Exactly correct. If a Russian 'intelligence official' knows that Snowden is in town, he'll drop by and get a selfie with the celebrity. Maybe, he'll even make some ambiguous comments about how important their meeting was.
Then, American 'intelligence officials' will take note, and feel duty-bound to suggest that there should be further investigation. Reporters, also taking notes, and Congressional investigators, ditto.
In other quasi-news, scientists say 'we need more research'. Details at eleven!
Yeah, partly naturally, but partly socially, too.
Speech and writing and clothing and culture...
we all inherit a LOT of stuff that isn't part of biological evolution.
It's also well worth the effort (and it is a lot of effort) to read the third volume, Sorting and Searching.
I've greatly enjoyed the first three books, and especially Sorting and Searching. The
chapters are independent, so you can treat the volumes as
a collection of nonfiction short stories. I recommend it as bedtime reading.
Except, these short stories open up possibilities, and contribute to my understanding
of ways to handle tomorrow's problems. There are three kinds
of computer books: ones that teach one tool (pretty useless ten years later,
when the tool obsolesces), ones that teach from the bottom up (again, pretty
useless when 6502 is replaced by 65816, and in turn 68000,
68040, PPC601, PPC603e, G3, G4, G5, core duo, Xeon...), and those that
teach from the general principles (top-down style).
Algorithms knowledge
at the mathematical-tool level really REALLY helps sometimes. And it
remains helpful forever (like the Pythagorean theorem) rather than
becoming quaint (like the art of making an '035 keypunch program card).
What are they supposed to do, buy all the parts manufacturers including Samsung and Intel?
Well, no, but it would be nice if the batteries could be replaced, or the OS and other software updated to a more recent version. Third-party and counterfeit batteries for a favorite laptop are... discomfitting. As is finding that my version of a Safari browser can't ever get an upgrade so my bank will talk to it.
There probably were current legal and Democratic campaign strategy data on the laptops. Keeping them would leave them open to a possibility of FOA requests, leaks, etc.
Excellent observation! The Nixon administration had to sponsor burglars to get data from the Democratic offices in the Watergate building; a corrupt congressional committee could claim access to similarly important data in these laptops under the guise of 'investigation'.
The Fox news treatment suggests that this deal dims that prospect, and the Republican-dominated congressional committee
publicly bemoans their lost opportunity. Actually, while the letter from Bob Goodlatte (no other
committee members signed it) does include some slanted questions, it is merely a formal request
for information. The committee has NOT subpoenaed anything in the computers, and knows no
cause ever to do so, and The Honorable Bob Goodlatte has not suggested otherwise.
To stop the investigations, we have to destroy the evidence...?
Didn't read the article, did you? The laptops' data relating to the investigation is not to be destroyed. For security reasons, however, OTHER data is to be destroyed, rather than leaving it lying around 'in custody' for an indefinite period of time.
There is no grounds for a search of 'everything' on those drives, and no search
warrant covering the incidental information that would be erased. So,
the Justice department doesn't care (and, absent this kind of agreement, could
be careless in handling the hardware). The 'erase-afterward' agreement is sensible.
"If invisible to humans, the power could also be increased without danger of harming someone, further increasing speed and distance."
That's an incredibly stupid thing to say, since it isn't true. Just because it's "invisible" to human eyes doesn't mean that it can't/won't hurt human eyes.
But this was about UV light spreading out over several square inches at distance. The lens of the eye
is cloudy to near-UV light, and won't focus to a spot. The reason it's invisible, makes
it less likely to damage your retina.
Tinkering near such sources, you'd want to be careful, of course. Protective gear, for that wavelength, is rather common, because arc welding produces the same light in hazardous intensities.
As a tower-to-tower relay for high speed signals, it's unlikely to
impinge on anyone's face. Weather, though, will be a problem. It won't
replace microwave links if reliability is important.
The US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires agencies of the federal
government to honor "any request for records which. . . reasonably describes such records". So, if a description can be entered into a sophisticated search, that's the obvious way one would
comply.
The allegation is that only searches of an incomplete index are ever performed
for FOIA purposes, and such searches are (1) archaic and unusual nowadays, (2) rarely
find the requested material. That's more likely misfeasance than innocent.
The DOJ is an agency that ought to find compliance with law of primary interest, and
arguments of 'needlessly duplicative' ring false. The plaintiff's test was amusing: he asked DOJ
to find his previous FOIA requests, and was told there was no record...
>> It's explained that latinum cannot be replicated
>Which is a stupid writer cop-out, there's no good reason for it if transporter technology exists.
Speaking of early SF writers, George Smith's _Venus_Equilateral_ (1940s era)
matter duplicators and
transmittters were also defeated by a wonder-substance. Writers will ALWAYS add in
rights management to technology, because (1) it's imaginable, and (2) it adds complication.
To be a writer, you need imagination. To move a plot, you REALLY need complication....
The original article is PR dreck. Hydrogen is capable of fueling very simple vehicles,
and when you make a few hundred million cars and trucks cheap, there's lots of available
money to spend on tens of thousands of filling stations, and hundreds of power-conversion-to-hydrogen
and local storage centers.
The economics favors inexpensive leaf nodes of the distrubution tree, not
inexpensive trunks.
For public-relations purposes, someone with Tesla stock wants to claim that
better electric-power decisions are not in Tesla's future plans, and that that is
OK for the investors. He might be right, or wrong, but he won't change his claim
as long as he's holding his Tesla stock... regardless of facts. If he offloads
his stock, he may experirence a revelation as regards the merits of Hydrogen
as a fuel.
The pauses between opening pores (stomata) can be longer, for any given CO2 uptake, and that conserves water.
Maybe that's significant. Let's not believe, yet, that it will help grow crops; plants aren't little CO2 indicators,
vegetable production isn't going to be proportional to atmospheric CO2.
This effect has OTHER implications: most plant species are weeds, so 'helps plant growth' isn't necessarily a good thing for agriculture. I'm not fond of eating kudzu.
If water is plentiful, the effect won't matter. If water is scarce, it means the plant growth/death cycle might change, but is that good? What if dry-season stress is the end of root development,
and the beginning of fruiting? It might be a very healthy root system under your orchard, but the
apples don't ripen until November (and don't get very sweet, when the sun is low in the sky).
CO2 levels skyrocketed without any kind of correlation to actual temperature increases...
Whoa, BIG misconception there. Warming can melt glaciers, thaw permafrost, and heat oceans. You cannot instantly tell
from air temperature alone whether heat is building up, you need to monitor the BIG repositories of heat. The signal here is large, positive, and agrees with calculated greenhouse effect. Look up 'hockey-stick curve' and/or do some math, and
stop abusing the word "correlation".
What if it really was for ISIS?
I don't see the problem.
Like, Isis, the old Egyptian deity? Why would beer money, transferred within the US, be confiscated rather than allowing an offering to the goddess of some tasty beverage?
The "Office of Foreign Assets Control" is bound to return the guy's money, if they have it.
"Unreasonable... seizure" is prohibited by the US constitution (amendment #4). It might not happen soon, but unless a court orders otherwise, they can't keep the money.
'Detaining' someone's property can be a problem. I can see it, clearly. Why can't you?
While cars are built to order, most of the parts are off the shelf and common to a bunch of systems (things like wheels & electrical parts)
BART can't use any of these off the shelf parts
Nonsense; of course they can use lots of off-the-shelf parts, like seats, windows, nuts, bolts.
The running gear that fits their rails, will simply be made to specification - with modern
tools, it's as easy as ordering steel and sending the right files to your machining center.
There isn't any alarming 'trend' in the BART maintenance data, there aren't any good reasons
they cannot engineer minor improvements to old designs, and the flurry of recent
failures due to overvoltage is going to be understood in a day, re-engineered to
never reoccur, in a week, and will support a buzz of half-informed news coverage for months.
In all the nattering about the gauge of the tracks, there hasn't been any REAL complaint.
BART only carries passengers, doesn't need to use interstate tracks, doesn't need
the variety of boxcars, container flats, dining cars, auto haulers, oil tanks, coal cars,
and sleepers that come in a 'standard' gauge. They never need to couple to enormous
loads, or transport hazardous goods... it's a LIMITED USE rail system, and the users
like it just fine. Compatibility with unuseful rolling stock is not interesting.
This is a theatrical event put on for people in the US and to a lessor[sic] extent, Europe.
Oh, it's more than that. It's public notice that criminal misbehavior by the persons named has been uncovered, and that the US is NOT declaring war, but is seeking all normal cooperation (including extradition) of friendly nations in apprehending them. It's much more polite than Stuxnet, and isn't in response to treaty violations by a nation (like, the nonproliferation treaty violations that got Iran into past difficulties).
Political fashions come and go, maybe Iran will extradite the miscreants some day. At the very least, it's gonna give rise to a few thoughtful moments, maybe even discussions.
This is clearly a case of states' rights...This is apparently acceptable because it's being done in Vermont.
No, it's not being done in Vermont. The Vermont statute controls foods produced elsewhere and sold in Vermont: it's a major interstate commerce demand, and will add its burden to a broad swath of folk who couldn't vote in that state. Sadly, it's probably enforceable: state liquor laws have long created similar schisms, which is why a favorite pastime of yesteryear was to load up a few cases of a favorite beer from state A to take home to state B.
So, I wonder how long it will take to certify non-GMO status for pepper from India? Coffee from Brazil? Will stocks of unlabeled seed from before the law came into effect be presumed GMO untill proven otherwise? Will liars prosper, or will false claims actually be investigated? How?
I think the law reeks. What information I would like to have, won't be on the label. And learning that
the poppy seeds in my salad dressing were genetically modified... is worthless, a waste of ink and paper.
No, I think most people think that Apple and every other company should comply with court orders. Because that has been part of the law since the founding of the country...
Half-truths described as 'part of the law' - accurate, but quite amusing. Search isn't the only issue, here, there's also command authority over software creation and compulsion of Apple's signature.
The court may not arbitrarily order any action; the order must be limited, and must not impose undue hardship. And the court should NOT order Apple to damage their customers in the tens of millions, even to the minor extent of abusing their trust. The problem for Apple is one of ethics: the intentional retraction of privacy is a kind of wrongdoing, and while a court order might make it legally defensible, it doesn't make it ethical, nor does it limit the scope of damage to Apple's reputation, credibility, or even safety. If a back door into data ever comes into
existence, all persons who guard the door come under attack by any and all
prospective data thieves. The story of Lavabit is history we can all learn from.
Apple has every reason, and right, to pursue this matter. The courts may decide in Apple's favor.
diamonds are not that seldom and there are a number of well known process to artificially create them.
The researchers who first made artificial diamonds, were informed by the discovery in meteor sites, of diamond in iron matrix. That was their clue that good crystallization could be achieved using iron as a 'solvent'. The Lonsdaleite saga, though, is a carbon story without the iron, and is really new science.
Also, it involves lasers, X-rays, asteroids... I see the possibility of a really fine video game in this!
_The Diamond Makers_, by Robert Hazen, is a good treatment of the early years of diamond creation.
In our times I would most certainly expect that steps are accurate to *1* millimeter.
Considering that everything involved are industrial made parts
Then expect to be disappointed. First, everything involved is not industrially made parts. Second, a lot of it is put together by hand. Third, nobody is checking for those tolerances except in unusual cases.
No disappointment is expected.
Onsite carpenters would RARELY make their own staircases; it's faster to order from a millwork shop, and time is money.
Millwork shops have excellent measurement compliance: the windows and doors all fit, just as the stairs do.
Don't believe, either, that nobody is checking; architects DO inspect, and the owner usually doesn't pay until
the architect is satisfied.
Blazing speed and low power are less important to me than long range.
Long range is important, because in a dorm, tall office building, apartment, or crowded library
it backs up my traffic behind all the competing signals in the region. I'll get my faster service
from a wired connection (about half a millimeter range of the little plastic
connector body). For a host of minor tasks, like TV remote control, thermostat setting,
smoke alarm, and zombie attack warning (it sounds better than home intrusion alarm), the battery life is of greater importance. It looks like this scheme allows me to put a single beacon
in some central location in the house, and feed it a half watt. Then, all the minor
slowpoke appliances I want can communicate to my existing WiFi infrastructure
without breaking a milliwatt.
It's claimed this adds only ten microwatts power drain, and delivers WiFi connectivity.
Ten microwatts is gonna drain two AA batteries in two decades. It's short range, so my neighbors aren't a problem for me, nor I for them. I think I'll like it. Cordless game controllers... decade of battery life...
So after reading the fine article, it's apparently stuff that's only about one atom thick.
So, pedant maybe, but for me while that's pretty damn thin, it's still three-dimensional.
The band structure for a bulk material (full 3-d crystal structure) defines the behavior of electrons
deep inside the material, not near a surface - and near-suface conditions are different.
The permitted electron orbitals (and bonding, and atomic spacing...) in a very thin layer of SnO
might be very different indeed (and have different bandgap, mobility, etc.) from the bulk
material.
The fabrication and characterization of a material that is NOT similar to its parent 3-d lattice
is what has been described here, and it is important to note the 2-d nature of this semiconductor,
so that readers aren't confused by the chemical similarity to a bulk semiconductor with dissimilar
behavior.
Other surface-dependent characteristics define the behavior of polysilicon (Ovonics), quantum
dots, and some very useful low-noise HEMTs. Search on "2-d electron gas"...
Electron transit speed is not the limiting factor in device speed.
It's one of the limits; that speed goes along with a concept called 'mobility' which directly translates to better current-carrying capacity.
Higher mobility for p-type devices DEFINITELY would speed CMOS.
Since SnO is a p-type material, it could become half the circuitry of a CMOS IC, and because it is to be a layer atop (presumably silicon) other materials, it would make for lower silicon area for a given complexity. By using that third dimension, your interconnect wiring gets shorter and faster.
What I want to know is if it will be cheaper as right now even a small sample of areogel costs a small fortune.
Its supposed to be one of the very best insulation materials but its...cost prohibitive to insulate your house with it.
It should be less expensive than silica aerogel (which is made of quartz, and requires elaborate drying in an
autoclave-like pressure cooker). That's because freeze-drying is a cheap way to remove liquid from the
voids (and you NEED LOTS OF VOIDS).
It's unclear, however, if the mean-free-path for vapor movement is as small as a 'conventional' silica aerogel (the sample
looks opaque, so probably the voids/walls are larger than wavelength of light). Silica aerogels for insulation are
glass-clear (but slightly smoky) because the structure is nanometer-scale.
It's unclear what cellulose does to 'improve' the product, and unclear that the product is durable.
It's called 'biodegradable' but does that mean fungus will nibble it to nothing inside a year? Even a slow-moving
variant on wood rot could quickly destroy a nanostructure. It's shown as flexible, which would be good
(part of the cost of insulating a house with aerogel, is that you have to size all the house stud spacings
to exactly the dimensions of factory-cut aerogel panels).
Well, TFS is something about managed PoE switches, then something about 12V-5V USB power supplies (aka car phone chargers), and then about a PoE to 5V adapter not providing ethernet?
So... something PoE 5V USB ethernet power something.
Ethernet switches enable all the wired Ethernet sockets in an office/house/building.
Managed PoE Ethernet switches are capable of both supplying power (that's the 'PoE' part),
and turning power ON/OFF (that's the 'managed' part) by command from anywhere on the net.
The rest of the issue, is getting the Ethernet "PoE"-style power converted to 5V for a mini-USB plug
that powers some random device that you might want power-cycled. To make it reset or restart. If it were a truly PoE-compatible Ethernet device, you could send it Ethernet commands, but the intent here is to
control a non-Ethernet-listener.
Keyboards should be replaced yearly given how disgusting they are.
With the right technique and knowledge, keyboards can be thoroughly cleaned. And by "cleaned", I mean soap-and-water - lots and lots of water, as in total immersion.
Unnecessary; a rag, a few squirts of alcohol-based cleaner, and a wipedown will take off
all the fingerprints. The omnipresent 'hand sanitizer' goo is near perfect.
Pop off a few keys and shake crumbs and hairs out (or run a toothpick
between the keys).
Lots of modern keyboards use flexible-printed-circuit sandwiches, and will NEVER DRY
if you try immersion.
Slashdot Mirror
Then, American 'intelligence officials' will take note, and feel duty-bound to suggest that there should be further investigation. Reporters, also taking notes, and Congressional investigators, ditto.
In other quasi-news, scientists say 'we need more research'. Details at eleven!
Yeah, partly naturally, but partly socially, too. Speech and writing and clothing and culture... we all inherit a LOT of stuff that isn't part of biological evolution.
I've greatly enjoyed the first three books, and especially Sorting and Searching. The chapters are independent, so you can treat the volumes as a collection of nonfiction short stories. I recommend it as bedtime reading.
Except, these short stories open up possibilities, and contribute to my understanding of ways to handle tomorrow's problems. There are three kinds of computer books: ones that teach one tool (pretty useless ten years later, when the tool obsolesces), ones that teach from the bottom up (again, pretty useless when 6502 is replaced by 65816, and in turn 68000, 68040, PPC601, PPC603e, G3, G4, G5, core duo, Xeon...), and those that teach from the general principles (top-down style).
Algorithms knowledge at the mathematical-tool level really REALLY helps sometimes. And it remains helpful forever (like the Pythagorean theorem) rather than becoming quaint (like the art of making an '035 keypunch program card).
Well, no, but it would be nice if the batteries could be replaced, or the OS and other software updated to a more recent version. Third-party and counterfeit batteries for a favorite laptop are ... discomfitting. As is finding that my version of a Safari browser can't ever get an upgrade so my bank will talk to it.
Excellent observation! The Nixon administration had to sponsor burglars to get data from the Democratic offices in the Watergate building; a corrupt congressional committee could claim access to similarly important data in these laptops under the guise of 'investigation'.
The Fox news treatment suggests that this deal dims that prospect, and the Republican-dominated congressional committee publicly bemoans their lost opportunity. Actually, while the letter from Bob Goodlatte (no other committee members signed it) does include some slanted questions, it is merely a formal request for information. The committee has NOT subpoenaed anything in the computers, and knows no cause ever to do so, and The Honorable Bob Goodlatte has not suggested otherwise.
Didn't read the article, did you? The laptops' data relating to the investigation is not to be destroyed. For security reasons, however, OTHER data is to be destroyed, rather than leaving it lying around 'in custody' for an indefinite period of time. There is no grounds for a search of 'everything' on those drives, and no search warrant covering the incidental information that would be erased. So, the Justice department doesn't care (and, absent this kind of agreement, could be careless in handling the hardware). The 'erase-afterward' agreement is sensible.
But this was about UV light spreading out over several square inches at distance. The lens of the eye is cloudy to near-UV light, and won't focus to a spot. The reason it's invisible, makes it less likely to damage your retina.
Tinkering near such sources, you'd want to be careful, of course. Protective gear, for that wavelength, is rather common, because arc welding produces the same light in hazardous intensities.
As a tower-to-tower relay for high speed signals, it's unlikely to impinge on anyone's face. Weather, though, will be a problem. It won't replace microwave links if reliability is important.
The allegation is that only searches of an incomplete index are ever performed for FOIA purposes, and such searches are (1) archaic and unusual nowadays, (2) rarely find the requested material. That's more likely misfeasance than innocent.
The DOJ is an agency that ought to find compliance with law of primary interest, and arguments of 'needlessly duplicative' ring false. The plaintiff's test was amusing: he asked DOJ to find his previous FOIA requests, and was told there was no record...
Speaking of early SF writers, George Smith's _Venus_Equilateral_ (1940s era) matter duplicators and transmittters were also defeated by a wonder-substance. Writers will ALWAYS add in rights management to technology, because (1) it's imaginable, and (2) it adds complication.
To be a writer, you need imagination. To move a plot, you REALLY need complication....
The original article is PR dreck. Hydrogen is capable of fueling very simple vehicles, and when you make a few hundred million cars and trucks cheap, there's lots of available money to spend on tens of thousands of filling stations, and hundreds of power-conversion-to-hydrogen and local storage centers. The economics favors inexpensive leaf nodes of the distrubution tree, not inexpensive trunks. For public-relations purposes, someone with Tesla stock wants to claim that better electric-power decisions are not in Tesla's future plans, and that that is OK for the investors. He might be right, or wrong, but he won't change his claim as long as he's holding his Tesla stock... regardless of facts. If he offloads his stock, he may experirence a revelation as regards the merits of Hydrogen as a fuel.
This effect has OTHER implications: most plant species are weeds, so 'helps plant growth' isn't necessarily a good thing for agriculture. I'm not fond of eating kudzu.
If water is plentiful, the effect won't matter. If water is scarce, it means the plant growth/death cycle might change, but is that good? What if dry-season stress is the end of root development, and the beginning of fruiting? It might be a very healthy root system under your orchard, but the apples don't ripen until November (and don't get very sweet, when the sun is low in the sky).
Whoa, BIG misconception there. Warming can melt glaciers, thaw permafrost, and heat oceans. You cannot instantly tell from air temperature alone whether heat is building up, you need to monitor the BIG repositories of heat. The signal here is large, positive, and agrees with calculated greenhouse effect. Look up 'hockey-stick curve' and/or do some math, and stop abusing the word "correlation".
Like, Isis, the old Egyptian deity? Why would beer money, transferred within the US, be confiscated rather than allowing an offering to the goddess of some tasty beverage? The "Office of Foreign Assets Control" is bound to return the guy's money, if they have it. "Unreasonable ... seizure" is prohibited by the US constitution (amendment #4). It might not happen soon, but unless a court orders otherwise, they can't keep the money.
'Detaining' someone's property can be a problem. I can see it, clearly. Why can't you?
Nonsense; of course they can use lots of off-the-shelf parts, like seats, windows, nuts, bolts. The running gear that fits their rails, will simply be made to specification - with modern tools, it's as easy as ordering steel and sending the right files to your machining center.
There isn't any alarming 'trend' in the BART maintenance data, there aren't any good reasons they cannot engineer minor improvements to old designs, and the flurry of recent failures due to overvoltage is going to be understood in a day, re-engineered to never reoccur, in a week, and will support a buzz of half-informed news coverage for months.
In all the nattering about the gauge of the tracks, there hasn't been any REAL complaint. BART only carries passengers, doesn't need to use interstate tracks, doesn't need the variety of boxcars, container flats, dining cars, auto haulers, oil tanks, coal cars, and sleepers that come in a 'standard' gauge. They never need to couple to enormous loads, or transport hazardous goods... it's a LIMITED USE rail system, and the users like it just fine. Compatibility with unuseful rolling stock is not interesting.
Oh, it's more than that. It's public notice that criminal misbehavior by the persons named has been uncovered, and that the US is NOT declaring war, but is seeking all normal cooperation (including extradition) of friendly nations in apprehending them. It's much more polite than Stuxnet, and isn't in response to treaty violations by a nation (like, the nonproliferation treaty violations that got Iran into past difficulties).
Political fashions come and go, maybe Iran will extradite the miscreants some day. At the very least, it's gonna give rise to a few thoughtful moments, maybe even discussions.
No, it's not being done in Vermont. The Vermont statute controls foods produced elsewhere and sold in Vermont: it's a major interstate commerce demand, and will add its burden to a broad swath of folk who couldn't vote in that state. Sadly, it's probably enforceable: state liquor laws have long created similar schisms, which is why a favorite pastime of yesteryear was to load up a few cases of a favorite beer from state A to take home to state B. So, I wonder how long it will take to certify non-GMO status for pepper from India? Coffee from Brazil? Will stocks of unlabeled seed from before the law came into effect be presumed GMO untill proven otherwise? Will liars prosper, or will false claims actually be investigated? How? I think the law reeks. What information I would like to have, won't be on the label. And learning that the poppy seeds in my salad dressing were genetically modified... is worthless, a waste of ink and paper.
Half-truths described as 'part of the law' - accurate, but quite amusing. Search isn't the only issue, here, there's also command authority over software creation and compulsion of Apple's signature.
The court may not arbitrarily order any action; the order must be limited, and must not impose undue hardship. And the court should NOT order Apple to damage their customers in the tens of millions, even to the minor extent of abusing their trust. The problem for Apple is one of ethics: the intentional retraction of privacy is a kind of wrongdoing, and while a court order might make it legally defensible, it doesn't make it ethical, nor does it limit the scope of damage to Apple's reputation, credibility, or even safety. If a back door into data ever comes into existence, all persons who guard the door come under attack by any and all prospective data thieves. The story of Lavabit is history we can all learn from.
Apple has every reason, and right, to pursue this matter. The courts may decide in Apple's favor.
The researchers who first made artificial diamonds, were informed by the discovery in meteor sites, of diamond in iron matrix. That was their clue that good crystallization could be achieved using iron as a 'solvent'. The Lonsdaleite saga, though, is a carbon story without the iron, and is really new science.
Also, it involves lasers, X-rays, asteroids... I see the possibility of a really fine video game in this!
_The Diamond Makers_, by Robert Hazen, is a good treatment of the early years of diamond creation.
So, your complete time solution includes a webcam in the antipodes, aimed at a second sundial.
No disappointment is expected.
Onsite carpenters would RARELY make their own staircases; it's faster to order from a millwork shop, and time is money. Millwork shops have excellent measurement compliance: the windows and doors all fit, just as the stairs do. Don't believe, either, that nobody is checking; architects DO inspect, and the owner usually doesn't pay until the architect is satisfied.
Long range is important, because in a dorm, tall office building, apartment, or crowded library it backs up my traffic behind all the competing signals in the region. I'll get my faster service from a wired connection (about half a millimeter range of the little plastic connector body). For a host of minor tasks, like TV remote control, thermostat setting, smoke alarm, and zombie attack warning (it sounds better than home intrusion alarm), the battery life is of greater importance. It looks like this scheme allows me to put a single beacon in some central location in the house, and feed it a half watt. Then, all the minor slowpoke appliances I want can communicate to my existing WiFi infrastructure without breaking a milliwatt.
It's claimed this adds only ten microwatts power drain, and delivers WiFi connectivity.
Ten microwatts is gonna drain two AA batteries in two decades. It's short range, so my neighbors aren't a problem for me, nor I for them. I think I'll like it. Cordless game controllers... decade of battery life...
The band structure for a bulk material (full 3-d crystal structure) defines the behavior of electrons deep inside the material, not near a surface - and near-suface conditions are different. The permitted electron orbitals (and bonding, and atomic spacing...) in a very thin layer of SnO might be very different indeed (and have different bandgap, mobility, etc.) from the bulk material.
The fabrication and characterization of a material that is NOT similar to its parent 3-d lattice is what has been described here, and it is important to note the 2-d nature of this semiconductor, so that readers aren't confused by the chemical similarity to a bulk semiconductor with dissimilar behavior.
Other surface-dependent characteristics define the behavior of polysilicon (Ovonics), quantum dots, and some very useful low-noise HEMTs. Search on "2-d electron gas" ...
It's one of the limits; that speed goes along with a concept called 'mobility' which directly translates to better current-carrying capacity.
Higher mobility for p-type devices DEFINITELY would speed CMOS.
Since SnO is a p-type material, it could become half the circuitry of a CMOS IC, and because it is to be a layer atop (presumably silicon) other materials, it would make for lower silicon area for a given complexity. By using that third dimension, your interconnect wiring gets shorter and faster.
It should be less expensive than silica aerogel (which is made of quartz, and requires elaborate drying in an autoclave-like pressure cooker). That's because freeze-drying is a cheap way to remove liquid from the voids (and you NEED LOTS OF VOIDS).
It's unclear, however, if the mean-free-path for vapor movement is as small as a 'conventional' silica aerogel (the sample looks opaque, so probably the voids/walls are larger than wavelength of light). Silica aerogels for insulation are glass-clear (but slightly smoky) because the structure is nanometer-scale. It's unclear what cellulose does to 'improve' the product, and unclear that the product is durable.
It's called 'biodegradable' but does that mean fungus will nibble it to nothing inside a year? Even a slow-moving variant on wood rot could quickly destroy a nanostructure. It's shown as flexible, which would be good (part of the cost of insulating a house with aerogel, is that you have to size all the house stud spacings to exactly the dimensions of factory-cut aerogel panels).
Ethernet switches enable all the wired Ethernet sockets in an office/house/building.
Managed PoE Ethernet switches are capable of both supplying power (that's the 'PoE' part), and turning power ON/OFF (that's the 'managed' part) by command from anywhere on the net.
The rest of the issue, is getting the Ethernet "PoE"-style power converted to 5V for a mini-USB plug that powers some random device that you might want power-cycled. To make it reset or restart. If it were a truly PoE-compatible Ethernet device, you could send it Ethernet commands, but the intent here is to control a non-Ethernet-listener.
Unnecessary; a rag, a few squirts of alcohol-based cleaner, and a wipedown will take off all the fingerprints. The omnipresent 'hand sanitizer' goo is near perfect. Pop off a few keys and shake crumbs and hairs out (or run a toothpick between the keys).
Lots of modern keyboards use flexible-printed-circuit sandwiches, and will NEVER DRY if you try immersion.