Last time I tried Pale Moon, about 2 months ago, it crashed unfixably due to some conflict with the desktop environment.

I think the thing which the article completely misses is the difference between survival of the species vs. survival of the individual. There are very few things which threaten the survival of the species: nuclear war, massive volcanic eruption and asteroid impact. Other things, such as disease, significant climate change etc. may kill a lot of people but they are unlikely to affect the survival of the species directly - even ebola has survivors.

People who worry about asteroids don't do it because of the risk to themselves personally since that risk is negligible. They do it because of the risk to the species. The risks of these sorts of events are incredibly low. However if you compare a "1 in 100 million" chance of an extinction-level asteroid impact with the similarly tiny (and probably larger) risk of a massive volcanic eruption then suddenly the odds become more relevant. The article completely misses that point.

If you don't like it, its little more than some standard CSS to adjust the UI however the hell you want

If I don't like it, I can write my own browser. Get real.

A big part of the US shuttle program was that it was a compromise that had to do everything for everyone. For example, the initial plan was going to be fully reusable, but since they didn't have the money for that, it had to have the singe-use fuel tank. It also had to do orbital profiles for the military, such as being able to launch, release a single satellite and come down after making a single polar orbit. The plan was to Vandenberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_AFB_Space_Launch_Complex_6 for the launch. The entire idea was a bit silly since the entire idea was to use it to launch spy satellites faster than the Soviets could shoot term down if the cold war got luke-warm (but somehow not becoming an outright hot war). It is possible that this was actually a cover for another orbital profile that hasn't yet been declassified. But the basic upshot is clear: the shuttle had to many different things for many different people, many who never even ended up using it for the desired purposes. If you make something that has to a hundred different things don't be surprised if is very expensive.

I'm 64, a Perl guy and in London. I still get a fair amount of contract work, some of which I turn down. Recently that's included a couple of start-ups. Are you London area? I suspect this may also be a geographical and networking problem. I'm ex-investment bank and people know me.

Meanwhile some of the other advice is great, learn Python [I did], learn Java [I do some, hate it, it reminds me of COBOL], improve Javascript, especially the 'new' frameworks. But, I like to program and I like freelance, if you're programming 'for cash', then the advice about graduating to management is good. At this age, I can look at things and go NOOOOO, often saving others a lot of time, money and heartache, but I don't like meetings/suits etc. etc.

So if you're old, I'm moribund [although 2 hour half marathon suggests otherwise, keep healthy too!], don't despair, very best of of luck from me.

Actually he has a very good point. The article is wrong: there is just as much mass "beneath your feet" since technically the entire planet is beneath your feet. The point is that the mass is, on average, located further from your feet near a mountain because of the thick crust which floats on, and displaces, the far denser mantle. The gravitational field depends not just on the mass but on the distance as well.

What I don't understand is how this counts as 'news'. The effect was discovered by the British Trigonometric Survey of India where they noticed a discrepancy in their measurements caused by the fact that the 'vertical' was not the same near the Himalayas. This was well over 100 years ago...hardly news.

Python doesn't force you to declare variables but running pylint on your source files will notify you of common errors that declaration helps avoid.

For example, pylint will tell you when you've attempted to access a variable that never has had anything assigned to it.

Here is why:

One: He is forcing the cloture vote on this to be next week, there is not time (its complicated) for the cloture vote to happen before the NSA must shut down the program.
Other business, like the pending trade agreement will have to be dealt with to come back to the NSA.
So for at least one weekend, there will be no NSA spying, and they will have to get it back on line if and when it is reauthorized. Inertia is our friend, if it is down, there will be pressure to keep it down.

Two: He also prevented it from passing cloture by unanimous consent, which is really silence. The chair asks a variation of "Without objection, so ordered" and if everyone is silent, it passes. There are no up/down votes, so no up/down vote is recorded

Now people are going to vote yea or nay, and THAT will be on the record for the next election.

"... isn't this completely unrelated to what slashdot is about?"

Please don't post comments to stories that don't interest you.

The sociology of technology is something I must deal with every day. It's interesting to me to read stories about that.

Ask Dzhokhar Tsarnaev,

he would not be facing death row if it was a state crime.

What about her dog? How does it she feel about me?

You get new engines for Selection Search via the Mycroft Project, those can be used with Firefox's OpenSearch and Sherlock plugins, and probably with other browsers, too.

It is indeed pointless, you don't know what you are talking about, you admit you don't know what you are talking about (going on 20 year old remembrance) ....

But somehow you know what you are talking about.