I was perfectly happy with Firefox bookmark syncing until it decided my carefully organized bookmarks all needed to be moved out of their folders and put into the top level of the bookmarks menu. Oh, then let's sync that across all Firefox instances. Had a backup so I brought those SQL files back into my profiles directory, then tried many things to get it to stop doing that and it would not. So I had to kill off Firefox syncing and I'm looking for a replacement.

Yeah, not something you expect. I should file a bug report but have yet to do so.

Beyond some unknown future economic potential that Mars could provide that the Earth simply could not, once you go past the scientific/adventure angles, there's really only one compelling reason to go to Mars - survival of the species. We are presently a one-planet species, but even if we cleaned up our act and made the Earth a sustainable place to live for the very long term, we're one catastrophic event away from oblivion. Pick any time horizon that you like, we're eventually extinct. Once we're a viable two-planet species, and by that I mean there's a self-sustaining human presence someplace else, the end of humans can at least be forestalled.

But there's so much we don't know still. Even if we could convert lava tubes into viable habitats for some protection from radiation, and grow food, and have a long-term self-sustaining energy and manufacturing infrastructure - if we could simply bootstrap long-term human viability on Mars - we don't know what making babies in a place like that is like. Will we bring the right microbiome with us to impart healthy immune systems? How fundamentally tied to the Earth are we?

We could spend a tremendous amount of money and have a lot of astronauts/colonists die finding the answers. I think it's worth trying.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F...

Oh come now, it has a "butt-mounted Velodyne VLP-16 system". What's not to understand?

With the number of pills taken by the elderly these days, not to mention people who die in the hospital who may have all sorts of compounds pumped into them before they die, I wonder if the composting process fully breaks them down, or at least to safe levels. I didn't see any mention of it in TFA.

What leads you to believe that? My empirical observations from owning two Toyota vehicles ('05 Prius, '06 Highlander hybrid) is that even with the complex systems on these vehicles, they have required nothing but regular maintenance. Seriously, I had to replace the water pump on my Prius at 175K miles due to seepage at the seal, and that's it. Both vehicles have been trouble-free. My brother's Avalon is pushing 200K, and he abuses vehicles. So I'm honestly curious whether your experience has differed from mine.

I can't quite grok what form this might take, but whatever it might be, it surely needs to be a Kickstarter campaign.

This.

The point made earlier by a poster regarding acceleration lag is very true, he described it perfectly. Other than that, the Prius is a great car. Mine has 160K miles on it and it runs the same as the day I bought it, and it has been more reliable than any other car I've ever owned (and I have owned many). Brake linings never replaced. Not a bunch of rattles and squeaks, although it's not the quietest care on noisy roads. I'm planning to take mine to 300K miles if at all possible, and I know others who feel the same - keep it as long as possible, there's no real reason to replace it.

Conspiracy may be too strong a word. Tech companies want to be able to hire in a buyer's market, which almost certainly requires a larger pool of talent to pick and choose from than would occur naturally. Having a position go unfilled for weeks or even months due to a lack of qualified talent isn't in their best interest, and if there's anything we can agree upon, it's that companies will always act in their perceived best interests.

That said, I must agree whole-heartedly with your statement regarding "qualified". Having participated in many phone screens and in-person interviews, it is astounding how much resume inflation goes on. If you say you know Perl, I'm going to ask you about it and ask you to write a short, easy script. Oh, you meant that you once ran a Perl script written by a co-worker? That's nice. And in most cases, when there's one inflated claim like that on the resume, there are more.

Beyond that, so many candidates say they know how to do something in particular - driver development, firmware, chip design/verification/layout, etc. But when you delve into the qualitative aspects of the job, many can only cover the mechanics of the tasks they perform -- they don't show more than a surface understanding of it. Yet they are already employed and have titles that have "Senior" in them, and they expect a raise and maybe even a better title.

The ratio of mediocre to "OMG this person really knows their shit!" talent is not nearly what I think it ought to be.

Yes, but we usually recognize things as belonging to one or more of these categories. For better or worse, trying to explain to the vast majority of the population what a Bitcoin is has been akin to saying "Play Minecraft for fun and profit!"

That's quite possibly fair. But if you buy into the theory that all of the gold on Earth was likely created during numerous supernova billions of years ago, you just might have a hard time comparing that to a Bitcoin.

The future world she envisioned felt so much like an obvious extrapolation from the world of today. It affected me for awhile afterwards; just kept thinking about it...

You are unfortunately right. My father had a really nasty bout of shingles that laid him low last fall. I didn't see him for a couple of weeks during the worst of it, but he took a photo of what his shoulder looked like with the lesions and the discoloration caused by the silver-based topical medication prescribed by his doctor. I don't think a zombie ever looked as bad as that.

It laid him low, and he hasn't ever quite recovered. Chicken pox was nothing compared to this.

From Krebs' article:

At least most bots have the decency to let you use your own computer. Norton (and in my experience, McAfee) security suites are much less inclined to leave enough free resources for that to be possible.

There's a good history of Buran over at Astronautix. First the article about the craft itself, another (with a lot of overlap) about the project, then a short piece about the Buran Analogue. A very good write-up with several good photos (sad ones at the end) over at Aerospaceweb.

If you've got some time to kill, you can find a Buran mock-up sitting at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Google Earth. Also the final resting place of the Buran that flew and the Energia reusable launch vehicle, but it's a little hard to locate.