How do I do that? Because someone could buy them out and they could sell all your DNA info on the open market!

Both China and Russia have blown up satellites in weapons tests recently. It makes sense to plan for a future where they would blow up our sats.
1. Operate constellations
2. Have defensible sats
3. Be able to retaliate

https://carnegieendowment.org/...
https://www.space.com/3415-chi...

Summary speculates the compact body could have been a black dwarf, but these do not exist (and won't for about a quadrillion years).

Asteroid deflection is an excuse to keep a few large warheads around. Nuclear weapons have shrunk and shrunk as technology of accuracy and penetration has allowed us to be able to use smaller warheads to more reliably hazard targets. The largest weapon we have in the active stockpile is are a few B83 gravity bombs only deliverable by B-2/B-21 and the B83 is planned to be decommissioned per the latest NPR. Every other active weapon we posses is 1MT physics packages around.

Keeping nuclear weapons in general is a no-brainer. Nuclear deterrence has prevented major power conventional wars since 1945. Everything else that happened sucked considerably less than another world war.

or Thuraya

or Apple decides to launch their own constellation

Interestingly AMD is trading at a trailing PE of about 37, Nvidia at 50, while Intel is at 6.6. In my opinion none of those are warranted (AMD and NVDA inflated, INTC being given the short shrift).

This is the type of story I come to slashdot for. I also spend a lot of time on phys.org where there are great science articles with non-clickbait titles and summaries written by actual science writers and scientists.

Why aren't the solar panels effectively self-cleaning via rotorwash?

Lest air travel become even more insufferable with people yelling into their bluetooth headsets...

WHO ARE YOU?

First, TFA vs COVID, then Flu and is it airborne:

TFA is all about whether or not you can get aerosol behavior of larger particles than 5um with longer distance of travel and longer airborne residence times. This is predicated on infectious aerosols. What did we know and when, in addition to TFA articles? What were we deciding on how to operate at the hospital level?

In early March 2020 we had data showing apparent aerosol durability:
https://www.medrxiv.org/conten...

And in late march 2020 we had data showing COVID aerosol shedding even without cough:
https://www.medrxiv.org/conten...

Both of these matched observed transmission scenarios reported from China and elsewhere consistent with airborne spread in January and February 2020. I even remember circulating a small study from January 2020 of a hospital in China showing complete protection for HCPs who consistently used N95s vs inconsistent use of surgical masks (not super strong evidence, but in the setting of other evidence, it was convincing at the time).

In April we had this paper talking about the insufficiency of 2M indoors unless everyone was masking https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Again TFA is focused on long distance transport and long residence of larger than 5um particles driving airborne mode transmission. This is all about the >6ft? No maks needed BS and the idea that good ventilation = key. But for healthcare settings, which I'm focused on, obviously ventilation is key, but what masks should we wear? Now, if you have large droplets that stay airborne, and the virus is infectious after desiccation, the question is how large are the aerosols after desiccation? That helps drive the type of mask you need. Surgical masks are going to catch large particles better than small ones, which is where the N95s come into play. A 100um droplet is MUCH smaller after it desiccates to the droplet nuclei, usually 20% of the original size! So a 25um droplet is going to be 5um after desiccation and I'd like an N95 please.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.10...

Now how about flu?

Here are some studies showing that medical masks are nonsuperior to N95s
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://www.atsjournals.org/do...
https://jamanetwork.com/journa...

So if we know that, and we don't see airborne mode of transmission behavior in flu transmission, I am comfortable in conclusion that airborne transmission is not the primary or significant secondary mode of transmission except in unusual circumstance (and by this I mean catching a large dose of airborne droplets prior to viral inactivation through desiccation).

FFP2, N95, and KN95 are all very similarly performing PPE, and were in short supply in early 2020.

Implicit in ascribing "airborne" as a mode for a pathogen is the durability of infectious virions after droplet desiccation leaving the nuclei (aerosol). If there is not durability, viable virus, then you don't get airborne transmission, just droplet, as with flu, except in unusual circumstance.

SARS-CoV-2 is durable as first evidenced by demonstrated airborne transmission scenarios in January and February 2020 and then laboratory testing published at the start of March 2020.

Plausible, perhaps likely, but pragmatically and ethically wrong! Any study of previous pandemics shows that misleading people lowers trust and endangers lives, which is what happened here. Hospital corporations prepared for the declared mode of transmission instead of the real one, even when the means became available, at which point it was about saving money. It would have been better to be honest and prepare to the best of ability.

The flu is primarily droplet spread and there are multicentered RCTs showing the non-superiority of N95s over surgical masks for preventing influenza spread which is exactly what you'd expect if it was droplet borne. Flu isn't infecting dozens of people around an auditorium from one signer on stage, or people in the next room over through the HVAC system, or someone who walks through a room an hour after the infected person left. These are hallmarks of airborne transmission. You can aerosolize flu only under certain circumstances.