If you actually care about the environment, it's probably more productive to just bribe the correct Chinese officials to enforce their laws than to enact export bans or mandatory certification processes in the USA.

E-Waste that gets shipped to China and other places, sometimes ends up handled by facilities without adequate worker protection and polluting the environment. The journo doesn't provide any real information of what percentage of waste ends up handled in this way and how much is handled in a responsible manner. Nor does he make any mention of how Chinese law regards these activities. China is mentioned only as a bogeyman.

Oh, look! Someone right here in the good old USA has found a solution! Yay! The Chinese bogeyman can be defeated! But, wait... there are some fly-by-night operators who don't want to embrace this triumph of American ingenuity. Obviously, those fly-by-night folks are just looking for a quick buck while the larger businesses are really looking out for the environment.

Therefore, we should pass some kind of law to prevent export of e-waste. The large businesses that can afford to vertically integrate (through capital expenditures on the machinery for e-waste processing [NB: Investment in jobs vs machinery is related to cost of labor {Where labor is cheap (China, global south), work is done by workers. Where workers are expensive (USA, EU, etc.), work is done by machines}]) obviously have environmental interests at heart (never commercial interests.)

So, the article offers a problem (hellish conditions in some places receiving electronics exports from the USA), and offers a solution (requiring the processing of waste in the USA). Who will benefit from this? The large, vertically integrated e-waste companies in the USA. Who will lose? 1) All of the small e-waste collectors who will now be forced to sell their raw e-waste to the large domestic operators, and 2) all of the foreign e-waste processing centers.

The end result would be that all e-waste would be processed through a small number very rich e-waste processors. The barrier to entry (through investment in machinery and whatever certification process they create) will be so high and the economies of scale so large that perhaps 3 big companies will be processing all US e-waste if it's export were banned.

How much do you want to bet that some actors in the e-waste marketplace who aspire to be larger processors put something in the ear of the journalist?

That the thing-- how many infantry squads are carrying around a M2 or Mk19? That shit is heavy and takes a while to set up. M203 is nice, but the range is limited. The XM25 will do everything your M203 can do, but it will do it more quickly and accurately and out to at least 500M. Keep in mind that this weapon is magazine fed and fielded by a single soldier or marine.

Look-- I can understand the questioning of the physics behind a round moving 2000 feet per second exploding and killing people below it. It sounds like a difficult problem to solve. I'm certain that you're not the first person to wonder about this.

Still, this weapon has been in development for a long long time. Presumably, they've tested the ammunition at some point in the 10+ years that they've been developing it. During that testing, I'm sure they figured out how to make it kill things despite the physical challenges.

The cost of keeping men in theater is so great that if this (or any) weapon reduced the length of the conflict by 1%, it will likely have paid for itself. The real issue is whether the conflict can be solved by killing people.

Likewise, the cost of recruiting, training, and maintaining a soldier is so large that if this weapon saves some lives and prevents some injuries, it will pay for itself.

As far as how "revolutionary" the system is, well, I can't say for sure because I'm not using one. I'm guessing that this weapon will be issued to the guy in the team who would normally be carrying the M16/M4 with the M203 on it. The M203 is reasonably effective for firing on enemies behind cover. When I had the chance to fire one in Basic Training, I could very reliably put a round through a window out to about 100 meters. Landing a round a couple meters behind a berm or small wall was a bit more tricky but definitely doable. The sighting system on the XM25, the much flatter trajectory, and the air-burst feature should make these kinds of shots much much easier. It will also allow a soldier to shoot from the prone position, which isn't so easy with the M203. The important thing about this weapon is the range. Being about to put those grenade rounds out to 800 meters is a big advance over 150M with the M203.

I haven't shot or handled one of these weapons, but I can imagine firing one. What I imagine is something similar to the feeling of firing a M2 or Mk19-- my feeling was 'Holy shit! There's nowhere to hide..." That's what I can imagine with this weapon.

I had the same problem. Maybe she's busy chatting to so many people who found her on slashdot.

The OP says "upgrade home computers." If the plan is to upgrade multiple computers, it would seem to make more sense to just build one badass box sitting in a closet somewhere and running ESX or other virtualization software. Use the existing machines to connect over RDP, X, VNC, or similar. I haven't used ESX, but the old GSX server was managed by a GUI client that could connect across the network and allowed direct control of the guest OS's. I never had problems with redraws, latency, or saturation of bandwidth when connecting over a GigE LAN.

The headline says 'Berlin Wall Death Strip', but actually reading TFA shows that it's about the border between the two German states.

If this game is about people crossing the Berlin Wall, wouldn't 150 km (or whatever the exact length was) be more appropriate? Technically west Berlin wasn't even part of the FRG-- it was a foreign occupation zone deep within the borders of the GDR.

There was a media spoogefest over this software a while ago. It turns out that there are only 100 users and apparently it sucks in the first place.

You think Arc is "steaming pile of 'software'"? I've tried a few of the free alternatives (QGIS, MapWindow, Thuban), and, while ambitious projects, they don't come anywhere close to Arc. Can you suggest something better?