Thanks - what I what I wanted to know. Mine was a serious question.

I have mod points and would like to use them on this comment but I don't know what half the words mean starting with "prole".

Not going to use Google Translate (or Google anything) on the last sentence.

> Your flight plans will have to be approved by the FAA and you will have to observe flight space, respect commands of ATC, ...

This is 2/3 untrue and pretty laughable to anyone who is actually a pilot. Flight under visual flight rules (VFR) requires no flight plan here in the USA. There is no need to communicate with ATC unless flying in controlled airspace.

Sure, instrument flight rules (IFR) is a different story but many pilots have the vast majority of their flight time with no flight plans or without talking to anyone (or not even having a radio).

I do not track the ROI without the various incentives but rough calculations tell me I certainly would not have "broken even" here at the 7-year point and possibly not even at the end of my 15-year contract (and useful life of the solar cells). I definitely would not have "gone solar" without the 30% tax credit and generous feed-in tariff.

You're right about 3 cents vs. 35 but also I mis-wrote "feed in tariff" -- should have been "net metering". My utility has about 750 of us net metering customers and perhaps it saved them the cost of building more generation capability. And it gives them points for being "green".

I heat with gas and would not consider solar electric for a heat pump due to the expense of conversion. Western Oregon winters are pretty mild and space heating is not a big expense. However, an EV would make sense if I drove more miles. With my 5 kW installation I definitely have "energy to burn".

My system was installed by professionals and after re-installing it myself (after a roof replacement) I don't begrudge them the job. It's hard work just hosting the 18 panels to the roof and securing the mounting tracks in a leak-free manner. I used the professionally-installed mounting tracks and wiring so I didn't have to do any design work.

Professional or not, perhaps some would be interested in some details of my system. I paid $16k for a nominal 5kW system about 7 years ago. Half of the cost was reportedly the solar materials and half was the labor, wiring, permits, etc. My salesman (and entrepreneur with a "day job") said it would pay for itself in about 5 years. It did, and here at the 7-year point I have received about $22,000 of benefits.

The benefits included a 30% US Federal tax credit, a sweetheart deal on feed-in tariff to the utility ($0.35 per kWH), and depreciation on the installation, On average I use about 500 kWH per month and have not had a utility bill since I started. In addition, there has been a check from the utility for between $50 and $150 most months.

This is in northwestern Oregon (where it rains 8 months of the year). The panels are more efficient when the temperature is cool so this location has some benefit compared to Nevada or Arizona.
 

A human one, that is.

From TFA:

It was not something that had not being done before, ...

What does this even mean? Plenty of other embedded cruft that makes reading painful.

> The asteroid is predicted to be somewhere between 33 and 72 feet in diameter â" about as wide as the length of a bowling lane....

Here you go, Newsweek, in case you need to dumb this down further:

[S]cientists track more than 28,000 (equivalent to 2,800 bowling pin sets) near-Earth asteroids as they travel through the solar system. Around 900 of these (about the number of bowling balls in 5 tons) are more than one kilometer, or 3,280 feet, (about 328 bowling shoes end-to-end) in size.

> ... you become an astronaut if you're willing to pay $450,000 ...

In no way does paying for a ride make someone an astronaut any more than paying for an airline ticket makes one a pilot.

The whole concept of calling some joyriding meatbag an astronaut greatly diminishes the astronaut profession.

Even though Slashdot editor msmash, the Russian FSB, and apparently therecord.media are all non-native English speakers, it's pitiful that none of them know the difference between 'residents' and 'residences'.

-1, Pedantic -- yes, but this kind of stupidity drags us all down as we tend to write like what we read.

Yes, every example is different. But still worthwhile, at least under my circumstances.

While my situation is not as favorable as yours, my 6-year-old solar installation has also paid for itself:
1. Lots of sun in the summer and overcast most of the winter (western Oregon).
2. Low cost electricity rates (due to hydro in the Pacific NW -- $0.11 per kWh).
3. Excellent net metering policies (15-year contract to buy my generation for $0.35/kWh) but only up to the amount I consume.

The Federal tax credit of 30% (no longer available) really cinched the deal for me and accelerated the payback.

Also, the "sweetheart deal" in #3 above is no longer available. The utility actually offered contracts at $0.40/kWh before I signed on. Only feed-in tariff rates are available to new solar suppliers.

The payback period would be considerably longer for a new solar supplier today and may in fact never pay back as the energy output diminishes at 1 to 1.5% per year.

from TFA and Musk's tweet: "Unlike its aircraft division, which is fine, the FAA ...

The aircraft division is f''d up too. It took the FAA (working through the Portland FSDO) from November 6 until January 30 to issue my Repairman's Certificate. This is needed for signing off an annual Condition Inspection on an airplane I built myself.

In my own situation I find it hard to see the FAA's value proposition especially considering the large number of six-figure salary employees it has. Many of my general aviation flying friends agree.

This large amount of data is undoubtedly due to streaming entertainment. So someone who watches a lot of television is now a "power user"? Give me a break.

Before I spend any time to actually RTFM, I do a sanity check on any "facts" I can find in the synopsis.

... they took 2.5 billion steps -- the equivalent of 80 years of human experience ...

(2.5 X 10**9) / 80 = 31,250,000 steps per year

31,250,000 steps per year / 365.25 ~= 85,500 steps per day

What kind of human walks that much (approx. 85 km if a step is half a meter)?

I should give Facebook the benefit of the doubt because this is probably the first time they got something wrong but ... nah, ain't gonna bother reading the article.

The full story and a lot of details about Chuck Peddle and the seven other members of the 6502 development team are at https://www.team6502.org/

https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7010095&cid=49123241

Sadly, Mozilla wasn't listening then and isn't listening now.