Do you remember what was on cable and broadcast TV 20 years ago during prime time? I'll give you a hint, there was no Netflix or other streaming services (to first approximation). If you wanted to watch something that wasn't broadcast at a convenient time, you had to record it through something like a DVR or TiVo.

There was the occasional show that was well-written and well-produced, but mostly the available content was palaver to keep the masses glued to their sets through the commercials. What was available was neither deeply entertaining nor deeply educational; networks were, at the time, afraid of producing anything that was too strong for fear of alienating some segment of their audience. That lack of interesting material started to change in the mid-2000s, but by then, we had already cut the cord.

As do I, and it mostly stays in my briefcase, or my jacket pocket, except for the odd call or text. I almost never use it otherwise, as a proper-sized screen and keyboard is a far easier and more efficient interface to obtain information from online sources.

I wear a watch, because I like them, and, as someone else pointed out, having a watch means I'm not pulling out my phone just to check the time and getting distracted by the shiny. That would be a regular mechanical watch (well, one with a quartz movement, not a strictly mechanical watch in the afficionado's sense), not a smart watch. I see my relatives being continually distracted by the smart device on their wrist, often rudely interrupting our conversation to feed the beast. I have no desire to have such a thing that needs my constant attention.

I also use a printed schedule book, and hand-written to-do lists. I never need to worry about the privacy of that information, my device being charged, the screen cracking and rendering it illegible, or any of the litany of untimely maladies that can befall a fragile electronic device, the operation of which you fundamentally don't own.

You can call me a luddite, and I would not object, but I would also point out that I do accept modern devices into my life; I just limit their reach to what benefits me, not some corporation. Finally, and importantly, I don't automatically assume that just because something is new, it is better than what it purports to replace; I've seen enough to know that is often not the case.

As I tell my kids, as long as you have your brain, you should never be bored. There are always cool things to think about, investigate, or observe, no matter where you are. You just have to find them.

As for days feeling longer, if you are mentally and physically active, that's a very good thing.

Two decades ago, we got rid of our television because I found myself spending the evening in front of the idiot box and when it came time for bed, I was neither really entertained, nor educated in any way, nor had I accomplished anything. It was an utter waste of time. We haven't had television service (that is, cable) in 20 years.

The crap on social media is about as bad as TV was back then, and arguably worse because of the negative psychological impact it carries. Delete Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whathaveyou. Stop using your phone as a pacifier. Your life will be better.

The point Sandlin was making is that there are basic, fundamental parameters (like the number of flights) that are critical to the plan and thus schedule and budget that have not even been estimated, let alone nailed down. In software development terms, these are blocking bugs.

The other point is that there are serious, and dubfounding, limitations on capability that are forcing very complex orbital dynamics that were completely avoided with Apollo.

Which, by the way, landed 15,000 kg on the surface of the moon, not a couple of hundred. If you give up the need to land it softly to protect the biological cargo and put them back in orbit at the end, I bet you could deliver more.

If you believe what Destin Sandlin says (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU) Artemis has become waaaaay to complicated. His rapier stab to make the point was a graphical comparison between the Apollo flight plan and the Artemis flight plan, using NASA-released promotional documents. He then suggested that the actual constraints imposed by the Artemis plan for in-orbit fueling were not known --- no one had an accurate estimate of how many fueling ferry flights would be required before Artemis could leave LEO. While he was being nice about it, he made it clear that it's a pretty damning criticism that the planners haven't nailed down basic parameters.

My impression is that he's right. Far too complicated. Artemis suffers from second-system syndrome.

When it's boot code, that will be run by many millions of machines likely many millions of times per year, programming time is nearly irrelevant, and efficiency is paramount.

There's no reason, as an example, for it to take more than a few milliseconds to register with the local AP and secure an IP address over DHCP. And yet for many laptops, tablets, and cell phones, it takes seconds. Why? Because programmer time is more important? Please.

Python is a poor example for your case. I'd strongly recommend reconsidering your thoughts.

Software inefficiencies have scaled far beyond hardware gains. My current laptop (with 8 GB RAM) boots more slowly than the one I wrote my PhD dissertation on in 2000 (with 64 MB, yes MB, of RAM). But TeX -- which to first approximation, is the same code now as back then -- screams compared to 20+ years ago.

To all of the software engineers that have come of age in the last 20 years, go back to understand how your predecessors were able to squeeze performance out of simple code and comparatively impoverished hardware and ask yourself where the industry has gone wrong.

48V is a poor choice and is not found in most consumer electronics for one reason: you can feel it. It will shock you.

12V won't.

(Standard disclaimers ... I'm sure you can find a way to make 12VDC shock you, but don't. If you do, it's on you. I told you not to.)

I believe in the power of revealed underlying structure, but this assertion isn't quite right. There are many, many plug-ins, for example, to edit HTML that allow you to switch between HTML view and WSISYG.

The ultimate granddaddy of seeing underlying codes is TeX and it's derivatives like LaTeX. You don't get WSISYG without some 3rd party add-on, but, really, who needs them when you can write TeX properly so that the raw code approximates the finished document?

MS Word, which in addition to hiding formatting, also hides structures that 3rd party plug-ins use to manage references and citations. I have to use MS Word at work. If, like WordPerfect, you could view and edit those hidden structures, it would be possible to fix things when -- not if -- they go wonky. But no. I very often tell my staff to not bother with 3rd party reference manages because they ALL screw things up, eventually, when you have people using slightly different versions of Word, with multiple edit passes, and the end result is you have to manage the references by hand, anyway.

The summary spends half of its time talking about poor summaries, pointing out that, in one single case, the negative reviews that accounted for 1% of poor reviews occuped 1/3 of the AI-summarized comments.

But what fraction of the AI summaries are actually bad? Did TFS do the same thing it criticizes Amazon's automated tool for doing and over-represent cherry-picked negative outcomes?

Why is this story on Slashdot? What's the relevance?

You've provided the absolute minimum criteria for adoption: don't lose money over a long period of time compared to doing nothing.

There are far more positive levels of motivation, like ROI going positive in a small handful of years, which is what I understand solar is approaching. As a home owner, what are you going to do with some tens of thousands of dollars, put it in an investment fund where it will earn 3-7% annually, or put it into infrastructure that will slowly rise from net negative up to 0% over 30 years? For infrastructure to make sense financially, the picture is often substantially worse than people selling alternative strategies to grid power imply in their analyses.

Why is it painted white? Why not paint at least the top and sides black to absorb solar radiation and help with lift? Does it make control too difficult because there are different lifts in the day than at night? Why not then use hot air, so you can take advantage of solar-driven lift, and not deplete helium resources in a stupendously misguided way? Punt the photovoltaics idea that others have mentioned and just absorb the photons directly, purely for lift. If you need additional PV panels for drive, fly them as wings.

A five second Google search identified at least one other AI product and company called Grok. It would be reasonable to expect that among them, there's a registered trademark. Indeed, a few more seconds looking at the USPT trademark database reveals that there are a number of live claims on that term, with xAI's being the most recent. Some of those live claims are most definitely AI-related.

It sure looks like someone didn't do due diligence, or are expecting to bully their way to ownership.

(emphasis added)

That is a distinctly North American (maybe just US) cultural phenomenon. Travel elsewhere, and you'll find that he waiter will not periodically interrupt your meal, but instead, you need to call them over when you want service. If the place is even halfway decent, the waiter will be there very shortly.

I strongly prefer the latter.