There are two topics in the post. There's the example of the Pioneer plaque and the example of the Wikipedia edtors. And I agree in both instances... this is something that can't be overthought. In the case of Wikipedia, it's primary function is to provide information for humans... who know all about humans, so the picutre is really a formality. We all know about racial, cultural, socioeconomic differences, etc. So it really doesn't matter one little bit what photo is up there because it is just a placeholder for something we all know and understand. As for the Pioneer plaque, on first contact all you want is the aliens to know it was the things that walk on two legs and look roughly like these pair that sent this. We just don't want them going to the giraffes or penguins, right? So again, complex human concepts are unimportant. In one case because we all understand them and it is meant for us, in the other because it isn't meant for us and they won't undertsand them anyway.

There is literally nothing more useful that you would want to launch on the maiden flight of a completely unproven rocket design. Most companies and governments send slabs of concrete or steel plates. They just need x amount of weight in the fairing. But why just launch concrete when you can have some fun with it and have the same effect? SpaceX gets its fake payload mass, free publicity is gained, people get to have good laugh and fun and dream a bit. I'm not seeing a problem here.

And on top of that, the Democrats claim that this memo cherry picks information and leaves out important details... but the GOP know the public would never know that and wouldn't ever look anything up to notice in the first place. Which gives them a free pass to say nearly whatever they want knowing their base will believe it 100% without question. The tyranny of the willing?

Of course fusion produces radioactive waste! It's a nuclear process. It just doesn't produce the same kind of waste that fission produces. Very very high energy neutrons are released by fusion reactions, and whatever those things hit, and are ultimately absorbed by, will become radioactive over time, and will need to be disposed of. Right now they are just trying to get these dang things to turn on. But when they do, if they don't have some method to absorb the neutrons, then the infrastructure of the reactor itself is going to become radioactive over time and need to be disposed of, and a new reactor built.

Foreign matter, not imaginary matter. ;)

We use Agile in our office and for the dev team it works pretty well. Our problem comes from the management not actually having a clue about software development, despite our best efforts to educate them. We still deal with insane feature creep from above and delivery promises before we've even been informed of the new feature.

In 16 years of working as a developer for more companies than I can count now, I have never been in a team that used Scrum until my current job. Also the first to use Agile in their process. I've been in small teams and large teams alike, and never had a need for it to meet deadlines. These guys live and breath and bleed agile and scrum. And the original author up above used some words that I think apply. It's a religion to some people. And it gets in the way of following the ideas behind it. Really, Scrum is about communication. Bringing the team together for a quick, "here's what's up" from everyone. That can be really useful. As for sprints, they have been an utter disaster from my point of view. And that may be because management wants everything in the next sprint, but I also notice that the focus becomes the sprint rather than the development itself. It adds what I'm going to call, for lack of a better word, a distraction layer.

The article this post links too is a bit misleading. Read it, was horrified by it, decided to go and look around on Google Maps myself. The city of Baotou does not have pipes all over the streets as the article stated. The streets are wide, paved, full of cars. The city looks pretty decent actually. If you could remove the massive polluting factories on the Western edge of the city, it would probably be pretty nice actually. It is only when you cross the canal into the industrial complex itself that the pipes and crap all start appearing. The article made it sound like the whole city was overrun with industrial piping and smoke stacks. It isn't. At all. They also made the lake sound like some gigantic monster of a lake. It also isn't. It isn't tiny, by any means, but to say it stretched to the horizon is literary hyperbole. Standing on the shore of any lake it stretches to the horizon. NW to SE it is about 2500ft, and NE to SW it is probably a mile. That's not to say that this place isn't an absolute mess. It is. The industrial complex is massive. The main portion is at least 5 miles N to S. It is a Gordian knot of factories and conduits and walkways. And the air in the entire region must indeed be foul beyond words. But the residents of the city aren't living in the middle of the industrial complex as the article made it feel. And the lake itself is far smaller than described and is surrounded by all the factories and plants, not out in the open in farmland as the article again made it seem. It may once have been farmland, but it is all surrounded by industrial complexes now. This is probably the superfund site to end all superfund sites, but they exaggerated quite a bit writing that article.

They only thing they can say is that the water didn't come from Comet 67/P. They look at the ratio of Hydrogen to Deuterium in the water on the comet and compare that ratio to what we find on Earth. The problem is, we find comets with similar ratios, and comets with nothing like it. It seems we still have a long way to go in understanding how comets formed and what that says about where/when they formed. Comets may still have delivered the water to Earth, but none of them may exist any more to study. Rosetta didn't really answer a question here, it just gave us yet another hint that comets are not all created equally and we have a lot more studying of them to do.

The Constitution can not violate itself either. Any law made in the United States, including constitutional amendments, must measure up to constitutional scrutiny. The constitution guarantees the right of persons to be secure in the homes and effects unless a search warrant is duly procured that is specific as to the person to be searched and what is being searched for and is based upon probable cause. The interpretation by the FISC of Section 215 violates this. The searches have not been "particular," the word used by the Constitution, they have been dragnets both in terms of the persons searched and things seized. When you send an order to Verizon demanding ALL their customer data that is that is hardly particular. Nor would it meet the standards of probable cause. Probable cause can't not be applied to a massive group of millions by saying "one of them may have done something." Probable cause is a reasonable amount of suspicion, supported by circumstances sufficiently strong to justify a prudent and cautious person's belief that certain facts are probably true. The vast majority of the people involved in these sorts of searches do not fall under that. There is no circumstantial support to the need to gather their information. Constitutional amendments must also be constitutional, as must all laws passed by Congress, executive orders signed by the President. Even state and city laws must adhere to the laws passed above them all the way up to the Constitution. It is not just a piece of paper with words on it. It is the core beliefs underpinning the creation of all our other laws. It is a codified standard that has the backing of the force of law via the Supreme Court. Laws that are found to not measure up to the standard are overturned. The argument the government is making is that "well, the law was passed by Congress, and it hasn't been challenged yet, therefore it is constitutional and can't be challenged." It is a ridiculous argument.

Physics says moving an object faster than light relative to spacetime is impossible. However, physics does not say the same about moving spacetime faster than light relative to a stationary object. Seems like the same thing, but they are very different in physics. In fact inflation of the early universe was an expansion of spacetime itself, not the objects within spacetime moving apart, that occurred at speeds faster than light.

Technically, the solar energy comes from the Sun burning its expendable fuel, hydrogen, in a massive fusion reaction regulated by its the gravitational field of its fuel source.

It should be noted that Elon Musk has degrees in economics and physics as well as real world experience in the software field (PayPal) as well as engineering and business (SpaceX/Tesla). The man is incredibly intelligent and seems to really understand how things work. I'm willing to bet this decision wasn't made without the board. I'm sure Wall St won't like it and stocks may fall, but this is the correct decision. Musk is doing what many businesses don't seem to understand these days, playing the long game rather than the short game. He may lose a little in the short term, but long term, Tesla comes out a huge winner an brings up a whole lot of other winners with them. There's a good chance he explained all this to the board, and given their about to start battery production, they realized that they stand to have a huge revenue stream if they jump start the electric car industry in this way.

This is their absolute root core problem. There is no leadership at all. And I have repeatedly told them this and gotten really idiotic replies back. It is just a bunch of kids who have no clue what they are doing, and increasingly less of a reason why.

I have to disagree. The point of a protest is not to go to jail. The point of a protest is to make a point and raise awareness. This goal is not always best served by going to jail. In fact, often times, going to jail because you were being an ass and breaking laws only serves to distract from your point and make you look, in the eyes of the broader public, like a hooligan. If you are improperly jailed then it can be a boon (sort of a martyr thing), but you can't be trying to get jailed or intentionally breaking laws. This is a very key point that OWS has never ever understood. Their point and purpose has gotten completely lost and forgotten among their fights with police and constant reports of arrests. They think they are fighting the man when really they are playing perfectly in to the man's hands and tarnishing their own public image. A protest should decide what their end goal is and then use all the tools at their disposal to most effectively achieve that goal. If that involves mass arrests, so be it, but that is actually very rarely the best method. In the case of OWS, it is the least effective method. They are all but forgotten. Not to mention hilariously presumptuous. Million mask march? How many actually showed up? Several thousand?