There's a bit of interesting parallel (or antiparallel) to US transportation in the mid-late 1800's. Then the common form of transport was horse (or horse and wagon), but transitioned to train. So the control of travel went from the individual traveler to a conductor and railway organization that defined schedules and managed safety. In the late 1800's/early 1900's cars became popular and the control of travel went back to the individual. Now we're talking about control shifting back to a more centralized operator, software developed/maintained by a central organization (or a few companies).

One important aspect, which of course everyone talks about: when control is centralized, so is liability. How do we handle liability in this case?

You mean you *don't* stack your hard drives vertically on their short edges?

From a strength-to-weight ratio, which is a big part of the design considerations, is it really superior to aluminum, or titanium, or other metals? That may be very dependent upon structural design of course. If I were a spacecraft manufacturer they'd need to convince me that they can achieve the same structural rigidity for the same (or lower) mass. One potential benefit that they mention: RF can pass through the wood structure, which might make for simpler antenna designs.

which reminds me of this alarming demonstration from Harvard of evolution and developing resistance to things that should kill you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

It's funny that you mention accuracy. Up here in MA, my area was predicted to get 6-10" as of Monday morning's forecast (for Tuesday). The forecasters were seemingly quite confident, enough so that most schools in my area declared a snow day by Monday afternoon. Monday evening rolled around and the forecast dropped to 1-3". As of this afternoon, my back yard has maybe 1" of snow.

This was a wasted snow day. That said, snow days a special for kids - a surprise gift that they should be able to enjoy. Let them play! As our school superintendent declared on our first snow day after COVID, when there was chatter the district would convert snow days to remote learning days: "sleep in, play in the snow, watch a holiday movie, and most importantly, take a day off of your computer".

Certainly not arguing against it, just trying to find the solution with least environmental impact, and noting that it's a bit more complicated than it may seem (or at least seemed to me). I'm all for charging for the bags, with the proceeds ideally going to environmental efforts. I think I'll keep going with my reusable-but-plastic-based bags, and keep an eye out for cheap non-plastic based ones to replace mine as I wear them out.

This is the sort of study I'm referring to:

https://stanfordmag.org/conten...

There's lots of debate about this, and I'm not sure which way it really goes. In short, seems like ~139 uses and the reusable bag breaks even with plastic bags. I use them once a week for grocery shopping so that's ~3 years. I think mine last more than 3 years typically, but not by a lot - maybe 5-6 years, albeit very material dependent.

Agreed! Where I live (northeast U.S.) there's a store that has a brand called "Nature's Promise", which is higher-end produce, usually organically grown. Their fruit (grapes, berries) is very good but sold in stiff plastic containers that are heavy and annoying to store in the fridge. Kind of an odd juxtaposition of appearing "natural" (organic) but not environmentally conscious.

Agreed, I haven't been using them for a long time, and it wasn't a tough transition. I use "reusable" bags, some of which are nice because they're insulated, but I have seen some studies that say such bags may be worse in the long term because they have proportionally more plastic per use. As I wear out these, I'm looking for alternatives (canvas?) that may be better.

The only thing I miss about plastic bags is that they're handy around the house for a second use to bag up smelly expired food, throw out a dead mouse from the attic, pick up after the dog, or other uses where you just need to quickly seal something up and throw it out. I used to have a glut of them in the house, but no more. I'll survive.

More like on its side, since it was supposed to land with its thrusters horizontal.

Maybe things aren't dire enough, but I wonder if the rovers could do anything to help the lander upright itself. Obvious risk in getting the rovers stuck and not sure if it's worth it with lunar night coming, but it would make for a fun rescue mission!

This! I'm in New England, where Stop and Shop (Giant elsewhere) has handheld scanners that you carry with you as you shop. Bring reusable bags and you can scan and bag as you walk. When you go to self checkout you just have to press a button, a barcode appears on the scanner screen, you scan it and all of your items are downloaded to that checkout station. You pay and are out very quickly. It's so simple. There are occasions where their local wifi is down so it won't work, but I'd say over 95% uptime.

You do need a membership (free), so that is a downside. But you can also pre-load coupons onto your account via the app, which get applied at checkout automatically.

Our grocery store has a handheld scanner that you carry with you on the cart. When you get to self-checkout you press a button and scan a barcode on the handheld scanner, which loads everything onto the register. I can walk up and pay and be out in under a minute. There are periodic audits to make sure you're not stealing anything. I love it as a customer, but I can't say what the impact is for the grocery store.

In principle I don't see an issue with a private store having facial recognition to identify potential shoplifters. Walk into any corner store in NYC and you'll see the cashier has a list of names or photos of people that are not welcome. This is just an automated version.

The problem to me is that Rite Aid used it in really irresponsible ways. First, facial recognition is known to have false positives, so relying upon it to stop crime is ridiculous. The fact that this wasn't shut down immediately upon the first false positive tells you what Rite Aid thinks of their customer base. Second, asking store employees to confront people that are "recognized" by the facial recognition, even if those people aren't actively engaged in shoplifting, endangers the employees and legally exposes Rite Aid. I'm shocked the company doesn't have a legal division that could see this problem coming from a mile away.

Enceladus and Europa are the most compelling to places in the solar system to be putting landers, as far as I can tell. Mars is great, but those moons have potential for real, actual life, right now. This plume run by Cassini seems a prelude to what we'd get with the ELF mission. The question is whether the current evidence is compelling enough to argue for a lander to complement the ELF plume fly-throughs.

How do space telescopes handle this sort of damage? Reading the summary I assumed they were talking about telescopes until they said they replaced the cameras every few months. Why don't space-based telescopes have the same problem?