People with healthy immune systems don't die of flu.

What about people without healthy immune systems? Is your immune system healthy, or is the way to check just to see if you die of the flu? Or maybe you get a type that kills you because you have a healthy immune system, like the 1918 pandemic, who knows.

As for the MMR vaccine causing measles, what? Before vaccinations, 90%+ of children contracted measles. Now it's down to a few hundred a year. That's a very strong correlation, but not for your theory.

13,000 documents is a lot of documents, when you are considering that they each will have to be viewed by a person. There is no way that a software solution could provide the necessary level of security while preserving enough of the documents to be useful to anyone... which brings me back to my original question: What are they looking for? If they are looking for public support then they should make it more clear why this is an issue of public concern. Right now, all I know is that the government captured a Mexican cartel leader, which doesn't seem like something I should be concerned about. For all we know about this the request is from his associates looking for people to retaliate against. (If that's the case, we may find out when they pay the fee)

But why do they want these documents? It seems like an extraordinarily large ask without some similarly large rationale behind it.

I've known a number of people who had no need of a job for income, but worked anyway. I've known far more who could have found a higher paying job, but liked the one they had. Money is not the only motivator in the world.

Uber runs a risk in being so bold in trying to get rid of its workers. Until it has these cars in hand, it needs its driver fleet. Rational self-interest tells those drivers to maximize their income, but also to mitigate as much risk as possible. The most conservative when it comes to risk are frequently the most dependable employees as well, so if Uber jumps the gun they could scare off some of their best associates.

Thank you, that is actually a pretty neat resource. However, I would contend my point still stands. That 7pm peak is for today, in the middle of the winter. In August, the peak is at 4:30, and is 66% higher than the February peak. In June and July the peak times seem to be around 5pm, well within the time solar is active for those months.

That is a chart for Oregon, which is has relatively little air conditioning demand. In contrast Los Angeles has a "high peak" at 1 to 5 pm, and "low peak" from 10am to 8pm, and in Atlanta peak is between 2pm and 7 pm. Even cities like New York and Boston see their biggest loads from summer air conditioning. Oregon is somewhat of an outlier.

Fair enough. I am still curious what definition this device would fall under.

Why does the linked paper refer to it as a "robot"? It seems to be a projectile at best. Is there some definition of robot I'm not aware of?

No, this is a great Republican strategy, we will just name all beneficial things after Democrats! First there will be Obamacare, and Goresat, and then maybe something like Hillaryrail - a high speed rail network, or Elizabethbucks - A system of guaranteed federal income. Soon everything that Americans have come to depend on will be named after some Democrat! Ha!

You'll see, it will pay off in the end.

Not sure about the test, but the summary was certainly awkward.

Heck, probably just by running around and beating random people with a piece of rebar considering how unlikely it is for the orbitally delivered rebar to both retain significant energy and actually hit a target.

I laughed, then I imagined said person running around hitting people with rebar screaming "RODS FROM GOD! RODS FROM GOD!", and I laughed again.

Not really. This is an article/thread about the product, awareness of it can be assumed. Marketing would certainly rather keep the discussion in this location on its features or positive attributes, complaining that it is named Dell 34-342355-9 does nothing useful for them here. If the Grandparent poster was to start a thread in another location to talk about how stupid the name is, then that would be helpful, as it would be raising product awareness.

There is an entire branch of poetry that uses computers to generate poems, though I can't recall if it has a particular name. (I think it might just be computer-generated poetry) So not only is this not about the Turing test, not novel, it's not even subversive: You could be a legitimate poet and do this very thing, and no one would bat an eye. Though I imagine a legitimate poet would have a better success rate with their (computer generated) submissions.

At the end the legal procedure is still susceptible to public scrutiny. For the country, and most if not all states, there is such a thing as a pardon - which exists completely outside of the normal system of justice and is exercisable by an elected official. Obama could sign a paper and Ulbricht could walk out of jail tomorrow morning a free man (at least until Maryland picked him up but that's another issue) It's a heavily scrutinized power, used sparingly, and certainly wouldn't come up in this case, but it exists and is a part of the judicial landscape.

elite athletes

Divided up over the week, 15 miles is like 3 hours for a slow runner. I used to run over 2 hours a week and I am certainly not an elite athlete. My cousin, also not an elite athlete, used to run double (or more) than this weekly while training to run marathons.