I didn't miss the jr. high "figure out what g is" stuff in the beginning of the book. I was kinda bummed at how much the selective breeding was glossed over as they had to cram a line into the movie to explain the disaster at the end. But a the same time the movie is two and a half hours long. While there are a handful of other cuts I think they could have gotten away with (the extended Karaoke scene maybe), there wasn't a ton of fat to trim to keep the runtime reasonable.

I don't think Xenonite is made of Xenon exclusively, but it is strange enough that handheld spectrometers can't deal with it. Maybe it offgasses xenon when bombarded by charged particles? One thing the movie glossed over is how Rocky's species is in many ways much less technologically advanced than Humans. Their materials science is outstanding due to the hellish nature of their home world, but they don't have electronics. Their math and science are back in the early 20th century. They went interstellar before discovering relativity. Mostly due to the fact that the astrophage is basically magic. In the book one background character mentions offhand that the astrophage is a miracle that will solve countless problems and everybody just glares at him angrily because even though he is right it's also killing them. On the other hand, while reading the book I had thoughts of an interstellar ferry service that collects astrophage and brings it back to Earth where it is tricked into releasing its energy into the atmosphere to warm the planet and light up cropland. Spin drives open up the entire solar system to exploitation and the astrophage is the perfect energy storage medium.

For me self-checkout is just the new express lane. I like using it if I only have a few items but only if there is not a line at the self-check. One caveat is that when people are slow at self check, they are extremely slow. If a line has formed it is not worth it, just go to a regular checkout instead. The bagging area is also too small to handle more than an express-lane sized load as well, and the machines will freak out if you remove a loaded bag to make room for a new one.

It depends what you see a stock as. If you think it is a distributed measure of the value a company can bring to an economy then meme investors are wrecking your engine of economic growth. However, if you think stocks are a way for people to make money without having to produce a product or service themselves, then this is just average joes butting in on a rich person game.

Cable companies are in a bind. They are losing subscribers and the only option they can think of is to raise prices. I guess it's time for another price hike. It has to be clear at this point that they're pricing themselves right out of the market and yet they don't seem to care.

Breeder reactors are very expensive and nuclear fuel is cheap.

Nuclear waste is 100% a political problem, not a scientific one. The total amount of waste generated by all of the US Nuclear reactors ever fits in about 16 Olympic size swimming pools. Storing it safely effectively forever is not difficult technically, but is basically impossible politically. If you think about it these reactors have been running for several decades without a waste solution and somehow have not run out of space on-site to store it, the total volume can't be too large. It's not like the fly ash from coal that would completely bury the average plant after only a few years if it wasn't trucked away constantly.

As for why new plants aren't being built, that's mostly political too. It's a shame too because pushback on nuclear has ironically increased the amount of radiation in the atmosphere. Coal plants release more radioactive material in the air every year than was released in the Chernobyl disaster in addition to releasing planet destroying levels of greenhouse gasses.

Don't worry, the same company has a product they would like to sell you that can solve that problem.

Trump went right out and fired the staffers who testified at the impeachment hearing. Whistleblower protections mean nothing to this administration.

Web browsers decided that every tab needs to be its own process for one.

I have one desktop that is an Raspberry Pi model B (the original) and it's pretty clear how performance will nosedive if you open more than 1 or maybe 2 browser tabs. It's actually kind of usable with just one tab though. Enough to do google searches and read forum replies to help solve problems in other areas. The other thing that kills the box is big compiles, especially for programs like Wireshark where some of the .c files were autogenerated from giant input files and end up being tens of thousands of lines long. A few programs, like Firefox, literally can't be natively compiled on a Raspberry Pi due to memory constraints.

Iceland uses Geothermal and has tons of it, which is why they are a major Aluminum exporter, so worries that they'll run out seem greatly premature at this point. Fatter internet pipes to Europe and the US are just a transatlantic cable away. The title seems alarmist but the actual situation seems pretty good.

Evidence suggests he asked the rookie co-pilot to go back and check on something, then locked the door and depressurized the plane to kill the passengers and rest of the crew.

I'm sure conspiracy theorists will say that those parts were seeded to throw off people. You can't use logic or evidence to dissuade someone who arrived at their conclusions by explicitly ignoring logic and evidence.

Thinking Machines Corporation was building 8192 processor machines back in 1987.

It doesn't have to be "totally free" to save me money. Currently to e-file costs around $45. It's nearly a guarantee that the government can run the service cheaper than that. Virginia had a service like that nearly a decade ago and it cost them about $40k/year for the entire state. Lobbying from the tax return industry killed it and now every taxpayer in the state pays on the order of $55 each year to e-file. Millions of dollars funneled to H&R Block, Intuit, etc... because they bought off some representatives. Not once has any service saved me a dime off of my state taxes. I can't think of any money they have saved me on federal taxes either. The only reason I use them is because there is no free way to e-file if you have a middle class income.

Are you seriously advocating for people to send their taxes to multiple services (paying a fee for each) to determine which can find your lowest tax bill?

Nobody is saying that they want to outlaw accountants. That's a gross misreading of the law. If you want to having someone look for savings in your tax bill then that's your prerogative. If you don't think those people are worth their fee because your return is simple then a free government service will probably save you money. The only people who lose are the middlemen who take a fee and fail to find any extra savings, which is an extremely common situation.