Holy shit! Me too, except I've decided I like it. It is a compelling story. It goes a bit hard on the scientific accuracy which can kind of interrupt the flow, though.

I find the most interesting part is the insight of modern Chinese commentary of recent Chinese history. I wasn't sure what popular sentiment was, or what criticism / critiques would be allowed to be published by the party.

That doesn't really have the same rigidity. There would be no guarantee for others that it would remain available to them as long as they adhere to those principles.

Said another way, a bad faith actor could create a patent and make it available to FOS developers, but then turn around and sell that patent to someone who will charge those same developers.

I suppose you could have a third legally binding document that stipulates the terms of use, but kinda wish it was just handled under the patent.

I'm very confused. The president can't know the composition of Congress during the campaign because all of the Reps are on the same ballot as the president. Are you saying prospective candidates should always say "If I'm elected and we have the house and Senate I will..." to cover their asses? I think most people understand those ramifications.

You think one imaginary number is crazy? Just wait till you learn about quaternions. One real number and 3 imaginary numbers forming a four dimensional coordinate system. It's the basis for quantum mechanics and most video game engines. Who thinks of this shit?

I honestly needed to hear this today, so thank you. I'm at work trying to work out someone else's uncommented code and have just been staring at it mumbling to myself. I'm new to the position so I'm anxious my new coworkers will think I'm just dicking around... This is the validation I needed. Thanks everyone!

It is a politically savvy and ethically correct move. Really nice when those line up.

But we can't get a database for firearms?

Can someone provide a summary on what this means? I thought there were malicious exploits in this. Why is it back up and the perpetrator unbanned?

There are many things that need change, but fixing the housing prices isn't complicated, it's just unpopular. You just need to take make speculating on housing as an asset very expensive. This will drive down the demand from non owner occupiers (businesses). It will also reduce the value of the largest asset most people own. People who invested so much into owning a home with the expectation that it will appreciate aren't going to support policies that do the opposite.

Wow, sharks @439mya, Polaris @70mya. They're more than 6 times older! This is NUTS!

Then you plead the 5th. Pretty sure that's exactly what it's intended for.

Ok, I see a lot of false info in here. EE chiming in here.

Minor efficiency improvements: consumer electronics, batteries, solar panels, CPUs/GPUs

Major efficiency improvements: power transmission, wireless power transmission, electric motors, high density electro-magnets (used in fusion, MRI, etc), 'traditional' energy generation techniques that spin a thing to produce electricity (wind, nuclear, hydro, gas, (even coal, but let's pretend coal doesn't exist)).

Outside of my expertise, but I'm speculating major improvements: wired and wireless data transmission (antenna tech)

The implications that excite me the most are mostly around transportation.

-Realistically, of existing technologies I think electric motors are the biggest winner with superconductors. For the most part, the size and power of electric motors are constrained by how to get the electrical waste heat out. With superconductors you don't have electrical waste heat. You can create incredibly small, powerful, efficient electric motors with super conductors. This means efficiency gains in so many of our big 'energy sinks' right now. Transportation, air conditioning, manufacturing... I mean it would be a largely unnoticed improvement to almost every aspect of our modern lives.

-Cars with close to 100% regenerative braking (superconductors+capacitors for temporary energy storage) You could stop at a red light and accelerate back to the same speed 'for net-zero energy'. THAT IS BANANAS! A current conventional gas car burns fuel for ~30% efficiency, the other 70% is waste heat. Then after you've done all that inefficient work to get moving you hit the brakes and USE FRICTION TO TURN YOUR MOMENTUM INTO MORE WASTE HEAT! Bugs the bajesus out of me! Superconductors would make it much more practical to recoup energy when stopping a vehicle.

Then you can get into cool new technologies:

-Mag-Lev trains would be super cool. I don't see a huge practical benefit since the mechanics of train wheels on rails are pretty efficient as is, but come on... levitating trains? so cool!

-Rail gun style space launch systems (unfortunately, this comes with rail gun style weapons too, sorry everybody!)

-Tokamak nuclear fusion reactors are currently constrained by the strength of the magnetic fields they can produce using electromagnets. The limiting factor is largely cooling for these electromagnets and the associated superconductors. Room temp superconductors allows for much more compact designs for the magnetic confinement infrastructure used in these facilities.

-You could make a friggin mag-lev skate park. Hoverboards! REAL FRIGGIN HOVERBOARDS could be produced!

-(I think) We can actually start talking about 'active support' structures. Buildings that would not be possible because of the compressive or tensile strength of known materials can be supplemented by active support through electromagnets!

-This removes probably the biggest constraint in electrical engineering and design. We will see amazing technology come out of this that none of us can predict.

EDIT (I'm just gonna keep adding these as they get mentioned elsewhere):

-Magnetic energy storage. Similar to how an electrical transformer works: You induce a current to flow which 'stores' the energy in a magnetic field. In the case of magnetic energy storage you just leave that current flowing. No resistance means it will flow indefinitely. You can then extract it directly or through interaction with the magnetic field.