This is what we had installed back in 2019 and don't regret it at all. They put 714 feet worth of pipe under the ground (two bore holes) which runs through the foundation to the heat pump. When its 100 we have no problem keeping the house around 70 and when its -10 we keep the house around 68 without issue. Definitely don't miss oil and natural gas.

I've been remote for around 8 years now with occasional travel to an office. I wouldn't trade it for anything other than a massive increase in salary. Not that it matters since my nearest office is 5 hours away in a different country.

The company I work for (software, about 500 employees) is taking an "if you want to" approach. Offices are opening, they'd like to see people but no plan to force people back. Considering that over the last 8 years we migrated heavily from a must be in office policy to almost 50% remote (including vps) it makes sense. I want to say maybe 5 years ago the company did surveys at each branch about satisfaction. Most offices ranged from 55% to 65% satisfied. They had remote do this I guess to not have us left out but the results ended up being something like 92% of remote employees were satisfied.

Kids aren't stupid. If it shuts down every day from 12 - 3 they aren't going to consider it magic.

It absolutely is the case in most civilized states. Parent poster is being overly dramatic.

Username checks out.

Also... agreed although I'm not at risk of going back to an office being that the nearest one is 5 hours away and in a different country.

I'm in NY and schools have been open although with various configurations depending on the school and local cases. My youngest has been in school every day since September with only two closings due to cases. My oldest has been full remote but could go in a hybrid option if we wanted.

Maybe I've played too much KSP but with the amount of hardware spread out over the solar system why do we not have a large dish in Earth orbit to act as a relay to the ground?

There isn't really any proof that Waymo vehicles are driverless, only that the driver isn't in the vehicle. If you compare a dozen dubiously driverless vehicles to a million collecting data every moment and already doing a pretty good job at autonomy, which do you think will succeed?

The fact that the driver is not in the vehicle does not mean that there is no driver.

I believe that this was figured out in the amateur observer community before NASA confirmed it. I saw it go by in my twitter feed. Not sure I can find it now...

Linear Energy Transfer

It's not radioactive. When high-energy particles strike it, they break apart into lower-energy particles that are more harmful. So, you need enough shielding to catch the particles that break apart in the top layer of your shielding.

While radiation mostly results in transient errors, it can also cause latch-ups that blow a gate off of the die. For rad-hard equipment in space this is mitigated by silicon-on-insulator fabrication, so that you can't have a latch-up between the substrate and a silicon feature.

We could have REAL ZOMBIES! YEAH!

:-)

I hear you. Going to be an interesting future, if we live.

Someone who broke their neck and was suffering from paralysis. You can control a chair or exoskeleton. People who can not hear today have cochlear implants, this is not all that different and might (eventually) work better. Or speak, or see. Other people who are disabled in various ways.