That's why the author proposes a culture change; obviously you're not going the change anything by being the only parent to follow his advise. Thankfully, parents and educators are becoming more aware of the negative effects of cell phones on kids, and this article hopefully will add a little more fuel to that fire.

A little while ago cell phones were banned from primary schools here in the Netherlands. Since the start of this year, they are banned from high school classrooms as well; schools can choose how to implement this (for instance: let the kids keep their phones in their lockers, and allow use during breaks). Not a complete break with cell phones, but it's an important start.

No. I do not. The polar deserts are becoming valuable real estate. I don't need to persuade anyone of anything. I need to secure property rights, build fences and buy guns to protect my claim from those who clued in late. I'm really just making conversation.

The perceived value should be irrelevant. If it was proven that platform P was being used by the Chinese government for nefarious purposes, are you saying we should do nothing If it just so happened to be the case that platform P was perceived to be extremely valuable by its users?

⦠I strongly oppose a ban on the principle that it amounts to a ⦠lot of Americans having their free speech rights being stifled.

Even though I think the alleged threat is way overblown (what, exactly, would the Chinese government do with all the data that Johnny watches videos on underwater checkers matches), I don't buy the 1st amendment argument since, as you noted, there are alternatives.

Few rights are absolute. For example, just because the 2nd amendment says you can bear arms (and never specifically mentions guns) doesn't mean you can legally own a rocket launcher. There are also plenty of laws that implement "time and manner" restrictions that have survived constitutional scrutiny. For another example, just because you can rant on a street corner doesn't mean you can do so with a megaphone at 3am. So a ban would say that you can express yourself online all you want, just not with TikTok.

Maybe. Before we had Office 365, Office did not need any selling point besides the fact that everyone else was using it. And before we had Office 365, we often had document management systems that were actually any good*, and allowed easy sharing and managing access to documents. But it seems we have largely forgotten about those**

*) Sharepoint is definitely not one of them, I'd hesitate to call it a document management system of any quality.
**) Thanks to Sharepoint.

Wait "federal" ? Does this mean you need to file state taxes separately!?

Yes, but you've always had to do that. They are (and always have been) two separate sets of forms sent to different addresses. The fact that you may have used some service or accountant in the past who filed your federal and state taxes on your behalf is just part of the convenience of the service they offer.

LibreOffice is there for the using. And no we don't need this cloud crap.

Absolutely. That is not "a problem", that is its purpose. They've floated similar ideas in the EU with regards to free speech, and it is the same approach they have taking with banks being tasked to police illicit transactions.

You are creating poverty for no good reason.

You are wrong. There is no evidence to support the assertion that climate change from fossil fuels is rendering the planet less hospitable. If you research the Paleocene Eocine Thermal Maximum, you will see that the opposite is true.

... we have heavy lift rockets bringing mass to orbit at a greater rate than any time in history ...

The rate at which this happens is irrelevant to the point of making spacecraft travel faster after getting out of Earth's gravity well.

... and more efficient rockets on the cusp of being brought to use, with next generations planned for the future ...

I suggest you read the answers to this question.

Today's technology likely wouldn't make any difference in terms of the spacecraft's speed. After any spacecraft either gets into orbit or places it on a trajectory away from the earth, it simply coasts at whatever speed its engines got it to after they shut off. To make it go faster, it would have to keep burning fuel to accelerate and rocket fuel is extremely expensive to launch because it's heavy. There's also diminishing returns because carrying more and more fuel to go faster eventually would make the spacecraft too heavy to launch.

Voyager got its speed boosts from gravitational assists by slingshotting around the planets it visited along the way.

Sounds like it merely found a bunch of pro-choice protest posters, and perhaps mixed them up a bit.
(And before anyone starts: I'm very much pro-choice)

If you use proprietary code or software that infringes on something, worst case is that you have to pull the software and find a replacement; the person who sold you the software is liable for the infringement. If you use FOSS however, the buck stops with you. That's the value of companies who sell you FOSS software (by charging you for support and maintenance): they provide a legal shield as well.

FTFA (emphasis mine):

The man entered and tried to operate a Waymo vehicle ...

That aside, attempted thefts like this will probably keep happening because there are plenty of people too stupid for it to have occurred to them that Waymo (and every other autonomous car manufacturer) would have taken attempted theft into consideration and implemented ways to thwart it.