Well, I'm uncomfortable killing, period. Even if they are terrorists, we should look for another way before jumping in to killing them. In the case of Hamas there may (or may not) be another way, but war is always and everywhere a sad thing.

We had a little drama of this kind years ago at the company I was working with, same issues. We politely reminded the employees about the contracts they signed. Some understood and walked away, jeered by the other malcontents. To the rest, we notified the immediate termination of their employment and dismissal. The one troublemaker who had started the whole show put on a defiant face and threatened to "occupy" the premises. He changed his tune when security pepper-sprayed him in the eyes and batoned him to his knees. This deflated the rest, which was then escorted out. The ones who initially participated but relented were warned that they would be passed over for promotion and had lost any seniority privileges - which means they'd be let go if any restructuring was to take place. This being Italy the unions went all apeshit but they fell silent when the main offices in Amsterdam told them in very polite terms that they could very well close down ALL operations in Italy and move everything to Slovakia, which is what happened anyway a couple of years later. It had been long in the planning and all those bozo hamalovers only made things move a little faster. I had since gone independent but it put a smile on my face to think about it. Employees who depend on their jobs to survive should learn not to be too cocky. You can protest if your workplace is dangerous, if the working environment is toxic, is wages are too low and so on. But for a shit cause miles away? Stupid. Your family will not hail you as a hero for throwing their lives into a dumpster.

I'm basically speaking from personal experience here. I believe Microsoft had a lot of managers with engineering degrees. This trash person has an engineering degree.

It's also a temporary problem. Short-range anti-drone missiles should cost roughly the same amount as drones.

It's also worth noting that even objectively terrible movie treatments (for example, Soylent Green's failure to represent the actual storyline of Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room, while also being cheesy and stupid, and Without Remorse's failure to even remotely resemble Tom Clancy's book, while also being... well, lame) didn't hurt those books.

Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space!

Newton submissively begs scraps from Einstein's table, suh.

No. Leave the fucking books alone.

Protip: Just don't buy into new motion pictures based on books. Your problem, solved! Because as you probably will understand if you give it some thought, the existence of a first-time movie treatment of a book doesn't hurt the related book. Quite the contrary, most often.

For those of us who don't want to see yet another Roadhouse or Bladerunner or Poseidon or Total Recall — and for the authors — new motion pictures based on previously untreated stories are a good thing. At least once they're out on physical media. Movie theaters... [shudders] :)

Interesting. Looks like it is used to a very small extent in California, and has been for decades. I'll guess it's less than 90% efficient, but I really have no idea.

You BASTARD! You KILLED them! It's all your goddamned FAULT! Their blood is on your hands! You could have saved them all, spared so much pain and sorrow to their families, and you did nothing! NOTHING! You are the sole responsible for that tragedy! Flay yourself alive and shit on your own decomposing carcass, you MURDERER! You MURDERED SEVEN PEOPLE! IN SPACE! DIE, MOTHERFUCKER, DIE!

Pretty much all tech we have today is entirely possible without burning fossile[sic] fuels

One of the apparent filters is simply that above a certain level of gravity, chemical rockets will not suffice to reach space. We're near the edge of that condition ourselves. Any number of civilizations might be out there, pinned against their planet's surfaces. The only way that's not true is if there are physics yet to be discovered that can accomplish surface-to-space in high gravity without using chemical rockets. We certainly haven't found any sign of such science/technology here. And fission or fusion powered rockets... the engineering for that is at least completely non-obvious thus far. And before anyone says "nukes against a pressure plate", yeah, a delightfully bang-y notion, but no.

The assumption made in the Fermi paradox that any civilization could reach space if they try may simply be wrong.

As there are so many wonderful books out there just begging for a motion picture treatment, Hollywood will oblige by... releasing more pointless, vapid remakes.

For a while I was making a list of weird translations I saw it do. The most extreme was translating "woman" as "man."

I think more often, whistleblowing is just complaining to your manager, or manager's manager.

Yeah. I don't think they've improved in translation ability. I think they've gotten worse in translation ability.

They have improved in the sense that the output of the translation tools is more likely to be grammatically correct.

It won't help. "Ambitious" management types will just see that as another obstacle, and then will feel more entitled to riches because they've "worked so hard for them."

If you are concerned, you can whistleblow directly to the government. Then your company will never find out until the court case is already in progress.