We might see not much at all because Betelgeuse happens to be located almost exactly in the ecliptic plane (10 degrees or so below it), so at certain times of the year you can't see it because it's just 10 degrees away from the sun. It would really suck if the supernova occurred during those months. I think even Hubble can't observe that close to the sun, so you'd need a telescope in deep space, which we don't really have atm.

It seems SpaceX is relying on a trial-and-error strategy during the development of the soft landing capability of their booster much more than they (or others in the industry) do for other components or capabilities of space launch or other aeronautical systems. I don't see (unmanned) rockets or drones being developed in this fashion. Even large rockets that can achieve orbit will normally be modeled, simulated and tested component-wise to the point that they will usually work at the first or second attempt when the entire system is integrated and tested for the first time. So why is this so different here? Is it just cheaper? Or is it actually that much harder to make the rocket land softly on its own exhaust jet than to make it go into orbit?

Correcting rough seas doesn't seem to be child's play.

What's more, it all happened at place that was supposedly under "police protection"...

Yeah, but wouldn't it have to be rewritten from scratch on Windows? AFAIK there is no chroot, cgroups or anything like that in Windows (I guess there might be equivalents). And I have no idea what you would do about the registry blob in this scenario.

No, it's a little shy of 2 kW.

If all it is, is a battery, then by itself it would be worth almost as much as cold fusion, as it can store and produce 600+ horsepower for an hour (1.5MW hours).

It doesn't store it, it has a power supply (even officially). And it emits the 1.5MWh over a period of 32 days, not one hour. And oh yeah, it never seems to work unless Rossi is present to "supervise" the thing.

Isn't anything is cheating or not cheating relative to a constant set of rules that are applied consistently? The current set of rules happens to allow wind-cutting and refreshment points along the track, but not 1000m downhill slopes or using a motorcycle.

Doesn't seem any less "meaningful" than any other sports activities, e.g. baseball, car racing, or the Superbowl. Myself, I find it pretty damn impressive that anybody could run 42 kilometers at a speed that I couldn't sustain over 500 meters.

That's aneutronic fusion, not cold fusion (it tends to be even hotter than neutronic fusion).

How so? He's been saying this for years now, in one form or another. And as a society you're lucky to have some crazy people like Musk to make up for legions of bean-counter types.

That would defeat the "genetically diverse" requirement.

Maybe they should apply for a job at an organization that's under "intense scrutiny" by the government anyway. The ACLU maybe?

The device encryption feature is apparently designed to always use the lock screen password. So you're forced to have such a password, which you have to enter every time the device comes out of sleep mode, AND (much worse) it breaks essential apps like SkipLock that want to disable the lock screen under certain conditions, e.g. when you're within range of a known WiFi network, thereby relieving you of the need to enter your PIN about 5,000 times a day while you're sitting on your couch at home.

See also https://code.google.com/p/andr...

Unfortunately, this is a total show stopper for full device encryption.

I don't think so. The comet may not be rotating on its own. Which would mean that all patches of its surface rest in an inertial frame (at least if you ignore the rotation around the sun -- which shouldn't have much influence during the short timespan of a landing). If that were the case, it would make the landing easier because the lander's velocity relative to the surface would stay constant during unpowered flight phases.