"The implantable device aims to convert neurons in the brain into electronic signals ..."

As an additional benefit a short time after implantation the subjects will qualify as news release editors or professional climate change deniers (but not for long).

What Nazi set the requirement that each question for Mike Godwin must have a comparison with Nazis or Hitler to make it a valid post?

Wow, children will no longer die from malaria. Most will live to be adults and consumers of resources, have babies that will not die from malaria and will also ...

Good thing we are so far from the carrying capacity of the earth that we will have time to address the over population problem.

The particles absorb photons over a wide band, violet through 'thermal'. Presumably the energy is dissipated as though from a black body unless it is removed by conduction. For example when illuminated by visible light they would radiate mostly in the infrared (unless the absorbed energy is removed by conduction) and would be seen to glow in infrared.

If they could be tweaked to absorb better at a wavelength that is best transmitted by human tissue and attached to an antibody that attaches to cancer cells they might be used as antennae to heat and destroy the cells.

I remember that an SF story a couple of decades ago predicted that cruise missiles and the computer technology to direct their swarming would make them inexpensive weapons of choice for some nations. Looks as if that time is upon us.

"...officials note, having this capability will force adversaries to focus on UAV swarm response." I hope that we also have some focus onUAV swarm response; the 'swarm' of Kamikaze attacks on our fleet off Okinawa in WWII inflicted great damage even though we had AA shells with proximity fuzes, early warning radar, and fighter aircraft for interception.

I don't see that Mr | Ms | Mrs Coward's comment is pertinent. I sure don't want to need to code "y = z++" in assembly, much less binary, each time I need it. Computer languages are made up of symbols that translate to several to many lines of code and come with libraries of still more abstract code and the trend of higher abstraction appears to be continuing. It's good have routines coded once that that are used many times. Productivity increases.

I agree with fff.

I suspect that the savings and utility will come with new construction where, for instance, the load carrying copper wires only go to the outlets or lights and the controls, which could control the light, socket, etc. could be wireless but their power would come a separate low voltage, low amperage, circuit this saving quite a bit of copper. The smartphone could control selected or all circuits but would not be the only control.

As an example thermostats control furnaces and air conditioners via low voltage, low amp, wires. New ones may also be controlled by a smartphone or computer.

It's probably not very cost efficient to convert existing homes in most cases.

BTW I get points when I mention that I can't go out as I need to update the firmware in my front door lock.

xkcd is great. I forwarded it to our statistician when it was first published!

I didn't see anything about the control group that thought they were given shocks but were not. Did I miss that? If not the study is seriously flawed and nearly worthless.

Don't forget the minerals that will be left behind to clog the wall along with the mold. Locations that are dry enough for evaporative cooling to work are usually short of water, too, so this would be like a faucet continually running.

That's assuming that it's rectangular solid, it's probably an ellipsoid.

Schlock movies and forgettable juvenile music?

Only if you're looking up in the direction of the satellite, otherwise it's your head that would be about 1 pixel. Of course it's unlikely in either case that your your head/face would be contained in one pixel so it would more probably be split among 2 or 4 pixels.

I'm not sure what you mean by "simpler" system, what would it be? AFAIK it takes signals from 4 GPS satellites to get a fix, I think that it could be done with 3 having knowledge of the approximate position. That's with 3 or 4 satellites with GPS electronics in view at once. This implies that there need to be several more than 3 satellites in the constellation to be certain of having 3 or 4 in the correct position at any time. I don't think that the orbits of multi purpose satellites would be the ones needed for GPS.

Parachutes are used to slow the descent rate of the landers and are then cut away as the descent rate is still pretty high. Other methods need to be used to bring the lander to touchdown. I guess some engineers experienced in origami might be able to design a multiple rotor copter that would be compact in transit yet unfold properly once the parachute slows the descent rate etc, etc, etc.

Well, the up front costs for the Martian GPS system will be high, that is to say, astronomical. May be some maintenance problems as well. Other than that and the near absence of an atmosphere it sounds good to go.