The great thing about parallel construction is that everyone is always already on a watch list.

Actual Executive Order

Nothing there says criminal penalties.

Also, it says that the actors must be outside of the United States. Remind me again, but Snowden did all of his stuff inside of the United States, right?

As usual, non-lawyers read something think it means something that makes them upset, and it spreads and no one actually sits down to read the actual law.

No link? [citation needed]

And why isn't being obligated to serve on a jury silly? It's actually very much like voting - you are required to offer your opinion for the benefit of society, whether you feel like it or not.

From a practical perspective, required voting takes some of impact of emotions out of elections, which is good thing. It also overcomes the various ways that people are obstructed from voting. These things outweigh the unavoidable issue of people casting random (i.e. self-cancelling) votes or other shenanigans.

I guess you haven't read "The Wisdom of Crowds".

One of the things they talk about in there is how the random noise of idiocy tends to cancel out allowing for a good result - but only if the sampling is done correctly. Required voting is one means to achieve that. Letting people decide if they want to vote or not skews things toward the irrational emotional, which is fairly obviously what has happened in the US.

Such an eloquent a reminder. Thank you.

I've been on reddit so long it took me a minute to realize I can't upvote you. Maybe not a lot of people here will agree with you, but you've nailed it. I work IT in environments with lots of regular folk and the power and flexibility I crave is a) useless to them and b) the source of the vast majority of their problems.

Just played the WebGL version in Chrome. Works fine, looks great. I don't know what you're doing wrong, but it's probably your fault.

Humanity's power generation is currently negligible compared to the amount of energy injected into Earth's ecosystem by the Sun. However, at current growth rates that will not hold true for long. If the current growth rate of about 2.3% is maintained (which it cannot be), then in about 400 years we will produce as much energy as falls on the Earth from the Sun. By that point in time, the surface temperatures on Earth would have raised by about 50 Celsius, making human habitation close to impossible.

Well, that's not entirely true... Hydrogen buildup and ignition can result an explosion, which did happen at Fukushima. I don't think this is what the GP had in mind, though. Nuclear piles are designed such that criticality cannot result in a nuclear detonation (actually, it takes careful design to achieve nuclear detonation even with weapons-grade fissile material). Worst case, in older designs, is that the nuclear fuel melts through its containment vessel, resulting in a radioactive leak.

Hell, I would settle for them not being immediately hired as CEO elsewhere. Where did all the competent leaders go? Were they just a myth?

+1 surreal

Short answer is no. Although there are plenty of other semiconductor devices that can operate in the microwave.

The "quantum" part of quantum dots is that the effective bandgap of the semiconductor, which controls the wavelength of luminescence, is increased by quantum confinement. Google particle in a box for more information.

It's pretty stable in salt form---much less of a problem than elemental Cd from batteries or Hg from florescent lights. Also, it's pretty well encapsulated in the TVs.