Or perhaps Putin will have him killed is some spectacular false flag operation to make the US government look like total tools.

However, it is quite unlikely Putin cares or is in any way involved in the Snowden case. He is the chief executive of Russia, and has a lot more important things to do than decide if a low level whistle blower gets asylum in Russia or not.

SWATTING isn't a light offence. When you do this there is a very real possibility that someone will end up dead because a cop gets excited, or a homeowner is armed and decides to start shooting. This should be treated as a very serious crime, and if anyone is killed, the person doing the swatting needs to get a murder one charge slapped on them.

Moreover, this kid didn't do this once, but many times, demonstrating that this isn't a spur of the moment 'crime of passion', but that he possess a consistent and dangerous disregard for life. I am all for lighter sentencing for a lot of things, but this is something that you need to come down heavy on people for. Grafitti is stupid teenage hyjinx. SWATTING is really dangerous behavior.

These sorts of papers and documents are really interesting. Are there places that the are being shared out for public consumption and/or comment?

the surface temperature is high enough that you aren't going to do much there until you stop the greenhouse effect and cool down the planet quite a bit. It might be a great Terraforming project, though.

One of the speculated effects of a large meteor striking earth is throwing large amounts of dust into the atmosphere, and cooling the planet by blocking incoming solar radiation. We can land on comets and such, so it is probably possible to land an engine or solar sail on a large meteor, and steer it into Venus's gravity well. It would give us some good (real) data on the effect of a large strike on Earth, and would be a fast and relatively cheap way to take a stab at terraforming a nearby planet. More cooling == more space rocks slammed into Venus at 17k MPH....

I also assumed that burrowing would be a early colony strategy, as several meters of rock makes great radiation shielding. Also, you are going to want to start to bring mineral extraction and fabrication technology online quickly to minimize resupply needs. So, while colonists mine resources, they can be constructing habitat space at the same time. Has any thought been given to martian mining procedures? If there is or was frozen water in sub-soil permafrost, isn't there a good chance that if you go deep enough, you might hit a water table? If we drop you off on Mars, what is your dig plan?

Haven't they already done this? I think they are called 'Italians'.....

Sifting through it . . . . looks like MAYBE 100 gig is actually important to me.

Wow, that is a LOT of porn.....

if you are rich enough to qualify for an estate tax, then you are rich enough to afford lawyers to tell you how to avoid estate taxes.....

Clearly the solution is to allow hunting of Chinese people to reduce their numbers to manageable levels. A species that is overabundant needs to to have its numbers greatly reduced to protect the environment. I'll alert Ted Nugent.

.....yet another streaming music service! Way to go Apple, now you are thinking with gas!

The solution to cells in prisons is simple, deploy cell jamming technology on guard towers. The solution to cells in deployed platoons is throw the soldier disobeying solider into a prison where they have jamming technology on guard towers.

I feel conflicted...On one hand, Disney is yet again, being a shitty company and I feel bad that all these employees are being put through the wringer. On the other hand, if you are gullible enough to take a job at a company like Disney, you kind of deserve what you get.

I have a suspicion that a lot of Disney employees are like people that get jobs in the AAA game industry: They think that because they love the product that is produced, the job and working conditions will somehow be good.

Open message to anyone working for or thinking about it Disney: Research the companies history before you take a job These are shitty, shitty people that are in charge of making all these lovable characters.

ZING! well played, sir!

well, you could ship the fuel up to a LEO separate from the reactor in a container designed to survive catastrophic lunch failure to reduce the risk of fallout. It wouldn't be hard to ship it into space safely, so I think that particular worry is more FUD than a real concern.

This is true, but when Chernobyl happened, basically everyone was moved out of the contaminated zone, and it remains deserted today. While people were exposed to radioactive material, it was for a relatively short time. I see no permanent evacuation of the city occurring in Japan. Radiation is bad in large doses over a short period of time, but it is also dangerous if people are exposed to constant low levels (more than the background radiation level) over long periods of time.