Stop making my brain hurt!

If you have solar panels on a rooftop that would otherwise be cooked by the sun, aren't you also saving on the amount of power required for air conditioning?

If you're trying to heat the building - not so much.

In the case of a datacenter, I don't think that heating the building is that much of a concern.

Average solar insolation is more like 5 sun-hours/day, not 8, in good locations. Much less in places like Germany.

Don't tell that to Fox news - everyone knows that Germany gets LOTS of sunshine.

Your datacenter takes 1 MW/h. You receive roughly 8 hours of usable sunlight, so you need 3MW/h capacity of solar panels to produce the power you need

Whatever the soundness of your arguments, you immediately discredit yourself by using "MW/h" as a unit of power. That's like saying that your new car is rated at 500 horsepower/minute, or has a fuel consumption of 32 mpg/hour. What are those even supposed to mean?

And, no, the corrected unit is not MWh, or "megawatt-hour". That is a unit of energy (a bulk quantity), not power (the rate of energy production or consumption). The proper unit for referring to the size of a PV array, or any electrical generation facility, is "watts" or some SI-prefix thereof.

It would do nothing to curb criminality

Some kinds of criminality would be harder. If you have to move, say, €10 million in cash, whether you do it in €500 bills or €50 bills makes a large difference. In the first case, you only have to move 20,000 pieces of "paper" (a stack about 2 m tall). If you are constrained to €50 bills, you have to move 10x as much cash. Now, instead of a single briefcase that can easily be carried onto a railcar, you need a few duffel bags.

Not that this is an insurmountable obstacle to criminals - it just makes certain transactions harder to execute and hide.

Further discussion on the topic: Planet Money Podcast - Should we kill the $100 bill?

If you are making a medical device where there is the potential for someone to hack the software or communications, resulting in death or serious injury, then yes, you do. No sense in whinging about it - that's the reality of the world. Computers get hacked, and that can have serious consequences, so you'd better examine the risk and mitigate it. This is nothing new, especially on /.

If anything, you should be asking yourself: if the FDA is only now issuing this guidance, and you haven't already been worried about security in your devices, how far behind are you?

If the government hadn't been stomping all over its authority (and limits thereof), then perhaps such measures wouldn't be needed.

Holder contends that "It is fully possible to permit law enforcement to do its job while still adequately protecting personal privacy.” that may be possible in theory, but governments everywhere have demonstrated repeatedly that they can't be trusted to protect personal privacy. In other words: allowing law enforcement the ability to search through a phone's contents willy nilly, trusting them not to abuse that authority, is a nice-to-have. And because of their actions, we can't have nice things.

Flying cat is not amused. He and a killer bunny will come after you.

They're trying to duplicate something they saw on a sci-fi TV show, thats primary use was exploration of alien planets

No, the tricorder's primary use was exposition, not exploration.

TV Show Watcher: What the heck is going on there?
Star Trek Character: (consults tricorder) There appears to be a radiation surge from other there, indicating a portal will soon appear and introduce this week's source of conflict.
TV Show Watcher: Thanks, informative tricorder!

Let me guess: the fate of our universe depends on us winning the next Tetris tournament, because the other guys have won the last nine. One sage but somewhat aloof character - Christopher Lambert, perhaps, but with a Russian accent - will gather together a diverse team of fighters - no, arcade junkies - to battle an alien invasion force that has overwhelming technological superiority. Except that instead of actual battles, we'll get head-to-head Tetris. I can't wait for the cinemasins version of that

IEEE Spectrum also has coverage, along with an excellent technical explanation.

It's not about how attractive they are. But how traditionally they are dressed. Which for many people contrasts with space exploration.

Well, although a sari is a wonderful outfit, the flowing fabric would probably just get in the way in zero-g.

(I kid, I kid)

My keys are metal. They don't bend.

Ah, but do your keys have a 5.7" screen?

Read much more coherent coverage from IEEE Spectrum.

Spectrum is great - important and well-written technological articles that 1) get their units correct and 2) don't get breathlessly hyped up like a press release. For a while, the print magazine was the main reason I kept my IEEE membership current. Now the whole thing is posted for free online.