With you so far.

Nooooooooo. Only on /. is it normal to be focused entirely on the clothes coming down a catwalk!

This argument is often raised, but Haiti and Cuba are countries that make you stop and think about it. Haiti received government support from the U.S. and it not doing well by any measure. Cuba has had an embargo with the U.S., Bay of Pigs, etc. and is doing relatively okay for it in comparison.

Now I like the U.S. and respect it for holding to its principles as a country, but there are a couple of supporting countries that have had their countries pretty well screwed over.

Is this really true though? A lot of what we know about Earth's formation, our moon's formation, our solar system's formation, etc. has only come to light in recent years. Earlier solar system equivalents would have faced a much higher risk of being blasted by blazars and O-type stars. This would wipe out life at any stage of development as we would know it. There are many other things like how the Earth got its water where the details of how it happened that need to be considered properly and time added for.

I'm postulating that the answer could be that the reason why we are the first is that all the other intelligent life that faces this problem in our neighborhood might meet humans later and not have to ask that question. Or, in other words, we may be first because we are first.

Maybe the reason why we haven't encountered alien civilizations is simply that we are the first in our region?

If you think about it you need a second generation start like our Sun because the first lot of Stars needed to go supernova to generate the heavier elements and compact our star system into something like it is now along a nice plane with larger gas giants and a "cloud" of water bearing asteroids circling far out. The earlier second generation stars also had a problem where earlier in our galaxies history there were more pulsars and O-type stars that could have killed life by sending jets of high energy radiation our way.

Next you have to wait for the planet to form and then get water from the stabilization of larger gas planet orbits bringing in the water bearing asteroids. Then you have to wait for the planet to cool, the water to seep down and create some sort of active continents with plate techtonics. Then you have to wait for the iron to settle in with the water, first life to start producing oxygen in the atmosphere, and evolution taking its long course to make something that can make useful technologies and contemplate the universe.

Could just be that we are the first (somewhat) intelligent life around.

Because they can sell new ones at 60$ a piece and pocket the 55+$ in profit every year or so, putting in code that tells if it is "genuine Apple" or not?

Then you can use your guns to shoot your neighbor's drones and all will be well.

Seriously though, this seems unlikely as drones are not even remotely mentioned in the US constitution.

Reading through the comments did no one else see that in the article the company that was focused on only recruited people with 15 years industry experience?! I suppose the owner wants people to work for 15 years without pay as an intern before getting a position at his company? Looks like there are just too many people for every decent job.

That doesn't mean they are underpayed and not soaking up all the resources. Lawyers always will want more money for the same level job. A bit cynical I know but I think a "scarcity" of lawyers is always going to be the case, because they never can actually solve anything.

The problem is probably that after the judges and lawyers salaries are factored in they probably haven't got enough money to do IT properly. These guys will take the lion's share of any amount you throw at them.

There's a market for seamless video looping that the pis are starting to fill. I use them for exhibition spaces to push videos remotely on a loop with omxplayer. Dispman_vncserver allows for remote viewing of content as well.

It's the small size that makes them attractive and I could see them being mounted to other devices than display screens as well. The new compute module and board would fit fine in home-made drones. I was thinking of trying to make a drone with a servo and 3d printer, but my 3d printer isn't up to the task unfortunately (maybe in a couple of years). You just have to use your imagination.

I think what you are referring to has been known at least since the Egyptian times and is the result of hallucinogenic/intoxicating drugs or head knocking. Nothing wrong with having a good time, but people should at least be honest instead of saying "the god with crocodile head and lion body that only I can see told me to do X."

The trick is to wait for the ghost to pull the lever. This is the only way to win at gambling in a statistically significant way and you'll never lose your house.

You are right, I missed that and admittedly did not do a thorough search before posting. Still it is fun to think about how to make a genderless connector that would just click together in any which way.