Ken Fabian

Have Musk release the doge's to investigate the breaches? Even without such blatancy I don't expect much legal comeback on Trump. Given the inability to prosecute Trump himself in a timely manner (4 years) - and a Trump friendly Congress and a compliant Supreme Court I won't hold my breath waiting for the wheels of justice to turn on Trump's inner circle.

@toucana Everyone who participated had to know the use of Signal was a breach of security protocols in and of itself. Every one would know they may be called before a relevant Committee and have to answer questions; the politicals might consider lying under oath (in the absence of records) to be BAU but the others? Hard not to think the point of using Signal was to have a discussion that was unofficial, unrecorded (after someone presses 'delete all') and therefore deniable - and they could 'speak their minds' more freely. May even have been instructed by Trump himself to use Signal and push the boundaries of What The President Says is Always Legal? Seems to me like all the more reason to - like organised crime - be very clear who is in the loop. Big oops.

Well, incompetent people being careless of their security obligations might trust the convener and not be clear exactly who they are sharing information with. Actually I would expect organized criminals to want to be sure of who they are talking with before saying anything incriminating. The aides and spooks in the discussion didn't check who was on-line either? I kind of expected it would be an obligation (and a critically serious one) of every participant to know who is included before participating. The junior ones probably had a good grasp of the requirements - but chose not to, out of deference, Trump loyalty or to avoid notice? I wonder if the proper communications protocols - NOT Signal - would have provisions for confirming everyone involved had the requisite clearances. As well as keep records.

Not familiar with Signal but... wouldn't every participant know who every other participant is? Aren't they clearly listed? Wouldn't they check that list if only to be sure everyone who is supposed to be in the discussion is on-line before they start if only to not have to call another meeting? Or is that list only for the 'convener' and others can be kept unaware of the identity of some participants? Which sounds like it would be an absolute no-no for such a meeting to me. It does sound like a level of carelessness as well as disregard for proper procedures for a high level classified meeting that is incompatible with their duty for dealing with classified information.

Whilst not a Greenhouse Gas and displacing fossil fuel use with renewable Hydrogen will reduce global warming raising atmospheric Hydrogen concentrations slows the decay of methane, which undoes some of the gains. One thing to breed or genetically modify termites (or - seems more likely to me - their accompanying micro biota) to produce more Hydrogen, another thing to harvest and use the H2 cost effectively. Low cost enough that it's use will displace fossil fuel use is a major step that other ways of making Hydrogen have not done successfully; much of that due to the storage and transport difficulties. Adding in the requirements for the termite farms to be inside airtight facilities, for a means of extracting H2 from the air, for a supply of biomass to feed them - all the while maintaining an ideal (termite healthy) air mix and temperatures - makes it extraordinarily challenging. How do the costs compare to dedicated solar, wind, storage powered electrolysis? Meanwhile battery EV's are beating Hydrogen EV's by thousands to one, in part because there are electricity grids EV's are able to take advantage of. With Hydrogen the infrastructure for widespread use does not exist and has to be built from zero. I am cynical enough to think most of the leaders of industries that insist that Hydrogen will be best don't actually believe that themselves. Their Hydrogen efforts so far seem to work better as evidence that low emissions is too hard and expensive than as viable decarbonising.

I think most people don't care that much and don't so much have informed or even heartfelt opinions as tend to agree with their preferred pundits and what aligns with political views - and consistent messaging can change those opinions. I think actual policy has been more influenced by the opinions of captains of commerce and industry than by public opinion or the influence of 'green' activism on it - and mostly they have opposed emissions accountability or regulation or subsidy of low emissions energy - enough to be willing to engage in Doubt, Deny, Delay as their principle response. They have a comprehensive kit of tools for influencing government policy - Lobbying, Strategic Donating, Tactical Lawfare, Post Politics Payoffs, Tankthink. They have not used it to do emissions reductions with nuclear. I also suspect the nations that are best able to do nuclear did not and do not want every second nation in the world becoming nuclear competent, restricting it to prevent them building nuclear weapons (too). I am of the view that nuclear was (until RE costs got competitive) more impeded by climate science denial amongst pundits and parties that ostensibly like nuclear energy (no climate problem means no need, not with fossil fuel being abundant and cheaper) than by anti-nuclear activism. Now it is impeded by lack of cost effectiveness compared to renewable energy rather than being unable to compete with fossil fuels. The climate science denial made support for nuclear into a rhetorical blunt instrument for criticising and opposing 'green' climate policies without any requirement for building nuclear power plants themselves. I note that media organisations that have aligned with Doubt, Deny, Delay politics will play the 'they should support nuclear' card but make little real efforts to inform better or defend or promote nuclear, just criticise climate activists for not doing so. That the climate issue appears led and dominated by 'green' politics looks to me more like an enduring failure of mainstream politics to show leadership - a serious abrogation of their duty of care - than any kind of insidious, undue influence of 'green' politics. Handing the issue off to fringe politics like a hot potato and making it about opposing them instead of about the problem itself was a choice (or series of choices) and their failures to address it directly has never been the fault of 'green' (anti-nuclear) politics.

It probably was originally meant to be taken seriously, told by people with limited knowledge of the wider world and poor arithmetic to people not so good at arithmetic too, who would be expected to be awed and terrified of and submissive to a God so powerful and so inclined to harsh collective punishments... and submissive to God's priests (who were also inclined to brutal collective punishments?). Having details like how large would reinforce the idea that it was a true account of a real event but I doubt there was encouragement to think it through and indulge in criticism.

Five cubits away maybe.

Not an American here but energy matters everywhere and the best available advice on climate change says it really has to be low emissions energy. Any discussion of energy subsidies should not pass over and ignore the climate and other externalised consequences and the de facto subsidy that having no accountability for them provides to emissions intensive energy and industries. The impossibility of accurately accounting for how much that 'subsidy' adds to future costs should not be excuse to assume those costs are zero. A shift to EV's over oil for transport is worthwhile in ways that ICE being cheaper right now aren't. My own view re energy 'independence' is that the value of national self reliance without trade is greatly overrated; economies can and do benefit more from what they can produce out of what is inexpensive to import and paying the bills with that greater productivity and export trade than by insisting all their industries use more expensive local resources and impeding their growth. No successful developed nation, not even exceptionally resource rich USA has gotten that way by being isolationist. That said, having a lot of RE that is not subject to the cycles of fossil fuel global pricing and price volatility (and the greedy profiteering from energy crises) as well as having factories making what that takes is undoubtedly economically beneficial as well as necessary to regain climate stability. .

@Sensei Thank you, the sudo dmesg -w command fixed it first go. I was reluctant to enter Terminal (named Konsole in this case) because what is being done is incomprehensible to me, but I was at the point of abandoning it completely, so nothing to lose. But I am making a copy of that instruction where I can get to it easily, just in case the problem recurs. FWIW the usb sticks I tried were fat32 and one external drive shows as vfat (I though it was fat32?) but the other (2TB) external drive was NTFS. I will avoid the NTFS. I might keep going with the dual boot version and see how well it goes. (But I only gave Linux the minimum partition space, just to try it with minimum impact on Windows.) I will hold off for now on a standalone install on a different HDD; have to be a different distro, given the results with the Ubuntu-studio downloads I tried.

Not a usb device but every usb device... except the wireless mouse, that has a usb dongle (I just realised), so maybe just storage devices. And SD cards don't show/mount either. Haven't checked the cdr/dvd drive. I suppose if usb devices worked I might still use the dual boot version - but I would not trust it. Haven't checked every usb file but the ones I looked at seemed fine (on sticks and external hard drives, on Windows of course - can't access them on Linux to see). I had noticed ubuntu did not like the NTFS formatted external drive - it would not allow copying of files to that drive although I could open and read the document files on it. Was not so long after that I noticed I couldn't access any usb devices.

Mine would have been a variant of that distro. I can still use it dual-boot - just unable to use usb (where I like to keep backups of email addresses, important documents, browser settings etc).

Naive of me to expect the installation package to come up with a "hardware not compatible" notice if hardware was not compatible? I know from painful past experience that Windows (Win7 I think it was) can go through the whole installation process and - only at the very end, an hour or two later - give a notice like that. Would've been helpful for it to have checked compatibility at the start, before directing me the wrong way down a one way street. @CharonY my needs are basic and I had been given the impression those could be provided reliably with Linux. I think the working reliably without resort to Terminal text commands for fixes part is an essential requirement for me - without an ongoing need to use Terminal any attempt to learn is not going to stick. Whilst Win10 hasn't been perfect mostly it has worked reliably - an occasional boot into safe mode when icons on start bar go missing has been the worst of it. My post is more rant than call for help, but thanks for all the offers of help. I probably will try Linux again, but not any time soon. I need to get over it first.

Hi @joigus . I use a HP laptop that was upgraded to fresh install of Win10 before i bought it 'refurbished'. By the sticker on it, it originally ran Win7. Ubuntu ran okay as dual boot, until losing the ability to mount USB (and SD) along the way - which worked fine, until it didn't. I wondered if I was supposed to have pre-formatted the new HDD somehow - I just assumed (always risky to assume) that the install process could cope, even do it better with a new, untouched HDD and assumed it would make the appropriate partitions (boot partition?) after I used the 'erase disk and install' option. Without an OS I don't have a ready means to format. Give myself a bit of time to get over the frustrations and I might try again, with a different version, but I don't enjoy the tinkering, which for me is only for problem fixing, out of necessity - the better it runs the less tinkering I would expect to face, which, ideally, won't be enough to gain lasting knowledge or skill with Linux Terminal/Konsole. My uses are quite basic - the choice of ubuntu-studio was for the audio software (I play a bit of guitar and sing a bit - preferably not where people can hear me!) - but mostly just for browsing, emails and occasional documents and picture printing.

Thanks @studiot Actually the Dual Boot with Windows did work okay... once I found how to bring up the OS choice screen( holding down the 'shift' key). Until it stopped recognising any usb drives the ubuntu OS worked okay as dual boot. Then I got a new hdd and installed just Linux on it, starting with 'erase disk and install ubuntu', so no conflicts with Win10. After three install attempts with it, with two different downloads, I just get "no bootdevice" and "install operating system". I suppose someone will have a fix, no doubt with incomprehensible Terminal text commands, or I could try a different distro and hope I'm lucky, but I feel like I've wasted too much time and effort already. I have switched the hdd back to the one with the dual boot drive and am back to using the Win10, not the Linux.