I suspect that a lot of the data pulled from cell phones with this will be used for "parallel construction" cases. The same approach used with stingray. Once the prosecution knows the answer, they go back and figure out what other evidence, searches, approaches they can use to find other evidence of that same known facts. This second set of evidence can be introduced at trial without having to reveal how the technology used to find the answer the first time was used.

My guess would be that the addresses for the wallets being used for cold storage were not public. So until they cracked the laptop, they didn't know which addresses to check. So if they cracked the laptop, found the wallets and then they could check the history of those addresses and see that the equivalent of $137M used to be stored in those addresses and no longer is.

Yes where ever you put the storage site, you need to generate the same amount of electricity, but you can still get away with storing less by putting your storage right by the consumer. Assume total loses in transmission are 50%, and energy storage is 80% efficient (which it isn't) and the consumer needs 80 kilowatt hours of power If storage is at the generator site, you need to send 160 kilowatt hours to give the consumer 80, and you need to generate 200 to store 160. If the storage is by the consumer, you need to receive 100 kilowatt hours in order to store 80 for use by the consumer. which means you need to send 200 from the generating site. So either way, you're generating 200 kilowatt hours to use 80, but in the second scenario you only have to pay for 80 kilowatt hours of energy storage capacity, and in the first you need to pay for 160.

Oh good, I'm not the only one who noticed 65+75 != 120.

Here you go: http://www.alzheimersweekly.co...

I've also had the thought "If I were rich, I could fund all my own research and never have to write a grant proposal again!" Not: "If I were rich, I could quit this job and never had to write a grant proposal ever again."

I don't know if it is integrated with Netflix yet (or ever) but it address the exact use case you're describing. Picking random stuff from the set of all videos I have access to, group them logically into thematic clusters and just keep throwing content on the screen without the user having to invest any mental energy in choosing what to watch beyond "I feel like switching from the comedy channel to the science fiction drama channel."

I've been surprised to see how many people like this method of interfacing with their video content libraries more than selecting something they'd like to watch.

Of his work, I've read "A Desert Called Peace" and it seemed to be pretty much nothing BUT heavy handed political messages mixed with wish-fulfillment, so I haven't felt the desire to read more of his work since. Now it's possible A) I simply happened to pick one of his lesser work works and he has also written other much better books B) his writing style appeals to lots of people and I just happen to be an outlier, but another explanation is C) the people who really enjoy his work do so at least in part BECAUSE of the political messages, instead of enjoying the books regardless of the political views put forward. That's not unique to one end of the political spectrum obviously, which is how this whole controversy kicked off in the first place, but the solution isn't to error in the opposite direction, it's to get the focus back on the whether a book/short story etc is enjoyable regardless of political messages.

You also mentioned David Weber, who is a great example of someone whose political principles don't match my own, and, while his views are reflecting in the stories he tells, the books are still plenty entertaining (usually anyway, I don't know what happened with the Safehold series but even there the problem wasn't the politics), and clearly his work shouldn't be penalized because others don't agree with his politics. Come to think of it, from his writing I'm pretty sure Marko Kloos (one of the Sad Puppies backed nominees) and I wouldn't agree politically, but his Andrew Grayson books are excellent, and I'm really happy to see him nominated for Lines of Departure this this year.

So in summary, I agree with you on the general principle of not letting differences in political views get in the way of enjoying or recognizing good writing, but based on my N=1 dataset, I would suggest Tom Kratman may not be a particularly good example to use in making the case to a broad audience for getting politics out of the Hugos.

Here are my numbers:

20 light years = 2* 10^14 kilometers
70,000 years = 2.1 * 10^12 seconds

Therefore two stars are moving apart from year other at ~100 km/second which is right in the range of what would have been expected.

http://xkcd.com/1462/

If Watson had a second X chromosome, we'd be having a very different discussion about his (actually her at that point) sexism. ...I suppose the racism bit could stay the say though.

Presumably if one were a corrupt government contractor, one would start with China and Russia and work your way down until you find a government who doesn't already have a copy of the plans? ...on the other hand TFS says "FBI agents made contact with him, pretending to be with the Egyptian government" so maybe he was just going to sell them to whoever bothered to ask.

You are right, my working assumption was that this was a method for overlapping visible light photos. While I know there are approaches to convert multiple photos from different angles into a 3D reconstruction, everything I've seen in that area either require photos from a LOTS of angles or produces 3D models that are so full of artifacts as to be useless. Having actual distance-to-surface measurements as lidar provides is a very different ballgame and certainly would have big implications.

The images are projected into 3D space to find overlaps, but from reading TFA, it sounds like the output is still a good old fashioned 2D photo, just one covering an awfully big area.

Holder, please investigate why is the NSA putting so many children at risk. But conducting extra-legal (and arguably extra-constitutional) collection of data for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with child abductions, they're driving the adoption default encryption across the US and across the world, making data unavaliable to police and emergency responders in critical situations. Won't the good folks at the NSA please think of the children?