I think the PSLV is getting close to a world record for the most consecutive launches without problems. I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but hopefully someone will chime in with the real numbers.
It's a good candidate for an 'asteroid redirect' mission in any case, but the mining potential depends on what it's made of. Chances are it made of something that would be useful up there. I would bet that Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources are interested in this rock. It would give them a chance to prove out the basic technology they'll need in the long term, and which we'll all need for planetary protection.
It's already in a pretty handy orbit, but I'd like to see them send a 'gravity tug' to coax this asteroid into a lower orbit, and try to park it at L2.
All this fuss about "Trending" on Facebook... Am I the only one who's never even seen this thing. It doesn't show up on my FB page. I googled it, just to see what it is, but it doesn't show up where it's supposed to be.
Let me be the first to second that emotion! America needs more CEO dick fights! Just look around to see how far we've sunk as a nation, nay, as a world! You'll see people working in companies that actually produce physical "goods" instead of financial instruments. How in the world do they expect to survive?! Sure, they may have food to eat, but where are their stock options? Where are their "2 & 20" hedge-fund accounts? People these days seem to have been brainwashed into believing in this mythical beast called a "physical economy". Good grief! Don't they know we've changed all that now? Don't they know the only way to create real wealth is to leverage the shit out of everything in sight, and then foreclose on it later when the markets get a whiff of the vapors?
Just look at these cretins, pining over the loss of 60,000 factories in the last 15 years from American soil. Can't they see that free trade agreements actually help American workers, with strong protections for environmental and workplace concerns? Are they blind to the benefits of mergers & acquisitions that consolidate markets into effective monopolies? Have they not heard that Comcast and AT&T are the most beloved corporations in America?
My heart weeps for America... once the cradle of our "service" economy, which is without doubt the best economic system ever devised by the mind of man. Can they not see that the future lies on the path of everybody delivering pizzas to each other? [sigh!] I am depressed.
Earth would not be in the habitable zone without plate tectonics. Venus would be in the habitable zone if it had about a zillion times less CO2 in its atmosphere. Mars would probably be in the habitable zone too, if it were bigger and had a magnetoshpere.
I would be surprised if even half of the Democrats I know will vote for Hillary ever.
It depends on how Hillary and the DNC choose to deal with Sanders, and how he responds. If they adopt some of his key platform planks, Sanders will probably endorse Hillary and campaign for her. Will he convince all the Bernie-or-bust crowd? Probably not. But it will be enough. I'm a staunch Bernie supporter, but I'll hold my nose and pull the lever for Clinton, just to keep the GOP clown-car out of the White House. (At least she would start slightly fewer wars, and appoint reasonably sane justices to the SCOTUS.)
And when you add up all the demographics that Trump (and the GOP) has insulted, there should be plenty to get her over the top. (Apparently there's a surge of voter registration in Latino communities in response to Trump.) Heck, even some Republicans have said they'd vote for Clinton over Trump.
The real wild card for her is a possible FBI indictment over the email scandal. Director Comey (a Republican) is reputed to have "a dozen agents" working on the case. Like most wild cards, this one is a long shot, but it could throw a serious monkey in the wrench. Hard to say if that would hurt her more or help her, given the obvious framing as a 'political' hit job. But presumably that is why Comey is taking his time to make as solid a case as possible.
Exactly. And I'd add that Elon had already "financially saved" the company before NASA awarded the contract. If that fourth F1 flight had not reached orbit, and then NASA had still awarded the contract, then I'd agree with the characterization in the headline. But SpaceX earned that contract based on performance. And experience since then has shown that this was a very smart investment by the government.
Given all the troubles the Kepler craft has encountered, I just want to raise a toast to the geeks in charge of this project. They have overcome some incredible obstacles through ingenuity and determination, and yet again they have brought the bird back under some semblance of control... from seventy-five million miles away. Now THAT is a hack.
A sapphire lens will help, but only until you brush up against a wall that's finished with rough granite. And the thicker the timepiece, the more likely you are to scuff it. I suppose the simplest fix would simply be some sort of 'clam-shell' protective cover. That would give you the convenience without the risk.
But then you're back to the 'why' question... If I were in a high-pressure job that required rapid response to incoming messages, this might be a useful tool. But for most purposes, most of the time, it's just not that big of a PITA to pull out the cell phone, just like everybody else I see on the bus, subway, etc..
Personally, I don't much care for the mini-screen form factor anyway, nor the 'fondle-slab' UI. For anything more than a tweet, I'd much rather have a full keyboard and mouse, with an eye-level display. It's easier on the neck...
I gave up on wearing a watch many years ago. Inevitably they get scraped against a wall (etc) and damaged. Bad enough when it's a 20-dollar cheap-o, let alone a "wrist computer" that cost hundreds. In a city like Taipei, you're never very far from a display of some kind, and there's always the cell phone if you're in a hurry to find out what time it is.
I've never seen an Apple Watch in real life, so they don't seem that popular, at least not around here.
In addition to the Robert Lustig video you linked, I would also suggest Gary Taubes's "Why We Get Fat", and Peter Attia's "Straight Dope On Cholesterol". These three together provide an excellent understanding of the big picture.
As you noted, Lustig's "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" highlights the link from fructose to metabolic syndrome and fatty liver disease. Taubes's lecture (and book of the same name) covers the link from carbohydrates in general to insulin resistance and obesity. Dr. Attia covers the nitty-gritty details of how cholesterol is produced in the body and absorbed from dietary intake. (Over 90% of serum cholesterol is produced by the body itself, only a tiny fraction comes from the food you eat.)
I would also suggest doing some research on Low-Carb / High-Fat diets (just google "LCHF") and ketogenesis.
But let's be more realistic, and say we boost that top bracket to 50%... That would only add another 15% of that $622.8B or $93.4B, which does not eliminate the deficit, but it makes a big dent in it. What else could we do...?
* Equalize tax rates for investment income and income from work.
* Eliminate the ability of U.S. corporations to defer taxes on offshore profits.
* End corporate inversions that allow U.S. companies to merge offshore to avoid taxes.
* Enact a Financial Transaction Tax on various financial market transactions.
* End unlimited executive pay tax write-offs.
I'm too lazy to look up specifics, but I believe that's close to another $100B in annual revenue, so we're already near halfway toward eliminating the deficit. Throw in a few other things like lifting the cap on FICA withholding and eliminating subsidies to Big Oil, Big Ag, and Big Pharma, and then add some judicious cuts to, say, the military and the DEA, and you're pretty much done.
if we raised the top marginal rate to 100%. How much revenue would that generate? Why, all of $622.8B
BTW, for anyone who's not clear on how marginal tax rates work, this hypothetical 100% top bracket would only apply to the portion of income above the $357,700 ($388,350 in my link) cutoff. The income up to that amount would be taxed at the normal rates.
For individuals:
10% on taxable income from $0 to $8,700
15% on taxable income over $8,700 to $35,350
25% on taxable income over $35,350 to $85,650
28% on taxable income over $85,650 to $178,650
33% on taxable income over $178,650 to $388,350
35% on taxable income over $388,350.
So, a person who makes $388,349 pays taxes equal to 0.1 * 8,700 + 0.15 * (35,350 - 8,700) + 0.25 * (85,650 - 35,350) + 0.28 * (178,650 - 85,650) + 0.33 * (388,350 - 178,650) = $112,683.50. That leaves a net income of $275,665.50, having paid an effective rate of about 29% overall. Thus, $275k would effectively be the maximum income (for an individual).
Same here. Is there something special about apples? Would it work with pears or guavas too? TFA mentions "hard carbon" as an enabling factor, but doesn't explain why. A google search turns up a paper on the subject, which says, "Hard carbon is found to be less prone to passivation due to the high electrochemical stability of the ionic liquid." (I'm not quite sure what that means, but it sounds cool.)
In any case, I'm always happy to see more folks making more advances in battery tech. Elon is blazing a trail with the Giga-Factory, but there's a whole bunch of others lining up in the wings. I think we're going to see a 'boom' in this sector in the next few years.
According to TFA you linked, the Sanders campaign has since withdrawn its DMCA notice. Still, it's pretty weird for them request the takedown in the first place. Doesn't really fit well with his populist message.
As for whether or not he "supports extreme forms of copyright protection," I'll reserve judgment until I hear him actually say something that. It's certainly not part of his standard stump speech.
Reason number 9,862 why that TPP is a terrible idea
Keep counting... you've got a long way to go yet.
Is it just a coincidence that the most 'exciting' candidates on both sides in the current election (Trump and Sanders) have both come out against the TPP? (Yeah, Clinton has come out against it too, but nobody believes her.) I honestly don't know a single person in America who thinks these so-called "free trade" deals are a good idea, and yet here comes another one.
The liberal talk-show host, Thom Hartmann, likes to refer to the TPP as the Southern Hemisphere Asian Free Trade Agreement or SHAFTA.
I could see allowing modding and posting in the same thread, just flag those posts as such, and make a mouse-over popup to show the mods by the poster/modder in that thread.
I also RTFA (admittedly, after I posted) but I still think it's pretty obvious to anyone who pays much attention to space development issues (like, you know, readers of Air & Space). For that matter, this isn't really that much of a step change in terms of lunar landers. The author talks about "Developing a reusable cryogenic space vehicle," but the F9 is only half cryogenic, it's kerosene fuel is chilled to very low temps, but it's not the same as LH2 or liquid methane.
We could build a reusable lunar lander here on earth and put it on the moon pretty easily, but it's not much use if we don't also have some ISRU infrastructure to produce fuel up there too. That gets damn expensive at $60M~$200M per launch, but begins to look more feasible at $5M~$10M. That cost savings is the key enabling factor, not the novelty of design.
The 'big deal' about SpaceX's feat is that they soft-landed a booster stage on earth, enabling reusability for the first time in history. We've been soft-landing stuff on the moon for decades.
Unfortunately, they didn't make the landing. According to Elon via Twitter:
Definitely harder to land on a ship. Similar to an aircraft carrier vs land: much smaller target area, that's also translating & rotating.
Also:
However, that was not what prevented it being good. Touchdown speed was ok, but a leg lockout didn't latch, so it tipped over after landing.
It will be interesting to see how well they can zero-in on the 'carrier' landing in future flights. When you combine the trans-sonic approach with the chaos of ocean waves, the magnitude of this task is mind boggling. I can't wait.;-)
Do you really think the Chinese likes having a nuclear-armed, inscrutable wack-job on their doorstep? They put up with NK because they like having a buffer between themselves and SK. I just hope they have some sort of 'kill switch' to eliminate the threat (for their own sake) in case he gets too far out of hand.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the PSLV is getting close to a world record for the most consecutive launches without problems. I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but hopefully someone will chime in with the real numbers.
It's a good candidate for an 'asteroid redirect' mission in any case, but the mining potential depends on what it's made of. Chances are it made of something that would be useful up there. I would bet that Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources are interested in this rock. It would give them a chance to prove out the basic technology they'll need in the long term, and which we'll all need for planetary protection.
It's already in a pretty handy orbit, but I'd like to see them send a 'gravity tug' to coax this asteroid into a lower orbit, and try to park it at L2.
All this fuss about "Trending" on Facebook... Am I the only one who's never even seen this thing. It doesn't show up on my FB page. I googled it, just to see what it is, but it doesn't show up where it's supposed to be.
Let me be the first to second that emotion! America needs more CEO dick fights! Just look around to see how far we've sunk as a nation, nay, as a world! You'll see people working in companies that actually produce physical "goods" instead of financial instruments. How in the world do they expect to survive?! Sure, they may have food to eat, but where are their stock options? Where are their "2 & 20" hedge-fund accounts? People these days seem to have been brainwashed into believing in this mythical beast called a "physical economy". Good grief! Don't they know we've changed all that now? Don't they know the only way to create real wealth is to leverage the shit out of everything in sight, and then foreclose on it later when the markets get a whiff of the vapors?
Just look at these cretins, pining over the loss of 60,000 factories in the last 15 years from American soil. Can't they see that free trade agreements actually help American workers, with strong protections for environmental and workplace concerns? Are they blind to the benefits of mergers & acquisitions that consolidate markets into effective monopolies? Have they not heard that Comcast and AT&T are the most beloved corporations in America?
My heart weeps for America... once the cradle of our "service" economy, which is without doubt the best economic system ever devised by the mind of man. Can they not see that the future lies on the path of everybody delivering pizzas to each other? [sigh!] I am depressed.
This.
Has been used on /. since before Reddit existed.
Earth would not be in the habitable zone without plate tectonics. Venus would be in the habitable zone if it had about a zillion times less CO2 in its atmosphere. Mars would probably be in the habitable zone too, if it were bigger and had a magnetoshpere.
It's all relative.
This. Also, Clinton won't pick a nominee so wildly more popular than herself. She doesn't want to be upstaged by her running mate.
I would be surprised if even half of the Democrats I know will vote for Hillary ever.
It depends on how Hillary and the DNC choose to deal with Sanders, and how he responds. If they adopt some of his key platform planks, Sanders will probably endorse Hillary and campaign for her. Will he convince all the Bernie-or-bust crowd? Probably not. But it will be enough. I'm a staunch Bernie supporter, but I'll hold my nose and pull the lever for Clinton, just to keep the GOP clown-car out of the White House. (At least she would start slightly fewer wars, and appoint reasonably sane justices to the SCOTUS.)
And when you add up all the demographics that Trump (and the GOP) has insulted, there should be plenty to get her over the top. (Apparently there's a surge of voter registration in Latino communities in response to Trump.) Heck, even some Republicans have said they'd vote for Clinton over Trump.
The real wild card for her is a possible FBI indictment over the email scandal. Director Comey (a Republican) is reputed to have "a dozen agents" working on the case. Like most wild cards, this one is a long shot, but it could throw a serious monkey in the wrench. Hard to say if that would hurt her more or help her, given the obvious framing as a 'political' hit job. But presumably that is why Comey is taking his time to make as solid a case as possible.
Exactly. And I'd add that Elon had already "financially saved" the company before NASA awarded the contract. If that fourth F1 flight had not reached orbit, and then NASA had still awarded the contract, then I'd agree with the characterization in the headline. But SpaceX earned that contract based on performance. And experience since then has shown that this was a very smart investment by the government.
Given all the troubles the Kepler craft has encountered, I just want to raise a toast to the geeks in charge of this project. They have overcome some incredible obstacles through ingenuity and determination, and yet again they have brought the bird back under some semblance of control... from seventy-five million miles away. Now THAT is a hack.
To quote Wayne & Garth: We're not worthy.
A sapphire lens will help, but only until you brush up against a wall that's finished with rough granite. And the thicker the timepiece, the more likely you are to scuff it. I suppose the simplest fix would simply be some sort of 'clam-shell' protective cover. That would give you the convenience without the risk.
But then you're back to the 'why' question... If I were in a high-pressure job that required rapid response to incoming messages, this might be a useful tool. But for most purposes, most of the time, it's just not that big of a PITA to pull out the cell phone, just like everybody else I see on the bus, subway, etc..
Personally, I don't much care for the mini-screen form factor anyway, nor the 'fondle-slab' UI. For anything more than a tweet, I'd much rather have a full keyboard and mouse, with an eye-level display. It's easier on the neck...
I gave up on wearing a watch many years ago. Inevitably they get scraped against a wall (etc) and damaged. Bad enough when it's a 20-dollar cheap-o, let alone a "wrist computer" that cost hundreds. In a city like Taipei, you're never very far from a display of some kind, and there's always the cell phone if you're in a hurry to find out what time it is.
I've never seen an Apple Watch in real life, so they don't seem that popular, at least not around here.
In addition to the Robert Lustig video you linked, I would also suggest Gary Taubes's "Why We Get Fat", and Peter Attia's "Straight Dope On Cholesterol". These three together provide an excellent understanding of the big picture.
As you noted, Lustig's "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" highlights the link from fructose to metabolic syndrome and fatty liver disease. Taubes's lecture (and book of the same name) covers the link from carbohydrates in general to insulin resistance and obesity. Dr. Attia covers the nitty-gritty details of how cholesterol is produced in the body and absorbed from dietary intake. (Over 90% of serum cholesterol is produced by the body itself, only a tiny fraction comes from the food you eat.)
I would also suggest doing some research on Low-Carb / High-Fat diets (just google "LCHF") and ketogenesis.
According to Reuters, "The U.S. budget deficit narrowed to $439 billion in fiscal 2015, the lowest level since 2008." (I don't know where you're getting the 'over $1T' number from.) So your hypothetical 100% top marginal rate would just about cover it.
But let's be more realistic, and say we boost that top bracket to 50%... That would only add another 15% of that $622.8B or $93.4B, which does not eliminate the deficit, but it makes a big dent in it. What else could we do...?
* Equalize tax rates for investment income and income from work.
* Eliminate the ability of U.S. corporations to defer taxes on offshore profits.
* End corporate inversions that allow U.S. companies to merge offshore to avoid taxes.
* Enact a Financial Transaction Tax on various financial market transactions.
* End unlimited executive pay tax write-offs.
I'm too lazy to look up specifics, but I believe that's close to another $100B in annual revenue, so we're already near halfway toward eliminating the deficit. Throw in a few other things like lifting the cap on FICA withholding and eliminating subsidies to Big Oil, Big Ag, and Big Pharma, and then add some judicious cuts to, say, the military and the DEA, and you're pretty much done.
It's not that hard to do.
if we raised the top marginal rate to 100%. How much revenue would that generate? Why, all of $622.8B
BTW, for anyone who's not clear on how marginal tax rates work, this hypothetical 100% top bracket would only apply to the portion of income above the $357,700 ($388,350 in my link) cutoff. The income up to that amount would be taxed at the normal rates.
For individuals:
10% on taxable income from $0 to $8,700
15% on taxable income over $8,700 to $35,350
25% on taxable income over $35,350 to $85,650
28% on taxable income over $85,650 to $178,650
33% on taxable income over $178,650 to $388,350
35% on taxable income over $388,350.
So, a person who makes $388,349 pays taxes equal to 0.1 * 8,700 + 0.15 * (35,350 - 8,700) + 0.25 * (85,650 - 35,350) + 0.28 * (178,650 - 85,650) + 0.33 * (388,350 - 178,650) = $112,683.50. That leaves a net income of $275,665.50, having paid an effective rate of about 29% overall. Thus, $275k would effectively be the maximum income (for an individual).
I could live pretty comfortably on that.
...it can teach me how to get a "single-click" patent.
Same here. Is there something special about apples? Would it work with pears or guavas too? TFA mentions "hard carbon" as an enabling factor, but doesn't explain why. A google search turns up a paper on the subject, which says, "Hard carbon is found to be less prone to passivation due to the high electrochemical stability of the ionic liquid." (I'm not quite sure what that means, but it sounds cool.)
In any case, I'm always happy to see more folks making more advances in battery tech. Elon is blazing a trail with the Giga-Factory, but there's a whole bunch of others lining up in the wings. I think we're going to see a 'boom' in this sector in the next few years.
According to TFA you linked, the Sanders campaign has since withdrawn its DMCA notice. Still, it's pretty weird for them request the takedown in the first place. Doesn't really fit well with his populist message.
As for whether or not he "supports extreme forms of copyright protection," I'll reserve judgment until I hear him actually say something that. It's certainly not part of his standard stump speech.
Reason number 9,862 why that TPP is a terrible idea
Keep counting... you've got a long way to go yet.
Is it just a coincidence that the most 'exciting' candidates on both sides in the current election (Trump and Sanders) have both come out against the TPP? (Yeah, Clinton has come out against it too, but nobody believes her.) I honestly don't know a single person in America who thinks these so-called "free trade" deals are a good idea, and yet here comes another one.
The liberal talk-show host, Thom Hartmann, likes to refer to the TPP as the Southern Hemisphere Asian Free Trade Agreement or SHAFTA.
Unlike past efforts, our NEW copy protection scheme will totally work.
By the way, by any chance, would you happen to be in the market for a bridge?
I could see allowing modding and posting in the same thread, just flag those posts as such, and make a mouse-over popup to show the mods by the poster/modder in that thread.
I also RTFA (admittedly, after I posted) but I still think it's pretty obvious to anyone who pays much attention to space development issues (like, you know, readers of Air & Space). For that matter, this isn't really that much of a step change in terms of lunar landers. The author talks about "Developing a reusable cryogenic space vehicle," but the F9 is only half cryogenic, it's kerosene fuel is chilled to very low temps, but it's not the same as LH2 or liquid methane.
We could build a reusable lunar lander here on earth and put it on the moon pretty easily, but it's not much use if we don't also have some ISRU infrastructure to produce fuel up there too. That gets damn expensive at $60M~$200M per launch, but begins to look more feasible at $5M~$10M. That cost savings is the key enabling factor, not the novelty of design.
The 'big deal' about SpaceX's feat is that they soft-landed a booster stage on earth, enabling reusability for the first time in history. We've been soft-landing stuff on the moon for decades.
Would dropping the cost of getting payloads to orbit have implications for a return to the moon? Hmm.... let's see... I can't quite tell...
Unfortunately, they didn't make the landing. According to Elon via Twitter:
Definitely harder to land on a ship. Similar to an aircraft carrier vs land: much smaller target area, that's also translating & rotating.
Also:
However, that was not what prevented it being good. Touchdown speed was ok, but a leg lockout didn't latch, so it tipped over after landing.
It will be interesting to see how well they can zero-in on the 'carrier' landing in future flights. When you combine the trans-sonic approach with the chaos of ocean waves, the magnitude of this task is mind boggling. I can't wait. ;-)
Except for the fact that South Korea is host to about 28,000 US troops, you're right.
Do you really think the Chinese likes having a nuclear-armed, inscrutable wack-job on their doorstep? They put up with NK because they like having a buffer between themselves and SK. I just hope they have some sort of 'kill switch' to eliminate the threat (for their own sake) in case he gets too far out of hand.