Why wouldn't a randomized subsample from 10M people get funded? The required sample size doesn't grow as the population does.

I may be responding to a troll here, but, no, the GP is correct. P-values are about probability. They're often used in the context of evaluating a correlation, but they needn't be. Specifically, p-values specify the probability that the observed statistical result (which may be a correlation) could be a result of random selection of a particularly bad sample. Good sampling techniques can't eliminate the possibility that your random sample just happens to be non-representative, and the p value measures the probability that this has happened. A p value of 0.05 means that there's a 5% chance that your results are bogus in this particular way.

The problem with p values is that they only describe one way that the experiment could have gone wrong, but people interpret them to mean overall confidence -- or, even worse -- significance of the result, when they really only describe confidence that the sample wasn't biased due to bad luck in random sampling. It could have been biased because the sampling methodology wasn't good. I could have been meaningless because it finds an effect which is real, but negligibly small. It be meaningless because the experiment was just badly constructed and didn't measure what it thought it was measuring. There could be lots and lots of other problems.

There's nothing inherently wrong with p values, but people tend to believe they mean far more than they do.

I recently discovered that my old arcnet card has a vulnerability that allows me to hack the planet Mars. I plan on crashing it into the planet Vulcan. (Damn those pointy eared freaks).

I also plan on hacking the Atlantic Ocean and renaming it to the Great Eastern Ocean. This hack is so powerful that even paper maps will spontaneously change to reflect the update.

You may not have come across it in a while, because you don't have a clue what the sunk cost fallacy is.

The sunk cost fallacy is "throwing good money after bad" which is in no way what I described. I was describing "cost to benefit" or "return on investment."

Your argument smells.

Yes, more skilled people in general earn more. But (and in the words of Ben Goldacre: It's a big but) there are exactly two issues with this in our modern hypercapitalism, and they are related:

a) A class of very low skilled workers has moved to the top of the food chain and takes a massive part of the total wages for itself

b) The general level of pay is staggeringly low. If you compare the wealth of your western nations to the wealth of the average individuals within, you should be frightened. Most western countries can spend a few billions here and there without so much as shrugging. As nations, we have more, much much much more money available than ever in history. The most lavish spending of any king in history pales compared to everyday infrastructure, science or military projects of today. As people, we are richer than the average middle ages peasant, but in comparison to our nations wealth, we have less.

I seriously doubt it. I don't see how location reporting for a payment transaction in which location data is irrelevant could possibly pass Google's privacy policy review process. Collection of data not relevant to the transaction is not generally allowed[*], and if the data in question is personally identifiable (mappable to some specific individual), then a really compelling reason for collection is required, as well as tight internal controls on how the data is managed and who has access. I don't see what could possibly justify it in this case, and I can see a lot of risk in collecting it.

FYI, Google product teams have to develop privacy design docs for all new products, and the designs have to be reviewed by the privacy team (or their delegates) and pass the privacy review before they can be launched. Although Google set these processes up before the FTC settlement, I believe they became part of the consent decree and are now mandated by the FTC and validated in regular audits, so Google can't skip or violate them without potentially-significant consequences.

Disclaimer: I'm not a Google spokesperson and this is not an official statement. It is my personal perspective on the process and requirements. However, I'm a Google engineer who's been involved in launching privacy-sensitive products, so I think my perspective is accurate. I also do security reviews of Google projects, which sometimes touches on privacy issues (though privacy review is separate from security review, as it should be).

[*] Just to head off a likely riposte: No, StreetView Wifi collection and the Safari do-not-track workaround are not counterexamples. They predated the privacy review processes and, as I understand it, were part of the motivation for establishing the processes.

Microminiature accelerometers are really cheap and very very light, and you don't have to wait for them to spin up or deal with their mechanical issues. I doubt you will see a gyro used as a sensor any longer.

Similarly, computers make good active stabilization possible and steering your engine to stabilize is a lot lighter than having to add a big rotating mass.

As opposed to what? Cremation? Burial in a box at temperatures well above freezing? You can't seriously argue that this approach makes it less likely that she could be repaired and restarted at some point in the future than typical corpse disposal methods.

When you last flew a jet somewhere, why wasn't it a seaplane? Surely such things would be an easier problem to solve than building airports.

Short of giving you the starter course in rocket engineering, I can only say no, it's not easier.

The evening slowdowns don't affect Netflix streaming, for me.

The booster can indeed make it back uprange to Kennedy Space Center, and they've leased a landing pad for it there. Besides the turn-around burn, they tilt the booster against the airstream and let aerodynamics push it back uprange during that 78 mile descent.

If there's one thing they should work on, it's not thrusters but having the capability to throttle to hover. That would potentially change the entire low approach. It is complicated by the fact that engine performance goes nonlinear in the low range.

A video from the barge itself is here. Everything goes wrong in the last second of landing, with over-correction putting it down on one leg, and then the leg crumples.

Well the article isn't very clear about what part Apple plays other than supplying the iPads for this curriculum. If the iPads were substandard in any way, that might be a reason to complain. If it was a joint venture, both companies can point to each other but Apple has less liability as it seems that Pearson could not deliver on the customization that was required.

Here is the barge on the way to port, possibly with debris onboard. Here's a video of the landing shot from the barge itself. And I am waiting to see the barge from the Carnival Fascination webcam.