Remember when the NSA was secretly changing widely-used crypto algortithms to make them stronger? I'm thinking of the DES sbox and differential cryptanalysis.

One thing's for sure, RSA is toast. They can issue all the denials they want. Nobody's ever going to trust them again.

Isn't titanium pyrophoric, sort of like those golf clubs?

I for one welcome the gargantuan exploding lawnmowers to our skies.

... is The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.

(I liked the Seamus Heaney version too.)

And Wikipedia is always right. But xkcd is always righter.

Parent is the poster-child for compulsory public education. Some kids need to be rescued from their parents.

Just like gravity, for example.

Perhaps ... because learning three different ways to add two numbers aids comprehension of the mathematical concept of addition?

Nah. It must be a UN conspiracy or something.

Now that's the kind of textbook I would vigorously advocate for.

The answer is (c). Maybe the people shaking their heads over this stuff have finally succumbed to the brain rot caused by listening to Alex Jones all the time.

I sure would like to hear an example of what kind of "blatant error" you're talking about. For every parent that points out that centrifugal force is just as real as any other force, there will be ten who deny evolution or climate change.

Perhaps this is the main effect driving the study: the majority of parents in America are half-educated nitwits, and any involvement from them will only cause damage to their child's education.

Not when I'm on the panel.

So ... let's say you're on a funding panel, with 120 grant proposals in front of you, and you have to recommend twenty of them as top priorities for funding. The rest of them are going to go without, because that's all the money you have to allocate. Thirty of those proposals are from established, productive researchers with track records of transformative discoveries. Another thirty are from promising young researchers with first-rate pedigrees looking for their first grants to launch careers that may span decades. Thirty are from mediocre old guys nearing retirement who have been in the funding pipeline forever, and have been getting grants mostly by inertia. Thirty are semi-coherent ravings from people who display very little comprehension of the existing literature or of the basic parameters of the field.

Now find the "mavericks". You have to have a ranked list by tomorrow afternoon.

Dear person who thinks that "good code rarely needs commenting": the entire world wants to beat you senseless with a nine iron.

You're welcome.