Many American homes are largely wood with synthetic insulation. This actually works very well, if you do it right. Unfortunately, many homes are not done very well in this regard, and they let heat in and out in all the wrong ways.

It would take a huge portion of public mindshare, the candidates would be insane to ignore it. If it was indeed contact with an intelligent alien, it would have the potential to dramatically change discussions about foreign relations. If it were the kind of alien we can use as a resource, it would create a need to…

So... We believe the US government is savvy enough to create something like stuxnet, but if they want to take down Wikileaks the best they can do is a DDoS? I am sure if the US government were trying to take down Wikileaks they could do better.

I have done similar things before. How do you avoid situations where two people are editing at the same time?

I have a wallpaper on my phone that says "if found, call (emergency number)".

What are you talking about?!? That LotR adaptation sounds amazing! I think the world is a poorer place for not having that. Imagine the possible memes and animated gifs.

Yeah, terraforming fantasies lost a lot of appeal to me when I learned this fact. I suppose if we can some day gain the ability to really mess with the core of the planet we might be able to swing something... Still, there is atmosphere on Mars. I have not looked into it too deeply, might it be possible to at least…

Yeah, Moon is probably a good example of realistic life on any inhospitable object (what word can you use to describe both Mars and the Moon?)

I still keep a blog, but I never wrote in it a whole lot to begin with. I noticed the resemblance of properly organized Twitter feeds to a mini blog. Now I have a hybrid approach; my Wordpress powered blog has my Twitter feed embedded in the side for lighter updates, while I still have the option to write longer form…

It is a touch big. I have actually had it for a while, and today is the first time I tried to plug it into my iPhone (with a bumper). It does not quite fit past the case. Works great for my iPad though, since I just have a smart cover on it and keep it in a sleeve.

I have 10 foot 30-pin cable from Monoprice. I bought it so I could charge my iPad in coffee shops without having to sit on the floor next to an outlet. They have cables in 3, 6 and 10 feet.

I feel like these data leaks are not necessarily getting more frequent, but they are getting more important. As we move more and more data and activity into "the cloud", the risk is rising substantially. Additionally, as more services require internet connectivity and authentication, there are more juicy targets our…

It would certainly make his commentary on the subject more credible.

I suppose it depends on your priorities. For me, the cross platform capability and heavy integration are valuable. I know it could be better for organizing PDF's, but I get by well enough.

Papers is fine, but if you are going to go the paid route, I recommend investigating Endnote. It has great MS Word integration and Libre Office (on Windows) and Pages (on Mac) support. It also runs on both Mac and Windows, which is a great benefit when you are sharing bits of your research library with other people.

It's because of the conditions that Verizon agreed to when they bought some spectrum for their 4g system from the government. I do not know if Sprint has any such conditions in place. If they do not, they can do whatever they want.

Dunno, if they can do well enough producing for Ubuntu, they might not care to. It is a lot of work to create and maintain a distro.

Except customization. I have an iPhone, and I like it more than any of the Android phones I have seen, but I sometimes envy some of the customization of Android as a platform. I have jailbroken my phone, which helps, but that is limited for its own reasons.

Haha, I was thinking the same thing as I wrote my response. I was considering a bit of the danger to future human explorers too. Like how we put things in Earth orbit indiscriminately, and now we have a cloud of junk to deal with. Might we some day be worried about running into old radioactive probes on other worlds?

The point I am getting at is that the quote does not claim that the technology is magic, or that people would consider it magic. The quote is indicating that said technology can not be distinguished from magic. A quick search for a definition of indistinguishable finds me this: "not able to be identified as different…