AFAIK, these microcode updates need to be incorporated into a bios update.

Incorrect. Most operating systems have the ability to upload a microcode update very early in their boot process.

This link explains the Linux driver: microcode.txt

If I remember correctly, Windows has a similar method(but I do not know Windows well enough to confirm this).

We may not need to. There's considerable evidence to suggest that there's plenty of asteroids out there that are nearly pure iron - as in all we have to do is chop it up, hammer it out, or melt it down and cast/print with it.

This presumes that you want to make EVERYTHING out of iron, and not steel(which needs further processing, you know). I'm not even sure if most of our modern steelmaking techniques would work in zero-g. Pure iron on its own isn't really all that useful, generally its too brittle without being alloyed with something else, like carbon.

It also doesn't help with other alloys that are quite likely to be more useful in space, aluminum, titanium, etc are all pretty useful. Not to mention PLASTICS! Pretty sure we're not going to mine the raw materials plastic in space either. There are just too many useful materials here on Earth that can't be sourced from space, some possibly never.

I fail to see what's the gain between launching a rocket with 1 ton of preassembled componned or 1 ton of materia used by a space 3D printer to build those component.

Think along the lines of large objects that could not be launched from Earth pre-assembled, especially items that have large empty spaces inside of them.
Also. you can assemble some items in space that would collapse under normal Earth gravity. Building in space, means that the object only needs to be able to stay together in micro-gravity, which gives you a bit more freedom in structural designs.

The only way I can see a real gain is if most of the materia weight come directly from space. For instance, asteriod mining.

The current problem with mining materials in space is, we simply do not have the infrastructure in place to mine, purify and process minerals into finished metals in space. Sure it would be nice to see this some day, but in the mean time it's cheaper to launch your raw materials off Earth, especially if they're in the form of powdered metals, those pack very nicely into rockets. Besides I've heard there is some weird South African guy selling used discount rockets, not sure I'd trust him with my life, but with a pile of titanium powder, sure.

In short, you need to build the salt box pioneer shack in space before you build the steel furnace in space. We're barely past the salt box shack stage.

Oh I don't disagree that could be a problem, but that is true of giving a citation to just about any URL though. Hopefully if you are citing a Wikipedia article, its not something that it would get deleted in the mean time.

The issue with citing Wikipedia is that it isn't stable. Sure they have the formula for PVC on a certain page. But someone could just edit and change that either defacing or just reorganizing. How do you the cited link to check the original citation?

You cite a particular revision of the page. For example, for PVC if you wanted an old revision: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polyvinyl_chloride&oldid=802948163. The history page exists for a reason.

I'm curious if this includes the towers and the associated equipment as well. I'd be really surprised if it did.

But no one says "I received 3 mails this morning,"

The reason being mail is the SERVICE that delivers letters and parcels. You'd say "I received 3 letters this morning".

I hate to break it to you, but the rest of the world considers email to be both uncountable in the case of email as the SERVICE that delivers the email and countable as in the emails(nobody calls them letters) that is delivered via the uncountable email service.

This link explains it better than I can Explaination for emails

Prescriptivism isn't something that English speakers take kindly to you know ;)

Things like power lines add a sense of perspective and scale to the artwork without involving a huge amount of animation. Power lines make for really nice leading lines and can draw the viewers eyes to where the artist intends, on a budget.

Also I guess there is a sense of modernity that power lines and electrical infrastructure imply.

Though what do I know, I've never really gotten into anime.

No, we call them Imperial units typically. Sometimes you will hear (US) customary units. The latter being more accurate term, of course.

It could be argued that C does not really have string handling. Hence what would suck at string handling is the coder, i.e. you.

Oh I don't disagree with you at all here. I will say that C's "string handling" is probably one of the most common sources of vulnerabilities in C programs.

With that said, C is still my favorite language. Even if my feet have long ago been blown off and I've managed to hang myself with the excessive amount of rope it gives me.

That's a feature, not a problem. Pointer arithmetic is probably both the best(and worst) feature of C.

C sucks at string handling. Thus perl.

That's how it was packaged from Napster.

Since when does RF jamming have anything to do with hackers or "cyber threats". Clickbait headlines I guess.

Also jamming GPS would require at least line of sight to the receiver if the jammer is on the surface of the earth. Microwave signals don't go over the horizon. If you are jamming a ship at sea, you are either a nation state or a sophisticated pirate(I mean the real ones).

As far as LORAN-C goes, in many regards this is EASIER to jam since it is using LF bands, around 200kHz. Jamming at low frequencies can be a lot easier due to groundwave and skywave propagation, allowing the jammer to be much further away. That said, the antennas required to transmit LF frequencies are quite enormous in length.

$10k was a pretty common price point for Workstations during the early 1990s, especially graphics workstations. Very comparable to the prices SGI was charging for their workstations.

In short, people who needed real computing power that wasn't x86 garbage on Windows 3.1 were very much willing to pay. x86 PCs were considered toys compared to workstations.