Perhaps this is one of the Great Filters implied by the Drake Equation. I truly hope our biosphere survives.

My husband and I have been trading stocks for over 35 years. We have a few million dollars each that cheerfully disagree with you.

All these comments are just whiners bitching and moaning about politics, taxes, and nazis. Not one has any content with substance. No technical observations of what it took to make the ads, nothing about the newest devices or the latest AI applications. I mourn the death of slashdot.

For my part, I applaud the NASA ad. All the resources used were already legitimately in place without further expenditure beyond a few minutes of their time. There was no "massive waste of taxpayer dollars." The reward is increased faith in science among people who might be persuaded otherwise, especially important demographics like impressionable youth and people who provide the all important donations and political backing. But to get technical, the comment about being faster because of orbital speed is missing the relevant frame of reference. If they claim 17,500 mph around the Earth is faster, they have to allow that the Earth is in solar orbit at a substantially greater speed, about 67,000 mph. So they are going 17.5k faster, AND slower, every 45 minutes as they go with and then directly against Earth's solar orbital speed.

One area where fully traceable and publicly available transaction histories would be valuable is in dealing with the provenance of valuable art or culturally significant items. Not the virtual "This sequence of bits here" but of real world object's ownership. Museums, aution houses, and art dealers would be logical supporters of the blockchains in question. Perhaps also in the maintenance of a machine or vehicle, since these would be limited to the lifetime of the device so won't become overly cumbersome to compute. Airplane maintenance records for instance. Manufacturers and maintenance providers might join such a network, not to mention airports and the FAA.There are real world applications that do make sense, its not just black or white as to whether or not its useful.

Find the Edge executable and remove its permissions. All of them that you can. Or rename it. Windows may freak out, but you'll get some entertainment at least.

Larry Niven portrayed it as a good thing. He wrote of restaurant and bar chains that had identical decor and even staff that looked the same in every location. They had discrete feeds that showed them the customer's profile so they could act as if they knew them, and could even continue a conversation started with someone else a thousand miles away. It was a buffer of "familiarity" in the deluge of infoglut and rapid change of the modern world.

This is happening at many levels of healthcare. Doctors and dentists are increasingly working for larger corporations. Urgent Care and Aspen Dental come to mind but there's plenty more. The beancounters with no medical degree give directives to the staff about how to treat patients, and you get hard sell tactics for everything they can exaggerate at the dentist, and not enough of the right treatment, sometimes even the wrong ones, from the medical and psychiatric doctors.

Thank You

Naming this Matter Casting sounds like it may be a part of the new Matter protocol for interoperating IoT devices. If that's so, then this isn't Amazon trying to compete with or replace AirPlay and Chromecasting. They are just the first ones to announce compatibility with streaming with the non-proprietary Matter spec. If Bloomberg is reporting this correctly, then Amazon is trying to sell FUD about the Matter protocol and should be called on it. They MAY be trying to establish it first, then submit it to the Matter committee for inclusion. Does anyone know enough about Matter the protocol to shed light on this?

Hey Jack (yes, you), I've lived in the US, Europe twice in diferent countries, and South America for over three years each time. Your characterization of Americans is leaving out the real culprits: Europeans. We're talking human diseases here, not animal's. Americans in general take antibiotics for a "full course" of however long the prescription lasts, killing pretty much all of it. Europeans take them for a little while, until they start to feel better. Which means that the most resistant mutation in that particular infection will survive and go on to contribute to human immune system resistance in that strain. Who's the culprit now?

I was a fan of ReBoot before it went 3d. Loved the "Web Surfer" character. I'd really like to see Megas XLR rescued too; That was hilarious. The first episode starts slow but the rest of the series is really worth it.

That's NOT the point.

This is a loophole that most people don't understand. HIPPA only applies to any person or organization that provides medical services. MEDICAL services. So the companies that provide a "Patient Portal" that is free to patients and cheap for doctors aren't covered by HIPPA; they don't employ doctors and don't provide medical services, only administrative services. They get their money by selling all the data that unknowing patients happily fill out in great detail. I've dropped a doctor after he refused to believe me - this really is their business model. I've asked, and the staff at doctor's offices don't even know how to delete or remove the data after you've entered it.

I've had a nest thermostat for over a year now. It doesn't learn from me - it tries to manipulate and train me. Even worse, it directly disregards what I have specifically set it to do and imposes it's own set of what to do in what situation, and it gets it wrong. I have two chow chows; furry dogs that can't take high temps. Set the nest for 78, which is too warm already, and went out for errands for almost 3 hours on a sunny, 85 degree summer day. The nest decided I wasn't home so it didn't turn on the air conditioning. My dogs almost had heat stroke. Same shit in the winter; if I don't walk past the thermostat for over an hour, it stops heating the house & I get cold. Another problem: it turns down the heat at night. FUCK THAT. I have set this monster to 72 degrees every time I get up, multiple times every night, yet it doesn't learn jack diddly like it claims. I would use LESS gas to heat my home if the temp was just plain steady rather than argueing with me and burning gas for a long time to bring it back the where I had set it in thie first place. I truly plan to replace this curse with something that will do what I tell it to do, and I will remove this pestilence with a sledge hammer.