Poor choice of name. When humans set foot on Valinor their entire civilization was destroyed in a cataclysm. Why do nerds always pick the most cringe names?

That's overly specific. How about "can, in principle, be at least as effective as a photon drive". I don't think one can really rule out one that's a bit more effective, even if I've no idea how one would make such a thing. (I believe that a photon drive has theoretic limits on it's efficiency that are a bit more stringent than the more general limits...but there might be some way of generating light that got around those limits...so perhaps "can't be any more efficient that a totally ideally optimal photon drive".)

Even so, I'm not sure. If it's something that can't ever return, most of the arguments about the maximum efficiency fail because there's no way of performing the measurements.

Also there are these cute arguments about drives that essentially require the mass of Jupiter (or more) to distort space-time. Some of those seem to be valid arguments for a drive without a reaction mass. They are just essentially impossible to build.

That said, perhaps these extreme devices...things involving zero point energy, FTL drives, reactionless drives, etc. are really just pointing out a place where the theories are wrong. None of these devices are actually buildable, so nobody can test them, as they all require some form or other of unobtainium. (Constructs with negative mass, portable masses heavier than Jupiter, etc.) I still remember "Rotating cylinders and a global causality violation", even though the plot of the story was a bit ... acausal. (The story doesn't seem to have any on-line references, but *it* was a reference to https://www.franktipler.com/ti... )

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.

An inalienable right is one that "is not transferable or that is impossible to take away"

It appears that the EU has recognized you right to consent to whatever meta is doing as inalienable.

Not every right to say "no" by withholding consent is an inalienable right. However f-ing is an example of something that is.

You can pay someone so they will let you f- them. But you still need their ongoing affirmative consent the whole time.
If they say stop or they lose the ability to maintain affirmative consent (like they pass out or freak out) you must immediately stop f-ing them.

Meta is the same. They see you as a prostitute and they have decided that your €250/year is actually theirs.

They will pay you "their" €250/yr by letting you keep "their" money. To them that means you have consented to them f-ing you.
But it doesn't matter. Whether or not someone pays you, they still need your consent the whole time they're f-ing you.

More to the point, if they don't collect personally identifiable information, how do they know that you've paid.

Well, this summary is based on a story from someone quoting a story in The Guardian. Not the best way to get accurate news on science.

That's an extreme formulation. It does imply that certain efficiencies would be equivalent to perpetual motion, but if the amount of energy required were sufficient to offset the gain in relativistic mass & potential energy I don't believe the argument fails. And it might be able to use half that energy, as the contradiction doesn't occur until it returns to the origin. And there's no thermodynamic reason that staying stable in a gravitational field should require any energy. (Anything in orbit is an example of that.)

I don't believe that this device will work, but I believe that your argument doesn't work either.

No, Google was kicked out of the country and blocked. That was after the color revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and Google was going to do one in china, too. Because of free speech. Google of all companies! A staunch defender of free speech! But they went evil despite don't be evil being their company motto and now they're the world's leading purveyor of censorship. For the same reason China was: it's a threat to government power. Sad!

It's not a term for which there is a "generally accepted" definition. It's slang, which is widely variable between sub-populations.

The general idea of "drone" is usually someone who's useless.
The general idea of "suit" is someone who dresses excessively formally.
These are both judgements based on the perceptions of the one doing the describing.

I have Frontier at home. It is actually fast. My Ethernet-connected computers register both upload and download speeds close to 1Gbps.

But, just about every evening, or night, it goes down for 1 to 5 minutes. Strangely, the router also seems to shut off the WiFi at this time, which means that some connections within my LAN fail.

I did not experience these dropped connections with Comcast. Comcast's upload speeds were utter crap, but the connection typically stayed up for many months.

... they don't mean "Microsoft Account".

I was setting up a new laptop for a colleague. We have Office 365 (or whatever it's called today) for company email, etc.., but my work account was not accepted. My work email is clearly what I would call a "Microsoft Account", but apparently Microsoft doesn't. I assume that Microsoft doesn't allow the use of this account because they would really prefer us to use the [expensive] Azure AD, or whatever.

I was able to set up local accounts after trying "a@a.com" (rejected) and "f*ckyou@f*ckyou.com" (rejected, but allowed me to proceed to to setting up a local account.)

If you can't read the article, read the summary at least before posting:

They tied the bill to a MASSIVE Ukraine/Israel funding bill.

If you think of it as a missile, you've also got a different idea than what I'm talking about. It's sort of a cross between a missile and a fighter that is designed to work in swarms, run by a "home base" that could be a large truck for small swarms of short distance versions. Imagine *highly* souped up model airplanes that are designed to act like missiles, if called upon. Long distance versions would probably always be more ammunition than craft (sort of like cruise missiles) for cost reasons, but shorter range versions would be expected to be refuel-able, and reusable unless the particular craft was used for an attack.
FWIW, I expect most of them to be relatively short-range, but too fast for the quad-copter design to work. Perhaps one model could be designed for "site defense".

I don't expect swarms to use the same form factor as a fighter. Really I expect them to be a cross between a fighter and a missile. No guns on board, and no missiles on board. Yes, fly like a plane, and land safely back home if you can, but also the attack mode is to crash into the target (or get close enough, and explode). Size will (and design details) will be dependent on desired range and speed.

As a result, each individual craft will be a LOT cheaper than current fighters. But a swarm may well be even more expensive. (Depending on swarm size and desired range and speed.)