You're correct, but this is a big problem. I'm willing to make changes, BUT, doing that individually only increases my costs/lowers my standard of living, and makes no difference on its own, so until governments start forcing everyone ELSE to do it, too, I'm only hurting myself if I try to help.

If you have the female connector, you don't need the metrics. Cut some lengths of stiff wire, stick them in the female connector, solder your cable to the ends sticking out, then dunk the soldered ends in some epoxy to hold it together.

Unfortunately, after Russia's military is destroyed, there's nothing standing between China and Siberia except nuclear weapons. I don't really think that the CCP would mind trading 100-200 million people for Siberia. Those abandoned cities you hear about in China make a disturbing sort of sense in that case - "oh, Beijing is a glass crater? We'll just move the survivors into this ready-built city over here!"

Disclaimer: I'm not a rocket scientist, but I HAVE played way too much KSP...

The station already has provisions for maneuvering in order to dodge debris, probably just not strong enough or having enough fuel to deorbit - especially, as you pointed out, to do it fast enough to predict the impact point reliably.

However... What if instead, you simply fit extra fuel tanks to the existing system, then take all the time you need to raise the apogee to a point where a relatively small delta-v maneuver would cause a fast and predictable reentry at perigee. I would think that would be much cheaper than developing a whole new spacecraft.

From what I remember, the original Google glass wasn't designed to hold lenses. These are, which means you can put prescription lenses in them. That will probably present an interesting problem to businesses that don't want them around, because making someone take off prescription glasses is more or less like making someone leave their wheelchair at the door - likely to end in a lawsuit.

At $299, they're not totally out of line with high-end glasses frames. I don't think they'll make you a target for anyone other than people that hate glassholes.

Worse, actually... I know the brand of firewalls we have at least used to use Cavium chips for data-plane processing. That includes SSL inbound and forward proxy decrypt and re-encrypt, as well as VPNs, etc. They also store certificates AND the associated keys, in some cases. Perfect place for a snoop, especially since in general, the more secure you make your network, the more you separate stuff with a firewall, and the more of the traffic is then visible to the firewall.

I think it might be a little different comparing a human vs. computer, though - at least legally, if not practically.

I can take a book, and *without making a copy*, read it, and end up with a synopsis and highlights in my memory.

A computer can't process it at all without making copies, so that would probably open up a legal can of worms which might give them a copyright case.

We tried Walmart+ for a few months. It would be OK *if* the people picking items weren't idiots. Stuff like getting marscapone substituted for fresh mozzarella. Never mind melted frozen stuff, etc. Maybe if you only live off of packaged/processed food, it would work, but not if you actually cook, and need very specific ingredients.

Almost every delivery required a trip to the store to pick up/return the item(s) that they messed up/couldn't find, etc. We ended up canceling, because it took less of our time to just go get everything correctly in one trip.

So what happens with old games that were bought years ago that I re-install and play occasionally? If I get a new PC every few years, they'd consider it a "new" install, and try to charge the developer for it. Does the dev keep getting bills from Unity forever, even after there are minimal/no sales any more? Would Unity force Steam to pull it from my library if the dev goes out of business and stops paying?

The problem is that NATO has entrenched their manufacturing and industry to fight a war according to their doctrine, which is heavy on high-tech air support, and not so much on conventional artillery. Ukraine, even with the small amounts of western equipment they have, has the capability to fire over 350,000 155mm shells per month. The US currently has the capacity to produce a measly 15k/mo, and all of the EU can only do something like 50-75k/mo, IIRC. We just can't keep up with that rate of expenditure. Imagine how many more we'd go through if NATO was in an actual war with all of it's equipment.

At least we seem to have learned a lesson from it (masses of artillery are really important in a war of attrition), and the US is now increasing production by something like 5x (but that's still a far cry from what you'd want to be expending in a war). We have the high-tech manufacturing capability, but it's slow and expensive. We also need to maintain the industrial capacity to churn out dumb, cheap, lots. It would probably be way more difficult today to turn an automotive assembly line into one for aircraft, like we did during WWII.

What do you expect when companies are making it harder and harder to actually communicate with them? A lot of times you're lucky to find a chat link that connects you to a barely-able-to-speak-your-language person that apparently has the IQ of a turnip. Don't even think about finding a phone number any more, and if you do, it's a maze of menus or terrible IVR that might eventually connect you to another turnip.

Can't really blame people for just filing a dispute, because it's a hell of a lot easier, and CC companies are some of the last with decent customer service.

I think you're close...
We need to limit the current type federal-backed/non-dischargeable loans to schools that can cut their tuition and on-campus housing costs back to inflation-adjusted equivalency with what a public college cost around the mid 90s. You can go to one of those, get a traditional student loan, and study whatever you want.

Or, you can just go get a normal loan, but the lenders can use past academic performance and school/degree choice as criteria to decide whether to write the loan, and for adjusting loan terms. The interesting thing about this is that it will force the lenders to do their homework so they can make good decisions. Which means as a student, it would be worth applying just to see what they say. If you're approved, your course of study is probably a reasonably safe investment. Still not sure normal loans would be widely available though, since as a new graduate, bankruptcy and a few years of bad credit is probably a better decision than paying a $50-100k loan.

I've always wondered what it would take to build a ducted, auto-targeted EMP turret inside of a plastic dog igloo... It would be virtually undetectable.

I can almost guarantee that's exactly what the holdouts are working on. They don't really care if they're fired, because they're already looking, anyway. Why not collect a paycheck as long as possible?