The common thread I'm seeing in all of these stories is that SOMEthing crumpled.

I'd give the van's occupants better odds than I'd give you against a brick wall, though.

This is less "Eagle has landed" and more "First stage of Falcon 9 has...landed".

Okay, yeah, this guy is definitely a tool with a massive ego trip. He already seemed like a dick from the way he phrased his press releases, but insisting he's too important to use the bug tracker and instead he needs to talk to the devs personally? No.

Hm. That actually was my problem with Angband. Too easy, too farmable. I'll have to give that a shot...though I suspect it's going to be a lot of long, boring running around in circles trying to get that ring of fire resistance before I hit whatever depth will kill me without it. And you thought stair scumming was boring...

I've always been used to big refunds because I've done a lot of contracting work, and that means employment gaps and an overall yearly income that's lower than the estimated taxes taken out of each paycheck. Settled down fulltime...don't think that'll happen anymore.

I've been hearing a lot on NPR about students boycotting the test (with support of their families, and in some cases, teachers)...any of that happening where you are?

In the house I bought last year, the cheapest Comcast business tier is just a smidgen more expensive than the home tier I would have wanted...and it's by far the best option around, way better than DSL.

Apparently having a business account means that you get dedicated cable (= your neighbors don't slow you down), super fast responses in tech support, and even your own salesman...which is a little weird. But in any case, it's never given me lower than advertised, even when people with non-business accounts are getting screwed left and right.

Yeah, new version doesn't let you search in Smoots anymore, but I'm having trouble being bothered by that, I can convert stuff anyway.

Maybe it's just Stockholm syndrome though. I stopped using the new version at first because it had no distance tool, and said as much in the feedback; I came back once they re-added it and emailed me saying so.

I guess I could always say that the real mistake is using nautical miles when you should be using SI...

I don't see how that's misleading. So what if the program has all kinds of fancy algorithms--they're not waving around "look how smart we are!!". They're saying "Hey if you want to write image processing code, you can do it this easy". ...man, I miss my image processing class.

Sounds like someone's never heard of iterated prisoner's dilemma. Even beyond that, there's plenty of real-world reward grids where player 1's reward for (C,C) is even higher than (D,C). "But that's not interesting in game theory at all!" So what?

You and your partner commit a crime and nobody knows a crime was committed. Do you really think that ratting out your partner will always be a better result than high-fiving and both keeping it quiet? That's silly.

"Hey we've got some upcoming technical challenges for future missions that need us to deal with pressurizing and heating liquids"
"Okay, what are the parameters?"
"A lot like coffee actually"
"Well then...let's trial our technology by building an espresso machine."

Today's attempt, they expected a 60% chance of clear enough weather. Tomorrow they expect 50% chance, so...fingers crossed?

I don't see anything wrong with one country being focused on one thing for a decade or two. It's efficient.

Mars takes ~260 days to reach, with a payload that could theoretically bring humans...maybe 130 if we do some pretty crazy stuff. Europa takes three years minimum for a much smaller payload. Actually getting humans to Mars is already a big technical challenge, let alone living once we get there...it's going to take a heck of a lot more practical experience before we can get them to Europa.

Say what you want about the pointlessness of living off-world, but Mars is great practice. It's closer, it has more solar power available, and we can send bigger things with our current technology. Same with the Moon...great practice, but even less practical reasons to be there than Mars.