From the article:
Much later, he did a computer analysis of a high-resolution scan of a Vermeer interior, and discovered “an exponential relationship in the light on the white wall.” The brightness of any surface becomes exponentially less bright the farther it is from a light source—but the unaided human eye doesn’t register that. According to Jenison, the painting he digitally deconstructed shows just such a diminution from light to dark.
This suggests that his unaided eyes wouldn't have been physically capable of seeing this exponential dropoff, even if he was a savant.
What about internet access? Low latency, unlike satellites.
Balloons also have the advantage of being below the clouds, so not affected by cloud cover. Drones might also work. Though balloons or drones might be vulnerable to lasers from the ground.
The only mention of cloud cover I could find was in the full paper:
One quote from the paper:
Atmospheric transmission windows in the near and mid-infrared are adequate for detecting fires. Fires
cannot be seen under heavy cloud cover, and can be detected with reduced sensitivity under smoke and
thin clouds, depending on the wavelength of the detectors, smoke particulate size, and moisture content
of the atmospheric column.
Noticed the summary is now "Chrome Will End XP Support in 2015; Firefox Has No Plans To Stop". That's no longer the exact opposite of the truth, at least, but it's still false for Chrome. The Google article only says
we’re extending support for Chrome on Windows XP, and will continue to provide regular updates and security patches until at least April 2015.
That's it. In other words, like Mozilla, Google has no plans to end XP support, but unlike Mozilla, they are promising support for a specific time. The fact that they don't commit to more than a year's extra support doesn't prove they intend to stop after that - for example, they've only committed to keeping Google Voice free for a year at a time, and it's still free years later.
The linked article, posted 20 hours ago, actually says
Neowin asked Mozilla, the creator of Firefox, if it has any plans to end support for XP and Johnathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox at Mozilla stated, "We have no plans to discontinue support for our XP users."
and basically the same for Chrome.
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.