M$ should prevent all machines in Russia from receiving software patches for their machines. As a result, they'll all be much more vulnerable than usual within a week. And even more so the week after and so on.

Lightweight and stronger than steel. Right, when do we start building our planet's first space elevator?

To say that the island sank is to suggest that it was previously afloat, which in fact it was always standing on the seabed. It may be fair to say that it sank from view, but only that it did so due to erosion.

"Was Microsoft so big and powerful that it was invincible, at least long enough to come up with its next act?" Yes, it's called a monopoly, and now other big tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google are in a similar position. Because of their lack of competition, monopolies can survive mistakes that other companies can't. As a result, one way or another, consumers wind up paying more for less. A century ago companies like these had a better chance of being split up, but nowadays their influence on the US government is such that this seems less likely to happen. The age of the robber barons lasted for some 40 years; maybe more. How long will this period last?

Here's your answer: "Lies, it's all lies and fake news! You can't trust anybody except Trump and he says that's the way it is!"

Indeed, for those who want to live in some remote area, Starlink sounds like a fantastic and very affordable solution! My only question is what do its customers get for their money? Speed and latency seem to be acceptable, but what about addressing? Will customers all get an IPv4 /29 and and a native IPv6 /48, or a single static IPv4 address and an IPv6 /48, or a single static IPv4 address, or a single dynamic IPv4 address, or just a dynamic RFC-1918 address with carrier-grade NAT? Oh well, I guess even the latter would be better than nothing if living far away from it all, if only physically, is the main priority.

Indeed. The problem with high-pressure cryogenic fuel storage is what ultimately killed the VentureStar project in 2001. Going green is a big problem for airline manufacturers: they might do better to instead invest in the development of sold-state batteries that are energy-dense enough for their needs. Also, I remember that at some point Richard Branson started investing the development of green fuels for his fleet: I think that project is probably still ongoing, but turning it into a production system that can compete with fossil fuel prices is something else entirely.

2035? That's 15 years from now! This is just a stupid concept that no one should take seriously; something to make us think that they really do want to go green some day. They're like the auto industry, only without a Tesla-like competitor: they only way they will ever go green is if governments regulate their asses and drag them into that era kicking and screaming.

Many electric cars are like rolling laptops and Tesla is a prime example of this. While their batteries are meant to last half a million miles and their electric motors a million, what about simply lasting a few decades with or without all those miles?

I had reserved a Tesla Model 3 in 2016, but when I was eventually offered one for a lot more than I had hoped, I had to reevaluate. It seems to me that Tesla's strategy is really to set up an automated taxi fleet capable of making hundreds of thousands of miles per automobile with each car lasting about ten years. After that I see these cars quickly becoming obsolete because it will no longer be possible to update the software and perhaps even the navigation data.

I emailed Tesla about this a number of times, but got no response. So then I called them and they quickly admitted that this was the case. It's simply a trade-off when cars are automated to this degree. They simply can't afford to keep developing new computers for all of their older models as the years roll by.

This is an issue for all new cars today that rely on complex software packages that need to be updated regularly. Yet, if this is what all cars will soon be like, then I think I'll just pass for the time being and wait for a subscription service that will allow me to make use of some local automated fleet for a much lower annual cost.

My impression: Wow! It felt like a very powerful, high-tech, magic carpet. So smooth. Regardless of whether you think these machines are environmentally friendly or not, this is obviously the future of automotive technology.

I reserved a Model 3 in 2016, but in the end I didn't buy one, mostly because it turned out to be a lot more expensive than we were initially led to believe. At first I was crazy for it, especially after the test drive, but eventually I had to admit to myself that spending over $50-60K on a vehicle that I would likely drive less than 10.000 km a year (my daily commute via public transport is super convenient) was just too over the top.

Another thing to remember is that these cars, like any other mass-produced vehicles, are consumable products that only depreciate in value, so you'd better make good use of it, or else it will really just be a super-expensive hobby that would be wiser for you to avoid.

Many Tesla fans believe that these cars hold there value better than other vehicles, and for now they may be correct. However, I suspect that what will eventually cause the value of cars like these to plummet will be the need to replace their computers. It looks like the chassis, the batteries and the motors will last much longer, but will it be possible for Tesla owners to replace (or even better: upgrade) the on-board computers after 10-15 years for a reasonable price? If not, these these cars may end up with a shorter lifespan than most other vehicles on the road. Let's hope Tesla eventually comes up with a solution.

Obviously, it would be better if everyone could just go to school, study whatever they wanted for however long they desired and then afterwards always be able to find job waiting for them somewhere, preferably not too far away. Unfortunately, things just don't work that way in a market economy.

As the world economy continues to develop and an ever increasing number and types of jobs are automated, governments do not seem to be making any plans for what to do with the legions of unemployed that will inevitably result from this trend. The corporations are only investing in all of this automation because their primary responsibility is always to make more money, in this case by saving money. Unfortunately, these kind of investments will eventually cause consumer spending to fall and thus their profits to do the same. Like with the production of greenhouse gasses, perhaps there is a point of balance, but without some kind of global economic incentive to make them hone in on it naturally, I fear it will become another crucial point in history that will pass without any notice.

Therefore, unless we want to accept a Luddite revolution of some kind, possibly triggering a global economic collapse, I figure that taxing the corporations and introducing a universal basic income (UBI) is the only option that governments have open to them. And it should be quite a reasonable income as well: one that will only allow people to afford the barest of necessities is not going to help the corporations either.

In my view of the future, education would always be free and the UBI would afford everyone a comfortable life. For those wanting to lead more luxurious lifestyles, however, there would be no choice but to be smarter (possibly by investing wisely) and/or to study harder for longer. Those lucky enough in the job market would then have the privilege of working something like 4x6 hours a week on some really cool project, or just taking pride in doing something that's essential to everyone, but which is not (yet) possible to automate. Or they could work in a restaurant, or play in a band, or write books, or teach: whatever. Some of these people may end up earning tens of times more than anyone else, but not hundreds or thousands of times more like we often see today -- the kind of inequality that would make such a post-scarcity economy impossible.

Because that's also what the pontiff is asking of us.

On the one hand, when feeling less judgmental I think it can be a wise approach. It seems normal that so many people always want to keep things the way they are. Adapting to change is not as easy for some as it is for others and one could argue that the more progressive types sometimes need to be more tolerant and patient towards the less adaptable conservative types, many of whom are also religious.

On the other hand, when those same conservative, religious types maintain arbitrary, strange, discriminatory and often cruel beliefs that they strongly feel should also be respected by everyone else, then I become less tolerant of them. The Pope needs to recognize that there are limits to what can be expected even from peaceful, civilized non-believers.

Nope.

Interesting. That would explain part of its appeal. I'm a long-time Debian user who happens to have obtained an RHCE recently. RHEL left me with many positive impressions, but there's much that I have yet to learn about it.

Well, I've seen comments from RHEL admins who would disagree with that statement (I believe here on Slashdot).

For me, Linux is about control. That's the great thing about Linux, and the Unix philosophy in general: it's resulted in an incredibly stable system that at the same time is possible to tune in a very fine-grained manner. That's why I like Debian. The systems that I've been building and maintaining with it over the years just keep getting more complex. My favorite ones are usually the cheapest ones: built on a shoe-string budget, but running everything including the kitchen sink. Importantly, I've managed to get it all to boot up and behave just the way I want precisely because of the extent to which I can control sysvinit, cron, rsyslog, udev, fstab, networking, and so on. I've accomplished much that way and so it's worth a lot to me.

Apparently, systemd replaces all that and more with a single monolithic structure, which seems more akin to the Windows way of doing things. It's main selling point appears to be boot-up speed, and while I can understand how laptop users (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc.) would appreciate to that, IMO the cost that we must all pay for that extra speed is just too high. Don't get me wrong: I'm all for improving the Linux boot process, but not at any cost. I can appreciate the idea that sometimes it's necessary to take the bull by the horns, but in this case I think an incremental approach is still the better way.

As we all know, it's still very expensive to put a kilo into low Earth orbit, so sending a kilo to Mars will only be that much more expensive. Therefore, even as a guy, the line of reasoning seems plenty reasonable to me. Ideally, we would put the crew in stasis while en route, but in lieu of that, having a crew that will not have to take nearly as much food with them makes a lot of sense. Besides, including men in the mission "just because they can lift heavier things" would be tantamount to admitting our inability to plan ahead and solve certain technical problems. Putting boots on Mars is going to be hard enough as it is, so clinging needlessly to old ideas and refusing to think outside of the box will not get us there any sooner.

Having used it almost exclusively since 2001, I've always regarded Debian as a distro for more tech-savvy and conservative types -- system administrators, for example. However, their recent move towards systemd seems very unlike them and, as a professional sysadmin, this worries me. Perhaps it's what we can expect, every once in a while at least, from a bunch of people who are not system administrators.

Luckily, they seems to be having second thoughts about the matter and this could be an opportunity for them. Their main competitor, which IMO is Red Hat, have already committed to systemd, which I'm not happy about either and find just as surprising. Therefore, since so many people have expressed their misgivings about it, if Debian were to reverse their earlier decision and go back to sysvinit (or at least make systemd optional), then I think we could see many sysadmins converting their RHEL systems to Debian jessie.