I was unaware that my corner bakery required a state of the art chip fab sector, or that the local chain of shoe stores had to overthrow Intel to be considered successful. Running a successful business doesn't mean you have to compete with the biggest, nor is tech the be-all, end-all. But if we're talking about tech, althought it doesn't apply to Intel specifically, plenty of tech companies were started in garages or as a project between like-minded people on the Internet. We hear over and over that small companies are the true drivers of the economy. If no one started them, thinking they couldn't possibly compete against the likes of Intel, we'd be truly screwed.

I'm saying we have a rich tradition in the US of civil disobedience over bad laws.

I currently have a web radio transceiver front panel application that works on Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, Amazon Kindle Fire, under Chrome, Firefox, or Opera. No porting, no software installation. See blog.algoram.com for details of what I'm writing.

The one unsupported popular platform? iOS, because Safari doesn't have the function used to acquire the microphone in the web audio API (and perhaps doesn't have other parts of that API), and Apple insists on handicapping other browsers by forcing them to use Apple's rendering engine.

I don't have any answer other than "don't buy iOS until they fix it".

My first thought was, "oh holy crap, MIPS is still a thing?"

Awesome to see non ARM, non Intel ISAs get some support from large Linux institutions.

A law needs to be justified to be respected. "The law is the law" is not an argument for that respect.

I'm sorry if you find it so hard to start a business that you don't find it to be worth it, but fortunately not everyone thinks that way.

I think the proliferation of bad laws is not something to be celebrated, but always fought against.

So having way fewer cabs on the street than needed, and never being able to hail an empty cab are just pleasant side benefits?

So what exactly is your point here? That's what I'm trying to delve down into. As far as I know you always post AC, so you're not against people posting anonymously. Is the argument that the "pseudononymous" nickname is not anonymous? Sure, I could agree with that, you responded to one of my posts where I said as much. I login to Slashdot for the convenience of easily tracking my posts, and I'm fine with other people doing so, as you have. You can call me an easily-tracked sheep if you want, that's certainly your prerogative, but maybe I'm fine with people tracking my posting history. I'm not ashamed of my posting history on Slashdot, whether I log in as "Rakarra Williams" or decide to just post as AC. Going through the history seems to me like it would be a waste of time, but I recognize that it's there if you want it.

Super Dracos are for escape in flight too, including in and past MaxQ. But they are on Crew Dragon, not Cargo Dragon. Cargo Dragon did not carry a crew and wasn't programmed to save itself.

Most of us do have a need to transmit messages privately. Do you not make any online purchases?

Yes, but those have to use public-key encryption. I am sure of my one-time-pad encryption because it's just exclusive-OR with the data, and I am sure that my diode noise is really random and there is no way for anyone else to predict or duplicate it. I can not extend the same degree of surety to public-key encryption. The software is complex, the math is hard to understand, and it all depends on the assumption that some algorithms are difficult to reverse - which might not be true.

Most algorithms to do this use the time between keypresses, measured to very high precision so that the lower bits are chaotic. So it doesn't really matter what keys you hit, and it doesn't matter how rythmic your typing is.

The problem with FM static is that you could start receiving a station, and if you don't happen to realize you are now getting low-entropy data, that's a problem.

There are many well-characterized forms of electronic noise: thermal noise, shot noise, avalanche noise, flicker noise, all of these are easy to produce with parts that cost a few dollars.

True randomness comes from quantum mechanical phenomena. Linux /dev/random is chaotic, yes, enough to seed a software "R"NG. But we can do better and devices to do so are cheap these days.

I wouldn't trust anything but diode noise for randomness. If I had a need to transmit messages privately, I'd only trust a one-time pad.