Clouds? Well this may be surprising to you but most modern telescopes are built in areas where you have nearly no clouds, no flight paths at night time and stable conditions in the lower atmosphere. Or do you think the VLT was built on Cerro Paranal for its recreational value? If you consider Space X plans to cover the LEO in 550km with 1.600 satellites (even worse would be the the 7.500 in 220km orbit), then you will risk to have at least one pass of a 22 satellite constellation in your view field per night, even more if you have VIMOS running.
Putting those instruments into space may seem tempting but then you have got the task of putting quite a lot of sensitive instruments into orbit without any easy mode of upgrading, repair and maintenance. And the VLTs resolutions is still by a few magnitudes better than the resolution of Hubble.
Space X claims that they will use "adaptive" flight paths to avoid observational areas, but that just a red herring, because it will cost energy and that equals satellite lifetime and that equals profit...

To add some context: This draft is developed by a standard procedure in german agencies. The BSI (cyber security agency) develops common minimum standards to ensure basic security and privacy for all federal offices, since thats part of their official mission based on legislation. Since not only federal but also many other local agencies follow these guidelines they act as some kind of de facto standard for all german agencies and authorities (except the military ea.). But these guidelines just describe the basic (lowest) protection levels - all agencies or workplaces with higher protection levels will adhere to much stricter standards.

... how the millions of LPs. EPs and singles were manufactured in ancient times! IRC its not only the pressing, but also the production of pucks and the creation of negative masters that do slow down the production nowadays - not many of the suppliers of specialized services left (some goes for the accumulated knowledge). That aside it seems a good idea that some of the press runs in the 70s and 80s would have needed to avoid that crappy quality sold back then.

A few annotations:

As some one pointed out most of the images are arial photographs of lower quality - where they use satellite images (res. >1m) they have no control over the time of flyover - that is determined by the flightpath of the commercial operators. Only military sentinels and some scientific platforms carry enough fuel (or have a very short life span) to adapt their flight paths to the customers need.

Aligning images is non-trivial - you got minimal tilts which could be corrected and professional arial images (ie. not the ones used by Google) are corrected and coded for stereoscopic measuring (some specialists can determine the hight of the terrain up to a few centimeters). But you still got the height differences of earth surfaces within an image which are hard to correct and Google wont pay anyone to adapt their geo-models and image models to fit within a few decimeters.

Far more problematic is the underwhelming cartographic quality in regards to symbols, generalization ea. - heck even Apple Maps is better than Google maps in that respect.A lot of pupils don't know what a good map should look like or how to tell what determines a good map... sigh...

That might be partly true for some countries but the problem with Waze ea. does also exist in other countries in Europe where the situation differs a bit, because:
we (as house owners) paid up to 90% of the roads construction cost (for residential roads - others might be "free" of direct cost),
we live often in a reduced traffic area with no through traffic (especially of lorries) allowed,
we often have a significant speed limit of 30 km/h in residential areas.

Modern traffic planning does actually divide streets up into different classes (aka functionalities) but most apps don't take modern planning into consideration - Eg. the street I'm living in is a low traffic residential area designed for some traffic going through because of an elementary school and a hospital in nearby areas. Whenever one of the larger motorways or state roads in the vicinity of our town is blocked the traffic rises exponentially ( also the speed) to cut through or bypass the traffic jam. If this happens in the morning quite a few school children will attempt to cross the roads or use the same roads by bicycle, which sometimes leads to dangerous situations.

And you want to know whats really funny about that? Those detours won't save you much time, money or fuel - I was working with some traffic scientists in our geoscience department which calculated the time difference between staying on the congested road or using the detour suggested by apps - their finding was that it might save you time for short journeys, big jams or road closures but not for most other situations and you will need at least as much fuel.

Nope it is not - Actually institutes in England (1997, Westminster report) and Germany (2005, TÜV) ran tests regarding handwashing and drying with different means. The conclusion? Handwashing may reduce the pathogen level on your hands by about 40% (if using only soap) but the funny thing is that this holds only true if you use paper towels. If you use Cloth the reduction might be only 20% while when using Hot Air Dryers you might ending with the same count (or even more) than before. But normally you won't get infections this way - thats because your skin (and the hydrolipids covering it) will protect you - except if you destroy the hydrolipids by washing your hands too often.

And in case you want really clean hands:
There is a reason why hospitals ask you to wash your hands and then disinfect them with specialized agents. Since the 60ies most surgeons disinfect them for about 5 to 8 minutes with antiseptics (there are even EN norms for that) to be sure they won't carry pathogens.

I wouldn't worry about people not washing their hands but about people not washing and disinfecting their hands in high risk areas like hospitals, nurseries and care institutions...

It is not a preliminary ruling per se but an Opinion registered by the General Advocate - usually the court follows his arguments but only then it will be a ruling. Nevertheless is this a great step towards a open wifi in some of the EU states. The case centers around a german law which forces you, if running a hotspot, to ensure that your hotspot is not used to violate IP (by using passwords or providing detailed logs afaik - as if that would help). But the law also determines that you can be hold liable if IP violations are committed using your hotspot without those countermeasures. That is what happened in this case as the party seeking this ruling was billed 800,- for alleged IP violations by Sony. As far as the registered Opinion goes it seems that the EU court will uphold the rights of free speech instead of hindering it by making wifi operators liable.

Actually Human Geography is how humans create and maintain spacial interactions and how those interactions may form space. It is just a way of dividing geography into different branches (human geography and physical geography). And since I both studied and lectured geography (specializing in human geography and regional econometrics) - I haven't dug through the whole article, but it seems rather legit albeit more about how glaciological knowledge is created and how this knowledge is influenced by gender and how some of the presentation of that knowledge to the public has a strong gender bias.

I just read the original post by the Polizei Hagen and the context is not so much about pedophiles but the emphasis is more on basic privacy concerns... A quick and dirty translation (usual caveats apply):

Please stop posting photographs of your children for all to see on Facebook and Co! - Even your children have privacy!
A snapshot naked on the beach or bathing in the pool: Many of you publish pictures of their little ones on Facebook and Co. And very often those are visible to everyone, without any appropriate safeguards in the privacy settings. Maybe you consider the pictures adorable today, but they might prove endlessly embarrassing for your children in a few years - or they might even get bullied! Even worse: pedophile inclined people may use such photos for their own purposes or publish them elsewhere. Your children have a right of privacy. We feel that pictures of children should not be published in social networks. Because the Internet never "forgets" anything. View your pictures of your little ones wtih grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, friends and acquaintances rather personally. Because: Isn't it so much nicer to talk and smile about them together?
Thank you!
Your Police Hagen

Some of the comments do refer to killing or harming the responsible persons:

• [2] ... Proposal – let’s do as in 1905, let’s go to [K]uressaare with sticks and put [L.] and [Le.] in a bag
• [14] ... As they sow, so shall they reap, but they should nevertheless be contained (by lynching as the state is powerless towards them – it is really them who govern the state), because they only live for today.
• [17] ... Estonian state, led by scum [and] financed by scum, of course does not prevent or punish antisocial acts by scum. But well, every [L.] has his Michaelmas ... and this cannot at all be compared to a ram’s Michaelmas. Actually sorry for [L.] – a human, after all... :D :D :D

I fear that not all posting here have read the ruling. There are a few things to consider:

• 1. The Ruling was made by the ECHR, which is not a part of the EU but an instrument of the European Council which is based on the CPHRFF (European Convention on the Human Rights)
• 2. The ruling only stated that the Estonian Law did not violate the human rights of the complainant and notes why the ruling by the Estonian court was held up.
• 3. The Annex and Concurring Opinions of the ruling describe the interpretation of the court that "Delfi was [not] liable as it did not “prevent” the unlawful comments from being published, and its liability was aggravated by the fact that it did not subsequently “remove” the comments; ... [but] Delfi did not “prevent” the unlawful comments from being published, and as it did not subsequently “remove” the comments without delay, it was liable for them." The judges issuing the concurrent opinion urged the Court to clarify this important part of the ruling (and there is a big difference in those 2 interpretations...)
• 4. The ruling makes clear that the original Estonian laws and ruling is within the "margin of appreciation afforded to the respondent State" and "the measure did not constitute a disproportionate restriction" on the human rights of the complainant.

So if any country within the European Council does issue a law that binds professional outlets to monitor comments and take down hate speech and comments incensing violence it may feel justified by this ruling, but vice versa no government within the European Council may be forced by this ruling to pass such laws.

The downside of all this is, that certain governments (I'm looking at you [name redacted]) will use this ruling to implement laws which will restrict the free expression of opinions online, but then there is still the ECHR to decide if such a law would violate Article 10.2 of the European Convention of Human Rights ...

No, but as soon as the Market leader does propagate a new data exchange format, the actual creators of the data (commercial companies as well as state agencies) will follow. ESRIs market share is dominating and unfortunately many GIS users are not interested in open tools. So if a more efficient and comfortable format will be available then the GIS community will willingly accept it - without even considering the problems of a further lock in. In addition to that, the Open Source Geo community is already providing the LASzip format for the same functionality and that format is far superior to the classic one and probably as efficient as the one ESRI is developing - plus it is open, documented and all, albeit so far not subjected to the process of standardization.

That is not entirely true; the procedure takes the following steps - The door is normally pre-locked and can only be opened from inside - Crew trying to enter from outside have first to contact the cockpit via intercom and then press a code on a pad. The cockpit gets a visual and aural signal and has a time period to confirm the entry. - When the crew finds that the cockpit is not responding to a request they (mostly the Purser) can enter a security code on the pad which will unlock the door after a time period - but the cockpit can still override the opening request within 20 seconds. So whenever a pilot or crew is not able to enter a cockpit for an extended period, then somebody in the cockpit is denying them the entry by an action (flipping a switch). That is why some airlines allow a cockpit member to leave the cockpit only while two crew members are in the cockpit for that time (4 eyes principle).

Since Roxana (Alexanders wife) and his son Alexander IV were killed in Amphipolis by one of the Diadochen it could be either one of them or the Diadochen (Cassandos) who was buried in that tomb. Btw the excavation is running now for more than one year - hardly news except that Samaras went there for a visit and archeologist plan to enter within the next few months...

slash code just ate the < SARCASM > around "dump the human trash where it belongs"....