Long ago, the UK courts ordered all the major consumer ISPs to block The Pirate Bay along with various other popular services. Ever since, we've had to keep up to date on what the latest proxy address might be.

Of course, thanks to the new censorship laws introduced more recently, we're all on VPNs now, so as to avoid having to hand our ID to the wallet inspector for every last website we ever use. And once that was set up, it was nice to discover that the original is still in play!

The jokes about Darth Jar Jar were everywhere of course, but it could have worked. Star Wars lifted a few ideas from classic SF sources including Asimov's Foundation series - in which, we might recall, the terrifying, unstoppable galactic warlord known as The Mule was hiding in plain sight as a clown, who seemed to be merely a harmless entertainer at court. His military success was chiefly thanks to his psychic ability to manipulate others' minds to his liking - Darth Jar Jar could have done very well that way!

I saw three Star Wars movies when I was young. They were great. Mainly because I was a child and this stuff was new and fresh and exciting to me. Even the Ewoks.

I saw three more when I was not quite so young. They were... poor.

I saw a couple more when I was older. One was great, the other was okay but a retread of one of the old ones, and I never got round to seeing the rest. Didn't care enough.

Now they've got more, and apparently they're based on a TV series they did, which I didn't watch because I wasn't subscribed to that streaming platform at the time. So I'm not going to see those either. Same reason I've not seen a Marvel superhero film since the first Avengers one - just too much homework required with all the backstory. Every scene is a shout out or reference that I won't get. Every character seems to be getting ever louder and angrier and more and more of them have access to time machines. I just don't have it in me to care anymore.

I like the sound of these horror films, though. They're going to tell a complete story? In one film? With a beginning, middle and end, that don't ask me to be up to date on an entire Cinematic Universe? Sounds great, time to check where they're showing!

A modern version of GTA London would be the absolute dream. Been long enough now, you could set it in the nineties and have the same retro value to it!

... why unions aren't much more common among technology workers. Especially given what you hear about the videogame industry in particular, with that mad 'crunch time' culture in which workers are ruthlessly, well, crunched. I'd always ask, well, what does your union say about it? And what do you know, there isn't one, how about that.

Nice to hear of some progress being made, then. I suppose the risk with this for the rest of us is that GTA 6 might be late to release, but, uh, at this point I think we're over that

I'm not gonna try to defend any platforms, but at its best streaming is amazing. I have found so much music, old and new, that I absolutely love. It makes my spine tingle and makes me laugh with delight at how good it is. It reminds me of when I was young, discovering music for the first time. That sense of discovery and a whole huge world out there. Algorithms have their faults but they sure have figured out what kind of stuff will appeal to me.

I see upcoming concerts for artists I like, had no idea they were touring. I've gone to dozens of shows in the past few years I never would have known about if I was grimly playing the same old music manually. I love music more and more each year and keep going to the best concert of my life, blowing my old high water marks away over and over.

It's so easy. I don't have to decide what I'm in the mood for or pick through my unwieldy music collection.

I'm not really a great cheerleader for all this stuff. I am naturally very averse to corporate stuff, popular stuff, middleman leech stuff. I refuse on principle to pay for it, or endure ads, somehow thinking that makes it less greasy somehow. All that said, it has enriched my life quite spectacularly.

They add hundreds if not thousands of dollars to the bill, they require a special physical trip to a facility, and they can be used to justify other tests, surgical interventions, and specialist visits. They are nearly entirely useless diagnostically, but they are wonderfully effective tools to extract money from society.

The sharp edges of the caps gouge tiny pieces of plastic from the tops of other caps as they tumble around in storage, manufacture, and application. I've noticed a dust of this plastic in boxes of bottle caps. Bags of caps that have been handled roughly for extended time have visible scratches on the tops of many of the caps.

All joking aside, asbestos is probably a lot safer than the PFAs in everything we use instead of the old materials

I'm confident that if it were made our top priority it could be done. It would take years and cost a fortune. After many billions of dollars and millions of hours invested in this heroic task the most important question we should ask ourselves is WHY?!?

We could tackle other issues with this kind of investment. We could cure cancer. We could solve poverty, develop nuclear fusion energy. It seems futile to take a working codebase and refactor it just because arrogant ignorance doesn't grok COBOL.

Zero is pretty optimistic. Once you subtract the cost of all the mining and transaction energy the intrinsic value is pretty strongly negative.

You could experiment with lowering the heat after it reaches boiling. There is no reason to boil noodle vigorously unless you are lacking a hobby or need the brush with danger to make you feel alive. Some folks even turn the heat off after it boils and allow it to cook covered with a stir or two for luck. I started doing this and noticed zero difference to the end product.

There are cheaters known as spoofers who provide false GPS location to access game objects without physical travel. They can instantly teleport anywhere in the world. I can't wait until our AI overlords grant us this ability, just think how much time and energy will be saved when we don't need to waste time traveling and can just blink wherever we want to go!

Every new phone this happens: I get a useless alert, something about a stupid kid with the wrong parent 3 counties away, it's gonna be hot or windy or cold somewhere within 500 miles, an old person is confused in some city I have never visited.

I angrily turn them all off and forget all about it until the next new phone.

If by some freak happenstance I get an alert that is helpful or relevant I will leave it on. If it is stupid that's the last "emergency" I know about on that particular device.

Cans taste different. Try it! I suspect it is due to 2 factors, they use different plastic for the liners than the plastic bottleses, and the liner is thin with imperfections which result in metal contact. Modern cans will develop pinhole leaks because of this if they are stored for very long. The old cans from 20 years ago would last indefinitely but new ones will have a surprisingly high failure rate. I opened a 12 pack of seltzer water that was still barrely within the "best by" date and 2 of the 12 had lost pressure due to pinhole leaks! I routinely find a blown can here and there if I am not meticulous about rotating stock.