Deleted. Misunderstood your point on first-read

I think people are more used to freemium than acually lower prices. I’m really glad they didn’t do the ‘energy bar’ on a timer, for which you either have to pay or watch ads to play the next level. I hate that. The truth is that people fork over a hell of a lot more money for those types of games than $10. But I…

I actually found it pretty entertaining for a mobile game. And I hear most people complaining about the 9.99 price, which I think is kind of a ridiculous complaint for a Mario game on day one (and the first on a non-Nintendo platform at that), even a mobile one. While I was happy they let people demo a few levels…

No, they couldn’t. France is part of NATO. We have a treaty. We are still engaged in a quasi-military conflict in Korea (armistice), and in any case are there with the permission of S. Korea.

We actually have a lot of economic leverage against China. This idea that because they “make our stuff” that we should never oppose them is absurd and dangerous. Their economy relies on us, even more than ours does on them. We can use that to our advantage.

Yes and no. It’s not, “no harm no foul.” They’re harassing us, and the rest of the world, in the South China Sea. That’s a lot of harm and a lot of foul. It’s international waters, and yet they are militarizing man-made islands. They have seemingly convinced the Philippino President to accede to their claims.

Russian hackers tried to penetrate the computer networks of the Republican National Committee, using the same techniques that allowed them to infiltrate its Democratic counterpart, according to U.S. officials who have been briefed on the attempted intrusion.

“Being more careful in the future” seems to me to primarily mean not putting anything sensitive in emails, and securing sensitive data in general.

As it relates to the hacks, the proposition that we should reverse or redo the undoubtedly legitimate election because of it is absurd. All reasonable people agree the votes themselves were counted for the most part properly, and that there has been no hack of the election infrastructure.

Good to know. And look, like I said above, if they built an offshore wind farm that can withstand a Cat 3 impact, it seems like a marvel of engineering to me, having actually been in a couple. And if newer designs are cost-effective off the coast in a particular location, I’m all for it. However, I think people need…

People who have studied the issue have come to a different conclusion.

I’m not sure how far out the wind farms were. Tsunamis actually have little impact in open ocean. There would have been a strong current, and that’s about it.

“Superstorm sandy” was not close to a major hurricane at landfall. They came up with ‘Superstorm’ so that when people heard it lost tropical characteristics, they wouldn’t stop preparations. It has no meteorological meaning, and in fact have given people in the NE a false sense of what areas impacted by extremely…

Sandy was not anything close to a major hurricane when it made landfall in the US.

I’m aware of that, but if you have actually been in the eyewall of a major hurricane (not in one that was once a major hurricane, and not in the outer parts of the storm; actually in the wind field greater than 115 mph), you would know that this does not provide much protection. While the direction of the wind is, for…

No, they can’t. Not even close. In any event in which winds are particularly strong, turbines are essentially disabled. They can’t even come close to taking that kind of pressure

I’m curious how these things will hold up in a major hurricane event. While rare at that latitude, it’s not by any means impossible, which it virutally is at the cited European locations

With all respect, I just looked it up to be absolutely sure (and I already pretty much was), and I had it right. Look into “time dilation near the event horizon” and there are plenty of explanations. And yes, Hawking did approach the event horizon time dilation issue as one of the reasons for proposing his recent…

That can’t be right. It would be from the perspective of a distant observor, watching a star falling towards a black hole, that you would see the star appear to slow and eventually stop as it gets to the event horizon.

That’s interesting. So I take it most pictures depicting black holes (as in the header here) are grossly wrong. They often show an event horizon, with the immediate surroundings being extremely bright. But based on what you said, it should be more of a gradient, slowly fading red then to black.