We all know that Saturn's rings were created about 3 million years ago, when the aliens who built the Monolith built the Star Gate.

Came here solely to make this comment. Alas, I was ninja'd by sconeu. Every time I hear a theory about the formation of Saturn's rings, I am reminded of that book.

As to why the rings contain more water (or rather, less dirt) than comets, one theory I read was that it had something to do with the frequency of impacts and collisions. The chunks would smash into each other, shattering and often vaporizing. The heavier dirt would get pulled towards Saturn faster than the ice, which would re-coalesce into the sky-bergs that Mankind has marveled at for centuries. Repeat the process over a few million years and you get some remarkably pure ice.

Considering that, when I was growing up, I expected to be living in a post-apocalyptic world of nuclear-bomb craters and anarchy (assuming I lived at all, which didn't seem likely), the future exceeds my expectations.

But even if we discount that particular horror, I think it's mostly better than I expected. Oh sure, there were the tales of flying cars and rocket-belts, but even as a kid I didn't expect most of that super high-tech stuff to come around in my liftime. Teleporters, talking robots and laser guns were things of the far-future, not something I would ever experience.

Mostly, I expected the world to continue more or less the way it had been, with incremental "under-the-hood" advancements; our cars would use less gas (or maybe use hydrogen), we'd swap out nuclear fission for proper fusion, and they'd make it so our record players would never skip and scratch. We might have self-driving cars (but only on highways where they laid down special control tracks) but I'd still be driving to work every day. Constructing a building would still take a lot of brute, manual labor. Food would still come from the supermarket, and oranges would be a special treat that were only really affordable at certain times of the year. But I was fairly certain that my adult life would be pretty recognizable to myself as a child.

And, largely, that has held true, but that's not to say there haven't been welcome changes. I would never have imagined the immense advancements in computing technology: a computer in my pocket that not only lets me talk to people anytime, anywhere, but gives me access to a huge worldwide database of information? 60" television screens so flat that against the walls they almost look like posters? Computers I can talk (and sometimes talk back) and they understand me? The ability to have almost any item shipped to me from anywhere around the world and have it in my hands the next day? All the music and movies and books I could ever want at my fingertips? Fresh blackberries in February? Things like this didn't exceed my expectations; they weren't even on the radar!

Sure, there are some areas we've fallen short, but we're coming close and none of these hopes -like switching to fusion - were really anything that would affect me directly. If there is one major disappointment, it's that we've almost gone backwards in our space exploration; after NASA's heydays in the 60s and 70s, we all expected things to continue apace; 2001 (the movie) didn't seem so far-fetched (well, except for the talking computer, but that was just fun sci-fi). Giant space stations, bases on the moon, manned flights to Mars, Venus and Jupiter; surely all these things would be accomplished by 2020. After all, we got to the moon in 20 years, right? That space would become a nearly forgotten side-show was as inconceivable to me as my owning a handheld computer.

Then again, I can still look up and marvel at a giant airplane that seems to hang by magic in the sky, or take a moment to appreciate that I can make light appear in my house simply by flipping a switch. I already live in a future unimaginable to my ancient forebears, with more power and knowledge at my fingertips than had even their gods. So what if I do not have a robot companion or the ability to visit Alpha Centauri; I'm still living in a high-tech wonderland and it amazes me every day.

(That said, ask me if the political and social advancements of the world today have matched my expectations; you'll get quite a different answer. Our tech is awesome, but I expected better from us as a people).

It's not quite so open and shut. The President inarguably has the power to pardon. However, the President is arguably limited in his power to actually intervene in the investigation and prosecution of a crime. He is, after all, sworn to "“faithfully” execute the laws of the United States" (or, as it says in Article II, Section 3, "take care that the Laws be faithfully executed."). If and when someone is found guilty of a crime, then the power of the Presidential pardon can come into effect. But the Constitutional basis for stopping an investigation prior to a guilty verdict is on shaky ground.

That said, many Presidents have wielded that power and stopped their attorney generals - members of the executive branch - from pursuing certain investigations or dropping lawsuits, nominally under the guise of setting priorities. This power is usually left unchallenged unless it is done for overtly political reasons. But a strong judicial challenge could be made that this would exceed the power invested in the President by the Constitution. So far, fortunately, there has never been an instance when the President has been so challenged.

In this particular case, when an actual arrest has been made, it becomes increasingly difficult for a President to intervene as the case now falls far more under the Judicial branch's purview than the Executive's.

So yes, the parent post was not as wrong as you imply; it would be improper and quite possibly illegal for Trump to intervene, at least at this point. After the case runs through the courts, then the President could use his power of pardon but acting before would likely create a Constitutional crisis of some sort.

It seems more like the AI is procedurally generating the world, while the actual rendering is still using the Unreal 4 engine pipeline. It is impressive, but the title /is/ misleading.

Right now they apparently feed the AI video and it creates models and animations based off that video, which it then recombines into new worlds. Imagine this tech combined with GoogleEarth's library of images: it could create a fully-3D view of every street. It will be sort of like jumping from the old step-based Bards Tale games to Skyrim.

The porn-watcher might have been the patient-zero of this outbreak, but I think as much if not more blame needs be laid at the feet of the IT staff that allowed the malware to get as far as it did. Limit user privileges, lock down access ports and use secure operating systems and the damage would not have been as severe; it might only have been limited to that single user's machine.

But that sort of thinking would require a costly revamping of the entire computer infrastructure, so better to put the blame on a single user, who could just as easily have gotten the malware from an ad on a perfectly legitimate site. Fortunately, he was viewing porn (naked bodies entwined together! The most evil threat America has ever faced!) so it's easy to throw him to the wolves.

The Martian's are firing their giant cannons to launch their war-machines towards us. The invasion of Earth has begun.

A carriage provided by a huge retail corporation that monitors the health and needs of the customer? This seems familiar...

Oh yeah, it's version 0.01 of the Wall-E Hoverchair.

Just as 1984 was never intended as an instruction manual for politicians, so neither was Wall-E for corporations. Neither are futures I want to live in.

I have a free-standing halogen lamp. It's wonderfully bright but I rarely use it because it gives off a tremendous amount of heat and I do worry about its excessive power usage. But let me tell you, if ever there's a fly buzzing about the room that I can't catch or otherwise shoo out of the house, I turn on the light and let the little f#@&*r fry. The smell of roasting bug that inevitably wafts through the room ten minutes after I turn the lamp on after being annoyed for an hour by the victim's buzzing is extremely satisfying.

It's the only reason I keep the damn lamp, quite honestly.

The device has "285 microspeakers emitting ultrasonic waves that hold up the light, and have a frequency inaudible to the human ear, allowing Luciola to operate in apparent total silence".

Yeah, but how does it affect the rest of the natural world? Just because it is silent to us doesn't mean other forms of life can't hear it. I'm reminded of the damage our submarines are doing to whales and other sea-life blasting away with powerful sonar. How would these sounds affect animals that can hear in the ultrasonic?

Before Bush, it was private security meeting standards (that were never missed on record), within his terms it became government that failed to meet standards.

How do we know they never missed on record? Is it because they told us they never missed? It seems like this might be similar to the difference between open-source and closed-source code; the former might seem less secure because there are lots of bug reports and patches, but that doesn't really tells us anything about the state of the latter. Similarly, it might very well be that the private security was just as much theater as the government's attempts, but a lack of transparency made it easier for them to hide their failings.

Honestly, I don't know either way. I am just hesitant to believe that the private industry's record was really any better. I'd be curious if there was any information on the topic.

It isn't the money that NRA tosses around that is the major problem. It is - comparatively - only a small part of Republican party funding: in 2014, only 1% of the money raised in 2014 came from the NRA.

No, the NRA's real power is how quickly - and repeatedly - they can mobilize their supporters. As importantly, NRA supporters don't forget about the issue in a month or two; gun-control is /the/ major issue for them. It trumps issues like abortion, taxes, immigration, and all the other hot-button topics that divide this nation. And they vote.

The NRA wields a huge club because they can get a huge number of voters behind (or against) a particular candidate depending on his stance on gun-control. Although many other issues result in vocal support (or disagreement), very few groups have a the same ability to guarantee actual votes on the topic. The NRA does. That's why they don't need to push so much money at the candidates (that money, after all, is mostly used for advertising to convince voters to their side; with the NRA, the issue is already decided). So rather than risk alienating them most politicians try to either placate the NRA or avoid the issue entirely.

Sweden is just worried about the widening imprisoned-to-unimprisoned ratio gap between itself and the US. By throwing every pirate in jail for 6 years, Sweden will soon be able to imprison, what, some 90% of its population into the slammer. Take that, United States!

Forget the music/movie industry; has anyone checked to see if this woman has connections to the prison industry (Sweden doesn't have privatized prisons but ultimately some businesses have to be involved with the construction and supply of the jails)? Or the lawyers; think of all the court cases!

It's older even than that; a pirate in the sense of "one who takes another's work without permission" dates back to 1701, at least according to Etymology Online. Wikipedia dates it back to 1603:

The practice of labelling the infringement of exclusive rights in creative works as "piracy" predates statutory copyright law. Prior to the Statute of Anne in 1710, the Stationers' Company of London in 1557, received a Royal Charter giving the company a monopoly on publication and tasking it with enforcing the charter. Those who violated the charter were labelled pirates as early as 1603

People arguing that the words "pirate" and "piracy" only refers to the maritime crime have more than 400 years of history standing against them.

"Money-losing infrastructure"? Is our infrastructure supposed to be making money? Is that supposed to be the goal of our government? Are both failing if they are not profit-making machines? Is that how we are supposed to look at things now?

Infrastructure is a government provided service for the common weal. We-the-Citizens (and most non-citizens too, while we're at it) pay for it in order to make our lives better - and to help our business prosper too, if possible. I don't care if the local highway or park aren't profitable; the lack is made up by my taxes. I do have a concern if the taxes are poorly spent or self-serving pork projects get tax money they shouldn't... but the solution isn't too de-fund infrastructure in general.

Or are we now saying that things like Dulles Airport are unnecessary?

This whole thing reminds me of Ajit Pai's "solution" to the US's poor internet ranking: if not enough people are getting broadband, redefine broadband until it's slow enough that the statistics don't look as bad. Meanwhile, with Trump: If maintaining government infrastructure costs more than we would like to pay, sell it all until it matches our budget. It's all about moving the goalposts - at a cost to the citizen - rather than fixing the actual problem.

This is the sort of thing that attracts government attention. For years - over a decade! - people have been decrying advertisements as a vector for malware, and the industry has completely ignored it, offering any advert from its partners without checking its content. And just as predicted, we've had a stream of advertisements offering up malware, stealing people's information and infecting their computers. And still the industry has done nothing. Now you actually have criminal enterprises creating their own ad agencies to speed up the process.

At some point - and I don't think that time is too far away - some government is going to step up and say, "enough is enough" and start regulating you. And it most likely will be done in the most ham-handed way possible, that will be good for neither your industry, your partners or the people viewing the ads. So clean up your fucking act before it gets to that point. Or shut the fuck up when government does finally clamp down, because you've had years and years and years of warning and opportunity to fix things and haven't done a god damned thing!