relin

True, it's a drop in a rather large bucket. I guess my issue is the principle: they're not charging for piloting but for handling the cargo... which is done by SpaceX equipment and staff.

http://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/spacex/2016/06/20/spacex-may-face-port-canaveral-fee-booster-return/86135670/ I can see why the Port Authority would make the move, especially with minor damage being reported, but 14x the typical rate for commercial goods? Screams "cash grab".

Anyone else getting an "Error loading player: No playable sources found"? Edit: seems to run just fine on my phone, but won't run in any browser on my Linux box. Oh well.

It was a good year for rain, but a single year of slightly-above-average rainfall cannot reverse a drought of this severity. Maybe if El Nino stuck around for a few more years...

I'd argue the worst example (fairly certain it's the same show, too!) is when two people, attempting to defend against an active attack, use the same keyboard to enter commands. As in, one of the two people has their right hand exclusively on a 10-key. In my office, we warmly refer to that as "double hacking".

I didn't even realize how much this bothered me until someone wrote it out like that. Same goes for any thrown weapon really -- tomahawks and spears have the same rules -- but the rotating thrown items get me the most.

My co-workers know me so well: Close enough, co-worker. Close enough.

I think the post above mine demonstrates your point perfectly: too little data, therefore "science doesn't bring evidence anymore". Even beyond that, there's the problem with convincing someone they're wrong. In most cases, putting up a valid defense of your position only causes the other to double down. No one likes admitting they're wrong, and absolutely no one likes being FORCED to admit they were wrong.

"Missiles" aren't exactly part of the "Star Wars" model @jrphilps was talking about, so I'm thinking turbolasers. And I'm not visualizing how one such turbolaser every ~6mi along the equator would be enough, much less one every ~55,000 mi2. Could you explain where you got your answer?

Around the equator, right? That estimate seems low for just that latitude, much less all of them.

So we essentially got lucky in finding Pluto? That's crazy.

No, they describe this as a full planet, much larger than Earth. From the Caltech article:

From the LA Times: Saw this on the way to dinner tonight. First live launch of anything I've been able to see, so I thought I'd share to see if anyone else spotted it.

That was my second thought, after a poorly-mounted engine getting loose during flight. I don't think the latter would cause that kind of damage, but an ejection charge might.

There are huge sections of the first-world economy that would grind to a halt if the internet went down. That's more than an annoyance, and that'll happen immediately before getting worse. Beyond that, we'd survive.

That's a failure of imagination on your part, not an argument against research spending. In the real world, there is no one who can predict how useful (or useless) an avenue of research will be until it's done.

Exactly, because there couldn't POSSIBLY be any real-world applications to those things.

It's the third brightest object in the sky... behind the Sun and the Moon. If you've ever seen it, you know it's brighter than Venus by a country mile.

Yes, it was "only" a third of the participants, but no other piece of software has been even THAT successful. It's considerably better than a Cleverbot.

It's the same bot that hit ~29% in a previous test. A couple more years of work and it still only managed to improve by 4%. Crazy to consider how hard it is to converse convincingly with a human who's actively trying to discern your reality. It's also pretty cool that Turing was only off by 14 years.

*Mercedes-Benz

Medium-rare, all the way. Grew up on well-done steaks due to over-protective parents, but can't really go back. Not that I eat meat very often anyway, but that's definitely what I prefer.

Hulu had the entirety of Sagan's show, but it seems that was temporary to prepare for the new version. That's disappointing, I only got to watch the first episode.

Also, make sure you have the latest version of the appropriate graphics driver.

The Martian, by Andy Weir. Excellent, hard sf.