This was done! It created terrible publicity incidents like the TSA forcing women to drink their own breast milk to prove it was safe. And not all liquids subject to this are things a person should swig even if they aren’t explosives. The extremely negative PR rightly stopped this practice.
Is that practice not really common? I’ve seen that done as a matter of course on lots of international airports with baby food / liquid and no one seems to get too fussed about it.
People travel with liquids they don't intend to eat. Shampoo and all that.
There is also nothing that precludes explosives from being non-toxic. Presumably your demise is near if you are carrying explosives through security. What do you care about heavy metal poisoning at that point?
But also you can fill up a water bottle after security. Wouldn't it be fairly easy to make a pen or similar innocuous item out of sodium, and drop it in a bottle of water to make an explosion?
My point is that security can never be strict enough to catch someone who's truly motivated and funded, without making it impossible to admit people at a reasonable pace, and the current rules don't really help with that except for cutting down on the riff raff terrorists. But maybe those are more common than a trained professional with high tech weapons, I don't know.
FWIW, sodium in water is such a pathetic explosion that it would mostly be an embarrassment for the would-be bomber. It wouldn’t do any meaningful damage.
An explosion with real gravitas is far more difficult to execute than people imagine. (see also: people that think ANFO is a viable explosive) This goes a long way in explaining why truly destructive bombings are rare.
The USA mostly used .50 caliber machine guns, usually with a mix of ammunition including incendiary bullets so that a hole in a fuel tank meant a large fire. Fighters from the other major combatants usually had 20mm autocannons in addition to smaller machine guns.
Allied fighters were also equipped with self-sealing fuel tanks, so a hit doesn't automatically mean it burns. I don't have any stats on it, but they wouldn't have added the self-sealing if it didn't improve the survivability.
The sensitive part for a P-51 was the cooling system. Any hit on that, and you're done.
B-17s famously endured a lot of battle damage. The usual vector of attack on them was head on, and they aimed for the cockpit. (Attacks on fighters usually aimed for the cockpit, too.)
I know that tracers were used in WW1 to set observation balloons (filled with hydrogen) afire. Tracers in WW2 were used so the gunner could direct his aim. I haven't read that they were intended for the fuel tanks, but that could be true.
109's would frequently sneak up from the rear, and if the tail gunner was not paying attention, it was an easy kill. My dad (B17 navigator) said the tail gunners, once they spotted a 109, would fire a few rounds of tracers long before the 109 was in range - just to let the pilot know they were awake and aware. It usually meant the 109 would veer off.
Incendiary ammunition is distinct from tracer, though some projectiles have both functions, and tracers have a chance of causing a fire. Incendiary projectiles usually ignite or explode after impact.
> My point is that security can never be strict enough to catch someone who's truly motivated and funded, without making it impossible to admit people at a reasonable pace, and the current rules don't really help with that except for cutting down on the riff raff terrorists.
This is the classic HN developer arrogance and oversimplification, but let's accept this as true for argument's sake. It turns out that "riff raff terrorists" are the only ones we needed to stop as there's been no successful bombings of Western airlines in 25 years, and there have been foiled attempts.
The existence of master locksmiths (and door breaching charges) doesn't mean you shouldn't lock your door at night.
Literally none of these were foiled by the security circus we all have to go through.
If anything, they are evidence that serious attempts are foiled by intelligence services long before the perpetrators get anywhere near an airport, and the others were just incompetent idiots.
Nonetheless, I hope you recognise that incompetent idiots beget more incompetent idiots, if they think they'll get away with it. You don't want e.g. a spate of bank robberies, by idiots who've heard that rubbing lemon juice on your face makes you invisible to cameras. It doesn't matter that they'll get obviously get caught, the problem is a spate of idiots attempting bank robberies (because they're filled with confidence they'll succeed) could easily get people killed.
I don't like security theatre either, and clearly the whole thing is a job creation program and an excuse for vendors to sell flashy scanner devices. But you need visible deterrents, even if most people know they're theatre.
They also act as reassurance for idiots who wouldn't fly otherwise. Idiots' money spends just as well as clever people's money, and there's a lot more idiots out there than clever people.
Because we live in a society with a free press, we have the chattering classes asking "what can we do about this threat?", and government is expected to respond. People don't like to hear from the politician "you're idiots, we don't need that, you are no less safe if we do nothing", they like to hear "we're doing XYZ to address this threat, how clever and wonderful you all are, dear citizens, for recognising it. Your safety is my top priority", then we get the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism
I wish I'd missed it. We had 12 feet of snow in 3 weeks where I live in the Sierra, and we're only at 4,500 feet above sea level. We average several feet a year, so we know snow, but not 12 feet in 3 weeks. We couldn't see out of our windows. I spent 3-8 hours a day for 3 weeks clearing snow from our driveway and cul-de-sac, only to have to wait longer for the county to clear the road beyond. We were running out of places to put the snow we cleared. Towards the end, people could no longer clear their roofs because the snow on the ground was so high. Decks collapsed everywhere, as did several roofs. There was no getting out for supplies, emergencies, etc. The ski resort nearest us closed because it was too difficult to get there.
Immediately after, we had a foot of rain in two weeks. That took care of much of the snow. But it also washed away significant roads (along with several feet of earth beneath them), some of which took a year or more to get back open.
The ground was so saturated that many septic systems failed in my neighborhood, some with water running into the houses through toilets/drains because the underground water table on the high side of their property was above those drains (artesian springs aren't so charming when they are coming through your septic system and out of your toilet). Most of those folks have installed one-way valves now, but that still means you can't flush in such scenarios because the water has nowhere to go. Ours didn't flow in reverse, but our drains/toilets stopped draining for ~2 months.
I like winter weather, but I'd be happy to never relive Feb/Mar of 2023 in the Sierra. I'll still take it over the floods that happen in valleys and flat lands as a result of such events.
Maybe, but I think it could have made a small team very wealthy and successful much more than it did a large company.
It was obviously pitched as an ecosystem/platform play, like "the next vmware" or something, but there was never anything close to a real moat there. Running a registry involved a lot of storage and transfer costs plus spam/abuse management, and private registry was always going to be a better fit for being integrated with CI platforms and the like more than a standalone service with its own auth and billing concerns.
That's a good point. I do remember doing problems related to extending formulae outside the radius of convergence in my final year before university, but I don't think it's fair to ask for proper complex analysis from 17-year-olds.
They're not. Rural electricity can be had in the United States for far less than PG&E's charging. Look at Hawaii, Alasaka, TVA, etc., etc. PG&E is expensive because they have to pay for negligence, homicide, stock buybacks, dividends, executive bonuses, lobbyists, and back maintenance.
It's also worth noting that PG&E's got a history of astroturfing. Back in the 00s there was a local blogger, Greg Dewar, who ran a blog called the N Judah Chronicles. Ostensibly it was a blog about Muni and transit issues, but when muni power in SF came up for a vote boy was he hopping mad. It wasn't until someone else called him out for being on the PG&E payroll that he owned up to being paid to astroturf.
1.The last time PG&E had a stock buy back was in 2006.
2. Their dividend yield was 0.8% in 2025, the average for utilities was 3% to 5%. Alaska's APTL was 2.4% to 3.4%
3. Their state lobbying for 2024 to 2025 was less than $4 million. Federal was $60k (both insignificant)
4. California AB 1054 means that almost all of their largest liabilities will be reimbursed via the state wildfire fund. They also have insurance for anything that is not covered. While this won't cover it all the amount actually owned is likely to be low.
I also checked executive bonuses and while the CEOs pay is on the higher end it's not extreme. Not sure how much other executive bonuses could really add up enough to stand on its own as a reason for high electric rates, especially since all your other main arguments seem to be incorrect or exaggerated.
Regarding "back maintenance" this is a standard expense for a utility. Do you have some evidence that it's particularly high for PG&E, taking into account the size of the state?
Why would you make the assumption that the reasons PG&E is expensive(which I haven't even checked) are mostly due to corruption, excess pay or benefits to stock holders, or that the utility has a high liability debt? Most of the reasons you gave are ones that look bad for the leadership of the utility and maybe even the state. Is it possible that due to political propaganda over the long term you default to the assumption that anything a California connected entity does is bad so much so you don't even bother gathering evidence?
Also Hawaii has much higher electric rates than CA.
(Sources for any claims I made are available if requested)
HE is claiming a residential customer will pay around $0.45/kWh which is absolutely on par with PG&E. Keep in mind that HE currently charges fixed fees for electric service, PG&E doesn't yet but will add a fixed fee of $24/mo beginning next year. It shouldn't even be close. Practical Engineering covers it but Hawaiian Electric has some of the biggest challenges of all POCOs.
Most people agree that we need utilities to be monopolies. PG&E, for all intents and purposes, is an arm of the state. Perhaps it’s private in some sense but we all know it’s the government. It has to abide by all manner of government mandates, there is no competition. If you want it to go bankrupt just let it go bankrupt. Whatever replaces it will be the same thing. I don’t have a solution but all the teeth gnashing isn’t going to change the fact that electricity is a government issue and whoever runs it will work at the behest of the California government and the voters.
Pass whatever rules you want. It isn’t going to change the fundamental nature of the org, which is a reflection of the voters. This is a government problem, through and through
> electricity is a government issue and whoever runs it will work at the behest of the California government and the voters.
That's hilarious. The CPUC is regularory-captured like nobody's business, and our governor has been in the pocket of the utility for as long as I can remember. I guess in some sick way that's "at the behest of the government", but it sure as hell isn't at the behest of voters.
Unfortunately, we rarely have choices in every aspect of political candidates in order to change this state of affairs.
Why should people in the sustainable areas keep feeding the cancerous growth of worthless degenerate parasites? Serious question, as city folk keep ratholing into more and more socially destructive technologies, technologies designed to hamstring people, they lose the relative value.
Look at youtube, tiktok. Fine that's entertainment (set aside the issue of infotainment that has already infected public education). Then look at so called "productivity apps", or language learning apps. It's one thing to waste billions of collective man-hours it's another thing to lie and tell people they are learning or being more productive when you are wasting their time.
There are no mass assembly lines in the US, city GDP has been paper GDP for a long time now. On-shoring won't work without a total collapse of every culturally-enriched city, people need to learn hardship again.
If - if - people who live in the boonies deserve to have the burying of their tens of thousands of line-miles subsidized by others, it's by taxpayers, not by electric users in efficiently-served areas.
The difference between being taxpayer-financed and user-financed is that Ellison is on the hook for 10000x as much as granny instead of 20x. If it's a public good it should be paid by the public. A six-year-old keeping the light on at night should not incur a 120% surcharge for burying the transmission lines to a mansion in St. Helena.
This is ridiculous. What could you possibly mean? Everyone decides where they live. The cost of moving is not high, the ability to secure a job never easier.
This is a luxury belief and not borne out by any sort of reality. People have been deciding where they live for millennia and it’s never been easier than today.
Well, urban areas tend to be much more expensive to live in, especially in California. And most people don’t work in tech and enjoy relatively good job prospects.
It was used correctly. What CAs wanted to sell wasn't something browsers wanted to support, and EV was the compromise. It just happens that what EV meant wasn't that useful irl.
What's the alternative, showing the company's unique registration ID?
CAs invented EVs because the wanted to sell something which could make them more money than DVs. The fact that company names aren't unique means that the whole concept was fundamentally flawed from the start: there is no identifier which is both human-readable and guaranteed to uniquely identify an entity. They wanted to sell something which can't exist. The closest thing we have got is... domain names.
The alternative would have been to have the CA use human judgement when approving EV certificates and reject applications from organizations whose names shadowed better-known firms, or to only accept applications from a select set of organizations (like, say, banks). But either of those possibilities would have increased the cost of the program and limited the pool of applicants, so CAs chose the cheap, easy path which led to EV certificates becoming meaningless.
How many CAs do you think there are? How many countries do you think they operate in?
Maybe we could augment the old EV cert indicator with a flag icon, but now there's yet another thing that users have to pay attention to. Maybe the CA/Browser Forum could run a clearinghouse for company names, but apart from trivial examples, there might very well be legitimate cases of two companies with the same name in the same country, just in different industries. Now do we augment the indicator with an industry icon too? Then the company changes its name, or forms a subsidiary relationship, or what have you. Now do we need to put "Meta (formerly Facebook)" or "Facebook (division of Meta)" etc. in the name?
There's just so many problems with the EV cert approach at Internet scale and they're largely beyond solvable with current infrastructure and end-user expectations.
How do you decide when a company is "well-known"? What's going to happen when there are two well-known companies with the same name or a very similar name? What if a well-known company in country A expands to country B, where a well-known company with that name (but active in a different industry) already exists? How are you going to deal with subsidiaries which are both legally and organizationally separate? Who gets to keep the EV when a company spins off a division but both parts retain the same name?
"Use human judgement" might work for trivial examples of fraud, but it quickly breaks down once you try applying it to the real world. Besides, how are you going to apply the same "human judgement" across hundreds of employees at dozens of CAs? If anything, you're just begging to get sued by large corporations whose complex situation fell on the wrong side of your human judgement.
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