While I was VP for Public Affairs at E'Prime Aerospace, we evaluated various sites for establishing a space port to launch our MX-derived rockets. It turned out that the presence of a military air strip at Ascension Island allowed a military jet transport large enough to deliver entire launch vehicles. Of course, the MX system was solid fueled so we didn't have to transport cryogenics long distances, but it would be feasible to set up a LOX facility on the island. There is a particular coastal cliff that is ideal for a launch pad.

My smartphone does everything already. Pulling it out of my pocket to look at it isn't such an ordeal. I already have a watch that tells the time and date, and it goes for years on a battery.

Using it as a a unit of account is a regulatory definition, not an economic one. Money is still money even if there is no concept of "Bookkeeping."

Volatility doesn't enter in to the equation, during the Weimar republic the Mark was still the currency of Germany, even though hyperinflation made it essentially worthless. Just because it isn't a good store of value doesn't mean it isn't a store of value. What matters is it's ultimate utility to the users.

Money is anything that can be used to store or trade value. Anything *can* be money, but that doesn't mean it is.

If people are buying bitcoin, then trading it for goods, services, or other forms of money, then, de-facto, it's money.

It's easy to complain about how awful malls are until you have to walk around outside when it's 105F out, or when it's -5F with two feet of snow on the ground.

A 15 year plan exists in rough outline. . Yes, it is extreme but then if the climate crisis worsens to the degree predicted by some, and action is delayed as it appears it will be, there will be very little time to geoengineer remediation.

Meh. Any "Nazi Nazi Nazi" troll that doesn't end with "Jews did 9/11. lol" doesn't even qualify for The Troll Special Olympics.

By investing Sun Corporation in making Java the standard programming language of computer science courses in India at the same time that the H-1b program expanded to take over the Fortune 500, Vinod Khosla managed to set the software industry back more than a decade.

If there were ever evidence that ./'s collaborative filter system has a bug; this is it. Look through the logs and reverse engineer this exploit.

Its self-indulgent to design an upward incompatible programming language (and, no, Perl 6 is hardly alone in this as others have pointed out about Python3, etc.) without looking for your keys some distance from the lamp post.

They don't say it has _all_ the properties of defect-free graphene -- so, what properties are mismatched? Just the important ones?

Look up Carbocrete's properties. While its true it does require some sand, in addition to the CaCO3 and carbon fiber, it requires much less sand than ordinary concrete and no rocks. Moreover, sand is ubiquitous on the ocean floor. A refinement of the calculation would substitute sand dredging for some of the CaCO3 energy use as well as including the energy for the carbon fiber.