Hyperborian

> ...and is more energy efficient per calorie consumed too.

I've read studies in the past that found entirely the opposite, and by a very large margin. If I remember correctly, I believe that raising chickens for meat was many times more efficient, and among common meat livestock cows were the worst.

Are you sure you've got it right?

> Are some angles harder to block than others?

As a matter of fact, yes.

Satellite dishes have, by their very nature, a narrow "beam width" of reception. That's so that they can pick up the weak signals coming from satellites (which, having limited sources of power out in space, can't produce as strong a signal as terrestrial broadcasts), and it's why they have to be carefully pointed in order to receive that signal.

In order to jam a signal and prevent someone from receiving it, you have to overpower it by aiming a signal of your own on the same frequency at their antenna. Since satellite dishes have such narrow reception beams, though, that means in order to jam them you need to get your signal out in front of the dish, so you can aim it directly in. If the dishes are pointed to the side, at a satellite near the horizon, that's not so hard to do. You just need to get your jamming transmitter up on a tower in the way and Bob's your uncle.

If those dishes are pointed straight up, on the other hand... well, there's not much you can do without a capable space program. Iran is not exactly known for their extensive space program. :)

That world doesn't need to be created, it's the world we have now.

I believe the implication is that these would be placed in locations that have free wifi available, without necessarily having permission to do so.

> Or maybe they would have been scared completely senseless seeing tons of steel being piloted by an idiot with no training at speeds they didn't even know were possible for humans to achieve.

In light of the second amendment, that seems unlikely.

> That still demonstrates there's a significant problem.

Of course, but it's a different problem with a different solution. Isn't that important to know?

I'm pretty sure that a high school teacher would not be considered a "public figure" in the US.

> “If you have a good book, price isn’t an issue.”

Because if it's that good, it will show up on the various pirating sites quickly.

There is a new ceiling on media prices, books included, and these companies are just going to keep loosing money until they adjust their pricing to the new reality.

Interesting. Reminds me of CJDNS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cjdns

If I'm reading the linked projections correctly, even the worst predicitions put us at less then three minutes off from the earths rotation by the year 2100, and it will take somewhere in the area a thousand years to be off by an hour.

I'll be frank: if we haven't progressed to the point that those offsets generally don't matter by those points in time, we've probably already failed as a species.

I say we drop leap seconds.

> ...and then conclude that what you are looking at is tight-knit enough to be called a culture.

There is no such qulaificiation on what constitutes a culture. You're making the common mistake of thinking that "culture" reffers to some sort of exclusive club, as though you're either in one or another.

Of course there is a European culture, as well as German, French, Britsh, and other national cultures, as well as local city, town, neighborhood, and even unique internal family cultures. It all overlaps for each of us in our own way.

There is almost certainly a human culture as well, we just lack sufficient comparisons to define it properly at the moment.