Butterfly effect nothing - we've been the invasive species from hell, upending ecosystems wherever we go. Usually starting with exterminating all the megafauna.

>Seems to me that I would save that for emergencies.
Says otherwise.

And on the return flight you're already going slow - you slow down almost immediately when you hit thicker air at supersonic speeds without actively pushing through it. If you were lucky you might be able to collect enough air at high enough pressure to be useful during the initial slowdown, but at cruising speeds you're probably sunk. Especially since there's no part of the rocket that reliably faces directly into the line of motion, meaning Bernoulli effects will dramatically lower the effective air pressure at the inlet.

Besides which the air you collect will likely be wet, dirty, possibly ozone-rich, and would then be fed through systems that are absolutely vital to the whole "don't go boom at the landing site" thing, as we've just seen. Probably counterproductive to the goal of high reliability and easy maintenance.

It is an interesting idea, but I can see why they'd prefer to stick to a nice simple open loop hydraulic system, at least for now - they've got enough other "interesting ideas" to wrestle with already, no sense in borrowing trouble.

No, it's really not. Not when it involves actively undermining legal social movements trying to change things in accordance with the law.

And when is the last time the government had a popular mandate? It's rare that even half the population votes, and elections are usually so close that even the winners are supported by less than 1/4 of the population, most of whom are voting against "the other team" rather than in favor of "their" candidate. Congressional approval ratings have been lower than even major ISPs for how long now?

The part where the rabble (supposedly) get representation is new. Roman citizenship was multi-tiered, and only the upper class (native-born landowners? something like that) got a vote.

France is also charging forward with attempts to expand government powers to monitor threats -- and to punish those who praise or do not readily condemn terrorism.

WTF? R'ing TFA... not a whole lot, but here's a bit more from the article:

France is also charging forward with attempts to expand government powers to monitor threats -- and to punish those who praise or do not readily condemn terrorism. Leaders this week called for new legislation to significantly bolster domestic intelligence agencies.

Another law, a fast-track judicial process for accusations related to terrorism, was on the books as of November but had not been widely used before the Paris attacks. In recent days, however, prosecutors have filled the dockets with more than 100 cases that are speeding through courtrooms. People who have expressed support for the attacks have been sentenced to as much as 15 months in prison.

A top French opposition politician, Eric Ciotti, said this week that the government should withhold social benefits from the parents of children who failed to observe moments of silence in schools.

One of the down sides to being an early adopter. We were one of the first kids on the block to install this shiny new "representative democracy" thing on a large scale, but the bugs really hadn't been worked out yet, and political parasites immediately began to exploit it's weaknesses to insulate themselves from the will of the people. A couple centuries of digging in and they make ticks look positively benevolent. And of course since they're the ones making the rules, good luck dislodging them. Especially with the various black-op "security" branches showing a distinct bias towards interpreting their job as "protecting the status quo"

>I'm a frontend web developer and absolutely *not* an expert on accessibility in any way.

And this right here is what is wrong with so very, very much of the web. Well, that and a generally poor understanding of normal usability/interface design as well. But hey, at least we finally (mostly) got rid of the %$#@! blink tag!

True, but usage has been accelerating exponentially, and there's not really any firm date you can point to and say "this is where it started getting bad".

If the first atomic blast lines up with the rough time period when we started having a dramatic effect on a planetary scale, and offers a convenient global geologic marker in global radioisotope deposits, then it seems like as good a boundary point as any, and better than most.

That said, I've seen some good arguments that global desertification over the last 5-10,000 years can be laid at the feet of our ancestors' hunting, agriculture, and animal husbandry practices. Certainly there's plenty of evidence that there's been a massive extinction event over that time period, with fairly solid evidence that humans were directly responsible for at least a large portion of it. Seems to me that those would both qualify as " a significant impact on Earth"

So, instead of taking a larger reservoir of hydraulic fluid you recommend they install a secondary pneumatic control system as well, along with an efficiency leeching ramscoop for collecting compressed air? Sounds like a good way to simultaneously increase complexity and reduce payload to me.

It suddenly occurred to me that I've never heard of a hydraulic system "using up" its fluid before. Anyone know anything about how/why the rocket is different?

Right - all those gamers should be either working themselves to death trying to get ahead in a game that's rigged against them, or out getting drunk and shagging strangers. You know, socially acceptable ways to pass the time.

And if I am not skilled in wordplay, then I should simply let you inflict all manner of indignity and social damage upon me?

Mostly the burly guys in uniform that show up at your door soon after the NSA dragnet detects an unlicensed encrypted communication channel in use. Because why would they give you a license to establish a VPN? What are you trying to hide?

The risk starts at almost zero. Your children are far more likely to die in a car accident while you drive them home from school than they are to be abducted while walking - it is only your illusion of control which is notably improved.

You can however ban it's usage except in communications with properly licensed organizations. That lets banks and businesses continue to engage in secure online transactions, but dare to send an encrypted email, and that's five years in the hole without appeal. Sure, you can't tell the difference between a terrorist and a guy who doesn't want anyone to discover his donkey-porn addiction, but so long as they're all rotting in the gulag, who cares?