A solution to a NP-hard problem can be used to solve any NP problem, but a NP-hard may, or may not be an NP problem. What means that no, not all NP-hard problems are equivalent (and that's for sure).

The set where all are equivalent is named "NP-complete". Those are the NP-hard problem that are also NP.

Cache memory never seems to get cheaper though, not the real fast Level 1 stuff anyway...

The most important "price" for L1 cache is paid in latency. It won't become much cheaper unless transistors become arranged in 3D, and after that the game is mostly over.

Somehow they state that people spend 5 times more on insurance than it costs to deal with the problem... Why should I belive the numbers weren't manipulated (upwards, obviously)?

In the exact sciencies, you get consensus to nearly all questions that you craft well enough to exclude any kind oppinion, but you'll get plenty of "nobody knows". You won't get any kind of consesus on the likehood of a non-mainstream theory being right, and very little on how right (or wrong) are the mainstream theories, except if you use some completely objective measurement.

In human sciences you won't have any "nobody knows" answer to those first questions. You'll have consensus on the known ones, and plenty of hand waving on the not known. You'll also get hand waving in the exact sciences, the difference is that they come after the "we don't know" part, while in the human sciences that part is missing (or maybe implicit, I don't know).

You do realise that this is an article about physics, right?

Also, I don't think researchers in any area would reach a consensus if you get they all toguether.

Well, take a deep look at Inflation teories. You'll be surprized.

The kind of questions cosmologists are asking nowadays is simply amazing.

Nope, those phase changes must be after Inflation, when the Universe was already quite big.

Yet, when anything goes wrong on the grid, they automatically disconnect themselves, with at most a few seconds of delay (while we'd have days to do that).

The only question is how much voltage does a circuit breaker support.

Did you get authorization for reading /. today?

I use a country switcher browser plugin

Thus, you pirate it.

Once you have a working (direct, not the one on TFA) detector for gravity waves, you just need a second one and a pair ver very well synchronized clocks. That'll let you calculate the speed of the waves.

The idea is that you pay as much as the work is worth to the worker, and charge as much as the product is worth to the customer.

If you did that, you'd have neither workers nor clients.

There is already equipment available to guide rescue people, and they work on about any place where the passengers have hope of surviving.

Dead people don't care how long the rescue takes.

Yep, it normaly varies from a pretty big problem to a huge one, depending on the application.

But since it's application dependent, manufacturers don't even need to cite times at their specification. That's maddening.

Well, of course, people exchanging currencies must keep some of their currencies on the exchange for a limited time.

That's completely different from using exchanges like a bank, like some people (the ones losing money here) are currently doing.