dozens of experiences like mine. One person said the batteries had burst in their wife's breast pump. Others had toys and appliances ruined by leaky fluid. Some customers blamed this on alleged Chinese manufacturing, but Amazon vaguely claims in the product's description that they are "made in Indonesia using Japanese technology." Over the past month, I have tried to uncover the hidden life cycle of this simple AmazonBasics battery. Amazon is fiercely secretive about its corporate footprint and masks its operations through a discreet network of outsourcing, making its supply chain hard to unravel. Its AA battery is no different. The product is indeed made in Indonesia, but not by Amazon, I learned. The company buys the batteries from a supplier and reskins them as its own, much like Trader Joe's and its eponymous food brand. Amazon has never voluntarily divulged the sources of AmazonBasics items, but it confirmed OneZero's reporting on where its AA batteries come from. Though I discovered where the batteries were made, I was unable to locate the source of their materials, for example. The difficulty in understanding the supply chain of even a simple component shows how Amazon's operations are deliberately designed to be a black box. This secrecy allows the commercial titan to be ruthlessly competitive, delivering cheaper items faster than rival stores. But it also makes it harder for consumers who wonder whether their purchases are ethically or sustainably sourced to even begin finding answers. Beyond obscuring why merchandise might be defective -- or explosive, in my case -- it hinders those of us who just want to know: Where does it all begin? The article eventually determines that Tokyo-based Fujitsu is a "covert supplier" for AmazonBasics, operating out of "a plain white building in West Java, Indonesia." Medium's reporter also notes that Fujitsu's sustainability report "shows that its Indonesian operations are among the dirtiest, ranking the highest on waste production..." But unfortunately, "I never discovered why my AmazonBasics batteries exploded."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Dresden is the birthplace of the anti-Islam Pegida movement which holds weekly rallies there.

During unprecedented protests, the tuk-tuks of Tahrir Square area have become a welcome sight.

I wrote this on this day in 2016: "Visualize Trump's victory speech where he goes off script because at that point there is no script."

I wrote this on this day in 2016: "Visualize Trump's victory speech where he goes off script because at that point there is no script."