The only way the Russian's can "win" this propaganda war is if they can somehow convince those Europeans who make decisions about sanctions that they had nothing to do with the downing of the passenger jet. People will want to know where that Buk missile launcher came from, who gave the order to shoot, and where that missile launcher is now. If there is any evidence that the Russians had any direct involvement with this, no amount of propaganda will help them outside of the regions where they have complete control of the media.

But can you ride on it?

They have a 'bit' of a smog problem in Guangzhou, but the hotel I was at had an excellent breakfast pho bar.

Hold on a sec ... is he trying to say that bitcoin can help rectify problems caused by weak currencies?

My uncle gave each of his relatives a large variety pack of energy efficient light bulbs for Christmas. Not a bad gift actually. Not flashy, except for in a light emitting way.

How about we call it a Higgoid object.

So I'm not going to be able to walk around in shirt sleeves after taking an oxygen pill? Bummer.

I was going to build one of those after seeing them made on Scrapheap Challenge (aka Junkyard Wars).

I'm going to assume that intelligent civilizations are much more rare than natural resources in the galaxy. Since intelligent civilizations probably develop in radically different ways, we would be far more valuable as objects of study than as a source of minerals. It would enhance the survival of a star spanning civilization to understand how other intelligent civilizations evolve.

Like you said, "everything is relative". For astronomers, two million years is a pretty short time. Unless you're waiting in the coffee line.

Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”

~George Carlin

Great book.

The robot should give priority to its owner. If the robot has to consider all humans equal, it will have to deal with ambiguity and uncertain intention in the external environment, which can lead to some disturbing possibilities. Consider the possibility that a robot could be manipulated into committing murder by having two pedestrians step out in front of a car on a narrow bridge. The car has no choice but to turn off the bridge, because two people are worth more than one. Or turning away from pedestrians (who are more likely to die) and instead going into oncoming traffic (where the oncoming car may or may not even have a passenger, or it may be a school bus). By always maximizing the survival of the passenger, I suspect that overall deaths will be minimized.

The word "perfect" is meaningless outside of mathematics.

Agreed. I recommend it to all our new programmers.