I'm holding out until they can use their model to locate whales on the moon.

CGPGrey summed it up nicely:

"The nature of a keyhole is to be cracked, and the nature of the Internet is to bring demons to the door. No matter how much we might wish it, there is no way to build a digital lock that only angels can open and demons cannot. Anyone saying otherwise is either ignorant of the mathematics, or less of an angel than they appear."

Yeah, well, I was considering a turkey sandwich for lunch. What of it? Is anything actually going to change? Game Theory suggest no.

Well, the climate-denying mouthbreathers in power wasted a few decades claiming that it didn't exist. Now they're claiming that 1) it's too expensive to do anything about it (as though not doing anything is costless), or 2) anything we do now won't matter because Look Over There!

So, yeah, it could have been an easy, orderly, and gradual transition, stretching over generations. We could have avoiding both the drastic economic upheavals and the worst effects on the climate. But we wasted 30-40 years with our collective head in the sand, and now shit's gettin' real, so both drastic measures and effects are piling up. Is it any wonder? It's like bitching about having to pull an all-nighter for a college essay, even though it was assigned weeks ago.

Really tough to get pictures of a monitor without Moire effects making it obvious what you've done.

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

What are the odds of this loan actually being paid back? NextEra (and Google) are certainly large enough to have the means to repay, but will they actually, and will the Administration force them to? What is the penalty if, after burning through all this money, no electrical power is actually produced?

This, in my opinion, is more like a grant - a giveaway. What is the public benefit for the risk being assumed by the taxpayer? Given the current government's love of ownership stakes (despite decrying "socialism" with a pearl-clutching gasp), why not provide the money in return for stock? Or make it a corporate bond such that, if NextEra defaults on the terms, the rest of the corporate bond market can extract their own form of punishment?

And furthermore, if this turns out to be a flop, will the politicians in favor of it get raked over the coals the way Obama was over Solyndra? Heck, that was only $500 million of lost taxpayer money!

The press release says Blue Origin "will design, develop, integrate, launch, and operate the network". Who actually owns it, though? For $700 million, I certainly hope it is the U.S. taxpayer. I'd contrast it to NASA's Deep Space Network, which is infrastructure with unique capabilities that is owned by NASA and operated by JPL. (JPL is, in turn, operated by CalTech, but is so enmeshed with NASA it's hard to see as a separate entity.)

Actually, I was thinking more of Asimov's "The Last Question".

Question for the wider audience: who actually owns a book purchased from Google Play? Anyone? More than 3 people?

(I ought to say "owns" because, as we all know, what you are getting is a revocable license to certain content.)

I wouldn't look to the 1970s as the time when the boomers were most responsible for this mess - they were just coming into adulthood, and the problem was not widely understood. I'd be looking to the 1990s and early 2000s, when it was 1) well established that this is a problem, and 2) was far enough out that modest and gradual changes could have limited the future effects at relatively low cost. And, yeah, boomers were mostly in charge during that time, and continue to have an outsized influence even today. The current occupant of the White House, age 80, is actively dismantling all U.S. policy to acknowledge or act on the problem.

Yes, that'll take care of it once and for all!

The problem here is that presumably Nine PBS has already paid OSS, who in turn was supposed to pay Iron Mountain, but didn't, and now Iron Mountain has locked things up. And now Nine PBS will have to pay a second time to get their data back.

For what it is worth, Germany has pioneered what's referred to "balcony solar": a modest set of solar panels, plus an inverter with good safety architecture, which plugs directly into a wall outlet and backfeeds the premises. These get their name from the notion that you can drape the panels over a balcony rail, plug in, and start making power. The systems are modest: a few kW max, but that can make a dent in the energy budget of most flats. Some systems can also pair with modest-sized batteries (oversized power-banks). These systems gives renters with access to sunshine the ability to make some of their own power. They are available in the US now, too, although most states' regulations don't specifically allow them yet. Plus, owing to the differences in Europe vs US home wiring, you may need to be careful about what you plug into.

I agree. If digital distribution was going to make for lower MSRPs, you'd already see it in the world: buy a physical disc at retail for $X, or buy the digital copy of the same game for $Y, where Y never has been the case for the same title.