OK, no real technical data and some absurd claims here.

First all-digital transceiver? No. There have been others. Especially if you allow them to have a DAC and an ADC and no other components in the analog domain, but even without that, there are lots of IoT-class radios with direct-to-digital detectors and digital outputs directly to the antenna. You might have one in your car remote (mine is two-way).

And they have to use patented algorithms? Everybody else can get along with well-known technology old enough that any applicable patents are long expired.

It would be nicer if there was some information about what they are actually doing. If they really have patented it, there's no reason to hold back.

Personally, I don't see that any of these things as compelling practical advantages, given that the kids already have dual Swedish and Belgian (and therefore EU) citizenship. If they were Moldovan and South Sudanese, that'd be a different story. Or if they were citizens of a country from which getting a visa to enter the US might be difficult in the future.

But most importantly I think this is one of those decisions that you just don't make primarily on a cost-benefit basis. It's not like deciding to join Costco or subscribe to Hulu. Citizenship entails responsibilities. If you want your kids to shoulder those responsibilities and feel allegiance to the US then it makes sense to get them that citizenship come hell or high water. But given that they already have two perfectly good citizenships from two advanced western democracies with generally positive international relations worldwide, I don't see much practical advantage in adding a third.

Still, I wouldn't presume to give advice, other than this. The poster needs to examine, very carefully, that feeling he has that maybe his kids should be Americans. The way he expresses it, "sentimental reasons", makes those feelings seem pretty trivial, in which case it hardly matters if they don't become Americans. After all, most other Belgians seem to get along perfectly well without being Americans too. But if this is at all something he suspects he might seriously regret not doing, or if it nags him in ways he can't quite put his finger on, he needs to get to the bottom of that in a way random people on the Internet can't help him with.

Exactly. My being sanctimonious would make you hypocritically self-righteous.

... with some food for thought.

The ending '-eous' or '-ious' is added to a noun to produce an adjective that means producing whatever that noun is. Something that is 'advantageous' produces advantage for example. Something which is ignominious produce ignominy (shame, embarrassment). Something that is piteous arouses pity in the onlooker.

I think you see where I'm going with this. The word the headline writer should have used is 'nauseated', although making users nauseous in the pedantic sense would certainly be a concern for the developers of any product.

Right, and when it comes to power generation deaths are the only metric that matters.

Well, don't keep us in suspense: what are these important metrics we should sacrifice human lives to improve?

Uhhhh, setting the coal on fire doesn't exactly render the region uninhabitable for generations to come. When the fire goes out, it's habitable again.

In 250 years, possibly more. After which you get to wait for the ground to return to normal again.

The engineers should have put the brakes to any construction efforts taking place in those locations, based on that fact alone.

They can't. The spirit of the organization employing them does not let them. Their role is to implement the decisions of the leadership and rationalize them. Conforming to their role earns them social capital, and going against costs it. And they can't possibly earn that capital fast enough to pay for keeping a plant blocked for long.

Coal with CCS is about the same price.

CCS - Carbon Capture and Sequestration? I wonder if you could drive the price down by keeping the carbon dioxide gaseous and feeding it to nearby greenhouses - possibly through a simple pipe. Heck, if you used the greenhouse products as biofuel in the plant you could create a completely closed loop :).

Which other energy sources?

Ones that will keep my computer running even if it happens to be cloudy and calm and my neighbour decides to use a vacuum cleaner.

Wind, solar PV,

Bit players unless there's a near-miraculous breakthrough in battery technology. At which point solar will require lots of land area and wind will likely have unintended side effects - it's removing energy from the weather system, after all - which means endless rounds of complaints.

solar thermal,

Workable, but requires massive plants. Those are not going to happen - someone will always complain.

wave, tidal,

Lots of promises, few deliveries. And again, these will have massive ecological implications even when working properly.

geothermal,

Unworkable at current drilling technology.

biofuel?

Basically solar power with lots of added inefficiencies. Bonus points for having potential to cause famines if it comes down to feeding the poor or feeding your car.

So because a bunch of flight instructors don't like dealing with the FAA the organization isn't effective at ensuring airline safety? You can tell stories about stupid things that happen in ANY organization and the FAA is no different. Yeah, not everything the FAA does is perfect - news at 11. Of course the aviation industry has achieved a ridiculously impressive safety record and the FAA has been a huge part of that. Coincidence? Not remotely. Just because an organization does some silly stuff doesn't negate their actual accomplishments.

For general aviation sure. It's expensive, time consuming, and causes your insurance rates to go through the roof if you are a general aviation pilot. Owning and maintaining a plane is not a cheap hobby.

If you are a pro the pay for a newbie pilot is ridiculously low and that has nothing at all to do with the FAA. That's simply due to the fact that there is an excess supply of pilot so wages get pushed down. I have a cousin who became a airline pilot. Spent a ton of money getting trained and was making all of about $30K/year in salary to drive the bus in the sky. Gee, wonder why people wouldn't want to become a pilot if the wages are shit and the hours are long.

So don't piss him off.

Just because a part is functional and not yet broken does not mean it is inappropriate to take it out of service. I'm sure you can find examples of something silly done by some FAA employee but the fact remains that without them the safety record of the aviation industry would not be anywhere close to what it is today.

Oh and the airlines industry right now is reporting record profits. Airlines going broke? Only the badly run ones. They've finally figured out that having excess capacity is economically stupid and they've started charging ticket and other fees that are high enough to actually generate a profit. What a concept...

Thorium reactors don't need cooling? I think you don't understand the physics involved. Some newer reactor designs have passive cooling systems which are (theoretically) safer but they still need and have cooling systems. Fission generates heat which is used to drive turbines. If you have heat you must have a cooling system. It takes a substantial amount of time for a fission reactor to cool even once the reaction is shut down and you have to have some form of cooling system in place to do that.

Nuclear (specifically fission) power generation is cheap. All the safety systems, regulatory oversight, large construction projects, waste management/disposal, licensing, project management, environmental impact, financing and maintenance of nuclear power are tremendously expensive. And you cannot separate the power generation from the rest of those items.

I think the premise is still quite doable, especially if there were some condition on Earth which prevented agricultural production from reaching its current capacity.

Anything that would leave spaceflight-capable civilization standing would also leave Earth better suited for food production than the Moon. It's an absurd premise, and any attempt to justify it with actual logistics will simply draw attention to it. Just imply the situation is due to "corruption" and leave the details to the imagination of the audience.

What's wrong with incest?

Power. Family relations already have a high chance of turning into a living hell due to the combination of huge power differences and mandatory participation; supercharging everything with sexuality is a bad idea.

There was a period in the early 00's when one of the my company's manager would periodically walk through my office door and the first words out of his mouth was "I just read about this patent..." and I'd stop him right there.

"This is going to be one of those things where the extent of the filer's 'invention' was to take something people were doing with LORAN fifty years ago, cross out 'LORAN' and write in 'GPS', isn't it?"

"Well," he'd begin.

"I don't want to hear about it. It's guaranteed to be invalid on the basis of obviousness, but if they get lucky in court and I've actually read or even heard about that specific patent they'll be able to take us to the cleaners."

You'd be amazed at some of the technology patents the patent office grants. Stuff anyone who'd been a practicing engineer for more than a few months would laugh his ass off at if he were patent examiner.