I completely agree with you and it is sad to see this tired old argument every time there is a moon story. There are plenty of good reasons to go to the moon, He3 isn't one of them. There is no reason to even bring up the subject given the numerous other reasons to go to the moon.

As someone who has data in there (out of curiosity), it couldn't have happened to better people. The people that run AshleyMadison are worse than the lowest spammers. Not because they sanction marital cheating, but because they are exceedingly scammy in every aspect of the way they operate their business. They make Paypal and Stamps.com look like saints.

Yes, but the vast majority of cases are fairly straightforward. Laws are nothing but a set of rules, and computers are great tools to track rules and figure out which apply. Precedents are set which further define what happens when the law falls short. Law (at least US Law) is chock full of "tests" which are fairly easy to apply. They come in the form of "If this AND this AND this, then $ruling". Unless you are in a precedent-setting case, which is rare, then I absolutely believe that a computer can be fed the results of a bunch of yes/no questions, asset values, and come up with the right answer with very high accuracy. If the two parties can agree on the answers to the yes/no questions and the asset valuations, want to reduce costs, and are not at each other's throats, then why not use a computer?

A computer doesn't have an interest in wasting time and accumulating billable hours like a lawyer does. No matter how much honesty and integrity the lawyer has, getting paid is always going to be on their mind.

f SpaceX had to pay the premiums for each launch separately, but NASA had a contract that didn't allow cost increases due to insurance premium increases, then insurance would be a great idea.

As it stands, NASA shoulders the costs for SpaceX's mistakes. The only reason that situation is allowed to stand is because it is common in government work. It shouldn't be.

It's a very poor example but a valid point. A much better example would be fraud [identity theft], ransomware, spam, etc. With computers you can easily steal time from people on an unimaginable scale.

Suppose someone hacks me, and I get off relatively "easy". I may spend 1 hour of my time canceling a credit card, activating the new card when it comes, and changing all the passwords of all the accounts that the credit card number is associated with. That's probably on the very low end of what a hack can cost an individual.

The hacker doesn't stop there. They repeat their act 1,000,000 times. That's a fairly successful and prolific hacker, but not unheard of, espeicially if the attack vector is a business. At just an hour apiece per victim, 1 million victims is 114 total man-years spent cleaning up. Nobody died, but an entire lifetime has been stolen.

The Target hack(s) affected "up to 110 million people". If we take that figure at face value, and each victim spent only an hour dealing with it, that's 12,557 years or roughly 148 lifetimes. Even if I count injured people, I can't find a mass shooting that comes anywhere near 148 lifetimes.

Google generally shows ads that they think you want to see. They learn from feedback- which links you click and which you scroll by immediately. They aggregate that data, then slice it and dice it into different personas (or profiles). I am sure they have categories which all people fall into 2 broad categories, and they have a separate profile for every user. All their data mining and AI research result in a weird reflection of humanity. If that results in women not seeing certain ads, I can only conclude that that is because women generally don't want to see them, or prefer to see other types of ads instead. Perhaps the majority of women prefer to see ads for jobs with more schedule flexibility. That would be a reasonable conclusion since only women can carry fetuses to term, and doing so requires some amount of schedule flexibility. More than 50% of women have children, and determining who does and does not want children is probably not easy- even people with very strong opinions on the matter (like myself 10 years ago) do change their mind suddenly, for a variety of reasons which may defy profiling.

The DOW is not a good benchmark for investigating if there is a bubble or not. It is comprised of just 30 companies, mostly huge conglomerates and industry titans. There are also little to no "new" businesses on the list. The tech companies on the list are very mature, and include Apple, Intel, IBM, and Microsoft. As far as companies that are trading at a "fair" price, I would say the 30 companies in the DJIA are priced very fairly because of all the eyes on them.

If there is a bubble, it is almost surely not reflected in the DJIA. Let's say, for argument, that there is a bubble (you don't have to agree, just for the sake of argument). Where would it manifest? Technology companies founded in the last 10 years? Tech companies founded in the last 3 years? Those are the likely candidates in my opinion, but they are not represented in the DOW 30 AT ALL.

Maybe you think the next bubble will again be in banking? In that case, only Goldman Sacks, Visa, and Chase represent the banking industry on the DOW 30. I have the opinion that if there is a serious disaster brewing, those 3 companies can keep it from affecting their balance sheet until the last possible moment. They were fairly successful in doing so in 2009 so I have no doubt they could and would do it again.

My point is that if you are looking for a bubble, looking at the DJIA is a complete waste of time. P/E ratios may not be the best indicator either- in 2008/2009 the P/E ratios didn't make alarming moves until *after* everybody knew there was a big problem. You're relying on every other investor to tell you that things are OK (by assigning a fair Price), but every other investor may well be stupid. The best indication I think is what companies are paying when they buy other companies. Are they paying reasonable prices that will allow them to earn a profit on their investment? If they are buying a company to protect market share, is their investment at least as much as the potential losses if they hadn't bought the company? If the answer to either question is no, that's a big problem. It means they have so much money that they don't know how to manage it, or it means that they are basing their decisions on emotion, and not numbers. Either of those is a recipe for disaster.

I have the Uplift 900. My company was very generous with the desk budget, so I went all out and got an 80" wide top. The 80" width is big enough for all my work, but if I were buying it again, I would *not* buy the desk top from Uplift. The price is too high for the quality- I think it probably costs a fortune to ship a big heavy desk top. The digital memory keypad is well worth the money. The Uplift castor wheels are also worthwhile. The Uplift keyboard tray is solid, but nothing special. There are better keyboard trays out there, and I definitely recommend getting a keyboard tray. The cable management kit is overpriced and next to useless.

Keep in mind that at standing height, the desk does have a little bit of wobble, especially if you use the castor wheels. My monitor was unsafely wobbly and I had to use a wood clamp to clamp it to the desk for safety. Part of this is due to my monitor- for a 28" screen, the included stand has a small (too small) footprint and odd weight distribution. For most monitors this probably won't be a problem.

I tend to stand until after lunchtime, then sit the rest of the day, depending on how heavy a lunch I eat. My back problems from a car accident 2 years ago have nearly disappeared. Best feature of a standing desk is eating lunch- your lap isn't in the path of falling food objects. If there is a spill imminent, you can simply dodge out of the way. I haven't spilled lunch on my pants since I got the desk.

Dice probably deserves some credit for not being *that* bad, despite all the complaining.

Without having the whole story, I will say this- power plants should be designed by power plant engineers. Many of the smaller power plants out there which burn %byproduct or %unwanted_materials are not designed by people who design power plants. There are a lot of Engineering/Procurement/Construction (EPC) companies out there who think "we did a recycling facility before, we put in some gas compressors and diesel engines at that landfill on the other side of town to burn landfill gas, a steam power plant is no problem!".

But solid fuels are a lot more tricky to combust compared to gas. They are trickier to design transport for- conveyor systems that don't have inherent blockage points are an art and a science. The ash is also a solid, but very corrosive, abrasive, and toxic, and needs special conveyors. Pollution controls are a whole 'nother science and improperly designed systems won't stay operating long without serious problems. The owner doesn't know all this, however, and doesn't have the experience to know that they should be rejecting some bidders for lack of experience. They go for the lowest reasonable bid and then when things don't work, the EPC finds every excuse under the sun on why they couldn't possibly have known better.

Taylor Swift's vocal range is among the narrowest of any pop artist in the last 20 years. Many of her songs sound almost monotone to me. Vocal range may not be the only indication of a talented singer, but someone with a very narrow range doesn't seem to me like a 'top shelf' performer.

Aircraft and spaceships have weight restrictions. Weight (and often volume) on a ship are not important. So you can literally have 2 of every system in many cases.

I grew up in a fairly rural area. After my sister and I reached a responsible age, we kept a .22 next to the back door at all times. It was used frequently to intervene in fights between our cats and foxes. Also to scare off any animals in the garden. The number of gunshots I heard on a weekly basis was proof that we weren't the only family shooting guns off the back porch on a regular basis.

Most people in government don't think about that. The USPS is a great example. You can buy priority postage for packages on USPS.com, but not for regular packages. It's certainly possible to offer it, USPS even has API's which support this functionality! But the only way to do it currently is through the horrible company stamps.com ($16/month subscription service) or through the equally horrible Paypal.

What are you talking about? The US "Merchant marine" is just a fancy way of saying "the commercial ships flying a USA flag". It's true that in wartime, we have historically armed these ships. But that is somewhat tricky to do nowadays because of international law. The only ships that can get away with this easilly are MSC ships, and those ships are directly supporting the military or other government operations. Commercial ships sometimes bring on private security contractors when traveling through dangerous areas, but that is completely different from what you are implying.

"allow the return of the merchant marine to keep trade routes safe," is a nonscensical statement.