It would be really hard to upmod messages from sock puppet accounts simply because mod points are given for reading a lot of articles on a given account. Basically, if you don't regularly use an account, it doesn't get mod points, so you're not going to have lots of sock puppet accounts with mod points. (I'm sure you could do shit like spam page reloads or something, but they've probably got ways to detect that.) That alone makes the system fundamentally better than one where everyone gets to mod everyone else's posts with no limit until there's nothing but circle jerk left.

Most likely from some brat kid breaking them with his fingernail.

The real reason for the seals is to stop people from getting free (or almost free) gas. If you know how to operate the pump side controls, you can press a couple of buttons to change the price to pennies per gallon. They're only downloaded when the price changes, and the back-end system then only selects which price level (cash or credit) to use for a transaction.

And if you're using debit, the PIN pads are supposed to be potted and keys injected into battery-backed RAM (code in RAM is a good idea too) to prevent tampering. In the US at least, the key is supposed to be only known by the clearinghouse at the other end of the comm line, and only comes out of the pad already encrypted.

The US had a nice dollar coin (the Susan B Anthony). But it looked too much like a quarter, being only being slightly bigger, so people didn't use it.

Then they made a new one (the Sacagawea). It was the same size (because vending machines), but made out of a brass-colored metal, and no edge milling. The metal looks nice when it's new, but with relatively low time in circulation it tarnishes to an ugly brown that has no contrast for the artwork. And people still won't use it, because the US government (probably mostly due to Congressional inertia) keeps making singles. They've even issued them with different artwork, but nobody cares. I'd be surprised if 10% of the US population even knows they exist, and probably more people know about the 2-dollar bills that nobody uses either.

There are a few places where you might find the dollar coins used, such as some parking garages. It's more reliable to make change with coins than with worn-out GWs, and quarters are no good when you're charging $8-$15 and people are likely to want to use a $20 bill at unattended payment terminals. The coins become a sort of local currency because of repeat business, so there is some amount of recirculation.

The post office used to have nice coin-operated stamp vending machines that took any coin from a penny to a dollar (except for those old monster JFK half-dollars), and gave dollar coins for change, but they yanked them out years ago in favor of some kind of complicated credit card-based scale/postage printing machine that basically nobody uses. So now you have to wait in line to buy a sheet of bog-standard stamps. (But I can get them at the supermarket check-out too, so meh.)

NASA has plenty of already-trained astronauts who don't have much chance of going up, whether or not they've already gone up yet. They're getting hired by the NewSpace companies. It's not like they're looking for H1Bs to be astronauts.

Or you could look for it on a map and see that it's surrounded by mostly wildlife areas and state parks and water, not unlike a certain place in Florida. It's not like they're planning to launch from some industrial park on the edge of town.

Any update on the Qualcomm DMCA takedowns at Github?

Cybercrime is basically just crime, only with a computer!!!!!!!!

Why is it so hard to stop crime?

Uh, huh. So what exactly are you going to do with that helium when you extract the few parts per million on the lunar surface? We don't even have fusion working yet, and He3 is not a first-generation fusion fuel.

We'll be on Mars long before we can use He3 for anything but inflating balloons.

I also think they should just put up the statue without the S. But put a J on it instead, because the kid's name is Jeffrey!

Flight 232 was a DC-10 that had three independent hydraulic systems. There was no way all three systems could go out at the same time... until they did.

Maybe they could hire these dogs out to sniff out hard drives that are about to go bad in RAID arrays. You know, like detecting when a Quantum Fireball is about to blow its chip and all that.