Ah yes, that must be why NYC housing is getting so affordable.

Kind of ironic that the nation's most desirable places to live (as measured by how much people are willing to pay to live there) and the engines of the economy (as measured by average income) are the places that seem to be furthest from Libertarian wonderland.

Seems like as good a place as any to ask a (probably ignorant) question I've had about neutrino detection.

Part of the problem detecting neutrinos is that they only interact with nuclei, so since atoms are mostly empty space, the neutrino rarely even gets a chance to interact. But, if you took a very pure crystal, with the nuclei arranged in a precise lattice pattern, and then rotated it at a very slight angle to the incoming neutrino beam, could you engineer it so that you maximized the number of nuclei each neutrino would pass through? Picture here Would this have any effect on detector efficiency or even allow you to construct a directional detector?

To me, the real story is that the people behind this botnet are getting extradited and, (knock wood), will do jail time in the US. This news made my day. I know this is slashdot, but malware is not going to be fought through any technical solution. Until this kind of activity carries personal risk, the bad guys are going to win.

Nice to actually feel good about my government, at least for a few minutes.

I don't really have an opinion on if we'd be safer with open carry laws or under current laws. Regardless, laws on the books should be enforced--as long as concealed firearms are illegal, it strikes me as fair to use technology to enforce that. My neighborhood (which is not at all an inner city shithole) has had a minor spate of gun crimes recently, including one fairly horrific home invasion followed by kidnapping and forced ATM withdrawals, so this is about more than thugs killing each other.

Maybe it's because I live in Baltimore and my chance of getting murdered is not too much lower my chance of getting cancer, I'd say forget about scanning for tumors. If they invent something that lets cop cars scan for concealed firearms while they drive down the street, that's at least as much a public health benefit as improved cancer screening. Or does the 2nd amendment mean we have to pretend that getting shot isn't bad for your health? And, just to anticipate to the inevitable psuedo-constitutional argument, what part of "well regulated militia" applies to people with criminal records walking around with unregistered concealed firearms?

I'll go against the grain and say this might be a good thing. Isn't being a teenager about making stupid mistakes and suffering painful lessons while still in a somewhat protected environment? Public humiliation at the hands of a bitter ex will teach you more about online security (and relationships in general) than a hundred lectures.

Our, you know, OP could RTFM: The retrieval of this data has been authorized by the vehicle's owner, or other legal authority such as a subpoena or search warrant...

RTFA (A=abstract, since the article is behind a paywall)...the abstract doesn't say that gas giants formed, then were stripped. It suggests the protoplanatary disk breaks up into clumps of gas and dust, and that the clumps that come too close to the star are stripped of their gas. I think all this happens long before the dust clouds condense into planets. At least from the abstract, all they seem to be saying is that the same original dust clouds could become rocky planets or gas giants, depending on if they're disrupted or not.

From the article:

Multiple individual pre-humans did evolve into humans, just not independently. Actually, saying that any particular individual evolved is a misnomer--more accurate to say that each of us has multiple pre-humans in our ancestry. The change most likely happened in a small-ish, somewhat isolated population over many generations. (Sort of related--much teaching about evolution overemphasizes the importance of random mutations. Selective concentration of already existing genetic variation is usually the more important mechanism. Once you realize that, it becomes easier to see how evolution happens to populations, not individuals.) Also, take a look at this, especially the common fallacies section.

Amen, brother, would mod you up if I had the points. Seems like three scientists, one affiliated with NASA, should at least nod in the general direction of physics when writing something like this. Does Acta Astronautica claim to be peer reviewed? If not, I guess this is just a sort of speculative quasi-SF opinion piece, and we can cut them some slack.