Probably why Trump doesn't understand it -- despite, supposedly, having earned a BS in Economics from Wharton.

Quitters, Inc has a 98% success rate and guarantees that the person will quit smoking forever.

I wonder how long they'd have tried had it been a ceramic knife. :-)

More seriously, TFS says the suspect had been "seen earlier with a firearm" but found sleeping with a knife, so how did this "bring the incident to a safe resolution," so they didn't have to "rush into a potentially deadly encounter"? He could still have had a firearm. All in all, just seems like an opportunity to justify the expenditure on the robot.

I was betting on one of these ... :-)

I have seen satellite dishes at the base of isolated cell towers, though I have no idea what they were being used for.

One big drawback for satellite networking is the delay it adds to the transmissions, to travel up to the satellite and get sent back down to a ground station. This delay probably wouldn't be tolerated by a cell phone user, especially if they were talking to another cell phone which would double the delay a second time.

There's also a bandwidth issue at the satellite, if you want to do that with hundreds of thousands of towers there's just no way to have that amount of bandwidth even from a cluster of satellites. The bandwidth problem isn't one of data rate, its one of needing to be able to communicate with the ground on so many different channels because of all the towers, and having satellites at many different geostationary locations. (that's what Musk is trying to do with launching this absurd number of starlink satellites)

High data rate meshing requires directional antennas pointed at other nodes, unlike the more broad-beamed bay antennas the towers use for cellular access. Adding several dishes and a bunch of expensive hardware to each tower would dramatically increase tower cost and maintenance.

It's much cheaper to just run a network drop off a nearby pole or trench a line to the nearest fiber vault. Even the towers out along the open highways tend to get fiber trenched to them rather than dishes networking them together over the air.

Here in the USA anyway, cellular service has been considered "critical infrastructure" for quite some time now, mostly due to the decline of landlines. 9-1-1 having high availability has been legally required for a long time, and those requirements shifted to the cellular network as people ditched their land-lines for cell phones at home. So all the towers have short-term (15+ minute) UPS's and a gas generator that auto starts, with requirements to run periodic tests.

The other part of it though is the towers nowadays require internet access to function. We had a massive storm system move through the area a few years ago with close to tornado-speed "straight-line winds" that took out a huge amount of above-ground internet infrastructure, rendering cell towers functionally disabled despite giving out full bars. There were a few lines still up but everyone's home internet was either down or spotty, and it was hard to get a cell call to connect. Was llke that for 2-3 weeks, really annoying.

So, power's not the only thing that needs to be protected to keep cellular service working.

Remember the days when Republicans said the government shouldn't be picking winners and losers? Maybe that's only when Democrats are in charge ...

I was happy when I replaced my used '69 VW Beetle and my newer used car had separate turn indicators instead of the single "<=>". :-)

FTFY

How about forwarding the message back to the sender(s), does the original still get included?

Don't worry, you'll also be able to 3-D print the cartridges - along with the printer. :-)

[Like with the turtles, it'll be 3-D printing all the way down.]

Makes me think of that saying, "A man with one watch knows the time, a man with two is never sure."

Unless they have dogs -- "... ultrasound. These are sound waves above the range of human hearing."

Hyundai announces licensing deal with Hasbro and Takara Tomy ... :-)