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Vertical takeoff vehicle using batteries already here?

Lilium - Vertical takeoff vehicle
World's First All-Electric VTOL Jet Tested - Are Flying Cars Here?

Quick data:
Motor power: 324 kW
Range: 300 km
Top speed: 300 km/h
Planned release: year 2025

It's started by technical students from Technical University of Munich (Germany). And they use ESA business incubator facilities.

Seems like it might get some trouble if power fails because the front seems to lack passive lift power, ie wings.

Vatican outlaws gluten-free bread for Holy Communion

Transubstantiation is serious business.

One politician’s solution to the overdose problem: Let addicts die

As Opioid Overdoses Bleed City's Budget, Councilman Proposes Stopping Treatment

Let overdoses die? Ohio councilman stuns with his take on opioid abuse

At least 1 million homes in the USA have solar systems on their rooftops and their use together with local batteries is increasing, enabling homeowners the ability to collect energy and store it for later usage on-site. Enabling homeowners to cut their dependence on the electrical grid and their bills. This could be economically painful for utilities. A new McKinsey study predicts two outcomes 1) electrical grid cut off completely 2) primarly local energy collection and the electrical grid as a backup.

The cost of of collecting solar energy and store it on-site makes the incentive too small even for residents of sunny Arizona to cut the electrical grid off. But partial defection from the grid with 80-90% of the demand supplied on-site makes economic sense in 2020 and total defection makes sense around 2028

The prediction by McKinsey is that the electrical grid will be repurposed as an enormous, sophisticated backup. Where utilities only adds energy at those times when the on-site systems aren't collecting enough energy.

My comment: So far good enough. But then why not simple connect to neighbors directly for electrical power transfer and cutting the utilities out of the loop even for electrical fallback needs?
A electrical power mesh grid might need some interesting mathematical modeling though.

(As a side note, maybe this makes UPS for home use obsolete soon enough?)

Daniel Stenberg a Swedish Mozilla employee was denied entry at the airport ticket counter early Monday morning despite his visa waiver ESTA. The incident stirred fears among international tech workers, who fear they'll miss out on work and research opportunities in USA. Microsoft's chief legal officer Brad Smith, tweeted a legal assistance offer. Many commenters have suggested to apply for a standard visa despite it being a pain in the ass.
Daniel have also written the command-line tool curl.

Newly placed 10 Commandments statue at Ark. State Capitol destroyed, man arrested

According to CBS affiliate 5NEWS, Reed has a history of similar behavior, destroying a Ten Commandments monument in Oklahoma. He was charged with destruction of state property or improvements, indecent exposure, making threatening statements, reckless driving and operating a vehicle with a revoked license back in 2014.

In 2015, Tulsa World reported that Reed stated his psychotic break was inspired by a Dracula film and that Michael Jackson's spirit was living inside meat. He also believed he was "the incarnation of an occult leader" and attempted to contact "Lucifer's high priestess he called Gwyneth Paltrow."

It all makes sense now! Gwyn*th P*ltrow is working for the almighty S*tan! Her steam-cleaned v*gina enhances her powers as a SUCCubus!

Them liebruls will stoop to any low in order to deny G_d and bring about the end of the world! They'll destroy priceless monuments just like ISIS!

Michael Jackson's spirit was living inside meat.

But of course! MJ is the patron saint of grape juice and man meat.

Also at WaPost and NYT.

Are you ready to Praise Kek yet?

This is what some people really believe:

If EMdrive is real and scales with Q factor then we get almost Star Trek level Technology (or Stargate Atlantis, going by the picture)

An EM-Drive with a q factor of 3 billion would need required is 20 MWe for the 1 gee acceleration spacecraft. 20 MWe is more than any reactor ever orbited but well within known design parameters.

An EM-Drive with a q factor of 30 billion would need required is 2 MWe for the 1 gee acceleration spacecraft.

An EM-Drive with a q factor of 60 billion would need required is 1 MWe for the 1 gee acceleration spacecraft.

An EM-Drive with a q factor of 300 billion would need required is 200 KWe for the 1 gee acceleration spacecraft.

For 30 to 300 billion q factors the power levels for a 1000 ton vehicle drop to the level where, you could use solar power for Emdrive to counter gravity on earth. It would be virtual anti-gravity. Structures that would be possible would not just be flying cars or floating antigravity but flying cities.

Gee = G.

Even the millinewtons of thrust being measured currently are disputed.

I won't say that EmDrive won't kill thermodynamics, because the expansion of the universe is apparently accelerating. Maybe that is an energy source that is being tapped into by the magic thruster. In which case turning on enough EmDrives would save the Universe by preventing the Big Freeze/Rip.

Earth being unusually dry for a habitable world would be a Fermi Paradox soft landing

1. The Fermi Paradox is still a thing.
2. Many Earth-sized planets may be completely covered in water, with no surface land whatsoever.
3. If there are life forms on these planets, they would be unable to develop technologically even if they were intelligent. No metallurgy, no electromagnetic communications, no spacecraft.
4. We can land boats onto the water worlds and dominate the fishy lifeforms.

This movie kind of illustrates what can happen when AI gets the opportunity for power:
Colossus: The Forbin Project
It's a movie from 1970 but perhaps even more relevant now.

Danish minister of Science, Technology, Information and Higher Education Søren Pind drops his Facebook account with 42 320 "followers". He says, he can't accept a system that is setup with algorithms that ascribes him and tries to create further dependencies.

He wants to read more books longer comprehensive blogs and posts at a slow pace, not have fragmentation and haste.

Source: nordjyske.dk (via spyoogle translate service)