Aliens who visit us, dismember our cattle and probe us? No.

Extra-solar planets with intelligent life? Probably. Given the sheer size of the universe and the number of solar systems and planets there are quite likely some out there with intelligent life (within range of detection is a different matter). Given enough rolls of the dice you're bound to hit on any given combination more than once.

Yeah, but don't forget that crawler needs to exit from multiple bays and head to multiple pads. Imagine the complexity involved in adding switching to that many parallel rails.

It's an incredible amount of weight to haul, and the crawler's treads are wide to distribute that load. If you took all that weight and concentrated it on a couple of rails the rails would likely buckle under the pressure.

Keep in mind that the crawler isn't just impressive because of the weight it can haul, but also because of the pinpoint accuracy with which is can place it's load. Yes, it could freeroll a little bit, but you won't get a spacecraft positioned within a fraction of an inch that way (think of all the connectors and arms attached to a rocket or shuttle, getting all those couplings right required the rocket or shuttle to be placed very precisely).

Many of the parts listed in the article had multiple possible source countries, and several of them listed US plants as potential sources. Conceivably Google could have requested those plants be used as much as possible.

Even if that's not the case, we're talking chips here. The housing was made in the USA, several of the chips were as well. It's reasonable to assume that the boards were made in a US plant, that the work of mounting chips to boards, of attaching connectors, of assembling the units, of doing QA, etc. etc. was done in a factory in the USA.

Most of the human labor (in other words the actual jobs) was performed in the USA. The foreign-sourced components are small enough that there was likely a lot more robot labor than human labor involved.

I'd say what you're really paying for in buying that Made in the USA label is employment for Americans, and you're getting it.

Congratulations, I assume you're not applying then. If you're the best candidate you'll likely have been actively recruited and bypass half the interviews. If you're not the very best candidate then the onus is on you to prove yourself to the employer, not the other way around.

You want a job? Pay for it with you time.

Your best bet is to go find the best Sales Engineers you can, the ones that don't just know the product catalog and can do a demo but who can install, customize and code integrations while providing solutions, solving problems and essentially doing the salesman's job for him.

Those Sales Engineers are rare, but they are the ones who can turn into what's sometimes referred to as a Technical Sales Specialist: a Salesman who can be their own Sales Engineer. Find someone like that and they will be able to sell to programmers.

Facebook could help their users by creating a second password.

If you enter your second password (mainly because you are being asked for it against your better judgement), Facebook displays a UI that only lists your public posts in your timeline, and only shows a subset of friends that you have pre-selected.

You can maintain anything you want in Facebook, and you can give an employer your password (though that still isn't right), and rest assured that you still look clean to your employer. The employer is none the wiser because the password you provide gets them access to your account.

As opposed to a cameraman who just happened to be flying by as Rossy just happened to be flying by as two L-39C's just happened to be flying by and by some miracle they all wound up in the same shot? The shot is real, the three flew in such a way that all were captured by a single camera shot, nothing more is being claimed from what I can tell.

Look at Mark Zuckerberg, do you think he managed Facebook because of the superior comp-sci education he got at Harvard? No, it was because of the connections he made and the people he collaborated with. It's the same with any of the 'elite' schools, the real value is that you will either get to know some very smart people, or some people with access to a lot of money or ideally both that is the real payoff for going to such schools.

The other comments are correct that talent and a good mentor can give you what you need to build skill, and that the degree itself really just gets you into your first job with experience getting you your next job, but it's the connections these schools provide that help make the difference between getting a good job and building a world-class career or company.

Oh yes, and while we're at it we'll teach them all how to fix a car so they can call out their mechanic if they recommend un-needed repairs, and teach them all construction so they can better review the work of the guy who builds their next home, and we'll put them all through medical school so they can better hold their doctors to best practices.

Honestly, there's a point where you have to get off your high horse and realize that we have specializations for a reason, and it behooves those in the know on a given subject to realize that it's not practical for every user of their output to be an expert in their field, so the onus is on the experts to make it easy for the non-experts.

I go to textfiles.com and read some of the old docs I remember from my BBS days.

Would you have preferred I have said bazillions?

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