Once AI starts going on an unfettered rampage, we can scorch the sky so there's no sunlight for them to power up.

A perfect plan indeed.

Every time I go past the In-n-Out Burger and see 40-50 cars lined up to talk into a scratchy intercom and wait half an hour to get food, I think how much more convenient it would be if all of those people could just park their car wherever they wanted (or even not have to get into their car at all), enter their order into an app on their phone, and have their food lowered down to them by a drone.

There'd be no more congestion issues, no need to spend 30 minutes idling in a slowly-advancing car lineup, and no need to repeat your order three times so a teenager can still get it wrong. You might have to deal with gangs of crows trying to intercept your order mid-delivery, though.

The conservation laws are statistical, at least to a degree. Local apparent violations can be OK, provided the system as a whole absolutely complies.

There's no question that if the claim was as appears that the conservation laws would be violated system-wide, which is a big no-no.

So we need to look for alternative explanations.

The most obvious one is that the results aren't being honestly presented, that there's so much wishful thinking that the researchers are forcing the facts to fit their theory. (A tendency so well known, that it's even been used as the basis for fictional detectives.)

Never trust results that are issued in a PR statement before a paper. But these days, it's increasingly concerning that you can't trust the journals.

The next possibility is an unconsidered source of propulsion. At the top of the atmosphere, there are a few candidates, but whether they'd impart enough energy is unclear to me.

The third possibility is that the rocket imparted more energy than considered, so the initial velocity was incorrectly given.

The fourth possibility is that Earth's gravity (which is non-uniform) is lower than given in the calculations, so the acceleration calculations are off.

When dealing with tiny quantities that can be swamped by experimental error, then you need to determine if it has been. At least, after you've determined there's a quantity to examine.

I want to know what distros of Linux ACTUALLY are stable enough, and intuitive enough to have the non-technical-savvy (aka normal/average) person use it without being frustrated?/

Linux Mint. It's essentially a Windows configuration. Same right-click menu systems (better than Windows 11), same start menu system (which you can see). If the average person who futzes around with Windows can't run Linux Mint, they're being deliberately obtuse. Or they're stupid.

Or removed "people" they had on employers payrolls who mysteriously returned to India when an audit was done?

I don't know about real Macs, but I have a Hackintosh that's ... um, OSX 10.8, on a midrange i7 with 8GB RAM and a fast SSD, and even doing nothing much (file manager, system settings and the like, no browser) it was sluggish to occasionally painful. Gave the system 32GB and suddenly it was much better.

If a version of OSX however-many-years-old is that bad with 8GB, I can't imagine current-OSX being pleasant.

My wife - who tends to always forget her password - has a windows 11 laptop.

She didn't write it down? That was too difficult for someone who always forgets their password?

Without profit driven, you end up with what LA has: 5 Billion dollars missing in various "help the homeless" scan non profits.

Or three bankrupt casinos ("The money I took out of there was incredible."), failing golf courses, a failed airline, a failed "university", and other businesses which never turned a profit. It's almost as if the point was not to generate a profit, but scam people out of their money.

If he were of full cognitive ability, he would be nagging you about getting a Mac.

Let's say in the next 100 years the Pacific Ocean rises 1 inch. At the same time Shanghai, which is on the coast, sinks 1 foot. That is 13 inches of change. If the city is only a few feet above sea level, that one foot makes a huge difference when it comes to drain water runoff, sewage dispersion, tunnels, etc.

For reference, Shanghai has sunk 3 meters in the past 100 years.

But what tempts you? The salty snack?

I think not. Your's is a sweet tooth.

You will always return to your Dark Master.

The cocoa bean!

speaks to the 'tude of the Linux community?

Go ahead. Mark me Troll. Make my day.

pretty much.

I really hope it is not a "reddit" filter. While there is merit to promoting discussions, reddit's main utility is that many topics are only discussed there. Where there is a choice, reddit is usually bottom of the barrel.

Read that part again. It's not that the school costs that much, it's that the finance charges on these "loans" could pile up over time. Just like any loan which isn't paid off and interest continues to accrue.

Why do you think so many people owe more on their student/medical loan than the original value of the loan? They didn't pay enough of it off fast enough so the interest kept adding to their total loan cost.