The oldest item in any of my computers are hard drives. My oldest drive is a boot drive with over 17 years power on time:

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Western Digital Caviar SE Serial ATA
Device Model: WDC WD1200JD-22HBB0
Serial Number: WD-WCAL92830116
Firmware Version: 08.02D08
User Capacity: 120,034,123,776 bytes [120 GB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: ATA/ATAPI-6 (minor revision not indicated)
Local Time is: Sun Apr 2 06:29:59 2023 EDT
 
[snip]
 
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
  3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 171 167 021 Pre-fail Always - 3966
  4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 040 Old_age Always - 303
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 198 198 140 Pre-fail Always - 27
  7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
  9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 001 001 000 Old_age Always - <b>152674</b>
  10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
  11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
  12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 303
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 123 097 000 Old_age Always - 27
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 195 195 000 Old_age Always - 5
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0012 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 253 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0009 200 200 051 Pre-fail Offline - 0
 
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

Reallocated Event Count has been 5 for the last 14 years. I also have two other drives currently in use with over 100,000 hours on them. My method is simple: keep the drives cool with fan(s) blowing right on them, and keep them spinning.

The abbreviation UFO (unidentified flying object) carries with it the assumption that the observation is of a solid object of some kind. This assumption isn't always justified, so now the government refers to them as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) to account for the possibility that it may not be a solid object.

... the reason why they don't just puncture the balloon with a single non-explosive shot is that it's too high for aircraft to reach.

The balloon is at 60,000 ft altitude. It was reported in the media that the balloon was intercepted by an F-22 and an AWACS plane. The F-22 has a (published) service ceiling of 65,000 ft., and would have no problem punching a hole in the balloon.

Let me google that for you..

What happens when you concentrate red rice extract.

I have an electric car and it currently costs me $13.46 to gain 280 miles of range (in Georgia, USA). How much does it cost to gain 280 miles of range in your SUV? Around here there would literally need to be 500.0% inflation in the cost of electricity to just match (not exceed) the cost of gasoline per mile. For many reasons beyond personal transportation that's just not gonna happen.

Does https really provide some zero config zero knowledge way to avoid a man in the middle?

Diffie-Hellman key exchange, at your service!

The combustion in a rocket engine doesn't occur in the atmosphere; it occurs in the combustion chamber.

Rocket scientist here. The combustion of hydrogen and oxygen in a rocket engine certainly begins NOx-free in the combustion chamber, but the extremely hot plume exiting the engine interacts and reacts with the atmosphere creating NOx among other things.

Next time you're out driving in a town or city, look up. Tons of wires overhead. Nobody will ever be allowed (or want) to take off or land on city streets for that and many other reasons. City parking lots have most of the same problems. So a "skyport" of some sort is needed. Whatever that turns out to be it won't be anything like this land-wasteful glorified heliport.

Meanwhile, nobody's been able to provide me with any evidence, investigation reports, witnesses or other exhibits used to justify impeaching him.

Impeachment in the House is equivalent to an indictment. The Senate conducts the trial, where evidence will be presented by the House Impeachment Managers to the court and the American people. If you can listen to the trial you'll get all the evidence you need.

As you know, the House was forced to compress the schedule because it was so close to the end of Trumps term, and they were hoping to give the Senate enough time to remove Trump before he did any more damage.

Their revolution failed in 1865, and they still haven't given up.

True, but the revolutions are getting smaller. :-)

In the United States, there are no national elections. Elections are conducted, audited, and certified by the states. For presidential elections, a slate of electors is selected by each state under the rules they establish.

Congress and the Federal government have no role in conducting, auditing, or certifying the vote. The 12th Amendment is clear: Congress' responsibility is to simply count the electoral votes certified by the states and announce the winner.

The place to audit the vote is in each state, and for most of the swing states in the 2020 election that was done according to state law. For example, after the initial count, Georgia audited the vote based on the paper ballot reciepts, and then did a full recount after that at the request of the Trump Campaign.

It appears to me that a number of Republicans in Congress need a civics lesson or two.

Censorship is what governments do. Facebook and Twitter are not governments. They are private companies who own really big front yards visible to all via the internet. They have every right to control or moderate the content posted in their front yards.

Slight problem, every state would have to agree to this because of article V. Or at least that's how I read this

provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article; and that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

I bolded the part you missed. The year 1808 is decidedly in the rearview mirror, so this clause is no longer in force. Since 1808 all amendments have the same process for approval, 3/4 of the states must ratify. Which is still a very high bar, leaving intact your implied point that any amendment revising the makeup of the Senate has no chance.

So what, we repeat this exercise every 3 years until our populations start having young median ages like those in the developing world?

Your links are from the CDC, which is certainly reliable, but the parts you quoted only talk about the presence of antibodies. The immune system is more complicated than that, and more capable.

From the link:

During the secondary immune response, the concentration of antibodies in the bloodstream increases much more rapidly after an infection compared to the primary immune response. This is due to the presence of T and B memory cells that remember the pathogen and activate the immune response more quickly; this is of major significance to the immune system and how it responds to threats.

The body only produces antibodies during an active infection, and for a limited time afterward. T and B memory cells provide long-term immunity, and they never forget.

The key thing that changed this time, is that the anxiety epidemic crossed a treshold, from letting tenthousands of people die because that's just the normal thing with such diseases, to the extreme opposite, where we want *complete* control and *zero* infections or it's not good enough, as *nobody* must die!

You either haven't been paying attention or have a political axe to grind. People I know lost their food-service jobs weeks before anybody in the U.S. officially closed anything. They lost their jobs because there were no customers. People aren't staying home because they've been told to. They're staying home because they don't want to get the virus or endanger their family.

A better theory might be that, compared to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, in the age of the internet people are better informed and able to react more quickly.