The new news that the government thinks they did it certainly changes my opinion, though I would be curious exactly what the evidence is. I find it hard to believe they would risk making a stupid blunder of an incorrect accusation, so the info must be pretty good, such as directly from a spy inside NK at the hacker facility.

My gut feeling is this is disgruntled Sony employees. Somebody thought it would sound cool to threaten theaters and are probably amazed at the result.

If that's their biggest problem, they are in better shape than I thought.

Chrome also complains about self-signed https, so you lose. Sorry.

Except NK denied being behind the hacking.

Now there is no reason to believe anything NK says, but I would think they would be very proud of their computer achievements if they had been behind it.

The reason they don't falsely claim they are behind it is because they are worried the actual hackers would be found and then it would be clear they were lying.

If we look at jet aircraft, wear depends on the airframe and the engines, and the airframe seems to be the number of pressurize/depressurize cycles as well as the running hours. Engines get swapped out routinely but when the airframe has enough stress it's time to retire the aircraft lest it suffer catastrophic failure. Rockets are different in scale (much greater stresses) but we can expect the failure points due to age to be those two, with the addition of one main rocket-specific failure point: cryogenic tanks.

How long each will be reliable can be established using ground-based environmental testing. Nobody has the numbers for Falcon 9R yet.

Weight vs. reusable life will become a design decision in rocket design.

Because they wanted to arrest him for drug trafficking.

Deporting him would mean he would probably sneak back or arrange with his friends still in the USA to continue drug trafficking. If you assume that drug trafficking is something that you don't want (and under current USA laws is something the police are supposed to prevent) then this is a totally logical approach.

I suspect the North Korean will not have a problem getting the USA to give him a tourist visa. He *will* have some trouble getting access to ask the USA for one, and for actually getting out of North Korea to use it.

And indeed, some of us are. If you drive an electric car and live near a nuclear power plant, you might be one of them.

http://rationalitate.blogspot....

Seems like Houston has minimum parking requirements and minimum lot sizes, so no.

Ad hominem attacks are tedious, so for the sake of argument let's take it as given that I'm both. Now that we've got that out of the way, I'll ask again: how are Uber's high prices ripping anyone off? Does anyone actually pay those prices? If so, why? Is Uber pointing a gun to their heads?

I've always kind of wanted a bank account with built-in credit-card functionality. No overdraft fees possible, rather you pay credit-card style interest when your balance is negative, and earn bank-style interest when your balance is positive.

Of course, this is unlikely to be offered for just that reason... to the banks, overdraft fees are a profit center :(

Nobody is being forced to pay Uber's prices. There are still taxicabs in Sydney, are there not?

You don't give Apple programmers enough credit -- the USB transfer routine includes a surreptitious Bitcoin mining thread. That's how Apple builds up its cash reserves.