I think they are working to answer a good question, but not necessarily a high value question. Why does distance matter? Scientific inquiry is good, but the goal is return of value to humanity. If you worked on making computer parts that could transmit information faster and more reliably over a very short distance, somewhere between a meter and a millimeter, then you could plausibly improve the lives of most of the folks on the planet, or at least enable them to check slashdot or facebook more cheaply.

Our leadership has no vision for anything more than lining their pockets. Long term success of the nation - nah.

Let the people learn to speak chinese ... or russian.

Excellent and well articulated point. Thank you.

We don't have enough history to gauge what actually has happened over time, so we have to estimate.
We approximate by finding big rocks or chemistry on earth, looking at craters on the moon, or this.

In all these cases we are using the small but frequent to infer the distribution of big but hugely problematic events. Our best answer the question about the likelihood of a killer impact is grossly changed if this tail is changed.

Think about it like floods. We ask how likely a 10,000 year flood is going to happen next year. We have ~100 years of rainfall data. We fit it to a distribution that is appropriate and then use those fit parameters to make a best guess. If our rain gauge was only measuring half the rain, we might under-estimate the actual risk by a factor of 10x or 20x.

There is good correlation between "killer impacts" and location of the sun in the galaxy (yes it moves around). We are starting to enter a higher risk region (transition to edge of arm) and perhaps the fundamental distribution is changing. In that case the history of craters on the moon or other might not be meaningful indicator of the near future.

Considering this I think good tracking is not a bad idea and should be thought out well and properly considered.

I'm currently on track to work myself to death. And the national debt has my kids also working their entire lives with nothing to show as well.

What is the difference between this and slavery? It is not going to get better, and I can't seem to get out of it.

The refrigerant in most air conditioner systems boils at about 45 F. The ability to transfer heat to the outside world depends on the compressor power - not on what the boiling temperature is. Because of the temperature and chemical compatibility with systems that run R-134a, there are going to be a lot of hardware cost reductions, multi-source suppliers, and existing infrastructure to support that technology. That boiling point yields a better technology ecosystem.

You are upside down. If in 1776 there were to be ~300 million people living in the United States of America, but the population of the planet had not changed, it would require ~1/3 of the world population at the time to relocate.

Americans may have a poor reputation, but you are demonstrating that the non-Americans of the world prefer to jump to conclusions before they understand what another person meant.

China is demonstrating its desire to be the ruler of the world. It may succeed. There are enough idiots in charge in places where it counts - folks with money myoptia who can be bought or bullied - that a single dominant power over the world may arise. Every "king of the hill" is a tree planted by the last "king" - this is a pattern in humanity that is thousands of years old. This is a good lesson for new "kings" and old - nobody lives on the top of that hill forever.

Time and circumstance. If one of those things gets radiation poisoning or is killed by a meteor - that part of the gene pool is lost. Only if you can guarantee 100% survival do you pull a Noah and pack species in by twos.

All you must do to ensure this is guarantee that the generation before arrival is able to be impregnated with human children, and bear healthy young. Then you could have a repository of ... ahem ... genetic material from as many people as desired. In fact you could continue allowing insemination after planetfall - and effectively carry the genetic diversity of hundreds of thousands of unique donors, with a minimal crew.

Now about protecting the integrity of the .. genetic material. That might require sterner engineering.

In business, if a manager doesn't know their product, their market, the employees and the job - they are junk.
In politics, they are elected.

I think there is a problem of scope. When the constitution and balance of power were created the "leader to citizen ratio" was likely hugely less adverse. Who in the 13 colonies would have imagined the number of people in the USA would equal 1/3rd of the planet's population. In 1776 there were 800 million living humans. Right now there are 350 million Americans. I don't think the government "balances" were built to work as well with that many people.

This has likely been going on for some time. The refreshing thought is that as soon as a different system becomes even a little more efficient, it will start outpacing the US in terms of real innovation, real economics, and great decisions by leaders. It is not a question of "if" something better is going to come along and show the un-bright folks what they are - it is only a question of when and how.

Maybe Sparkfun can ask Fluke for an event-based waiver in an open-letter. This gives Fluke the option to show themselves as a "good guy" in a very public way and not waste good tools or resources of a decent company.

It is an moment of humility to ask a question.
It is a lifetime of shame not to ask.

Did you read your own article? Try page 113 where it says:
"An EMP attack will certainly, immediately disable a portion of the 130 million cars and 90 million trucks in operation in the United States. Vehicles disabled while operating on the road can be expected to cause accidents. With modern traffic patterns, even a small number of disabled vehicles or accidents can cause debilitating traffic jams."

What about page 115 with "The ultimate result of EMP expoure could be triggered crashes that damage many more vehicles than are damaged by eMP, the consequent loss of life, and multiple injuries.

If there was WWIII then el gran fromage would be powerless and unprotected where he was the moment it hit.
If there was the right, wrong time of solar storm, then el heffe might be getting an unintended suntan while waiting for combustion engine vehicles.

There might be a security issue.

And he doesn't own stock in Tesla, so he isn't going to be buying one.

I wonder how much the explosion in computing budget, something not precedented by any actual increase in opportunity in the market or the technology ecosystem, is driven by a desire to enable NSA data-collection, something that our "freedom loving" president aggressively supports.

The only recent "big" thing is big data, like Hadoop/Couch/non-RDBMS.

What is the DOE going to do with all that budget? They are going to buy big computers, and do thing with them.
Is in investment in big data going to have a higher chance of payoffs for those folks who are spying on grandma? I don't see why not.

Are they spying on grandma? Of course they are. Of course they are. They can't not spy on grandma. When they say "they have protections" and "rule of law" they might, possibly, be talking about yesterday or today - but they have the data for tomorrow. They have no right and no substance when they talk about what might not be done to the data tomorrow. Like all weapons too horrible to use - it is only too horrible to use until it isn't.

The IRS would never target political parties, or religious groups, right? the NSA arguments come from the same source and report to the same powers.

Engineering jobs are offshored (and subsidized) much more extensively than visual effects artists. The number of engineers in the world dwarfs the number of visual effects artists by at least 1000x to 1. Offshore STEM work is subsidized by foreign governments. I wonder if this can lead to tariffs on works thus derived overseas. iPad tariff, anyone?