What kind of non-story is that? One link points to some guy writing about how some other guys went to study waves at different locations. It doesn't say anything about how they did it, or has any technical information. The other link is a PDF scanned from a paper from 1982. Slow day when you have 32 year old news?

I move the goalposts when failure modes become apparent to me. I apologize for not anticipating all such failure modes in advance. But the next one is that cash works without electric power, without a cellular subscription, and where coverage is unavailable.

There already is a generator.
Expect the first planet to be named Lave, and be famous for its vast rain forests and Laveian tree grub.

Even knowing that, Republicans will vote for Republicans and Democrats for Democrats and Libertarians for people who are not libertarian. Even knowing they're just putting the yin and yang into those crushing boots, they will continue to believe if they could only defeat other leg, once and for all, their lives would be glorious.

The one thing a Libertarian cartoonist won't tell you though, is if you follow those boots up to the legs, and the legs up to the pockets and the pockets up to the head, you will find the corporate wizard pulling the levers, whispering, "God...guns...gay rights...family values...free markets...climate change...Sarah Palin...Michael Moore...liebruls...wingnuts..." into the megaphone. He's a wizened little man, looks a lot like Sheldon Adleson, in fact, whose own legs have withered. He's the subject of the Picture of Dorian Gray. Call it, "The Picture of John Galt". Corrupt, suppurating and certain of his position among The Elect. Plump and parasitic.

It's so easy to blame team red or team blue, but only because The Commissioner likes to keep our attention focused on the heels and away from the head.

That's like saying "the ONLY thing required is world peace".
What admins and engineers have known for a long time, and which people like Snowden provided evidence for is that secure communication is not a given, and highly unlikely to be an option for the masses.

If the government won't let people have a shadow economy they can't monitor or control, expect physical alternatives to take their place. There's plenty of precedence for turning to valuable metals when the currency cannot be trusted. And there are examples of governments banning both gold and silver trade as a kneejerk reaction, but that just moves the market to something else.

Some people avoid buying a smartphone precisely because many carriers force purchase of a data plan. For example, Virgin Mobile USA offers pay-per-minute voice service starting at $20 per 90 days but won't activate that plan on a smartphone. Instead, plans that can be activated on a smartphone start at $35 per month, which is five times as much.

The child walks to the convenience store while carrying a pay-as-you-go phone loaded with only enough minutes to arrange rides a couple times a week.

With a substantial transaction fee.

With a substantial transaction fee each.

With a substantial transaction fee each.

I'm switching out my lightbulbs - to halogen lights.
I can't stand the visible flickering of LED lights, nor that they don't light in a continuous spectrum. Some colors will show stronger and some less in LED light, which irritates me.
It's like listening to music with an 18-band equalizer, and three random knobs turned all the way up, and the rest down.

Halogen lights don't have that problem, and you can get them in many color temperatures. They're far more efficient than regular incandescent bulbs, while still having the advantages of an unbroken spectrum and little flickering. They're also safer for the environment to dispose of than LEDs.

I believe they would actually be called Sodomites, which is already funny enough.

That most people already have a smartphone.

The data plan issue is a bigger one, I think.

But it'll be interesting to see if this goes anywhere.

Oh, so the French regularly use their armed forces against their own populace? That's even better.

But then you have to pay hundreds of USD for an iPhone (or maybe one hundred for a compatible Android phone) and hundreds of USD per year to upgrade from voice-only cellular service to smartphone service. Or what am I missing?

Purchased with what?