Let's not make a big deal out of this. 640kg of reactor-grade plutonium is only enough for a bit over 100 fission bombs / fusion bomb first stages, merely enough to make the recipient roughly tied for being the world's sixth most armed nuclear power.

Nothing to see here.

Humans nearly died out entirely from hunger and thirst, it was visionaries that led them out of a dying region of Africa into Asia, by a route that appeared to defy reason to any non-visionary of the time.

Pre-humans nearly had their brains the size of a grapefruit and wired backwards. It was visionaries who developed fire, 2.5 million years ago, providing the much-needed nutrition that allowed us to avoid the same fate as every other lineage of hominid.

Visionaries allowed the Norse to split quartz in a way that permitted them to track the sun even in cloudy skies and well into twilight, giving them greater access to the seas, trade and food than any other society of that time.

Visionaries developed cities to handle the logistics of the brewing and baking industries, again counter to any "obvious" logic that farming and hunting were how you got food.

Visionaries are the reason you can post stuff on the Internet, and why persecuted minorities around the world can have a voice and education.

So don't tell a visionary that he is defying your common sense. His work may have implications for society that you cannot imagine simply because he has the imagination and you don't. That does not mean that it will have such an implication or that he does have that extra imagination. It simply means that visionaries have a track record of saving people from starvation.

What about normal people? Those are usually the ones who manufacture conditions suitable for mass starvation. They're the ones who create nothing but buy the rights to sue to oblivion those who do. They're the ones who have allowed security holes to develop in critical infrastructure, like nuclear power stations, and then place said infrastructure on the public Internet where anybody can play with it. They're the ones who deny Global Warming and have endangered all life on this planet.

At this point in history, we'd be better off if the normal people were rounded up, put on some nowhere continent, and left to rot at their own hands. This would also solve much of the operpopulation crisis, as they're also the ones that breed morons like rabbits. If they choose to become civilized, they're free to do so. That would be helpful, in fact. But as long as they remain normal (read: proto-human), their fate is their lookout but they've no business making it everyone else's fate too.

Interesting article on the details of what he's charged with here, with screenshots of the operation he stands accused of running.

While the details of the arrest are still hazy, one thing is clear - they've had this guy in their sights since 2011. It's not surprising that they issued a sealed indictment for him, mind you, that's not particularly unusual for a case like this where the subject is unlikely to be extradited and would avoid your jurisdiction if the indictment was public (nor is the US in any way unique in this regard). And since I've seen others commenting about this: yes, the Secret Service is the correct body to have jurisdiction over this, as they (strangely) are in charge of enforcement against financial crimes. Back in the early days of commercially available inkjet printers, the nerdy high school/college program I went to (TAMS) once got a visit from the secret service when one of the students figured out that he could print good enough replica dollar bills on one to fool the scanner on the drink machine in the lounge. The total volume of the forgery had to be tiny, I'd be surprised if it was more than $100, but still, if you feel like getting involved in financial crime, expect the Secret Service to be looking out for you. ;)

The scandal here would be if this was an extrajudicial "kidnapping" in the Maldives, with the US swooping up in a van, grabbing the guy, and jetting him off to Guam to use as a bargaining chip, as has been alleged by the guy's MP father. I seriously doubt all that, but we'll see where the truth lies.

TFA says he was arrested in Guam (a US territory). The "kidnapped in the Maldives" thing seems to be coming from the Russian media, which isn't exactly the most trustworthy source on the planet (but at least it's a lot better than North Korea! ;) )

Russia (148th) might have been lower in the index had it not been for the stubbornness and resistance shown by its civil society. But the authorities keep on intensifying the crackdown begun when Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012 and are exporting their model throughout the former Soviet Union. From Ukraine (127th, unchanged) and Azerbaijan (160th, -3) to Central Asia, Russia’s repressive legislation and communications surveillance methods are happily copied. Moscow also uses UN bodies and regional alliances such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in its efforts to undermine international standards on freedom of information.

Criticism of the regime is common since the major demonstrations of 2011 and 2012 but media selfcensorship is far from disappearing. The federal TV stations continue to be controlled and, in response to the “return of politics in Russia,” the authorities have chose repression. Ever since Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in May 2012, more and more draconian laws have been adopted. Activists, news media and bloggers have all been targeted. Defamation has been criminalized again, websites are being blacklisted and the range of activities that can be construed as “high treason” is now much broader. “Traditional values” are used to justify new restrictions on freedom of information, including the criminalization of “homosexual propaganda” and “insulting the feelings of believers.”

Not like the US is a bed of roses - its #46 standing puts it below countries like Botswana and Papua New Guinea, only one place above Haiti. But compared to Russia....

There wouldn't be so many injuries if such a large chunk of the people setting them off weren't drunk ;)

If there's was any country with that special combination of whale-hunting and pyromania to do it, it'd be Iceland ;)

??? I don't see that all. The links are just google image searches on "reykjavík fireworks", "brenna gamlárskvöldið", and "jóðhátíð í eyjum". Oh, hmm.... I'm betting that because I'm searching from Iceland I get differently biased results. I know that my regular google searches at least bias towards Icelandic sites. Okay, well, basically picture this for an hour while several dozen of these are ongoing, or summer festivals like this.

We kinda like fire.

Hmm, interesting, they actually limit how many can be shot off?

Yes, your description of size, wind, etc are accurate. Also it's a rather moist climate, not much fire risk. And most buildings are concrete. And the city is half surrounded by ocean. And since the money goes to support the rescue services, the incentive is to encourage people to shoot off as many as possible, rather than the other way around.

Whoops, included the wrong link for the "The whole city looks like this" part - it was supposed to be this link. The first one is a link to just a small festival display.

What's the actual price there?

I think a lot of people spend so much here because the profits go to the rescue services. Also, I guess since we have no military we've got to blow something up ;)

Irrelevant. You're still limited by supply rates and feed wire heating.

LOL. No, you most certainly are not. Supply for the vehicle is from local storage, charged slowly over time, ready for fast discharge when needed

LOL yourself. You were crediting ultracapacitors with fast charging. Now your "counter" is saying that no, you're talking about slow charging. Well, make up your damned mind.

As for feed wire heating, that's absurd. At these lengths, and these voltages, it's simply not a problem.

At the *thousands of amps* needed to surpass the charge rate capacity of li-ions, yes, you bloody well are talking about wire heating problems.

I know that with multiple high energy motors, motor peak current demands can be very high, particularly in the case of high power motors that batteries aren't good for, and that semiconductors can be arranged for very high parallelism.

Oh, please, get real. The supercar-performance Tesla Roadster uses a 215kW motor peak, max 100kW sustained. To drain the whole pack with the pedal to the floor constantly (which, as noted, the car doesn't support) would take over 15 minutes. The fastest you can actually drain it without overheating the car is about 45 minutes. And this is for a car that does 0-100 in 3,7 seconds.

Learn to admit when you make a mistake and move on. The concept that there's sort of car performance limitation from not being able to instantly discharge the whole pack is utterly absurd.

Oh heck no, not even close.

Then follow the instructions in the very next sentence that you ignored. But given that few car parts last longer than 10 years, and most ultracapacitors don't last that long, I think that's an unreasonable demand.

Montana's not a great environment for batteries at times. I'd have to rig a cover for it all, probably lose 6 inches of depth in the bed. Hmmm. :)

Montana? You did see that one of the supercap info sheets linked showed that they're only rated down to -25C, right? Why would you choose that over good li-ions which go down to -40C (some varieties go even lower)? Are you fond of getting stuck out in the cold?

It's only when they are unused for long periods of times that they don't.

In fantasyland, perhaps. Check the specsheets for actual real-world ultracaps, like the ones I linked. They explicitly state that capacity declines from having energy stored in them. So unless your plan is to fully discharge your car after every use, yeah, good luck with that.

The idea that their lifespan in use is ten years is a complete myth.

Yeah, what do those stupid nuthead supercap manufacturers know about their own products? fyngyrz, you tell them what's what!

Yes, yes, of course you can break them if you misuse them

You can break them by precisely the same method you said that you can't, as per the spec sheets of the manufacturers.

UC won't overcharge if a continuous supply is applied to them that is under their rated voltage.

The spec sheets explicitly contradict that.

Show me one in continuous, low cycle rate use that needs to be.

The spec sheets all explicitly describe the exact same internal resistance rise with time. There's tons and tons of peer-reviewed research on it. But no, no, we have fyngyrz here to correct all those stupid boffins!

According to all manufacturer information out there, the primary loss mechanism is not cycling but energy storage. You can cycle them tons without problem, but each second you leave them charged raises their internal resistance. The higher you charge them and the further the ambient temperature is from the optimal, the faster they die.

Look on EBay. Search for them. Look at all the used ones pulled from equipment. Why do you think that is?

For the exact same reason I can do that for batteries?

All of mine are; my initial curiosity resulted in a buying spree, and that eventually turned into the DC supply for my radio station, which requires about a kilowatt and a half when fully dialed up. I get a solid hour of runtime there, more without the linear running. Not a battery in sight. That's been working flawlessly since it was put into service just before 2000.

Whoopee. Because I'm sure you're storing full power in them continuously when you're not using your station, right, and they're operating and being stored at outdoor temperatures? Surely that's the case, because otherwise you'd be making a stupid analogy, and I know you wouldn't do that!

Well, you can say anything you want, but I don't think you've demonstrated any of this

Yeah, damn the manufacturer spec sheets!

Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about. Are you actually ignorant of the rate of technological disruptions we've seen pop up in tech after tech?

And your reason for presuming that they'll apply to supercaps but not to batteries, when the trend is precisely the opposite, is...?

I don't get why American fireworks displays are so small. I'd love to see this copter fly through fireworks in Reykjavík on New Years Eve. The Macy's 4th of july fireworks display in New York shoots off about 10 tons of fireworks. Iceland (most of the population being in Reykjavík and its adjacent municipalities, about 250k people) shoots off about 600 tons of fireworks on New Years, the weight of about 5 adult blue whales. The whole city looks like this for literally about an hour. It's not organized, it's just everyone shooting off an average of about 9 kilograms / 20 pounds per family - some more, some less. You see fireworks like the stuff that copter flew through in little towns of 1-2 thousand people. Even if you only count organized displays, it just seems to be so disproportionately little in the US. Pretty much every festival that does fireworks here shoots off several tons. Or otherwise just burns pretty much everything that's not nailed down. Or as more often is the case, both at the same time.

Go sit in a corner! Thou shalt never bring those two words in close proximity, for should they ever come in contact, the reaction could destroy reality as we know it!

I didn't see SystemC, either, but may have missed it. But the real question is what the stats would look like if you only included Wishbone-compliant usage?

There should have been modifiers for typical bugs per kloc and security holes per kloc.

Also, there are many more layers to the industry. Scientific computing? Avionics? Publishing?

The subdivisions between languages are also a bit... strange. Java/Oak isn't truly uniform, whatever anyone claims. C and C++ have standards that aren't always backwards-compatible - if you ignore such changes, why bother listing C# or D as distinct? Lump the lot, together with B and BCPL under a single header.

My guess is that accurate representation of languages isn't possible (when does a dialect become a distinct language?) but that if it was, none of the so-called "big three" languages would be in the top 10. Computer languages are as bad as natural languages when it comes to classifiers.

Last, but by no means least, people rarely directly code any more. They code within engines, usually using some weird fringe language nobody has ever heard of that turns out to be Lua or Visual Basic with the keywords words renamed for the theme. Real programmers (as opposed to integer or complex programmers) tend to be in the minority, have become rarer after Qualcomm outlawed them, and are mostly in mourning for Freshmeat. But as a lot are Goths anyway, it's hard to tell.