Why not use a hypothetical (gravitic/magnetic/magic) field that could both compress a very small star down to a manageable size (maybe down the level just before it becomes a singularity) but also use the resistance, heat, and radiation to power your alien government boondoggles?

I mean its about as likely as a Dyson Sphere powering a civilization.

I've spent my entire career as a scientist and yes, I'm pretty careful about what I state as fact or proven knowledge. That was re-enforced in 2020 as we learned more and saw more published material come out at an ever-increasing rate. In addition, I was involved in several nightly clinical roundtable reviews (what did we do today? What did we learn today?) where we gleaned a lot of clinical pearls that played into published reports from cases or case series, uncontrolled drug trials, etc. There were literally days where I would change my opinions on treatment protocols, or even relatively hard data (test results and case numbers were never really hard data, despite protestations from a lot of social media pundits)several times in a 24 hour period simply because new, well-documented information came to my attention.
Why this admission? Because I was accused of not being truthful despite explaining my changes of opinion every time I made such a change. This was both in social media posts (Twitter was seeing a lot of science-exchange traffic) and in my updates to a large non-profit I supported. It was difficult to convince even people who generally believed me, and trusted my evaluations, that the landscape was changing that fast.
And to date, I've not seen evidence SARS-CoV-2 originated as a GoF lab experiment, nor that it emerged due to an intentional or accidental lab leak, but I've seen suggestions bordering on evidence (CCP transparency leaves a little to be desired) that the epicenter and index case did originate in the wet markets.

To the best of my knowledge, Tony Fauci did not, nor does he hold a patent on any vaccine, but Moderna had been working with NIAID for years on mRNA technology. But not on a coronavirus vaccine.

Doubt is key to science. I've not seen evidence of basic or gain-of-function research at WIV, but that doesn't specify or deny they were working on it. The CCP would prefer not to comment and that silence is likely to keep us in suspense re: WIV involvement.

The Trump administration's several decisions re: NIH and CDC contributed to the myriad failures in pandemic response and origin determination. As for GoF testing, adding ANY capability to a virus to study it better comprises GoF, not simply making it more virulent. Without GoF testing, we'd have a lot more difficulty studying potentially dangerous pathogens (beyond and including viruses). GoF testing for a bad rap during the pandemic because of a bit of misinformation regarding its uses.

No. The small outbreaks were not ignored but we didn't have the surveillance infrastructure in place to sequence them rapidly. And if we had sequenced them, we'd have gone, "Oh, damn, coronavirus" because we didn't have a sufficient index of suspicion for a novel coronavirus with multiorgan involvement that could rip through the population.

All depends on the type of work being done. If you were working on classified material (and had appropriate permissions to do so from home, you DID have to work on your work laptop. I was at NOAA during the Pandemic and didn't have a "work" laptop, but had requested a work desktop for home and was told to use my own personal system (computational modeling). When the VPN decided to stop playing with Linux, we played the game again, and I was denied again. So O created a work-around that exceeded security requirements, and got it approved by our in-house, and subsequently the NOAA security process. But it was all on personal hardware. I wasn't working on anything with any level beyond CUI.

Having spent a few hours of my life since 18 JAN 2020 looking at COVID-19 (the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2) and being somewhat familiar with coronaviruses, although I'll admit I know MUCH more now than I did then, it's pretty fair to assume SARS-CoV-2 originated in China, in Hubei Province. There's evidence that it was actually circulating in the US, and around the world... and certainly in China... somewhat earlier than the official date placed in early March for the US, and certainly well before the US initiated travel restrictions. Blood bank samples have found evidence of specific antigen and antibodies, and several unexplained outbreaks of non-influenza viral pneumonia were seen in 2019.
Whether the virus was under study at the Wuhan Institute of Virology we may never know due to the removal of US National Institutes of Health personnel somewhat before this outbreak. In fact early reports of the outbreak came through an Australian connection, and a Tweet from a Chinese clinician that was subsequently removed. It became pretty obvious that, once the Chinese Communist Party apparatus understood the potential magnitude of the outbreak they shut down communication, and attempted to defeat the disease internally, but too late.
But really, where the virus came from doesn't matter, as we can't put the genie back in the bottle. And China had more illnesses and deaths, proportionately, than the US did, and took more draconian measures than the US ever contemplated. And they were unsuccessful, even with a Zero-COVID policy, in stopping spread.
Most of the information held by the US regarding COVID origins has been pretty publically accessible, and openly discussed on multiple forums. For the most part, the GOP lawmakers have been responsible for attempting to hide accurate information on the disease, efficacy of masks and other non-pharmaceutical interventions, and vaccines. If there's a conspiracy, I suspect they should look in their own house.

OpenBSD has its strengths but screaming fast compared to most Linux distros? This is laughable. I would say openbsd is more secure by default and in general than the average linux desktop is but I'm not even sure of that in the year 2024...

This benchmark is a few years old but this has not changed, except maybe to skew a bit more in linux's favor - https://www.phoronix.com/revie...

Again there are places where OpenBSD has its strengths but I'm not even sure its faster as a firewall at this point.

CPU based on 80186 w/16bit, 9600bps modem, supported LISP, prolog, BASIC, assembler, rs232 serial - https://retrocdn.net/images/b/... - advertisement is on the 2nd to last page, its in japanese but the specs are in enough english to interpret what it had.

not really surprising - Atari had computers and much better computers than game consoles. This was released in 1986? The year after the first Macintosh came out with a 16bit processor. These sorts of computers were all the rage at the time. What's surprising to me is how rare they are, even in Japan. I guess they just didn't sell that many.

In addition to sandboxing they have their own app store, their own email services and mail apps, their own data services..you're paying for a google services replacement with screened apps with data stored in Switzerland with no 3rd party usage of that data, where extradition of that data is much harder. My hunch is people using this sort of phone aren't actively posting to tiktok or instagram or X and are actively trying to keep prying eyes off their location data while still having a useful data terminal. This isn't for poor people or your average C-level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Also https://www.freon.com/en/produ... - look how safe and cute that kid looks in the cancer chamber.

Perhaps you're thinking of a different chemical? It doesn't sound like this chemical specifically causes lethal toxicity, perhaps maybe other chemicals in its manufacture? It sounds toxic to brew..

How do you have a five digit slashdot ID and not remember the nerdcore scene posts (which succeeded the perl poets for idiot quotes tags on forums)? I mean most of the grumpy low-6s-or-less digiters were the "grumble wtf is this not really nerd stuff" commenters. Anyway as evidenced by this post https://slashdot.org/comments.... blues nerds and folk nerds have been around even longer and haven'tt gone anywhere. If nerdcore is gone, its because it wasn't great or as others pointed out, was subsumed by greater hiphop. To be fair to your outrage, this is a slashvertisment written as a CleverPost to oldtimers who know who cmdrtaco is for an old-timer with nostalgia factor.

AI is a marketing term to explain generative text and predictive text to non-technical people, much like Hacker was re-used and ab-used to describe someone who broke into computer systems in the 80s.

I think you underestimate the power of generative text. It is NOT AI. When its used as a tool to generate text, its amazingly powerful. It can save a ton of time getting a framework and outline in place prior to you putting the meat on the bones.

I also think the proper way to use this tool will be akin to something like, here's a metaphor for sculpture, where you say "I want to carve a horse" and the 'magic AI for sculpture' will grab a stone block of the right properties and whittle away a general horse shape in the way you want. Could you make the details exact with generative help? Possibly but that will be the difference between crap AI work that broaches on copyright violation and actual creations with a human touch.

Business is going to be very very interested in a tool that can detect more accurately things generated ML, and attorneys more so - the very heart of legal contract and copyright is at stake. The hype will not die down, nor will investment. We may see an ML-style dot-com bubble burst but that didn't kill the web - it made it better.

Transformers based generative text can double the productivity or more of a programmer or technical writer but it cannot yet replace them - and no one is currently claiming otherwise.

Yes, well, that's capitalism for you.

Most Americans have no choice in insurer. And their choices are controlled by a powerful cartel that colludes to keep prices high. There is no competition in the health insurance field.

No American gives a rats ass about the "choice" of insurer. They want a choice of doctors and services, but really, and I can not stress this enough, REALLY hate all insurance companies. More than they hate the government even!

And yet, taxes have been cut again and again and again. How do you reconcile that fact with your statement that "Because the people raising taxes will never reach a point when they say "the government has enough money now, let's cut taxes"."

Seems that it's very, very easy for the government to cut taxes, at least for the rich. Why are you afraid of "the people who want to raise taxes" when those people have never actually done so? Seems you are imagining a scenario that is not just unlikely, but counter factual.