While the institutions who employed him bare most of the blame, the media circus wasn't justified either. He wasn't the first and won't be the last one to get caught out fabricating stuff like this or stealing other people's work, but for some reason there was an excessive amount of coverage of this case.

Well, not "some reason", we know why. Black man hired to help with a lack of diversity and opportunity at Cambridge. Culture war bullshit.

Russia has a history there. In the 70s they had missiles that could prioritise targets based on size (for attacking ships), and share target info with other missiles.

Ukrainian forests are now criss crossed by kilometres and kilometres of fibre optic cable. RF control of drones is dead due to all the jamming.

If you dig into it, the deal is half of freshman will have normal grades, half will be pass/Fail. For various reasons (scholarships, internship and other opportunity requirements) the pass/fail students will have actual letter/numeric grades, but the students won't see their (secret) grades.

Incoming freshmen have somehow survived 12+ years in school getting actual grades and somehow handled it - why is it suddenly an issue in 'grade 13' (Freshman year)?

If a student can't handle getting grades, why not just let them sign up for pass/fail for each class?

I think you are right, the days of learning for the sake of learning are long gone.

Amazon is mostly just a marketplace for middle men who resell stuff from Alibaba with a 1000%+ mark-up. There is no point buying that stuff from Amazon because you can get it for less than 1/10th the price direct from AliExpress.

Okay, Ali's return policy isn't as good, but when you save over 90% you can afford to take the odd hit. After a while you might get VIP status too, which lets you return items without having to send them back, at which point Amazon is pretty much dead for anything except Western brands or stuff you need in a rush.

Microsoft software is the same. Their services in China comply with local laws re security services having access to them, as do Apple's.

Of course in the US the same is true, they comply with US laws regarding access to customer data.

If this concerns you then look at companies which don't operate in China due to those rules, such as Google.

It's not ideal to still use fossil fuels, but it could reduce pollution around airports. It could also save money if done right.

SpaceX was a massive pump-and-dump, and Anthropic probably is too. Just wish we could hurry up and get to the crash so I can buy some more HDDs.

The article says 1MW (?) for the entire flight...

And also, the plane weighs 25,000 pounds at take-off and 25,000 pounds at touch-down... That's a lot of mass to push around for 27 minutes and raising up 1,100 feet in the air in the process.

I have no idea where you came up with that number...

"They" in this case likely refers to the reporter/journalist, not necessarily the scientists/engineers behind this project.

1 Megawatt is 1,000 Kilowatts, right?

If 1,000 Kilowatts only costs "about $5", that puts each Kilowatt at about 1/2 cent? Seems kind low...

So this plane flew for 27 minutes 1,100 feet above the ground? Why not higher? (Because it's safer to fall out of the sky at 1,100 feet than at 30,000, LOL?) I wonder how practical it is extrapolate real flight times from such a low-flying example? Do you burn same energy at 30,000 feet as 1,100? How much energy would have been consumed trying to get this plane up to 30,000 feet compared to 1,100 feet?

Seems like they want to treat a very special test case (aloft 27 minutes) with an actual, practical flight, or are EV airplanes going to fly at 1,100 feet?

This is a result of COVID stunting kid's growth. It was a one off (hopefully) event that wasn't handled well from a development and mental health perspective.

Now they have identified the issue they need to triage it, which is what this is, but also look at helping those kids recover.

More generally there is more pressure on kids these days. They didn't used to have to take on 5 or 6 figures of debt to get an education that is basically mandatory to do even entry level clerical jobs these days. An 18 year old today has lived their entire life under one "once in a generation" crisis after another, starting with the financial crash in 2008, all through subsequent economic problems, COVID, AI, and climate change becoming an undeniable lived reality. They aren't snowflakes, they have just been battered by the mistakes and terrible advice of previous generations.