Nah, the Saturnians just did yet another launch.. You'd think they would have learned by now that they're really not good at it. Look at all that debris they left in orbit. That's what it's going to look like around the Earth in a few thousand years, if we don't start cleaning up after ourselves.

You sir, may have excellent potential in the exciting career of government alphabet soup.

https://www.usajobs.gov/JobSearch/Search/GetResults?Keyword=Alphabet Soup

The shock and awe of the situation was overwhelming. Almost on the scale of a WMD.

I'd say businesses banning the device on their premises is a good start. Admittedly, I'm not full of ideas - but I'm sure complacency is not the answer.

FTFY. :)

You're apocalypse sounds better, and possibly more likely, than some others on here. It's much more likely than the evaporating magnets and technology. :)

I think the first AC below is right. Without a good support structure, including people to defend you, you most likely won't survive the first few weeks. I'm fairly sure you're not the only person around (or even on here) that can identify and replace a bad cap. :)

It's ok though, if you make it to our compound, you'd be welcome and protected. You'd better know more than just swapping electronic components though. Everyone is a soldier first, and their specialty second. You won't do us much good dead.

A lot of us build from our parents work. Some of it we don't, because technology caught up sufficiently to the mainstream. Like, before my father tired, he was working on bleeding edge work with lasers and thermal imaging.

I don't need a ruby rod and flashtube to fire a laser, at some huge gov't expense, and $10,000 (if I remember right) for an infrared thermometer. Now I can get a $20 that does both.

He quite literally had a truck filled with gear that was cooled by liquid nitrogen, to do thermal imaging. I believe the truck was the cheapest component. Instead, I can spend $2,500 for a handheld camera that does much better quality imaging.

There are some things that really don't change much. I do my own work around the house. I work on my own cars. I've built electronics. Some techniques I learned from him. Some I've improved on. If he was still alive, I believe he would be impressed.

Is that before or after disassembling stuff? :)

And for some things, you don't even need the magnets. There are plenty of cars out there with self-exciting alternators. All you need is something to spin the pulley.

I think in his universe, all the magnets, tools, vehicles, and stores simply disappeared.

Correct, but if you're skilled with electrical gear, you can make electricity.

A car alternator, belt, pulley, a bit of wood, and a running river, can give you constant power.

That power can run our soldering iron, refrigerator/freezer, or other useful things.

The guy who knows all the in's and out's on a car, can give you reliable transportation. In the case of the recent walking dead episodes, he can give you a way to drive down the tracks quickly, rather than walking for days. (Hint: a Chevy S10 has the correct distance between wheels to sit on the rails)

A big enough mini power plant can run arc welders. Building foot thick steel reinforced concrete walls is better than hiding in almost any house.

And for the record, I'm a long-term IT guy. I also have experience in electronics, refrigeration and HVAC, automotive work, firearms handling, and farming. I'm also spoken for. My friends and family already know where to meet up if there happens to be an apocalypse. They have the written plans and maps. If an apocalypse happened, we'd be set back up and having LAN parties within a few weeks. :)

So, ignore it and maybe it will go away? I don't think that's going to be effective.

But what system with dozens of hard drives in it would be entering and exiting S3 constantly anyway?

You might do power saving on hypervisor hosts, but on a SAN? I can't think of a scenario where it makes a lot of sense... but perhaps I'm just lacking the proper imagination :P

On topic: I think this is awesome. I want to be able to suspend my machine and wake it up whenever I feel like it, with VMs shuffling around waiting for me to pick up a different tablet, or sit at a different desk. x86 has a lot of catching up to do. After all, I've gotten pretty used to putting a device "to sleep" and "waking it up" instantly. It'd be nice if my computer could do the same thing... even if it's only in spirit. Of course, an S3/4/5 is a much deeper sleep than my phone or tablet ever enters while it's powered on, AFAIK.

Dang. Typo broke the first, more-punchline-worthy, Schlock link.

I'm really begining to hate the keyboard on this new laptop.

I hope that was a rhetorical question. It's obvious they are trying to create a scapegoat.

This actually looks good to me. Most helicopters can be shot down with a rifle. They are huge engines with large fuel tanks and large, whirling blades, and it is not that difficult to get them to destroy themselves with their own momentum, height, or fuel.

I concur. Helicopters are a collection of single-points-of-failure, disasters waiting to happen. (Particularly the pilot - they have to be continuously controlled and crash almost instantly if anything incapacitates him.) Their vulnerability is justified only because their extreme usefulness oughtweighs it. With eight rotors I'd be surprised if this vehicle couldn't at least come to ground safely with at least two of them destroyed, and the multicopter approach has been under autonomous computer control from the start - made practical only by the automation.

I envision this thing's missions as being primarily extreme rough-country ground transport, with short hops to bypass otherwise impassible terrain, reach otherwise inaccessible destinations or targets, attack from above, or put on a burst of speed when time is of the essence. Think a truck-sized "super jeep" ala Superman. Being primarily a ground vehicle lets it perform longer missions and reduces its visibility and vulnerability compared to a helicopter.

Just because you CAN fly doesn't mean you DO fly all the time. As is pointed out in the webcomic Schlock Mercenary: "Do you know what they call flying soldiers on the battlefield?" ... "Skeet!"