For lack of available fuel? For lack of refrigeration in the warehouses that used to store the food they deliver? For lack of whole chunks of the supply chain upstream from their knife's-edge just-in-time delivery infrastructure? Because roads would be blocked or at least hosed up for lack of traffic control? Because people would be truck-jacking anything that looked valuable?

The entire infrastructure that brings food to people right before they actually need it is incredibly fragile. The trucks, needing fuel, communications, functioning computer-controlled drive trains, and managed roadways, are just one part of it.

The numbre of survivalist-type people is completely, utterly eclipsed by the number of people who have no clue about (or interest in) being sensible in an emergency. Look at New Orleans, where people living below sea level had days of warning, and couldn't be bothered to fill up a few jugs of drinking water or move their fleet of school buses into a useful place. And they're used to big storms down there! Now imagine lower Manhattan suddenly without any power or comms or viable transportation for weeks or more. Or the suburbs around DC. Yeah.

You're so cute, there.

Even more cute!

They other guy in the conversation was a KGB agent, has said publicly that he thinks the end of the Soviet Union was a huge tragedy, and is slowly but surely trying to build that empire back up again - and once again, using force.

That "phone in" show was completely scripted. You utterly embarrass yourself pretending otherwise. For you to go to that much trouble with the charade suggests that you're every bit the shill/puppet that Snowden was during that little bit of theater. You're not fooling anybody, so please stop trying.

No, by "we" he means all of us who think that. Thinking that doling out the huge amount of information he stole, and then wandering his way through one totalitarian country before setting up shop in another is a bad thing and indicative of his muddled world view ... that's not "the government line," that's being realistic. Snowden was and is being handled. His appearance on TV with Putin couldn't have looked more scripted, or more set up to allow Putin to answer in the dismissive, oily way that he did - all while sending the Useful Idiots that think Snowden is a clear-headed hero a nice little pat on the head.

I use Evernote. But I don’t trust it.

I use Evernote for most of my digital notes stuff. I like the syncing feature which keeps notes on my mac, smartphone and tablet in sync.

However I don’t trust it for really important long-term stuff. Really essential stuff, such as long writing projects, articles, essays, important letters or digital journals go into textfiles that are in directories covered by redundant backup/archive mechanisms on detached portable HDDs with filesystems that can be read with widely available free open source software (Mac OS X HFS *without* journaling).

Doing anything else with anything valuable that’s supposed to stay useable longer than a decade is insane.

For instance, I still have CD copies of CD Archives of Zip Disk Archives of very old HDDs (2,5 40 MB HDDs would fit on one ZipDisk attached via parallel port - yepp, those were the days) with texts written in Ami Pro. The Ami Pro format is openable with a regular text editor, but it still is anoying to extract the useful data. No way am I installing Dos 5 and Win 3.11 on a Vbox just to run Ami Pro just to open them. Hence, only UTF-8 textfiles since round-about 2000.

You should do the same for any journal stuff that is supposed to last longer than 3 years.

My 2 cents.

Limited demand. They'd be selling a product that's both low quality and illegal to own. The target market for that would be criminals with money to spend, who don't already have access to equal or better guns. And it's not like you can set up shop on a street corner; secrecy is expensive.

Basically, a black market Sten Gun factory has all the drawbacks of illegal arms dealing AND startup costs to boot. I'm not surprised it isn't a thing yet. Oh, and I doubt 3D printing will make it a reality any time soon - the startup costs would be lower, but the 3D printed guns would be even worse than cheap locally manufactured metal guns.

There are places in the world where the locals make cheap metal guns en masse, but they tend to be places like Chechnya rather than the UK.

FWIW, the animal did appear to be adequately anesthetized as it did not flinch with the incision or suturing, and, no, he was not good, he barely knew what he was doing:
- wrong scalpel. That was a 10 blade used for long linear incision (e.g. > 10-40 mm). He should have used an 11 or 15 blade which are smaller and better suited to precision cuts, which these were not - he hacked at the skin instead if cleanly incising (so the technique was bad, the blade was dull, and he used the wrong blade).
- he did not use a pair of forceps to grasp the skin putting him self at risk of a needle-stick injury.
- needle entry was not perpendicular to the skin
- he used PDS suture (it looked purple) , which is _never_ used on skin (especially externalized). Prolene is used for an external knot, or vicryl or monocryl for a subcuticular suture
- the suture looks to be a 3-0 or 4-0....that's what I would use to close an adult human (5-0,which is smaller, for the face). Should probably be using 5-0 or 6-0 here. Then again, this guy would probably break that suture since he doesn't have the manual dexterity or technique. - he should have used a horizontal or 2 vertical mattress sutures to close the defect, not a single simple suture
- he didn't tie square knots and his tying was worse than a medical student's (who don't know how to suture either)
So I may just be nitpicking but, then again, that's what I do as an academic surgeon who trains upcoming surgeons.

But to actually address the article: It looks promising. I have questions about:
A) potential toxicity (nanoparticles can behave in less predictable way in-vivo) [large volumes of iron can be toxic to the body hemosiderin leading to iron overload], also silica is sometimes not well tolerated by the body
B) I would like to see this applied in a larger model (porcine would be good), with a large volume hemorrhage (analogous to a human GSW or stabbing wound) to see if the tensile strength of this seal scales up and to see if a large volume of blood will wash it away rendering it useless.
C) Does it withstand the detergent like properties of bile?
D) What percentage of normal tensile strength does this technique afford? Sutures physically hold tissue together to prevent separation under shear stress - how much strength does this stuff afford?
E) Does the substance affect normal wound healing (scar tissue is a normal, appropriate response, in an adult, to tissue injury; less scar may mean abnormal or poorer wound healing)
F) Will it be scalable (yes you can produce it in a lab easily enough, but can you make medical grade easily?)
G) Can it cause injury to adjoining tissue? The edge of the wound is hypoxic (low oxygen concentration), will this be toxic to these at risk tissues?

It is a long way from the lab to clinical use, but this appears promising. Look forward to seeing how the technology plays out. And no....it won't put me out of a job, but if it works out it may make my job easier and give better outcomes.

Semantics.

It does not use the term "mechanical". I did- because there was more to this incident than just human error.

It cites in that very first paragraph in 3.2 that the pitot tubes icing over is a failure. If you conclude that because it never says "mechanical" (my term as things that go wrong with the aircraft or its systems are referred to in this way) that there was not a aspect of systems being inop in the outcome, then you are using semantics to make your case.

You made the claim that the "pilots were the cause of the crash". I dispute that simplification of events as inaccurate and misleading. The mishap report concludes that in addition to pilot error, poor training, weather and the "total loss of airspeed information" caused by a (mechanical, sytems, or whatever term you prefer) failure of the Pitot tubes were components of this disaster. Pitot tubes were replaced wherever they were in use, including the aircraft that I am type rated in and have over 8000 hours experience in, as part of Airworthiness Directive that existed prior to this accident. Wonder why...

...perhaps because the Thales versions were prone to "fail" to perform as intended.

This incident has some similarities to the Asiana crash in SFO. In both cases, pilots failed to recognize FMA's (flight mode annunciation). In Schipol, the autothrust had changed to retard mode (used during the flare) which allows the airplane to slow below ref speed and land. In SFO, they may have disarmed the autothrust instead of disconnected it, the difference being that they bypassed the low speed wakeup function of the autothrust which prevents low energy conditions.

In both cases, pilots lacked understanding of the automation. However, in the first case the automation malfunctioned.

That is exactly how we are trained with regard to the use of automation: If its increasing your workload, turn it off. We are encouraged to occasionally fly not only without the autopilot, but also without flight directors and autothrust off. The idea being to maintain proficiency.

Bullshit! The cause of the crash was the product of poor decision making, poor training, and mechanical failure. Every mishap is the product of a chain of events, so to say "the pilots were the cause of the crash" is completely wrong and misleading.

The cause of the AF442 mishap is detailed here. And it says that the pilots flew into an area of weather that they knew about, lost air data, and entered a stall from which the did not recover. You're overemphasizing the pilots role, under emphasizing the mechanical failure and exaggerating the capability of automation.

WTF does that mean? Am I supposed to react with giddy agreement that my profession is pointless? Using your logic, humans need never do anything that can be automated- surgery, programming, procreation...

No artificial intelligence can replace the versatility of the human mind. Pilots are there for the ability to make decisions under widely varying conditions. The automation is there to lessen the work load.

Yeah, and when your idea of the pilot-less cockpit is attained it will be "The vast majority of heavy aircraft losses are due to lack of pilots."

Sharp PC 1403H from '91. I'd bet money that my 1986 Sharp PC 1402 (same device with less memory) still would be working too if I hadn't sold it.
Batteries are from the 90ies too - haven't replaced them since. Still work. Still have microcassettes with my own software on them, such as a Shadowrun (1st Ed.) Character Builder. Would print out the stats on the cash register strip printer. Still have that too, still works. :-)

My Mac Mini from 2006 still is going strong, aswell as my HTC Desire HD Smartphone and my HTC Flyer tablet, both of which have been in hard everyday use since 3 and 2 years ago respectively. Both have been dropped hard multiple times, the Flyer is nicked and dented around the edges, the pounch looks like it's been through a war and I've wasted 3 hardcases on my HTC Desire HD and replaced the battery and protective foil once, because it was so banged up already. I expect both to last another few years with everyday use. It's a shame replacing the HTC Flyer battery isn't done as easyly as with the phone.

I consider the HTC Desire HD and the HTC Flyer the best smartphone and tablet enclosures ever (solid aluminium), better even than Apples current cases - although the iPad Air enclosure does look cool. Shame they don't build them in that quality anymore. They are from a time when everyone was rushing into the mobile market and trying to make a name for themselves. Although the HTC One line still has pretty goog enclosures.

Interesting tidbit: The HTC Flyers enclosure is top notch and very sturdy which makes it notably heavier than your usual 7" plastic tablet. That's actually a little downside.

'If a student wants football and Greek life and not doing any work for class, they have every single Ivy League university to choose from,' Nelson says.

Yeah, I'm sure that's an accurate portrayal of Ivy League schools, and not some capitalist's attempt at devaluing the competition.

While it gets regular maintenance that includes depot level refurbishments, they fly an average of 10 hours per day. The oldest I've flown, that is still in operation, was delivered June of 1997. It is rare that they are taken out of service. The oldest of all aircraft I've flown still in operation is a P-3C delivered in 1985- soon to be retired. This model has seen a good deal of press coverage of late for the missions it has flown in search of MH370 in the Indian Ocean.

Not that it gets much use anymore...

Still working since the day it was acquired in fall of 1985. This despite having been immersed in water (covered the circuit board but left the floppy drives dry) after a basement flooding a year ago. Its a bit reluctant to boot sometimes but after a power cycle or two, loads up to DOS 3.1 or basic.