Damn that was close. Kind of makes me wonder if using the barge as such a small target is contributing to the hard landings, simply because it's such a tiny target relative to the area that the rocket has to come down on. It's about the length of a football field; makes me wonder if they could set-down on an area ten times that large if most of these control problems simply wouldn't matter.

Heh. There was an episode of House where as an aside, the topic of the over/under age on attempting significant risky medical procedures on children was brought up. House asserted that the age was seven.

Nazi Germany fell in April of 1945. Any true German-Government Nazis that had reached the age of majority before this fall would be 88 years old now. It doesn't matter if they're not dead yet, they're so close to it that true original Nazis are done.

Neo-Nazis are another matter, but no one will ever take them seriously enough that they could become a political force. They'd have to organize as something else with a name that isn't poisoned from the outset.

Yes, but coming for them was to take them away to either lock them up or execute them. Despite both being the only sure thing in life, there's quite a bit of difference between death and taxes. Despite what so many anti-tax people would try to tell you.

Are you sure of this?

Last time I looked at tax status of non-profit-seeking entities, the two categories that I studied were 501c3 and 501c7. the c3 variety required charitable work. The c7 was for fraternal organizations and clubs that had to pay taxes if they made profits, but were for such entites that weren't really trying to make profits. I was looking because of clubs that I'm in, and how things like fandom organizations organized (some c3, some c7).

It's time for the tax code to change. Expenses associated with spreading the gospel should not be tax exempt. Expenses associated with the act of charity should be, but there's quite a difference between building a 10,000 seat auditorium with sound systems and paying for the expenses of an evangelist compared to running a soup kitchen or operating a shelter for those that cannot afford to stay somewhere.

I can kind of see how it's noteworthy to compare the use of aluminum as opposed to the sheet steel that most cars are made out of and to point out how that is at least evolutionary, but it's been done in mass-market cars before. The Plymouth Prowler was Chrysler's test platform for aluminum and other new ways to build cars, and as you point out, other car companies are doing this with main-line vehicles.

He really just carried it too far.

Yeah, sounds like they've essentially developed a library that the programming language is dependent on.

If it wasn't such a circle-jerk I might agree with you. Unfortunately there are too many 'makers' that are enthusiastic without having ability and aren't really developing it either. There are others that eschew modern manufacturing practices even if those practices really are good and are used because of their cost-effectiveness. Take the Tesla Model S as an example, it's made of aluminum and assembled through relatively conventional processes, not out of exotic processes. It's revolutionary because the company changed the conventional stuff that really is getting outmoded in the form of the drivetrain, not the entire body of the car.

You want random? Monitor your microphone input on your computer, or use an NTSC tuner and have it sample the static on a nonexistent channel.

It doesn't. There's no replacement for experience and actually working on things for real. A lot of 'makers' don't understand this.

Just as an example, Ikea is manufacturing ten thousand flatpack shelters. This was the result of people with materials experience getting together with people that manage refugee camps and are aware of the conditions, and people that do shipping and other materiel distribution, so that they could manufacture something that's durable, simple to assemble, and capable of being transported easily. Sure, corrugated plastic, extruded metal tubing, and rivets aren't sexy like a 3d printer, but the point was to build and deliver a product, not to navel-gaze in self-congratulatory smugness while the 3d printer warms up...

Sorry, I don't have a lot of respect for "makers". Those that self-identify with that label are as silly as those rooftop gardeners in high-density environments that try to call their 2' by 6' patch of dirt a "farm".

There was a game somewhere that was proven to have software so faulty that it wasn't even capable of 'drawing' one of the possible numbers that players could choose.

Computer-based random number generators are just about the worst possible way to conduct a lottery. They're not random, they're subject to tampering, they're only understood by a few people, and their function while operating cannot be observed by the public. They also aren't exciting.

Machines that dump a bunch of balls into a spinning drum and then start pulling those balls out look cool on TV, plus they can be inspected, the public understands how they work, their operation is transparent, and because of the nature of the beast, are about as random as one can get within the context of a machine doing the drawing.

So, our anonymous reader that sent in the article swung and completely missed with their headline...

If you don't want to have a safe deposit box and if you don't feel that you can keep things like this at work, if you have some kind of an accessory building on your property like a garden shed or workshop, use that structure to store it. Just make sure that it's either in a safe bolted to the floor or else it's very tiny and extremely well hidden.

Just make sure that the accessory building is sufficiently far enough from the structure with the primary storage that it doesn't suffer the same fate in a disaster.

At my work, 'offsite' is one of the other buildings on the campus. We have several rows of buildings with rows of parking in between, so we can store things 'offsite' where they're still readily accessible if we need them.

Yes. Before work was willing to issue a cell phone stipend so that we could use our personal phones for work purposes I had to carry a work phone in addition to my phone. I do not mind having to carry a heavier phone.

I'm in a building that has poor cell phone reception, so I definitely hear you on battery life. With no usage my battery is less than 20% after a full shift if I don't have a need to go out, and sometimes I'm down to less than 5% if I've had anyone call my cell instead of my desk.