There is not enough bandwidth for analogue tv AND lots of shopping channels.

The stars are in the range of 900 to 3300 AU and period of 11 to 93 years. They are moving at a fair clip

The US is producing U238 at about 1.5kg per year and only since 2012/2013. A decade late for this probe.
I don't disagree with you in general but the 1.5kg solar panels + batteries + electronics (total about 12 kg) would have to be replaced with a RTG + batteries (smaller) + electronics. And if the current RTGs are anything to go by there may also have to be a lot of plumbing and pumps and things to cycle the heat through the lander (if it was more mass effiecient then the RT Heaters used to keep it warm)

You can scale the current RTG's down as they are not designed for it. A totally new design would be needed and I doubt a SNAP 19 would be applicable even if anyone could make one now without a totaly new retooling (modern US RTGs are based around stacking "General Purpose Heat Source"s together. They are certified for reentry and other damage but they are not a component of a SNAP 19. Let alone the fact that it is a US design so would require buy in from them. And at the time getting the fuel would require cooperation with Russia. Two extra countries to meddle with and mess up your budget.

MrP-

I did not read the actual article. When I clicked on the comment link I got dumped halfway into the comments (is that a new fun slashdot thing? That they don't want you to start reading at the top?

Beside the point. I should have read the article even though my comment was more about hitting 2 billion rather then if it was a problem sorted before or after youtube hit it. I just watched it again to be sure I was not imagining it (and to crank up the numbers. my little contribution to getting to 2^63...it may take a while :P

Who said they had not already noticed this coming up and already changed code to allow the counter to continue working.

If they did it before or after the rollover does not really matter. The fact that 2^31 hits occurred is in its own right stunning.
Another way of saying it that is not quite as impressive but still strange is that over 1/3 of the population of earth could have watched it (they didn't but 7billion/2billion)

Radiation therapy should not have been mentioned. That is directed at a particular area of the body to kill pretty much everything there. It is hoped that the tissue that the radiation beams (multiple) pass through on the way to the target are not adversely affected. The sum effect of those beam in the affected area should kill everything there.

So nothing like radiation in your environment in terms of being therapeutic.

There are places on earth with significantly higher natural radiation than others but they are 7 or 8 orders of magnitude from some of the hot spots in the areas surrounding Chernobyl

And as it turns out in this case Apple were wrong. Oddly it turns out that they can not just do that. Is that moral or correct in some way? Who knows. But your law sais the did something wrong and owe compensation.

Philae does not have fold out solar panels. It is covered with panels but nothing to fold out. So not mass budget there.
The whole thing has a mass of about 100kg. There is not much to spare in it.

"The stick does not have wires of hydraulics "
"The stick does not have cables or hydraulics connected to the flight surfaces. You had better hope them computers keep working"

sorry just random typing mistakes.

Sorry that is knowledge after the fact. I did not know it. I looked it up a few days after I said I thought C3PO did not have a skin. At some point it started to bother me so I looked it up. I'm not sure how much of that is retrofitted just to allow the droids to be in the first 3 movies.

Nevermind!

I did actually look around to find out why Darth Vader did not know C3PO and vs versa.

When they made the prequels they did consider it. Hence C3PO not having a skin for the first two films (why darth vader does not know him). And why C3PO is ordered to forget everything at the end of ep3 (so he does not know darth vader)

Woooo that is far more than I wanted to know about starwars. I thought it was cool when I saw the first three back to back in a cinema in the 1993. I had seen them before but never in a cinema :)

Military aircraft went beyond that in the 1980's (experimented with in the 70's) They are unstable. Impossible to fly without computers.

Most modern airliners are also not possible to fly without the computers working. Not because they are unstable. But because the are fly by wire. If the computers fail. and fall back. and that fails. and they fall back again and that fails you can not move the wibbly bits on the aircraft. The stick does not have wires of hydraulics connected to the flight surfaces. You had better hope them computers keep working.

People are still in control because there are many reasons why a target is not a target.

Phalanx and even older weapons systems can work in fully autonomous modes. (TELAR, PATRIOT and other missile defence systems can also do so).
They are not used in that way as if they are then a match is good or bad based on what they know. What they know is not very much. They are not listening on VHS for example, to some pilot saying "opps, sorry. Where exactly are we?" or a sailor saying "We are a trawler and have nets out. We can't get out of your way please avoid"

There are lots of reasons why things go wrong and hopefully a human in the loop can assess the out of band information and make a good decision.

Did he make a gold droid?

I ain't a star wars fanatic. I thought c3po did not have any covering (in ep 1)

Most transatlanic air flight is just for fun. Most is for people going on holidays. That still has a demostrable and economic and societal purpose. And a massive enironmental impact.

But I agree with you.

Risk is something each person chooses in this kind of endevour. Why have there always been so many astrounauts in the US space program? They are the best of the best of all that apply and yet they still want so sit on many hundreds tons of BANG.

Test pilots may be nutters. As long as they knew what they were getting into (and I think they would not take a chance if they did not know) (well maybe as they are nutters) all the best for them.