Right. You are applying legalese word precision assumptions to throwaway online comments. I don't think that's going to work well.

No, the one that answered:

"You know what he means, ahole. If this were truly a problem the jet fuel would be rationed and private aircraft would be at the bottom of the priority list"

The entire point of rationing would be to REMOVE the pure market forces that would deal out the limited commodity to those with the largest wallets and replace it with a scheme that benefits the most people, instead of the most money.

If you actually knew better, you'd have posted it, not just made a vague assertion.

Yes, and the only ships running on nuclear reactors are military ships. As I said: No civilian use-case.

This is one AC that deserves to be modded up. I already commented, so I can't.

You are aware of what happened Oct 7, 2023, right?

Actually, islamic fundamentalists qualify for that statement in absolutely every way. So at the absolute minimum you'll have to concede that there are two fascist sides.

For sufficiently gracious definitions of "working". Iran was quite busy building up conventional weapons including delivery systems that could be re-purposed for nukes as well as moving towards nuclear weapons. There is no civilian use for 60% enriched uranium. Moreover, the number "60%" is misleading. The work to enrich isn't linear. When you have 60%, you're not 60% of the way from raw to weapons-grade, you're 95% of the way.

To put into context just how insane any claim that they had 60% for any peaceful purposes is: Most nuclear reactors use uranium enriched to 3% to 5%. 60% isn't "a bit more than usual". It's a fuckton more than any non-weapons use can reasonably explain.

Iran didn't need a reason. We all know the reason they already had: Wiping out Israel.

And no strike or other interruption has ever made them learn that JIT isn't all flowers and happiness and moving your warehouse to the road has more consequences than cost savings.

...the country where you can buy firearms at Walmart wants to restrict 3D printing because they worry about gun parts?

What drugs are these people on?

Well yes, if you put it that way. There is money in ignoring the AI hype if what you are doing works better without.

There's no money in being an AI sceptic in the way that as an AI hyper you can write articles, give presentations or brag about your startup.

There is, however, another market that moves faster than that one: The CEO market.

Any CEO who said "we don't do AI here, that's all bullshit" will find himself on the job market pretty fast in the current mood. So, everyone does AI. Not because it works as a business decision, but because it works as a job security decision.

see also: "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"

So called "AI insiders" are almost exclusively people for whom AI is either an active research subject or a business opportunity. There is almost no money to be made from being sceptical about AI. Of course these people feel positive about AI.

The common sense opinion here is more reliable, even if it is less informed.

Except that was already done, and done brilliantly by Deep Space Nine. In reality, the Star Fleet Academy idea had a very old lineage, to the smoking shambles that was Star Trek V, when the idea was posited of having a prequel with the TOS characters, or at least the main ones, portrayed by younger actors, during their Academy days. It was pretty quickly rejected because at the time they didn't think audiences would buy the idea of new actors playing Kirk, Spock and Bones.

Of course, in the end, that was effectively what the first part of the 2009 Star Trek, which, for me at least, proved that the guys who rejected the idea in 1989-90 were spot on. But other people like the Kelvinverse films, so to each their own.

The real problem isn't writing per se. There were no lack of justifiable complaints against Voyager and Enterprise. The real problem is that no one really knows where to take it. The whole 32nd century gambit is because no one really knows how to portray the technology of the intervening period. The Enterprise temporal war rubbish demonstrated just how incredibly problematic it can be for an established sci-fi franchise to push itself across a broad timeline when you start with ships that go multiples of the speed of light, create holodecks and replicators and have computers so intelligent they can create conscious beings, and that's just by the 24th century.

With James Bond they can just keep resetting the character over and over again, and updating the gadgets along the way. Star Trek, for all its faults, has established a sort of permanent 70s-ish technology vibe, and because it's more fantasy then science fiction, the controls for the super planet buster never have to change! That franchise fell on its sword more because of a lack of imagination, lazy writing and an obvious desire not to pay Extended Universe authors some royalties for a cache of rather interesting ideas, and ultimately having to go there anyways.

In all cases, I think the fan base is the worst enemy. No franchise like Star Trek is ever going to measure up to the mythology of the older series. TOS really has entered the realm of cultural myth, and TNG, though everyone forgets how much the first season was disliked (and on rewatch a few years ago, I have to say it feels like a wonder that it ever got a season 2), isn't far behind. Even DS9's critics have finally stopped talking, and for my money, it is the most consistently well-written and well-acted of all the Star Treks. But that kind of legacy is absolutely toxic, because if you try to be too different everyone screams "It isn't Star Trek", and if you try to be similar in tone, then everyone complains "We've seen it all before!"

"Strange New Worlds was a nice partial deviation from this - they still made sure to pander to all the current 'sensitivities', but if the writers of the show didn't love the original series and its fundamental qualities, I don't know who does."

Have you even seen the original series? Racism, bigotry, classism, human rights, ethics, not to mention nationalism, were all dealt with. TNG went further, particularly with Riker's penchant for rather open sexual interests, and of course DS9 dealt with everything from war crimes to the undermining of civil society. Voyager and Enterprise in their turn covered similar issues, though perhaps not always as ably as the first three series did.

While I would agree the way Nutrek at times has tried to do social commentary has perhaps suffered from a lack of metaphor and allegory, which the older series' writers at times had to work through since things like interracial kisses and non-binary identity would have, at the time, caused stations to go apoplectic (and indeed some did, with the Kirk-Uhura kiss). But I suspect more than just some iffy writing is at play here. Everyone accepts, well almost everyone that is, that mixed-race couples can kiss in public, and most people accept gay couples and class and racial equality. But if you try to push further into social liberalism, past what many conservative elements in society have been forced (kicking and screaming the whole way mind you), well suddenly it's all evil woke trash trying to reprogram our brains.

In other words, many have not progressed very far at all, and because TOS and TNG in particular had to hide the underlying message beneath makeup and latex, the less progressive fans can watch it and, well, almost willfully miss the point of The Outcast (TNG) or Let That Be Your Last Battlefield (TOS), assuming, I suppose, that the metaphor is buried so deeply they don't have to challenge their prejudices.

I mean, we're still using it, because our perpetual licences still work.

Once the wheels fall off, we're probably switching to proxmox.