Trump put in National Space Directive 4 for the Defense Department to work with Congress on establishing a Space Force. And he's been talking about it for longer than that. And the House and Senate have been working on what it looks like in the National Defense Authorization Act for months. It's not a surprise.

  https://www.space.com/43161-wh...

These stats are pretty dubious. I can hit the "I believe" button for some, like a 23% drop in electricity costs. One day in five not in the office... sure, a one in four drop in electricity is close. But a drop in paper usage of over half? That's either not accurate, or it's not attributable to taking Friday off. It could be "we cancelled the meeting on Friday where everyone brought a ream of printed materials (that no-one read)," but tying that to a day off isn't believable.

The more important number is the near-40% increase in production. And the reason it's not believable is they're going to try a four-day workweek again, but only next summer. If I'd tested the workforce and got a 40% increase in production by giving them a day off a week, I'd keep the change permanent. Right away.

Now, why wouldn't they make it permanent immediately? Well, it could be labor laws, which make all kinds of things illegal. Or it could be that they really think it's something else, like the fewer meetings that the article mentions. But it stretches credulity to say that you can get a 2/5 increase in production while dropping hours by 1/5, and the company doesn't make that change permanent, immediately.

I really liked M2. The folder view feature was a better previous than gmail labels, I thought. It even had SSL-client authentication, which we used at work. I still use the 1.0 standalone client for some throw-away email addresses.

That's pretty similar to what I do. Headphones are a great visual indicator for people to go somewhere else, so I wear a brightly colored set of ear buds if I really need to concentrate. (Sometimes I don't even turn the music on.) I shut off email when I need to limit my own self-interruptions.

I've been there a while, so part of my job is to tell people where the sharp corners and little-known areas are. I'd rather clear up a misconception early and avoid a bigger problem later on. And I never want to be the only person that knows something Yes, getting a lot of questions interrupts my day, but you can't plan out training for the rest of the company to eliminate all questions. (And we do do training.)

In other news, Chattanooga has discovered a way to expand infrastructure without paying for any labor or buying any materials.

And what he implied is that it would make it a more interesting engineering problem ... to him. With his rule change to limit the amount of gasoline he said the Prius would win over the current cars. That sounds like a solved engineering problem. At the very least it's a different engineering problem, with fuel efficiency rated much more than speed. It's not like there aren't fuel mileage races today, where the drivers and teams coax out the last bit of fuel so they don't have to pit one last time.

Hmm, looking at fuel efficiency in NASCAR vs. NASA, NASCAR wins hands down. Sending a rocket into space takes a whole lot more fuel than a 500 mile NASCAR race. NASCAR must be a more interesting event and engineering problem than a spacecraft launch, then. "But, they're different things!" Yup, and so are Prius and NASCAR races, Bill.

Agreed. In this case, the google answer is terrible because the answer for "what time is it?" is no longer the same. The other solutions stick a whole second at the time of departure, so the math is always consistent. With google's answer, 23:59:23 - 23:59:22 != 1 second. Ew.

I didn't see a single pro-net neutrality comment that talked about The Fine Article. Lots, though, that stated anyone who opposes net neutrality is in the KKK, demonized the right wing, complained about corporate personhood, and complained that corporations have purchased the votes of Congress. The article talked about how a specific bureaucracy received a petition from those it now regulates, and told them "We thought about it and decided we're right. Go away." Normal discussions about the article would talk about strategy, "This seems like just a first step in the ongoing litigation so the corporations can say they tried to play nice," or the underlying legal aspects "wow, this administrative law thing is kinda cool, I hope we can pull more from the regular court system and get everything we like tried by the administrative branch and not the judicial branch, at least until Evil Republicans get the White House back."

You're embarrassing your own side. Please keep it up.

I understand the bumper sticker version of net neutrality says that every packet is equal under they eyes of the regulator, and will be treated exactly the same. VOIP 911 emergency calls must be treated exactly the same as pornography.

The second part of your paragraph doesn't make any sense. I certainly don't want to take private ownership of the Tubes and give it to the government. And certainly not to then lease out to companies to charge prices set by regulators for particular rates. One, you can't know the fair price unless you have a free market, which obviously isn't in place in your proposed scenario. Two, with government owning the infrastructure, we've then pretty much abandoned innovation. Sure, if smart techies got to write and implement the regulations and the infrastructure we might get there, but there's no way that happens in this scenario. Remember, we're talking about the current failure of the existing regulation not being good enough. What magic wand is going to make it better?

No, I think the FCC limited entry into the phone system to prevent "wasteful duplication" and "needless competition." (http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1994/11/cj14n2-6.pdf). These are the same arguments against Uber. The regulation system encouraged a monopoly, and then we got one. AT&T had the strength to enforce phone rentals because the government regulations encouraged regional monopolies. Perhaps not on purpose, but that's why the primary measure of a law or regulation is not the intent behind it, but its effects.

You said that a free market "does not truly exist," but the current situation "keeps screwing the customer more and more." So the only way to fix the current awful regulation is better regulators? Good luck with that. Remember, the very first time a net neutrality regulator gives preference over one piece of traffic over another, net neutrality regulation is broken. The regulations are then the exact opposite of what you want. How long do you think that will take to happen?

Did any companies that backed net neutrality make campaign contributions? If so, are they corrupt?

Perhaps open roads are pretty democratizing, too. Should we ban toll roads, or high occupancy toll lanes?

Those laws were bad, so you and I agree. Can you see why some don't trust Congress to fix (or not pass) bad laws, or trust that agencies won't make bad regulations?

Why did you have to rent your phone? Because government regulations and laws enforced a monopoly. Your example is crappy regulation, not a free market system. Yes, after a few decades, the regulation got better. I wonder what we'd have had without those decades of awful regulation?