You can but that costs many billion dollars. To do a continent wide HVDC network with some limited energy storage (compared to what would ideally be needed) you're looking at many hundred billions $$$ or EUR

Compared to a regional economy that measures €15 trillion annually, an investment of several €100 billion over the next decade or two is not unbearable. Indeed, if it means that power supply and distribution is more resilient, and you don't need to expend several €trillion in energy imports over the same time period, it seems like a worthwhile investment in infrastructure.

I've seen this before, in the movie Sleep Dealer. The U.S. / Mexico border is completely sealed, but folks in the U.S. still want cheap labor. So: they hire Mexicans, working in Mexico, as drone operators.

Just CHIP-IN-PIN and be done with it

Particularly when using CAPSLOCK, please be sure to use the correct term. Chip and Pin. Most English speakers are lazy enough in their pronunciation that it comes out as a homophone. But even if you couldn't hear the difference between "in" and "and", you ought to be able to work it out from context: you've got a chip, and you've got a pin; the chip does not reside in the pin.

Oh, yes, I am sure that the choice of CAD programs has something to do with the launch failure, or points to some sort of cultural deficiency at Orbital. Really, you get a touch of shadenfreude over that? How petty are you?

There are enough blood donors around the world, and the testing on their blood is comprehensive enough, that one can make statistical conclusions about the prevalence of certain blood types in the general population. In other words - there's a large enough sample set (hundreds of millions, if not billions, or units tested to date, coming from tens or hundreds of millions of donors) that the (statistical) error bars are very small.

without getting a snide look from the restaurant staff for ordering a big mac _and_ a quarter pounder...

And a diet coke, but hold the fries - just to keep them guessing.

The higher skilled workers will also see their pay fall, as the excess labor pool in general grows

That assumes that the excess labor pool is able to do the job of a skilled worker. If 10,000 formerly-employed McDonalds cashiers lined up outside to try and get the $120,000 System Architect's job at SomeCompany, does that suddenly push the salary being offered down to $40,000?

Reminds me a bit of this scene from Joe vs. The Volcano

Sure, some company would have to re-manufacture the parts that couldn't be made at home

Thankfully, a lot of the early computers used commodity parts that are still manufactured, such as the 7400 series of discrete logic gates (e.g. 7400 = quad NAND gate, 7404 = hex inverter, etc.). The Apple I's 8-bit microprocessor, the MOS 6502, is still commercially available, too.

Don't tow the "Climate Change" line, don't get funded.

Well, if they're going to force me to tow something, maybe I don't want to have that kind of funding. I "toe the line" that towing is hard work, and I'm allergic to hard work!

A variety of people have been working on solar airplanes that collect sufficient energy during the daylight hours that, through a combination of electrical storage (batteries, reversible fuel cells, etc.) and mechanical storage (going to higher altitude during the day, then losing some at night) you can provide continuous operation. This isn't a new idea, and practical realizations of it are tantalizingly close.

and for most of that 98%, existing wireline technologies work too

In the United States, a lot of /.ers like to gripe about how the existing wireline providers (DSL and cable) are monopolistic and provide poor service at high cost. They'd love to see more choice, but the barriers to entry (i.e., deploying a parallel network, including the last mile) are so high that only other megacorporations (Google Fiber, Verizon FiOS) can hope to break in, and even then it is very slow. Result: everyone gripes, but everyone eventually buys the service that's available, and nothing really changes. As you point out: it "works", but not that doesn't mean everyone is happy with the situation - lots of people hope for greater competition resulting in better options.

The actual situation is a lot more complicated and nuanced than the preceding paragraph, but it is a sufficient synopsis to now tie into this article. High altitude drones could provide that parallel network at sufficiently lower (capital) cost that a lot more players can take a crack at it.

So, what you are saying is...

"Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be a Mars-shattering kaboom?"

Stop making my brain hurt!

If you have solar panels on a rooftop that would otherwise be cooked by the sun, aren't you also saving on the amount of power required for air conditioning?

If you're trying to heat the building - not so much.

In the case of a datacenter, I don't think that heating the building is that much of a concern.

Average solar insolation is more like 5 sun-hours/day, not 8, in good locations. Much less in places like Germany.

Don't tell that to Fox news - everyone knows that Germany gets LOTS of sunshine.