It sounds like the plan is for this ship to be the first of several, so the question is how much of that $20 billion investment is for upfront costs (design, shipyard upgrades, construction equipment) that will not be duplicated in subsequent ships. As it is, the first ship looks to probably at least break even or even make a decent profit (provided it works as expected) with bigger profits hopefully to follow. I am sure these numbers have been gone over very carefully. You don't make an investment this large on a whim.

I have driven that stretch in eastern Montana many times, and I have also driven that stretch of road in Texas. One thing the article doesn't mention about that toll road in Texas is that it was very expensive -- over $5 if I remember correctly. I tried it once not knowing the cost, and it was a lot of fun to drive on. But for that price, I can see why so few people use it, especially since you have to go out of your way. I was on my way from San Antonio to Dallas, so I didn't mind skipping Austin.

As for eastern Montana, the countryside is very open with gently rolling hills and long stretches of mostly straight sections of Interstate. Very often, you will not be able to see a vehicle in either direction (and just as often, no more than one or two buildings either), so the temptation to cruise is very high. Any wildlife can be seen from miles away, and there are very few trees. My only concern would be raising the speed limit on the western side of the state where there are more mountains and forests. There are some highways with 70 mph limits with limited visibility (both on the road and in the underbrush around) that makes for dangerous driving. As long as they take these things into account, it makes perfect sense. Montana already takes over a day's driving. just to get across.

You (The US) already spends the most on education per student then any other nation and yet have some of the worst test results.

That may be true, but it's not going to teachers!. (Link describes North Carolina, but I think the same is true elsewhere.)

I don't think "throwing money at it" will make it better. Sure, teachers will take home more money but the test results clearly show this doesnt improve the quality of education.

This study disagrees.

Yeah, Microsoft made a really good desktop solution and then developed a really broken one. Take that, Linux!

It's common knowledge that nvidia is having a hard time of things. They cancelled their server chip and their mobile devices are going nowhere. Discrete graphics cards aren't the market they used to be; and certainly not a growth industry. Maybe they're trying to get bought by Qualcomm or Samsung... there aren't many companies that are big enough to be able to absorb them and have it make any kind of sense. I wouldn't be surprised to see them sue Intel also.

Suing the companies that might be able to buy you out is not an uncommon way to start the negotiations.

The article says that most of the galaxies are moving apart, but the Local Group is moving closer. Why would the local group be different than the other galaxies? Are there other groups of galaxies that are seeing the same effect, or is the Local Group an anomaly?

Aw, crap. That should read: Information capacity < frequency bandwidth * log2(1+SNR)

Information Capacity Frequency Bandwidth * log2(1+signal-to-noise ratio) "In the lab" typically means "BNC cables" which give you very high signal-to-noise ratios. And in MIMO you can potentially treat each pair of antennas a separate channel. You use fancy techniques to increase the SNR for each channel. The nice thing about the 5GHz spectrum is that the frequency band is pretty large up there, and not as much interference with other unlicensed things (phones, microwaves, other wireless communication users... though as it gets more popular that will change) as the lower bands. The not-so-nice thing about the higher frequencies is that they tend to attenuate rapidly when the signal is going through something thicker than air.

My understanding is that ULA gets paid lots and lots of money to maintain two independent launch vehicles, the Atlas V and the Delta IV. That way if one of the rockets is grounded for some reason, space access is still available.

ULA prefers Atlas V because it is more profitable for them. But it uses engines from Russia.

The Russian engines are purchased from a company with ties to one of the people targeted by US sanctions against Russia... so the judge has granted the injunction to prevent purchasing those Russian engines.

ULA has a stockpile of some Russian engines already, and they have the (less profitable for them) Delta IV if they can't launch Atlas V for any reason... and running out of engines would be one of those reasons. But ULA would prefer to continue buying engines. But we've been paying them to have both rockets available, so they'd better be able to show up with what they've promised.

Separate from this injunction, SpaceX is asking for a review of the large block by of ULA cores, as it was done just before (a few days before) one of the final milestones of SpaceX being qualified to launch for the air force. I think it's not unreasonable for them to say that it's unacceptable to do a huge purchase when if you wait for a few days you would have multiple vendors competing for the bid.

Even John McCain thinks that contract smells fishy: link

So these cores with the arm V8 architecture add:

• More registers (16->32)
• DP SIMD
• New instructions for crypto

and a handfull of other things. But all of the above aren't really benefits of 64 bitness, just the improvements to the architecture. The real benefit of a 64 bit architecture is the larger virtual address space... processes with >2-3 GB of memory. Every other improvement is usually just improvements that could have been added in 32-bit mode but they threw into 64 bit arch. Similar with x86-64.

Low-complication implementations of functionality are typically more elegant.

Now come here and show us the stack of qualified, talented people for these open positions we have? Oh, wait, you're not actually trying to hire people? Maybe you mean there's no shortage of people writing crap on the Internet?

My total compensation as a qualified Engineer is similar to the average compensation for a doctor. I think that's reasonable. It's very hard to fill positions right now.

Because being able to use logic to write instructions that are correct and unambiguous is a skill that everyone should learn. And basically that's what coding is.

It's like literacy or numeracy or basic understanding of science. You have a problem as a culture if it is culturally acceptable to say "I can't do math" or "I can't understand written language" or "I have no idea about the universe around me or how people go about understanding it" or "I can't read or write logical directions."

Do you expect everyone to be a best-selling novelist (or a writer that is enjoyed for all history?) No.

Do you expect everyone to be the next Ramanujan? No.

Do you expect everyone to be the next Knuth? No.

But it is expected that everyone have basic skills in these kinds of things. It's just necessary to understand the world. If you don't understand these kinds of things -- if you don't have basic skills in language or mathematics or logic -- then you are at a disadvantage in modern society.

I group computer science'logic here separate from Mathematics. Perhaps it shouldn't be. But having a population that doesn't understand things like this shuold be considered as problematic as a population that can not read and write.

If you are driving, you are responsible.

A car that drives itself is responsible for itself.

Who pays in the event of an accident is the driver. In this case, the car. Probably the manufacturer would be liable.

Manufacturers will probably get insurance for the car when driven autonomously. If self-driving cars are safer, this should be a lower insurance rate than you pay now. Additionally, self-driving cars will probably have sensor input that will prove/disprove fault.

We were caught abusing the rights of the American people and the people's of many other nations. Now that we've been caught people won't trust us anymore. Fell so sorry for us!