And before any insurance company will touch you in the future, you will need to replace your front door (and any other exterior doors) with enhanced, secure, doors. Plus locks on all your ground-floor windows, maybe a burglar alarm too.
reckon on several thousand $$$$ spent and non-claimable. And after that, to add insult to injury, your premiums will be much higher - at least for few years.
Think it would be cheaper to not claim and keep quiet? Even worse idea. If you are found out, which you would be, then no future claim would be paid as you had withheld relevant information.You could even find yourself on a blacklist and uninsurable.
First, the cost of repairs after a break-in will far exceed the value of your PC. And in addition, the increased insurance premiums will probably dwarf the repair costs, too.
Most burglaries are drugs-related. All the thief wants is to get in, grab enough to pay for their next fix and run away. All this stuff about organised robberies, knowing what to look for, recognising a pearl in the pigsh... , thefts to facilitate hacking - that only happens in bad movies.
There is not a housebreaker in the world who has any technical knowledge. All they will see is a PC-shaped box. And being a PC, it's resale value is negligible. it probably isn't even worth carrying to their car. I would suggest buying a broken Macbook or iPhone as a decoy and leaving that as a "sacrifice". Being instantly recognisable and easily portable, that would be stolen in preference to what you actually value.
If you are still worried that a thief will steal all your little secrets, then the simple solution is to run Linux. Anyone in the thief's circle will not recognise that as being Windows and they will therefore toss the PC at the earliest opportunity.
Full loaded with its.44 special cartridges, works better than any backup as a deterrent against laptop thieves.
Unless the potential thieves know you have a weapon and reckon that you will:
a) be prepared to use it
b) be at home when they break in
c) would not be deterred by their greater force or number
Then all that being armed does is make you (mistakenly) feel more secure. It's nothing more than a safety blanket for you to hide behind.
The article tells us that the first "cellular" call (the author's opinion seems to be that this was the only contributory technology required to make "cellphones" as we know them today) was made in 1973. So 4 decades earlier would have meant starting celular technology in the early 1930's.
But to claim we could have had "cellphones" at any particular point in time implies all the infrastructure that goes with them: small size, portability, low cost, cell-towers, call routing computers, high capacity batteries. Simply saying that technical feasibility is the same as being able to develop a commercial product is naive.
The ancient Babylonians used oil, does that mean thay should have developed the internal combustion engine?
So you can buy a campaign to alter people's opinion. To change their views on something. To influence the actions they would take and the decisions they make.
OK, How is that different from trying to sell someone washing powder. It washes cleaner (no proof required). it makes your whites whiter - but we don't demand a reference or scientific study for the test that proved it.
We just accept that most of the stuff we will be told is bullshit. Whether it is about a new car (more energy efficient, chick magnet, safer, cheaper to run, higher resale value) or a political campaign (will make you richer / safer, will ensure jobs, signals virtue).
We used to have a healthy skepticism for politics - riddle: How can you tell when a politician is lying? Their lips move. What has made us so much more gullible or easy to influence? Have we become used to living in a more truthful society? Are we just looking for a set of information (true or not) that supports our preconceived ideas? Do we associate good looks with honesty? Are we so desperate for someone we can trust that we start to believe that TV stars offer real, honest, impartial advice?
Where should we draw the line between disbelief and nihilism? Is there a line to be drawn?
Maybe the US has achieved a level of subtlety and control over the press that makes these activities seem less significant, but you can bet that they are well supported with our tax dollars.
I am not sure that subtlety is the american way. Why bother, when you spend more on weapons than every other country combined? Wouldn't that be a "waste" of the defence budget? And strength has to be seen.
So while the FBI is setting up "them roooskies" as the boogie man of interfering with sovereign nation's democratic process, is that just to keep attention away from the american covert service's own programme for doing the same?
Many bodies seem to identify hacks as being "russian" due to the content of some of the code used - which contains fragments of other (known) "russian" hacks. But to recognise those code fragments, you have to have them. And if you have them, couldn't you be using them, yourself?
It is no different from selling weapons to "friendly" terrorists (aka insurgents, if they are on your side) that you sourced from enemies of the government you are targetting. So when they are found, there is no route that traces them back to the puppet-master.
America has a long tradition of influencing foreign governments, toppling dictators and installing their own leaders. Especially in central america. We should expect that they have not given up on this sort of activity. And what better way than online? Since nobody seems to be "finding" evidence of CIA hacks, is that because there are none, or because they are disguised as "russian", instead?
Just look at the growth curve. This has nothing to do with value; intrinsic or perceived. Bitcoin merely has this value because investors are piling in - and because Japan recently recognised it as a currency.
But it isn't.
It is not backed by any thing or government
and like all bubbles the time to get OUT is when all the household investors start buying it. People who have never heard of cryptocurrencies until they read an article in the popular media and then "invest", they never make any money. They tend to buy at the top of the market and lose a packet when the inevitable crash happens.
move passengers/cargo at airlines speeds for a fraction of the cost of air travel
Only if you don't include the cost of building the infrastructure. Once you total up the cost of building an airtight tunnel for hundreds of miles, and of designing, proving and building the trains, carriages and stations to deal with near-vaccum travel, the cost of a ticket will far exceed the cost of a flight. We have had airports for decades and most of them are already paid-for, from past use.
When a judge "decides" on a sentence, there can be many factors that influence the result. Not all of them are strictly relevant or objective and not all of them are easily explainable. Different judges would give different punishments for the same crime. Hell, the same judge can give different sentences for seemingly identical circumstances. When a program computes a sentence then the same data entered each time will lead to the same result.
Whether it is an open-source program that gives a result or a proprietary algorithm is irrelevant. Judges decision-making processes aren't exactly open-source, either. It is far better for sentencing to be consistent than "personal" or explainable. It removes accusations of bias (although there is still dependency on the data fed in) and makes the law and the trial process appear far more objective and fair.
Equality does not measure what people think it does
We could all be equal by being destitute. By having short, brutish, lives that end violently, in childbirth or starvation. That would be highly "equal", but extremely unpleasant.
We could also engineer a society where everyone had equal opportunities. But that would still give us people with great wealth and others who had nothing. Simply because some are driven (whether that is healthy, or not - a different issue) to attain power, wealth, knowledge, whatever and others are happy to sit around all day doing the bare minimum. Some people make good decisions - short term vs. long term, while others are impulsive, gullible and easily led.
We cold also have a society where everyone does the same sort of job and earns the same sort of money. (Since "equality" only seems to be about what you earn.) That would score highly on most measures of equality, like the Gini coefficient. But if a trillionaire moved to that "equal" country, the measure of equality would immediately be skewed and the country would show up as being highly unequal - even though none of the non-trillionaires were any worse off than before.
What technology has done is given us all more opportunities. Some seize them, others are too lazy or uneducated, or don't recognise it, or are looking the wrong way, or value other things. Some people just happen to be in the right place at the right time and buy into the right startup. Others are unlucky and go bust. But for the average individual, technology gives us all more. Whether you are a high-speed trader making millions (but who will soon be out of a job when an AI takes your seat), or a farmer in Kenya who gets up-to-date produce prices on their phone - you benefit from technology. You might have less equality, but you are better off, healthier, will live longer and be better educated.
In the end, that is what matters. Not whether the guy next door has a $1m yacht and you don't. That is just greed and envy, not equality.
First, there is a cut in mains power to the data centre. No biggie, the batteries take the load. The backup generators then start to spin up and then supply power and the datacentre keeps running.
No lights went off, no computers crashed, business kept running.
But then, mains power is available again. How do you transition from your own generated power back to grid power? You can't just flick a switch. For a start you should ensure that the phase of the two power sources match - on all 3 phases. If you don't do that, I can imagine a power surge would be very likely.
But just like every outfit tests its backups - but very few test their restores, I guess BA had tested their failover process - but never got around to failing back. Or that the one time they did fail-back they got lucky.
What people call "news" seems to be a mix of celebrity gossip, current affairs based info-tainment, political rumours, re-tweets and sports results.
That is all spiced up with salacious and gory images from nowhere in particular. Just as visual eye-candy to attract gawping readers / viewers.
So far as news goes, there is very little that I need to be informed of - and even less that has a direct, personal, effect on myself or those I know or love. Most "news", on most days that is immediately important comes down to the weather forecast and the traffic reports.
I do like to be kept up to date on what new laws will impact on my life, new scientific discoveries and developments, the occasional IT disaster, major currency movements and up-coming events. I find that a weekly local news summary and a weekly magazine subscription is all that is needed to satisfy those needs.
All the rest, the 24-hour rolling news, the hourly news summaries on radio and longer bulletins on TV seem to repeat the same few stories (see above). And at weekends, they barely change from Friday evening through to Monday morning unless there has been some sort of major disaster - which their weekend staff generally fail to provide any coherent information about.
There is a story, probably apocryphal, that in the UK banking industry, staff used to be required to take a minimum break of 2 consecutive weeks. The reasoning being that if they were involved in a scam, it would probably come to light during that time from whoever took over their work. Whereas a staff member might be able to cover up wrongdoings if they were only on vacation for a week.
wouldn't immediately be pilfered by baggage handlers
On the bright side, there could be some absolute bargains coming up on eBay. Choose wisely and you might even find some juicy confidential material about your competitors, too.
the idea of knocking down an airplane in flight, particularly if it's a U.S. carrier, particularly if it's full of U.S. people
So what is it about already being in the US, that would make it impossible for a baddie to put a bomb in a laptop and board an internal flight... on a US carrier... full of US people?
Once the individual has gained entry to the country (or done so by being born there), is there any special difficulty with sourcing the materials needed. Or is it just that internal flights from every little two-bit airport has so much better security than ANY of the major hubs in any country you care to mention?
But that is only in response to a crisis. You cannot do that every day (apart from for the obvious reason) and neither can anybody else, irrespective of age. My personal experience has taught me that these long sessions are far less productive than they appear, when you take into account the number of errors introduced. And when you further consider the "recovery time" after a spurt like that, the actual productivity over a longer period is no better than someone working regular hours.
While it is occasionally necessary to do a long shift to meet a deadline - indicating that the manager who set the deadline made a mistake - or to resolve a crisis, they are not a badge of honour. At best they mean that someone messed up, at worst they are simply just a waste of everyone's time.
Sure the "kiddies" are good for pulling all-nighters. But the "grownups" use their experience to avoid having to.
The biggest problem with IT - not just the tiny part that involves coding - is that it values quantity over quality. "Move fast and break things" being the prime example of this dumb idea. So while the fresh, new, intake of IT people work with gusto, many of them spend a large amount of time reinventing the mistakes of the past.
However, when your management team rewards "presentee-ism" and "heroic" efforts, rather than dull, predictable, progress: what should you expect?
Maybe this is the start of the IT industry getting just a little maturity. If it keeps it up, it might actually get to be a profession, one day.
Let's assume that Google will take the path of least cost.
So it's cheaper to send a lawyer to explain the data is too hard to collate
So it's cheaper to pay the fine or lose the contract
That must tell you something about the cost of "doing the right thing". Not that the cost of obtaining the information is too high, but the cost of fixing whatever the data tells the government is too high.
So we can infer that there IS an issue here. It is also reasonable that Google knows this, or it wouldn't be baulking at providing the data (and exploiting the P.R. benefits of showing "there! we do pay people fairly").
The question is whether Google would consider the odds of getting found out and having to pay people more, AND paying a fine for obstructing some dam' law or other, is worth the effort they are going to, to behave in such a manner.
new hypersonic spaceplane that can be reused frequently over a short period of time to deliver multiple satellites into orbit.
Is the description of this craft's operation supposed to be a euphemism?
When the military talks about "delivery" they usually mean weapons: bombs. And the simplest explanation of why they would need to deliver many "satellites" with a turn around of a few hours would be if those "satellites" were disposable. Is this development really just a space-based weapon system? One that uses orbital (or sub-orbital) platforms to bomb targets from space.
When I worked for IBM in the early 90s, we were often required to work from home as the company simply did not have enough desks and facilities to provide for all its staff. After that came a project to "hot desk" people, but that was unpopular and did not achieve any real savings or benefits.
I presume that they have since realised that there are, in fact, real benefits to having a full team in a single location. And now that they have sacked so many staff, they now have the free space to actually implement the most sensible and efficient (for the company, not the employees) way of getting the most out of their people.
So there were some open or barely protected wifi access points? That is itself tells you nothing. They are only a security problem if they lead to confidential information. Their presence on its own means nothing.
Just like an unlocked door does not constitute poor security, unless it takes you to a room full of swag or information you should not see. Merely finding some APs (that could simply have been APs on someone's phone) does not make a story.
the cost to charge your car fully from empty would be $0.15/kWh x 85kWh = $12.75
That is like saying oil is $50/barrel and a barrel of oil is 42 gallons, so petrol should be $1.20/gallon.
Who will pay for all the charging stations that will have to be built? What about replacing the EV's batteries every 1000 charges? What about the additional power generation needed? Tax?
If you treble that cost you are closer to the real mark. And when you do, your EV is getting close to the cost of a petrol vehicle to operate. That is a cost which we know the population and industry is willing to pay already, so it is not unreasonable that they/we will continue to pay it.
It's not got anything to do with understanding. If this can be passed into law and fines imposed for the new "illegal" activity, that is a source of government income.
It's far better than taxes since it doesn't take money from citizens. It doesn't affect domestic internet companies since all the big social media outfits are american. In fact it is "free" cash.
There are plenty of cases of the US government fining foreign companies for contravening its laws. Many times they have to pay $$$$ billions. So if european governments can get some revenue by tapping american companies, it's just part fo the same game.
And since many american companies have huge stashes of money that they refuse to repatriate to the US, as they would get heavily taxed on it, it's not as if the home-country is losing anything, either.
Slashdot Mirror
Completely replacing a window is less than $500
And before any insurance company will touch you in the future, you will need to replace your front door (and any other exterior doors) with enhanced, secure, doors. Plus locks on all your ground-floor windows, maybe a burglar alarm too.
reckon on several thousand $$$$ spent and non-claimable. And after that, to add insult to injury, your premiums will be much higher - at least for few years.
Think it would be cheaper to not claim and keep quiet? Even worse idea. If you are found out, which you would be, then no future claim would be paid as you had withheld relevant information.You could even find yourself on a blacklist and uninsurable.
First, the cost of repairs after a break-in will far exceed the value of your PC. And in addition, the increased insurance premiums will probably dwarf the repair costs, too.
Most burglaries are drugs-related. All the thief wants is to get in, grab enough to pay for their next fix and run away. All this stuff about organised robberies, knowing what to look for, recognising a pearl in the pigsh... , thefts to facilitate hacking - that only happens in bad movies.
There is not a housebreaker in the world who has any technical knowledge. All they will see is a PC-shaped box. And being a PC, it's resale value is negligible. it probably isn't even worth carrying to their car. I would suggest buying a broken Macbook or iPhone as a decoy and leaving that as a "sacrifice". Being instantly recognisable and easily portable, that would be stolen in preference to what you actually value.
If you are still worried that a thief will steal all your little secrets, then the simple solution is to run Linux. Anyone in the thief's circle will not recognise that as being Windows and they will therefore toss the PC at the earliest opportunity.
Full loaded with its .44 special cartridges, works better than any backup as a deterrent against laptop thieves.
Unless the potential thieves know you have a weapon and reckon that you will:
a) be prepared to use it
b) be at home when they break in
c) would not be deterred by their greater force or number
Then all that being armed does is make you (mistakenly) feel more secure. It's nothing more than a safety blanket for you to hide behind.
The article tells us that the first "cellular" call (the author's opinion seems to be that this was the only contributory technology required to make "cellphones" as we know them today) was made in 1973. So 4 decades earlier would have meant starting celular technology in the early 1930's.
But to claim we could have had "cellphones" at any particular point in time implies all the infrastructure that goes with them: small size, portability, low cost, cell-towers, call routing computers, high capacity batteries. Simply saying that technical feasibility is the same as being able to develop a commercial product is naive.
The ancient Babylonians used oil, does that mean thay should have developed the internal combustion engine?
OK, How is that different from trying to sell someone washing powder. It washes cleaner (no proof required). it makes your whites whiter - but we don't demand a reference or scientific study for the test that proved it.
We just accept that most of the stuff we will be told is bullshit. Whether it is about a new car (more energy efficient, chick magnet, safer, cheaper to run, higher resale value) or a political campaign (will make you richer / safer, will ensure jobs, signals virtue).
We used to have a healthy skepticism for politics - riddle: How can you tell when a politician is lying? Their lips move. What has made us so much more gullible or easy to influence? Have we become used to living in a more truthful society? Are we just looking for a set of information (true or not) that supports our preconceived ideas? Do we associate good looks with honesty? Are we so desperate for someone we can trust that we start to believe that TV stars offer real, honest, impartial advice?
Where should we draw the line between disbelief and nihilism? Is there a line to be drawn?
Maybe the US has achieved a level of subtlety and control over the press that makes these activities seem less significant, but you can bet that they are well supported with our tax dollars.
I am not sure that subtlety is the american way. Why bother, when you spend more on weapons than every other country combined? Wouldn't that be a "waste" of the defence budget? And strength has to be seen.
So while the FBI is setting up "them roooskies" as the boogie man of interfering with sovereign nation's democratic process, is that just to keep attention away from the american covert service's own programme for doing the same?
Many bodies seem to identify hacks as being "russian" due to the content of some of the code used - which contains fragments of other (known) "russian" hacks. But to recognise those code fragments, you have to have them. And if you have them, couldn't you be using them, yourself?
It is no different from selling weapons to "friendly" terrorists (aka insurgents, if they are on your side) that you sourced from enemies of the government you are targetting. So when they are found, there is no route that traces them back to the puppet-master.
America has a long tradition of influencing foreign governments, toppling dictators and installing their own leaders. Especially in central america. We should expect that they have not given up on this sort of activity. And what better way than online? Since nobody seems to be "finding" evidence of CIA hacks, is that because there are none, or because they are disguised as "russian", instead?
millennials aren't able to identify the networks responsible for some of the most popular television shows,
Me neither. I have never taken the slightest interest in what channel a programme is on, who made it, who presents or acts in it.
The only thing I am interested in is whether it is good or not. Why does anything else matter?
Just look at the growth curve. This has nothing to do with value; intrinsic or perceived. Bitcoin merely has this value because investors are piling in - and because Japan recently recognised it as a currency.
But it isn't.
It is not backed by any thing or government
and like all bubbles the time to get OUT is when all the household investors start buying it. People who have never heard of cryptocurrencies until they read an article in the popular media and then "invest", they never make any money. They tend to buy at the top of the market and lose a packet when the inevitable crash happens.
move passengers/cargo at airlines speeds for a fraction of the cost of air travel
Only if you don't include the cost of building the infrastructure. Once you total up the cost of building an airtight tunnel for hundreds of miles, and of designing, proving and building the trains, carriages and stations to deal with near-vaccum travel, the cost of a ticket will far exceed the cost of a flight. We have had airports for decades and most of them are already paid-for, from past use.
When a judge "decides" on a sentence, there can be many factors that influence the result. Not all of them are strictly relevant or objective and not all of them are easily explainable. Different judges would give different punishments for the same crime. Hell, the same judge can give different sentences for seemingly identical circumstances. When a program computes a sentence then the same data entered each time will lead to the same result.
Whether it is an open-source program that gives a result or a proprietary algorithm is irrelevant. Judges decision-making processes aren't exactly open-source, either. It is far better for sentencing to be consistent than "personal" or explainable. It removes accusations of bias (although there is still dependency on the data fed in) and makes the law and the trial process appear far more objective and fair.
We could all be equal by being destitute. By having short, brutish, lives that end violently, in childbirth or starvation. That would be highly "equal", but extremely unpleasant.
We could also engineer a society where everyone had equal opportunities. But that would still give us people with great wealth and others who had nothing. Simply because some are driven (whether that is healthy, or not - a different issue) to attain power, wealth, knowledge, whatever and others are happy to sit around all day doing the bare minimum. Some people make good decisions - short term vs. long term, while others are impulsive, gullible and easily led.
We cold also have a society where everyone does the same sort of job and earns the same sort of money. (Since "equality" only seems to be about what you earn.) That would score highly on most measures of equality, like the Gini coefficient. But if a trillionaire moved to that "equal" country, the measure of equality would immediately be skewed and the country would show up as being highly unequal - even though none of the non-trillionaires were any worse off than before.
What technology has done is given us all more opportunities. Some seize them, others are too lazy or uneducated, or don't recognise it, or are looking the wrong way, or value other things. Some people just happen to be in the right place at the right time and buy into the right startup. Others are unlucky and go bust. But for the average individual, technology gives us all more. Whether you are a high-speed trader making millions (but who will soon be out of a job when an AI takes your seat), or a farmer in Kenya who gets up-to-date produce prices on their phone - you benefit from technology. You might have less equality, but you are better off, healthier, will live longer and be better educated.
In the end, that is what matters. Not whether the guy next door has a $1m yacht and you don't. That is just greed and envy, not equality.
First, there is a cut in mains power to the data centre. No biggie, the batteries take the load. The backup generators then start to spin up and then supply power and the datacentre keeps running.
No lights went off, no computers crashed, business kept running.
But then, mains power is available again. How do you transition from your own generated power back to grid power? You can't just flick a switch. For a start you should ensure that the phase of the two power sources match - on all 3 phases. If you don't do that, I can imagine a power surge would be very likely.
But just like every outfit tests its backups - but very few test their restores, I guess BA had tested their failover process - but never got around to failing back. Or that the one time they did fail-back they got lucky.
That is all spiced up with salacious and gory images from nowhere in particular. Just as visual eye-candy to attract gawping readers / viewers.
So far as news goes, there is very little that I need to be informed of - and even less that has a direct, personal, effect on myself or those I know or love. Most "news", on most days that is immediately important comes down to the weather forecast and the traffic reports.
I do like to be kept up to date on what new laws will impact on my life, new scientific discoveries and developments, the occasional IT disaster, major currency movements and up-coming events. I find that a weekly local news summary and a weekly magazine subscription is all that is needed to satisfy those needs.
All the rest, the 24-hour rolling news, the hourly news summaries on radio and longer bulletins on TV seem to repeat the same few stories (see above). And at weekends, they barely change from Friday evening through to Monday morning unless there has been some sort of major disaster - which their weekend staff generally fail to provide any coherent information about.
There is a story, probably apocryphal, that in the UK banking industry, staff used to be required to take a minimum break of 2 consecutive weeks. The reasoning being that if they were involved in a scam, it would probably come to light during that time from whoever took over their work. Whereas a staff member might be able to cover up wrongdoings if they were only on vacation for a week.
wouldn't immediately be pilfered by baggage handlers
On the bright side, there could be some absolute bargains coming up on eBay. Choose wisely and you might even find some juicy confidential material about your competitors, too.
the idea of knocking down an airplane in flight, particularly if it's a U.S. carrier, particularly if it's full of U.S. people
So what is it about already being in the US, that would make it impossible for a baddie to put a bomb in a laptop and board an internal flight ... on a US carrier ... full of US people?
Once the individual has gained entry to the country (or done so by being born there), is there any special difficulty with sourcing the materials needed. Or is it just that internal flights from every little two-bit airport has so much better security than ANY of the major hubs in any country you care to mention?
a productive 36 hour work day
Maybe .... once.
But that is only in response to a crisis. You cannot do that every day (apart from for the obvious reason) and neither can anybody else, irrespective of age. My personal experience has taught me that these long sessions are far less productive than they appear, when you take into account the number of errors introduced. And when you further consider the "recovery time" after a spurt like that, the actual productivity over a longer period is no better than someone working regular hours.
While it is occasionally necessary to do a long shift to meet a deadline - indicating that the manager who set the deadline made a mistake - or to resolve a crisis, they are not a badge of honour. At best they mean that someone messed up, at worst they are simply just a waste of everyone's time.
The biggest problem with IT - not just the tiny part that involves coding - is that it values quantity over quality. "Move fast and break things" being the prime example of this dumb idea. So while the fresh, new, intake of IT people work with gusto, many of them spend a large amount of time reinventing the mistakes of the past.
However, when your management team rewards "presentee-ism" and "heroic" efforts, rather than dull, predictable, progress: what should you expect?
Maybe this is the start of the IT industry getting just a little maturity. If it keeps it up, it might actually get to be a profession, one day.
So it's cheaper to send a lawyer to explain the data is too hard to collate
So it's cheaper to pay the fine or lose the contract
That must tell you something about the cost of "doing the right thing". Not that the cost of obtaining the information is too high, but the cost of fixing whatever the data tells the government is too high.
So we can infer that there IS an issue here. It is also reasonable that Google knows this, or it wouldn't be baulking at providing the data (and exploiting the P.R. benefits of showing "there! we do pay people fairly").
The question is whether Google would consider the odds of getting found out and having to pay people more, AND paying a fine for obstructing some dam' law or other, is worth the effort they are going to, to behave in such a manner.
new hypersonic spaceplane that can be reused frequently over a short period of time to deliver multiple satellites into orbit.
Is the description of this craft's operation supposed to be a euphemism?
When the military talks about "delivery" they usually mean weapons: bombs. And the simplest explanation of why they would need to deliver many "satellites" with a turn around of a few hours would be if those "satellites" were disposable. Is this development really just a space-based weapon system? One that uses orbital (or sub-orbital) platforms to bomb targets from space.
I presume that they have since realised that there are, in fact, real benefits to having a full team in a single location. And now that they have sacked so many staff, they now have the free space to actually implement the most sensible and efficient (for the company, not the employees) way of getting the most out of their people.
Just like an unlocked door does not constitute poor security, unless it takes you to a room full of swag or information you should not see. Merely finding some APs (that could simply have been APs on someone's phone) does not make a story.
the cost to charge your car fully from empty would be $0.15/kWh x 85kWh = $12.75
That is like saying oil is $50/barrel and a barrel of oil is 42 gallons, so petrol should be $1.20/gallon.
Who will pay for all the charging stations that will have to be built? What about replacing the EV's batteries every 1000 charges? What about the additional power generation needed? Tax?
If you treble that cost you are closer to the real mark. And when you do, your EV is getting close to the cost of a petrol vehicle to operate. That is a cost which we know the population and industry is willing to pay already, so it is not unreasonable that they/we will continue to pay it.
It's far better than taxes since it doesn't take money from citizens. It doesn't affect domestic internet companies since all the big social media outfits are american. In fact it is "free" cash.
There are plenty of cases of the US government fining foreign companies for contravening its laws. Many times they have to pay $$$$ billions. So if european governments can get some revenue by tapping american companies, it's just part fo the same game.
And since many american companies have huge stashes of money that they refuse to repatriate to the US, as they would get heavily taxed on it, it's not as if the home-country is losing anything, either.