For many years, people said that nuclear power is very cheap. This was its major selling point. No need to buy large quantities of fuel. Now, it turns out that the costs of the energy are paid by the generations living when the power plant is already shut down.

Sure, we can then move the goal posts of this old discussion to talk about CO2 emissions and other pollution, but it would only be fair to compare nuclear to sustainable sources such as wind/solar. On a CO2 emission, they may be comparable, but since nuclear is apparently a little more costly than we previously thought, perhaps wind and solar energy are becoming more attractive?

I agree. If it was never meant to be carried around, why make it so small? Sounds like it needed a slightly larger cooling system to make it work properly.

Cooling capabilities of any device are proportional to the outside surface area of the device (where it can get rid of the heat), and this thing has too little outside surface area. Sometimes the marketing guys really should listen to the engineers.

Universal Hydrogen shortages expected soon!! -- that better?

It's an interesting read... and although none of it is breaking news, it's definitely stuff for nerds and I am happy that /. link to it.

Yeah, yeah... tl;dr. Not interesting if you're living in New York, capital of the USA.

Only the mad conspiracy hatters will be disappointed, because they already know that planet X is on a collision course with us. But then, they don't care about new findings,unless they support their theory. Amateur astronomers however will be just as excited when a planet is found much further away.

It's actually a very exciting and interesting article... it means that in the near future, we won't be searching for a needle in a haystack. We know pretty much where to find the needle, if there is any. To me, that is even more reason to search, which hopefully opens up some funding for the scientists who produce these awesome results.
For me personally, the really exciting thing is that there is so much out there. Perhaps no earth-sized planet, many more dwarf planet than I had ever dreamed...

There's basically 3 types of information for traders:
1. Official public information from the company itself (press releases, annual report, etc).
2. Analysis by external parties
3. Unofficial (non-public) information from within the company - trading using this is called insider trading, and this is already against the law.

So, when companies release information (category 1), everybody can trade. I do realize now that large companies have press releases on a daily basis. So, maybe the timespan of a week/month was a little long. But at least something that reflects the timespan between press releases (hours? at least not milliseconds) would still be a good idea.

It is acceptable to send people on a one-way if the goal is that these people survive and colonize. I would add a condition that they have a fair chance to grow old and possibly have offspring who themselves can survive there as well... meaning that (on the long run) the colony is large enough to be self sufficient.
If the goal is to set up a base camp (e.g. on Mars) with the intention to grow this base camp into a colony later, this condition is met, and I would think it is ethical to send someone on his/her way.

And it doesn't matter if it is NASA or anyone else who is organising the mission.

The way I understand it is that traders (computers) have to hold on to shares for a minimum of 500 ms, which means that whatever the market does in those milliseconds cannot be acted upon. However, others can act in the meantime.

Personally, I think that it should be law that if you buy shares in any company (or fund or whatever), you have to hold on to them for a minimum of a week or a month. Shares represent actual physical companies which own factories and employ real people. Those things don't change in 500 ms. They change over a much larger amount of time. And I believe that the stock market would be healthier if this was reflected in its trading. Obviously, when new information comes out (press release: "The factory of company X has just gone up in flames"), everybody's counter should be set to zero, but shares sold in such a case cannot be bought back a fraction of a second later (because whoever just bought them has to hold on to them for a week/month).

I don't pretend that this plan is waterproof. I'm sure someone will shoot a big hole in it in the replies below... I just wish that the stock market would represent what it's supposed to represent: a place where people can invest in our real economy.

Pants have pockets. Phones fit in pockets. Problem solved. And I know that women tend to not use pockets - I cannot understand why - but they have purses and handbags that are specially designed to hold many things including a phone. Either way, the problem that a wearable smart gadget tries to solve is not a problem in the first place.

Also, I don't have to track my fitness, because I am usually there myself to observe my fitness with my own eyes.

So, not using the phone is far more dangerous than using it.

Also: I get the feeling that European English speaking people swear a lot more than in the USA, and I wonder if this will be reflected in the moderation.

There is absolutely no way that soar losers will totally abuse this.

Also, there is no way that people will get upset buying an expensive gaming system, and subsequently being unable to play with the 'green' accounts because of some highly subjective moderation system.

The difference is that, together with Sedna, this is only the 2nd object found so far out.

From what I understood, the importance of this is that it may shed a new light on how the solar system came to be. I thought that the general theory of small dwarf planets in weird orbits is that they were flung into that orbit by the larger planets that passed by them at some point in the past. However, Sedna and the new object are so far out that they don't cross any orbit of a larger planet. So, something else is going on.

Contrary to popular belief, scientists get excited when observations do not match the current theories (they're often accused of defending the old models).

Some more about these 'detached objects' can be found on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Many people wear cheap sunglasses - I guess "80% of the eyewear market" is in terms of value, not volume, since 1 Ray-ban costs about as much as 100 cheap sunglasses?

I'm impressed that Lego can do such heavy tasks nowadays. I am sure that my old technic Lego blocks would simply have snapped in two under such stresses. However, I think that the new Lego is so customized that there may exist thousands of different blocks, which means you must now design first, and then order the blocks. It's no longer a matter of having a box full of blocks and just start building. It seems also many blocks are specialized and can only be used in one (maybe two) different way(s), whereas I seem to remember that I invented new ways to use my old blocks all the time.

Call me an old fart, but I am not sure all of this is actually progress.