A "No, it's not April the 1st" moment...

Price of U.S. Postage Stamp Going Down 2 Cents

My biggest surprise though is that the new price will be 47c. Compare with this headline...

Just a cooincidence, of course

Today I heard a noise outside and on investigating I discovered a technician playing with the fiber box for this block of flats. I've not bothered to connect to fiber yet, but others in the flats have and it seems their internet had died.

And then a little while later I read this...

http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/04/verizons-fiber-is-the-only-fix-program-upgrades-old-copper-lines/#p3

I know fiber will be faster, but I'm not sure it'll be more reliable for me as I can't even remember the last time I lost my connection, but I'm sure it's more than a couple of years back now.

So when I ask about connecting to fiber I'll also be asking if I'll still be able to use copper as a backup for when it's not working.

Now they're talking...

From here...

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/breakthrough-starshot-announces-plans-to-send-ship-to-alpha-centauri/

"The small spacecraft will be equipped with a light sail, and a phased array of lasers in the 100GW range will provide the sail with enough push to get the craft moving at roughly 20 percent the speed of light in just a matter of minutes."

That's quite impressive acceleration! The question of how they'd power phoning home wasn't explained though. But after the 20-year trip, adding a lot of redundancy to the bits of data being sent back may be one way, even if it takes a year for one picture to be sent.

This is a yah! moment, anyway. It's over 40 years since we went to the moon, so a wait of less than that to reach the stars is pretty cool. I've certainly the patience for it!

Later: Details, including communications, to be found here...

http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Challenges/3