You're barking up the wrong tree. If all you need is some directional controls, I've got some Atari style joysticks here that would be 100% up to the job. Manufactured in the '80's, built like a tank, seen plenty of action, all still work fine. Want better / new, have a look at what people put into arcade cabinet rebuilds.

What makes these things so reliable is their simplicity: a bundle of wires + some switches (of well-proven, battle tested design). So failure modes come down to cables / connectors, and mechanical wear. All of which is trivial to troubleshoot. In a pinch you could pull a cable, strip some wires & you're back in business.

Now for a carbon fiber hull, that's a different ballgame. So there you want independent experts, who know the intricacies of the materials used. Non-destructive testing using methods backed by actual science. Maybe destructive testing to find out where breaking strenghts actually are. That's where certification & 3rd party review come in.

But it's not the "certified" that makes something reliable. It's knowing a design through & through, its properties, strenghts, weaknesses, limits, failure modes & how to address them.

Grabbing an off-the-shelf game controller to steer the craft: defendable design choice. Skipping 3rd party certification (or even review) of something as critical as a pressure vessel (built using innovative tech): not so much. Never mind using a viewport that was rated just over 1/3 (1500m) of what it was used for (3500...4000m). That's just insane.

This could go down much like how humans build on each others' creations:

Say an art lover visits countless museums, reads countless books on various art styles, does some work on its own, and creates a unique artwork. We call that "inspiration". This is fine.

Now suppose the new work has an uncanny resemblance to a specific existing work. Basically a 1:1 copy with some tweaks. We call this "stealing" or similar terms. For some purposes this is fine (for example if you 'stole' a basic concept, for parody, research etc), for other purposes (eg. selling the work for profit) it is not. In case of conflict, a court of law will decide, using intent & other 'yardsticks' as guideline.

But so far I've said nothing about the technology used. Whether that involves painting, wood carving, photography, whatever, done by human or machine - who cares. It's the resemblance to existing work, and intent behind application of the result that matters.

Let's hope EU (and national!) lawmakers are smart enough to make this distinction. For example: developing AI-powered image recognition (even if it concerns faces, DNA etc) is not bad by itself. Doing so by scraping random people's photos without their permission, that is questionable. Using such technology to do mass tracking of people wherever they go, certainly is NOT okay.

Mechanism vs. policy. Regulate technology's application, not the technology itself. Do the latter, and its development will simply be done elsewhere.

"A greener future is not necessarily a lower-tech future. On the contrary: policy experts at the International Energy Agency and World Economic Forum see smart, data-driven energy systems as crucial to hitting net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

But the chips at the heart of all that clean tech - found in everything from wind turbines to electric vehicles and smart grids - come with a big carbon footprint."

The article tries to confuse electronics used in green energy systems, with semiconductor manufacturing in general. Thereby casting doubt on whether it's 'worth it' to put that green tech in place. But that's only obvious if you read the rest of the article, and understand the context (scope) of what exactly is being discussed. Sneaky...

Headline: "All that green power generation requires a lot of smarts (chips). And those chips produce a lot of CO2 to make."

Rest of the article: "Semiconductor manufacturing produces a lot of CO2 output."

Reality:

Yeah there's some electronics needed. But compared to the size of the green energy-system it is managing, manufacture of the 'control box' has a tiny footprint. Those windmills, the generators in them, solar panels, battery systems etc themselves, that is another story (and NOT what the article is about).

Separate from that: manufacturing the chips for your smartphone, tablet, PC, game console, TV, induction cooker, robot lawnmower, etc etc etc is an industry (for the time being) largely fueled by fossil inputs. No shit sherlock, so is keeping cold the beer in an average person's fridge. See "energy mix".

I'd prefer giving someone the benefit of the doubt. But a well-informed outlet like the FT not spotting above distinction? No way, this is Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt clickbait intended as such, plain & simple.

Depends entirely on the type of contents. Data sheets for electronic components are a good example:

Overview / general description is mostly text, some tables with numbers, etc. This doesn't produce big PDF's. Nowadays they'll begin their life in electronic form, and you get PDF's that are easy to text-search, look sharp etc.

Add some graphs, pie charts, pinouts etc, these type of graphics compress well. But add some embedded fonts, and this can easily add hundreds of KB's to the file size. Same if eg. some blurry scope 'photos' are included.

Then there's older files whose originals came on paper, were put through a scanner, and the PDF is basically a row of scanned images. This quickly goes into multi-MB territory, besides losing text-search & crisp fonts. Still easier than lugging around the dead-tree databooks they came from, though. ;-)

As usual: use the right tool for the job. And consider whether including X, Y or Z is really necessary.

How would you know, if you don't send anything there to have a look?

Liquid natural gas okay?

Common sense, really. It is sad that humanity works so hard to destroy it, but still we're living in a wonderful world.

Stars and clouds in the sky. Flowers in a field. Bees that visit them. A dolphin in the sea. Snow-peaked mountains. Waves crashing into a beach. A friendly person that crosses your path. A tree with its root system beneath your feet, grown from nothing but a small seed, water, air, minerals & sunlight. A spider spinning its web. Ants building their nest. Etc etc etc, enough to fill a lifetime.

Admire the beauty that is. No need for religion to take part in that, it's entirely optional.

That said: if religion inspires you to contribute to our shared culture & scientific knowledge: please do.

Even as renewables overtake coal over time, that 32GW coal is newer (read: higher efficiency, less particle pollution) than say, 20...30y old coal plants. So perhaps a worthwhile investment even as the coal / renewable / nuclear mix changes.

That said, India might well consider to skip coal entirely for new capacity, and divert those funds towards storage or nuclear as needed w/ respect to base- and peak demand. Besides putting more renewable generating capacity, of course (which they seem to be doing nicely).

They may want to check this Grusch charachter's phone records, bank statements, messaging / social media accounts etc, to help determine what 'sponsors' he's been talking to.

For good measure, maybe include close relatives or friends too.

Option B: just ignore. If/when aliens come knocking, we'll know soon enough.

Replace "trained programmer" with "sufficiently advanced AI". Assuming that humanity doesn't get destroyed somehow & technological progress continues, it's only a matter of time. Then what do you get?

Ordinary people assisted by their own 'uber-intelligent personal assistent' (or a 'team' of those) that understands every programming language in existence, besides countless other areas of expertise. Ready to chew on any problem that human can formulate somehow.

"Steal my bosses' secret agenda!"
"Get favorite game XYZ working on this settop box I just bought."
"Figure out which 4-seat car will be cheapest for me over the next 5 years."
"How can I get rid of tennant asap without violating any laws?"

... might all be valid (or at least doable) requests.

For most intents & purposes, that may translate as "you get a (vastly) bigger brain". That does NOT necessarily imply smarter, wiser, friendlier towards others, more successful, wealthier, or able to move your arms & legs faster than before. Like other aquired skills, it also enables you to mess things up in a bigger way.

How will that change human(?) society? Your guess is as good as mine.

That'll be sure to shave of 0.000002% of the environmental footprint of building this thing & launching it atop a big freaking rocket!

With the US being a wealthy nation, having a technologically advanced industry, and one of the biggest (if not em>the biggest) emitter of greenhouse gasses, it's about time they step up to the plate.

For Big Oil, the time of reckoning is coming. I'm eagerly awaiting the day when those rats head for the exit to jump from the sinking ship.

Somebody should have said that, sure. Seems like one of the following happened:

• Nobody did, or they were afraid to speak up to 'authority'? (seems to be a thing in Japanese culture).
• Somebody did, but it wasn't picked up by others.
• It was proposed, but management brushed it off.

In other words: might be more of a people / management / communication problem, rather than an engineering issue?

Many products and ehm.. 'activities' that are oil-based, aren't going away any time soon. But: they need not be oil-based.

Plastics: here to stay for the foreseeable future, because the world loooovves plastic. But: bio-based plastics are a thing. As we speak. Less oil needed as bio-based plastics ramp up.

Fertilizers: you mean the nitrogen part. Which most often derives from ammonia, which can literally be made from thin air (+ a big energy input). Starting with natural gas + fossil energy might be the most common method now, but it may not remain that way for much longer. Other compounds in fertilizers derive from waste streams or mining (as in: pit mine / quarry), not oil.

Fuel: internal combustion (ICE) engines will hang around, because it takes a looooonng time to replace all vehicles & equipment that uses an ICE. But: this replacement is happening. And we need not keep putting oil-based fuels in them. See eg. bio-diesel, ethanol, sewage-derived methane, isobutanol, flex-fuel engines & more.

So yes, those (right now) oil-based products & equipment will hang around. But their inputs may well pivot from oil to bio-based, synthetic (not using oil) or otherwise. Besides being replaced wholesale.

Maybe he's that guy who runs Phoronix.... Basement stuffed with racks of PC's running kernel compiles, CPU & GPU benchmarks, quad-screen monitor setups, the odd mining rig humming along in a corner, etc. That or he should move those weed plants out into the backyard. Just guessing though.... ;-)