Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, is making climate a central plank in his political platform, perhaps ahead of a 2020 presidential run.

Source: Washington State Is Set to Vote on a Carbon Tax. For the Governor, It’s a Gamble. – The New York Times

a simple rule of thumb is that a signal using optical fiber for communication will travel at around 200,000 kilometers per second.

Source: Optical fiber – Wikipedia

I didn’t know fiber was that much slower than vacuum. Apparently this is significant to HFT where they increasingly favor microwave links.

Edit: moar wikipedia: fiber is faster than cat 5e or 10base2 “thin” coax but slower than cat 7 or 10base5 “thick” coax.

Let private space entrepreneurs work on cutting costs: Our view

Source: Get NASA out of the rocket business

What’s noteworthy about this is it made it to the USA Today op-ed page, not some wonk blog.

Source: VW’s first electric bus begins service in mid-March