It doesn't 'violate' charge conservation. You build up a positive charge as you run. Pretty soon the positive charge becomes so huge that your thruster ceases to work. You can make it work again by neutralizing your charge.

Power sources do not produce electrons. They simply pump electrons around in a circuit. After running this propulsion system for a while you'd need to replenish your electrons from some external source (or eject positive ions to compensate).

> If it is producing enough electrons to move the material it might be possible to harvest those electrons and create a much more efficient solar power array.

Look up 'thermionic converter'. It's already been suggested for use in combination with solar collectors and nuclear power sources. It's pretty inefficient though as you generate a lot of heat in the process. I'm not sure about the heat output of this graphene-based system so I can't comment.

The EM drive is pseudoscientific rubbish. Conservation of momentum is a buzzkill and there's no way around it. As for this discovery, one of two things will happen:

1. They will 'discover' that it uses no reaction mass, in which case it can safely be discredited as pseudoscience.

2. They will discover that there is indeed reaction mass involved. Actually that's what it says there in the article: "Instead, they think the graphene absorbs laser energy and builds up a charge of electrons. Eventually it can't hold any more, and extra electrons are released" If this is confirmed it means that you can't run this for very long because you build up a positive charge and you need to balance this by gaining electrons from somewhere (interstellar gas maybe?) or ejecting positive ions.

If electron ejection is happening then it's really nothing new; we've known that electron guns can propel objects in space. This might lead to new, more efficient ways of using that effect, though. Still, I doubt that the thrust is going to be anywhere near useful for, say, a manned spacecraft. It might be extremely useful for satellites and probes.

I cannot comprehend this entitled attitude. on cable tv you see ads. in a magazine or newspaper you see ads. before movies you see ads. during movies you see ad placements. so it's not like Netflix is proposing a crazy new concept

I cannot comprehend this apathy about the ongoing invasion of every bit of space and time by attempts at mind control. ("Buy! Buy! Buy!")

Once upon a time you actually could pick up some magazines and see very few ads, or even none at all. There were not ads before movies. Product placement was inconspicuous or non-existent. There was even less ad time on broadcast TV -- one guy estimates that the time spent on commercials more than doubled since the 1950s.

Ads as we know them are memetic toxins. Anyone unconcerned about them is unconcerned about their own mind.

In other words, within a year or two we will be rolling out ads that you will be forced to watch before you can view the programming you pay a subscription fee for.

Except that it isn't an instant. Insulin takes effect pretty darned quickly. Thyroid changes can take days or weeks, and the synthetic hormones themselves actually have to be taken under specific circumstances, as absorption into the blood stream orally requires no significant intake of food. My wife takes her medication early in the morning and then cannot eat for something like three hours.

Having an artificial thyroid that would more closely monitor TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone, the way your body monitors and adjusts thyroid hormone levels is complex) and adjust actual thyroid hormone levels directly would be far better in the long run.

Pretty amazing advance. Now I wish they'd do the same for the thyroid. My wife had hers removed due to cancer nine years ago, and has to manage her thyroid levels via synthetic thyroid hormone pills, which, while effective, are crude and require regular testing to make sure she's not hyperthyroidic or hyothyroidic.

"The Supreme Court doesn't accept my legal genius, therefore the Supreme Court is wrong, and I remain the greatest constitutional expert EVERRR!!!!"

Internet trolls and other hyperbolic posters have been around as long as the Internet was around. I remember when I first started posting one Usenet in the very early 1990s (1990-91 or so), that there were many flamewars that ended with everything from legal threats to, at least in one case, a poster threatening to show up at another poster's house and beat him senseless, and in those days many of us actually had our home addresses in our bloody sigs! I don't think anyone ever really took it seriously, even when the poster making the threats was a net kook (and ye olden days there were some legendary kooks, particularly in places like talk.origins). People, particularly when shrouded in anonymity, behave in ways that they would never dream of behaving in person, which to my mind is a key to the notion that most of even the vilest trolls are really just assholes letting off steam in public forums.

I'm not saying that all conduct on the Internet should be protected, but I think we have to accept that anonymity and instant communications from any corner of the globe creates a somewhat different situation. I've personally been threatened with bodily harm a couple of times in the over a quarter of a century I've been on the Internet, and while I can't say it didn't effect me, I suppressed any desire to panic and realized that the assholes in question were, well, just assholes, and the odds were pretty damned low that I was ever in danger.

I think it's a bit unfair to conflate ALL the money he gets together - a quite a lot of that is just the same general corporate welfare every other business gets as well, and the subsidy part is way less than the subsidies enjoyed by oil companies for example.

It's probably not an unsupportable position to say there should be no subsidies for him - but ONLY if you hold hte position that there should be no subsidies for any business, ever.

There are numerous reasons. The look of adults will remain more consistent throughout the filming of a movie and between sequels (not to mention a TV series), while no amount of contractual obligation can stop a child actor from growing. I heard on a director's commentary of a film (can't remember which one) that said that they had problems reshooting parts of an earlier scene because the child had changed between the start and end of the movie; probably no so noticeably as you watch the film sequentially, but when it they intercut shots into the same scene then it could be obvious.

Child actors also have limits on how long they can film and require schooling during the shoot. It's possible that trained actors are easier to direct and put in better performances, but that is just speculation and there are definitely examples of children doing some stunning work. Finally, teenagers can be right pricks sometimes (although so can some prima donna actors too).

You mean, like Canada, that slum-ridden cesspit to the North?

Try dialing down the dogma a fraction, and accept that there are reasonable compromises that provide reasonable mitigation to the worst aspects of any economic system. You might find that it is indeed possible for sober public investment in private enterprise not only to work, but to work well. There's a whole sub-discipline in economics devoted to the study of it. Yes, there are downsides to Public/Private Partnerships (it even has a name!!), but with the proper checks, they can sometimes work better than either a purely public or a purely private undertaking.

The idea is that your device runs a calendar app and syncs with Google Calendar. You then get notifications regardless if you are online or outside a coverage area,

And through what magic does that sync occur if you are offline or outside a coverage area?

I'm not foolisbn enough to give an advertizing company my callendar, but I'm pretty sure that Google Clendar uses TCP/IP to sync. Which means you have to have data reception. Which is much less avaiable than SMS.

It is if you have the right lawyers.

Sure they could have screwed it up more. They could have mentioned that Alpha Centaurians have invaded Duluth, and are transforming Minnesotans into angry Communist half-snake half-jelly fish chimeras who chant "Serve the giant penis god!"

Now THAT would be a screwed up writeup!