2 Billion dollars is a ridiculous amount to pay for patents, supposing Occulus even has any good ones, and supposing they are in some way vital to Facebook's future plans. You could licence such a patent, even at exorbitant rates, for a LONG time for 2 Billion dollars. And if it turned out to be a worthless patent you could just stop licencing it and walk away.

When companies (especially Facebook) are spending these huge sums of money on dubious investments, something very bad is coming. Maybe it is another bubble ready to pop, or maybe it is something different. When it happens, it isn't going to be pretty.

40MPG isn't great for a motorcycle, but it isn't "horrible" either. The MPG has absolutely nothing to do with being a "crotch rocket" or not. Most motorcycles 650cc or larger have efficiency which is somewhat comparable.

Each life raft has an EPIRB which is marine rated, and can be picked up by sattelites basically anywhere on the planet. At least one EPIRB would be of the automatic type which starts transmitting when it hits water. The EPIRB is wrapped up deeply inside the packed life rafts, so disabling them would be impossible while the plane was in the air. Unfortunately this means that if the life raft doesn't deploy and instead sinks, the EPIRB will not go off. The fact that no EPIRB signals were transmitted indicates to me that if anyone survived the crash, they are long dead. Even if they were hanging on to floating wreckage, with no potable water and no shelter from the elements they would not last much more than a week.

No EPIRB signals also implies that the plane either broke up in the air, broke up when it hit the water at high speed, or nobody was alive to open a cabin door. In any of those cases the chance for survivors would be very low.

Forget the bereaved, how on earth will the media ever get closure if the plane isn't found?

I used to think the same, until I got video from my Samsung S4 and compared it to my Canon T2i. I can't tell the difference between video in a lot of cases.

Now, the T2i isn't primarily a video camera, but it has far better lenses and a far better/bigger sensor than the S4. It should perform substantially and irrefutably better than the S4. It doesn't.

As far as photos go, I'm either going to get out the big DSLR or I'm not. The DSLR obviously has superior image quality, but the camera is too big to carry around all the time, and is a significant theft risk if left unattended. If I have to wrangle 2 kids and whatever bags of stuff they require, I don't have a lot of patience for carrying around a camera bag too. Point-and-shoot consumer cameras are pretty much the same thing as cameraphones, unless you are talking about large models with big lenses (which have the same size problems as DSLRs). The cameraphone goes in my pocket. Of course it can be stolen but it is unlikely to be stolen if it is in my pocket. With the larger cameras you have to constantly be on guard and conscious of possible theft.

The best camera is the one you have with you. 1 device to rule them all is perhaps not the ideal solution but it is the most practical.

For the same price you could get a cheap feature phone, a tablet, and a camera. Use the phone for tethering the tablet, which works better for browsing the web and other such functions, and use the camera for taking pictures. That way you don't have to worry about your $600+ phone when you just want to go hiking or go for a bike ride where you don't really need internet connectivity anyway.

I have enough complexity in my life already without juggling 3 physical devices, managing all the interfaces (networking, file transfers, charging) between them, and upgrading/replacing them when needed.

Putin's actions are almost cartoon villianny. Maybe he was bunkmates with Boris Badenov when he was in the KGB.

Putin can call the US hippocrites all he wants, but at least when the US invades someplace we don't plant evidence to justify it.

And if we do, we don't get caught redhanded over and over again.

Please inform me of how you intent to break several laws of physics. It is impossible to make a power station without having a heat sink and dumping the heat somewhere. This is thermodynamics 101. Likewise, capturing ALL the emissions would require more energy than the power station creates!

If you are thinking about carbon capture- don't. Nobody has proved it on a large scale. The largest projects I have heard of divert a tiny (~1-5) percentage of the exhaust gas from a test (small) power station. All the major OEMs have lots of trouble even with this small proof of concept, and no meaningful advancements have been made in years. From my point of view, carbon capture is a ruse to get governments to funnel truckloads of cash to utilities and equipment manufacturers. Carbon capture carries a huge parasitic loss, an inefficiency which if applied on a large scale would wastefully use up even more fossil fuels.

I think you have that backwards. Coal plants under around 250MW are generally not profitable, and a vast majority of this size have been shut down already. The bar is moving towards 500MW as being economically viable. I can count the number of new coal stations in the US build in the past 5 years on one hand. Compare that to the 1970's when a new coal plant was being built every month. The environmentalists need to learn to quit when they achieve "good enough". Coal today is just as clean as other forms of energy when you factor in all the externalities. Those externalities come in different forms however and it is easy to count 1 form of environmental damage when comparing power plants while ignoring others.

In accounting, generally deposit accounts with customer money are considered liabilities. If a depositor shows up and asks for their money, you are obligated to give it to them. You seem to be confusing legal liability (a "duty of care" to do or not do something) with financial liability (an obligation which must be paid back).

Mt. Gox didn't have storage boxes without knowledge of what was inside them (safe deposit box analogy). They had computerized accounts for each customer, with money in each account. Regardless of whether they were a "bank" they were holding money for other people and that money is a liability in the financial sense.

The tricky bit is that they are valuing bitcoins at something around $100 per BTC, but all the other exchanges are around the $500 per BTC mark. I've only taken beginning level accounting but that could get them in trouble if they don't report it correctly.

Most civil engineers get a PE at some point. It is basically required for them to do their jobs. When I sat for the test it appeared to be 60% civil engineers, 25% land surveyors, and 15% electrical/mechanical engineers. I talked to a few and they said that without the PE, job progression beyond entry level drafting work was impossible.

The problem for them with this kickstarter/open approach is that everybody knows their progress. A private company can keep this kind of R&D project under wraps until the last minute. Microsoft or Sony could be developing something very similar but we won't know until they choose to release that information. Because Occulus Rift development is open and seems to be carefully plodding along, I would keep that kind of project secret since revealing it might spur Occulus to hurry up and release something. A private company could catch Occulus with their pants down.

Sanctum 2 - Tower defense PLUS co-operative FPS. I had it on my steam wish list forever until it went on sale but I regret not buying it sooner. It is a little rough in places but still a great game.

Witness statements. If "Give me your phone!" is the first thing the mugger says, he probably was after the phone. If the conversation instead goes:
Mugger: Give me your wallet
(Victim hands it over)
Mugger: Hey there isn't any cash! Give me your shoes/jacket/watch/whatever else you have

They were probably mugging in general, and the phone was just part of the haul.