Internet of Things: Yeah, but the industrial applications will be huge. Imagine a factory where each machine, or every subsystem in every machine, has a health status that updates in real time, based on sensor input (I imagine this is already in place in many factories). With a sufficiently advanced setup a lot of workers could probably be laid off.

Parallel Programming: Already in use by most of those who benefit from it.

3D printing: Already in use, but could have a lot of niche applications.

Web APIs: Massively in use already.

Embedded systems: Massively in use already. Whole classes of consumer-oriented embedded systems have come and gone, including mp3 players and feature phones.

This thing that you're describing is called sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is a state where you are still dreaming, but you are also partially aware of your surroundings (mainly through hearing) and here is the scary part: you are strongly convinced that you are not dreaming and that you are in fact awake. This combination of dreaming while thinking that you are awake can make for some pretty strange and frightening experiences...

Sleep paralysis is often posed as an explanation for the widespread phenomenon of people experiencing nightly visits by evil entities such as witches and (in modern times) aliens.

The first of those videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXgToM8cbBI) shows the smoke trail dispersing and becoming difficult to make out within about half a minute. The missile is launched at 1:20 into the video and the root of the trail is half gone at 1:50. I'd say there's maybe a 90-second window (at most) for anyone with an average smartphone camera who want to gather evidence of a launch with this missile system.

You also have to factor in that an unsuspecting civilian who is standing a couple of miles away will hear the launch about 10 seconds after it has happened and will most likely be confused by sound reflection and refraction against ground objects like houses and trees, which will make it difficult for them to locate the source of the sound quickly enough to get a good picture.

Alright, time for some back of the envelope calculations!

A maglev line between Chicago and Atlanta through Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville, would stretch about 1200 km.

Assuming a top speed of 500 km/h and a time penalty of about 10 minutes per station along the route and a 5 minute penalty for the departure and destination stations, the ride would take 1200/500 - (5+10+10+10+10+5)/60 = 3.23 hours, which would be quite competitive with air travel, based on travel time alone.

I'm afraid the numbers would get rather bleak once we start to talk about the financial viability of the project. Generally, you get the most societal benefit from infrastructure projects that offer attractive options for day commuting, so any tax subsidies ought to be focused on such projects and not on projects that merely offer attractive options for weekly commutes or one-off journeys.

I don't think ESA would ever be cleared to handle plutonium, let alone launch it into space. For starters, I don't know who would have the authority to clear ESA to use plutonium.

What?

But it has a handy little write new email to no specific person button in the bottom right, where your thumb is. I start writing emails to no-one in particular all the time! Okay, maybe not...

But at least all the other features have been optimized to be as far away from your thumb as possible (assuming you're right-handed), in the top left corner. But you can also swipe right from the left edge to open the menu, and this will only sometimes cause you to delete emails from your inbox...

Actually, maybe you have a point. But the old version of the Gmail app was only slightly better.

Never fear. TFA says:

"The Chinese researchers mention the question of privacy, however. That’s an issue that would make this kind of tracking difficult in democratic countries, or at least the public acknowledgement of it.

See that? Companies that make apps would never dare to ask you to let them access your location if you live in a democracy.

Okay, but they apparently missed the signs that Mexico was entering failed-state territory.

The police allegedly just shot up 43 protesters and handed them over to a so-called drug gang, one of the paramilitary proto-governments that are waiting in the wings to attempt to take over if the Mexican government fails completely.

If that analogy holds in more than one way then I suppose that specialized AI models will appear earlier in history, will be vastly more numerous and resilient and long-lived than more generalized AI models.

The more generalized AI:s will probably want to reach for a specialized-AI swatter every now and then.

Remember when you could learn to be a HTML/CSS "coder" in a couple of months and, if you were lucky or knew the right people, get a fairly well-paying job? That must have been around 1996-1998...

It coincides with the event of a major country, that is almost completely dependent on oil exports for its economy, invading part of Europe.

This may or may not be a coincidence. At any rate, this is very bad news for the Russian economy. It remains to be seen if Putin can generate a strong enough RDF to keep the Russian people in line with his foreign policy.

AFAIK the article does not say that.

All it says is that it sucks to be the one who is different from everyone else, and that the author is going to do what she can in order to bring more people like her into the industry, so that it will suck less for her kind of person.

Yeah, I suspect all they have is a machine learning algorithm that was good at predicting how 83 particular individuals felt about politics in 2014.

Good luck using the same algorithm on a different group of people, or on the same group a few years later.

http://spaceflightnow.com/chal...

T+1:56 "Flight controllers here are looking very carefully at the situation. Obviously a major malfunction."
T+2:50 "We have a report from the flight dynamics officer that the vehicle has exploded. The flight director confirms that. We are looking at checking with the recovery forces to see what can be done at this point."

(The main explosion happened at T+1:13.)

Politician: How can we tax them there internets?
Aide: Uh, we tax Internet companies through the regular revenue tax and through the salary tax that their employees pay and we put VAT on anything ordered through a web store, just like we have for regular stores.
Politician: Yeah, sure, but I mean I feel there's so much money being dowloaded in the Internet. Just this morning one of my staff members downloaded an internet from Facebook for hundreds of dollars. Seriously. Hundreds of dollars! I think it was a new TV and and one of those newfangled DVD-players with 3-d glasses.
Aide: It sounds like he ordered something from a web shop through a Facebook ad. He would have paid VAT on that. The business that operates the web shop will pay revenue tax on their earnings.
Politician: Sure, but I mean it's not the same thing. Like, he got this through Facebook, through their internet!
Aide: Yeah, I suppose.
Politician: Look, you have to understand that the Internet is not like a big truck that you can just load stuff on... The Internet is like a series of tubes... With gigabytes going through them. Gigabytes I tell you! I want to tax those gigabytes. I think it's only fair that we do.
Aide: Errr...
Politician: Could you write up a proposal where we tax the gigabytes?
Aide: I'm not sure if that would make sense, sir. Facebook is not a Hungarian company, so there is no way we can tax them.
Politician: Listen. You know how ugly the draft budget looks. It's what, a 10% deficit? We need to be tough on this. I'm making it a profile issue.
Aide: Hmm, okay I'll see what I can do. Oh. Speaking about money, I think it's time you give me a raise.