Hey Aston, good to see you on here. I agree this is not how Flux/POWDER operates, I do not see Alex going up the hill and placing equipment without approval...
Funny you mention IRC in a Winamp thread, one of the devs (Tag, Tag's Trance Trip) from winamp/nullsoft was active in a IRC that we used to stream/DJ on Winamp. At one point Winamp was developing a music streaming store/service way before Apple, Google, and the rest came along... some great memories of modifying cable modems to unlock more upload capability
I am amazed how quickly and how many images we get from another planet....
For those that might not know, http://www.curiosityrover.com is a great site for the image feed, if you scroll down you can see the CHEMCAM images of the most recent drilled holes.
There are some out there, but not at the commercial/industrial level. Like you said, higher risk along with added shipping cost keeps them out of the mainstream. Also the need for lightweight UPS systems for servers is pretty low. One bad thing if a lead battery is involved in a fire is the spreading of lead contamination, that's not cheap to clean up, but it's low probability.
I've seen an iPad that acted completely normal despite the case separating due to oxygen expansion while under warranty. Worst part, the owner had to get rid of it since she was on vacation where a Apple store didn't exist.
Since you consider it a core product, what do you estimate the portion of Facebook's revenue comes from this core product in relation to the billions they receive elsewhere.
Have you personally dealt with receiving commodities like gold from CME group or something? My understanding is it is not simple at all. But would love to hear a person's first hand experience.
