Yes, yes... and I took care already not to call it "massive quantities"...

That it is the easiest explanation, doesn't mean it's the correct explanation, or that us non-believers so to say would support one of the other theories.

To me it's indeed very much a kludge, it seems to work, but I have the strong feeling that there is something else at play. Just no idea what that something else could possibly be.

Smashing two galaxies together is not that easy :)

The thing that bugs me most with dark matter is that it is seemingly absent on small scales (e.g. the solar system), yet somehow shows up in immense quantities on large scale. It just doesn't add up to me.

I totally agree with you. Sooner or later we will find out what it is, and that 80% of matter that constitutes dark matter isn't there after all.

I always hear about dark matter when they're talking in terms of clusters of galaxies. Huge amounts of matter, immense distances. However this dark matter, four times as much as the rest of the universe, is supposed to be everywhere, have mass, but only interact through the force of gravity. However, for some reason unknown to me, the visible matter in our solar system perfectly describes how the planets orbit the sun, how the moon orbits the earth, and how hard I hit the ground when I try to fly. So where is this dark matter, all this extra gravity? Shouldn't I hit the ground a lot harder than we can explain just based on the mass of our planet?

Indeed there is probably something going on at large scales, where gravity doesn't work as it does on small scales. Or indeed as you suggest the speed of light is not as constant as we believe it is, and our observations are simply distorted because of that. It's going to be tricky to find all that out, as the scales involved are so huge. On the other hand, the moment scientists find out what gravity really is by looking at the tiniest bits like the Higgs boson, we may be able to understand how the universe works at large scales.

I'm looking forward to the first theories that really explain this gravity anomaly (which is what "dark matter' really is, as I understand it: seemingly too much gravity). It may throw our understanding of the universe upside down.

Doesn't work. Most of advertising is not to generate a direct sale; it is to get your name out. To get your brand image in potential customer's minds, so that when later they're in a shop they gear toward the know, i.e. your, brand. It's impressions that really count for most advertising, not click-through rates, though the latter (with the increased number of visitors on your web site) do give you a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling.

I was thinking the other way around: bots click many ads, so they appear to be interested in looking at ads, and that is what makes them look like a high value customer.

After all, people like me (AdBlock installed; for that reason alone won't ever click on an ad, not even accidentally) have no value for online advertisers, no matter how rich I am or how much stuff I buy.

That's going to be a million to one.

On top of that, I'm sure the majority of the already low number of direct clicks on ads, is made up of accidental clicks. I see ads all the time in apps on my phone; and really the only clicks they have from me are accidental. Which happens quite frequently (and is quite annoying in its own right as it disturbs whatever I'm doing - I know, I should look for an adblocker).

Thanks! Going to check that one out.

Recently I found out I had to allow third-party cookies to get a very useful extension to work... had it disabled to at least make tracking a lot harder.

Cookies certainly have their purpose, e.g. to remember my language choice for a site. Don't want to completely disable them. Keeping some cookies alive that the site that I visit uses is fine; third parties tracking me across sites definitely not.

This part I wholeheartedly agree with. Most of the ads are so irrelevant, so totally unrelated to whatever you're looking at, they're useless. For some reasons the advertisers like to look at all the info they can get about you, like your past interests and so, and serve ads based on that. Instead of simply looking at the page you're browsing, and serving ads that are relevant to the content of that page.

The only one that I know that's doing this, is Google on their own search page. Search for something, and you get ads directly related to it.

[...]and I will be much more likely to not block them, and in some cases I may actually look at them.

Not likely, as the damage has been done already.

Like me, I suppose you're running an ad blocker. This I installed as I got too irritated by ads - first it was FlashBlock as mostly flash ads were the culprit, but the animated gifs aren't much better so it was ABP. I never looked back. I'm not going to "test" whether a site has improved and is worthy of unblocking. When blocked, ads are gone, and I for one doesn't miss them. If they're there, unobtrusive and relevant, that's totally fine with me - but that won't happen, as it's simply blocked already. When installing a new system, ABP and FlashBlock are among the first add-ons to install, it's like a habit.

For the advertisers, the damage has been done, they've completely lost my eyeballs. Sorry guys, it's your own fault by seriously irritating me.

Does Windows (last time I checked still by far the #1 operating system in use) already have anything resembling a software repository?

Maybe you should look into this natural phenomena called "wind". It's there in many parts of the world. It's something that can put massive forces on things like solar panels, and to a lesser extent antennas.

One of those reasons may be that 90 years ago they did not have the super strong rare earth magnets like we have now. They're commonly used in places like hard drives which massively pushed development of such permanent magnets, and pushed the cost down.

As your attitude towards such abandoned technology is shared by many people, it may be forgotten about, and receive less attention than it deserves. Until someone realises that there is now technology available that makes the idea viable - like the much stronger magnets, allowing for stronger connections, and the demand for super reliable, super long life, super low friction devices for spacecraft which obviously didn't exist 90 years ago.

Another such example is the hybrid and electric cars of today, which were made possible thanks to great advances of battery tech which in turn was sparked by the demand for mobile phones and related devices.

I know, that's how it works. Too bad the tabloids don't jump on the many many other child abuse stories that do not involve sex.

OK call me old-fashioned, but I totally misread the headline.

I thought this was about general child abuse, not just the sexual subset, which could be a just a small part of overall child abuse. What I was thinking of was things like poor treatment by parents, such as receiving beatings or insufficient food or having to live in a terribly dirty home, all that kind of abuses. The kind of abuse children have to be removed from their home for, placed with foster parents, etc.

In other countries, mostly eliminated in the UK, there are of course also issues such as child labour (children forced to work long hours in dangerous or hazardous conditions), depriving children of access to education (particularly girls in Muslim countries), and other serious and highly widespread forms of abuse.

Not to gloss over sexual abuse, which can be pretty bad as well of course, there's a lot more to "child abuse" than just "sexual child abuse". However equating "child abuse" to "sexual child abuse" makes us forget the other forms of abuse, which I strongly believe are far more widespread than sexual abuse. But maybe those are simply not as sexy, politically.

The fact that virtually none of the solar panels in use have such a system tells me they're too expensive to be worth it.

Trackers sound quite expensive to me: they need fairly accurate timing, fairly accurately moving large and unwieldy objects which are strongly affected by wind... plus the maintenance needed to keep them pointing in the right direction at the right time.