astebbin

Blind nationalist attitudes like those in the Crimea, Eastern Ukraine, and Moscow?

The classic KGB tactic "accuse the enemy of exactly what you are doing" is all too transparent here.

If anything, that makes me worried that Russia cannot afford to properly maintain and secure their nuclear arsenal.

Indeed. For example, when you push into the Ukraine and annex Crimea via military occupation.

> Look at south korea. Plenty of military, no brain.

I'm genuinely curious - what did you mean by this?

As a longtime Steam customer, I've also grown fed up with what I perceive as Valve's attitude of complacency. There are numerous GUI bugs and usability annoyances on Steam for Windows that have long gone unaddressed - for instance, the lack of a "Confirm Order" progress spinner on the store checkout page, or the mobile app's inability to correctly load the Steam market "Confirmations" view on first try (always succeeds on retry, which I _always_ have to do manually). As an outsider, I imagine Valve's flat-org developers sitting fat and happy on their pile of Monopoly money, with little incentive to improve their current product so long as it keeps printing money. In this frame of mind, I'm happy about Twitch's announcement as it means Valve could finally see some real competition.

This message was an April Fool's joke:

https://www.parple.org/will.partain/haskerl/hudak-2.html

To make my own position clear - if their alliance with China does crumble, and if the nuclear danger can be mitigated, I would like to see regime change in North Korea. I'm not one for military adventurism; however, I see the current situation there as more similar to the Rwandan Genocide than the setup to the 2003 Iraq invasion.

A peaceful, East Germany-style transition would be preferable, but I also think it's possible that an invasion to free the current generation of North Koreans could do more good than letting them die under another Kim's boot. Millions live there today in deprivation and fear, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of North Koreans reportedly living (and dying, via torture and brutal execution) in Nazi-style concentration camps. Needless to say, a successful reunification of the Korean peninsula would benefit future generations of North Koreans as well.

If you're curious, here are the books which formed my impression on the subject:

"Without You, There Is No Us," https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JTC9QBO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

"The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why it Matters," https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EWETZW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

"Dear Leader: My Escape from North Korea," https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IBYRQ18/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

It looks like those numbers are hard to quantify, since South Korea's expenditures include e.g. salaries for Korean workers at US bases and the provision of non-cash resources and services:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-trump-allies-20160930-sn...

I suppose if the government in Seoul no longer felt it was worth the cost, they could stop paying and ask the Americans to leave.

EDIT: Oh yeah, why did you put "protection" in quotes? That's exactly what it is. The US doesn't pay North Korea to break the South's windows, if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor.

Ah, I understand now. Thanks for clarifying.

In this light, I'll note that Bush the elder removed US all nuclear arms from the Korea peninsula in 1991 (although Pyongyang's certainly still in range of American missiles and bombers):

http://thediplomat.com/2013/03/not-a-good-idea-american-nuke...

Overall, my impression is that North Korea fears a conventional ROK/US invasion much more than a nuclear exchange scenario, and that this fear (rather than of American nuclear artillery, missiles, etc) has been the primary motivation behind their nuclear arms development.

I don't think a conventional US invasion is likely, hence my comment. I also don't think the situation would be different if NK didn't have a nuclear arms program, given their alliance (or subordinate relationship?) with China.

What do you mean to imply? Do you refer to a specific incident in 1958? Or, do you blame US military aggression for the North's current nuclear program? Perhaps if North Korea hadn't invaded the South in 1948, there would be no need for a militarized border and heavy US defensive presence.

Rather than a vanguard invasion force, I've read that the 28,500 US military personnel in Korea today exist as a sort of political tripwire. There aren't enough of them to hold the line, let alone successfully invade the North, but their deaths in the event of a conflict would commit the US to the fight.

Thread provides a network, but no application-level semantics. In other words, Thread is to 802.15.4 as WiFi is to 802.11. Once you've set up a Thread network, you still need an application layer like CoAP or Weave to control your connected devices.

Google Weave, aka libiota, is targeted at lower-capability MCUs like the Marvell MW302 with its 512kB of RAM:

https://developers.google.com/weave/guides/overview/what-is-...

Based on these two links (including the parent), it wouldn't surprise me if a Google Weave API was soon exposed on Android Things.

Does the technology exist which could accelerate a nanoship to "one-fifth the speed of light", or perhaps more importantly, course-correct and slow it down as it nears its destination?

Indeed, early cruise missiles used terrain-following radar before GPS was available:

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

Ex-DARPA gal, actually:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_E._Dugan

I don't know why you've been downvoted, as you're absolutely correct. A defective thermostat can easily shorten the lifetime of your HVAC system. If your furnace itself is already defective, a buggy thermostat could even cause it to overheat and start a house fire.

EDIT: to those who mention the hobbyist scene, consider that such projects are not necessarily trivial, and that getting it wrong remains potentially catastrophic. I believe the parent's point still stands.

From The Verge, "Nest says it may offer 'compensation' to Revolv users for disabling smart home hub:"

http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/5/11374358/nest-revolv-smart-...