I'm not a US lawyer, but I'd interpret that as they need to block commercial VPN services advertised for circumventing blocks.

They have given us a bit of a masterclass in engineering here. Identified a rare but important issue, took decisive action to ensure safety, and engineered a fix very quickly to get the aircraft back into service.

It might be a case of the specific version of software they want to install to fix the issue does not work with older hardware, so any aircraft that are still on it need to up upgraded. It's not uncommon for the hardware upgrade to be cheaper and faster than trying to backport the fix and fully qualify that software, especially as the aircraft can't be used until it is done.

To be fair your link does say "designed to bypass internet filtering mechanisms or content restrictions", so it sounds like SSH, work VPNs, banking etc. don't count because they aren't designed to get around the porn filters.

It still seems pointless because most of the VPN services are based outside the US for legal reasons anyway.

They could, but probably the only real reason why they maintained access to the ISS is because they get paid for it, and because they wanted to keep their independent capability alive. Aside from those reasons, they probably aren't all that interested in going there.

China is building a maglev line between Beijing and Shanghai, which will then extend south. Given how fast they build conventional high speed rail, I expect that expansion will be rapid.

It's an interesting design too, and a largely domestic one. They do have a German built maglev in Shanghai, but the new EMUs they have been showing off bare little resemblance beyond using electromagnetic suspension. I'm looking forward to comparing it to Japan's electrodynamic suspension.

Investment is a tricky one.

I'd say that learning how to learn is probably the single-most valuable part of any degree, and anything that has any business calling itself a degree will make this a key aspect. And that, alone, makes a degree a good investment, as most people simply don't know how. They don't know where to look, how to look, how to tell what's useful, how to connect disparate research into something that could be used in a specific application, etc.

The actual specifics tend to be less important, as degree courses are well-behind the cutting edge and are necessarily grossly simplified because it's still really only crude foundational knowledge at this point. Students at undergraduate level simply don't know enough to know the truly interesting stuff.

And this is where it gets tricky. Because an undergraduate 4-year degree is aimed at producing thinkers. Those who want to do just the truly depressingly stupid stuff can get away with the 2 year courses. You do 4 years if you are actually serious about understanding. And, in all honesty, very few companies want entry-level who are competent at the craft, they want people who are fast and mindless. Nobody puts in four years of network theory or (Valhalla forbid) statistics for the purpose of being mindless. Not unless the stats destroyed their brain - which, to be honest, does happen.

Humanities does not make things easier. There would be a LOT of benefit in technical documentation to be written by folk who had some sort of command of the language they were using. Half the time, I'd accept stuff written by people who are merely passing acquaintances of the language. Vague awareness of there being a language would sometimes be an improvement. But that requires that people take a 2x4 to the usual cultural bias that you cannot be good at STEM and arts at the same time. (It's a particularly odd cultural bias, too, given how much Leonardo is held in high esteem and how neoclassical universities are either top or near-top in every country.)

So, yes, I'll agree a lot of degrees are useless for gaining employment and a lot of degrees for actually doing the work, but the overlap between these two is vague at times.

The reasons for not travelling seem questionable though, and you could argue that it wouldn't be safe for Indian staff to travel to the US.

Singing is pretty much a commodity service now. With autotune almost anyone can do it, but you can hire a professional for not a lot of money. It's good that people get work instead of AI slop, but also the rates are very low and it's a side gig at most.

The people who making a living from it tend to have other talents too. Song writing, stage performance, looking conventionally attractive, building up a social media following, etc.

AI probably won't change much in that respect.

It's incredible that anyone still invests in it, after Musk publicly admitted it was a scam.

And "the only solution for trips over 300 miles"? Less than an hour via existing maglev technology, which both Japan and China are deploying as we speak. That's just the start though, maglev can probably double that speed, close to the speed of sound. The issue is the noise, and you don't need a vacuum tube to solve it.

I'm hoping for more than normal. Big floods of used but perfectly serviceable drives and memory hitting the market, at bankruptcy prices.

Also can they please hurry up and get LTO 10 out the door, so that LTO 8 drives get cheap? Thanks.

It's a borderline scam, where so many jobs, even minimum wage ones, need a degree just to get past the application submission stage, that a degree is almost mandatory in many fields. A lot of it is employers transferring the cost of training to the employee.

It also blows the meritocracy arguments out of the water, because a person's ability to get high level qualifications is highly dependent on their ability to pay. Not just pay for college, but to not work so much they don't have time to do extra studying or non-core activities.

The degree isn't about "getting a high-paid job", it's about knowing what the hell you're doing once you get a job. Although, fair enough, it's quite plausible that not many degrees would meet that standard either.

There is a possibility of a short-circuit causing an engine shutdown. Apparently, there is a known fault whereby a short can result in the FADEC "fail-safing" to engine shutdown, and this is one of the competing theories as the wiring apparently runs near a number of points in the aircraft with water (which is a really odd design choice).

Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that (a) the wiring actually runs there (the wiring block diagrams are easy to find, but block diagrams don't show actual wiring paths), (b) that there is anything to indicate that water could reach such wiring in a way that could cause a short, or (c) that it actually did so. I don't have that kind of information.

All I can tell you, at this point, is that aviation experts are saying that a short at such a location would cause an engine shutdown and that Boeing was aware of this risk.

I will leave it to the experts to debate why they're using electrical signalling (it's slower than fibre, heavier than fibre, can corrode, and can short) and whether the FADEC fail-safes are all that safe or just plain stupid. For a start, they get paid to shout at each other, and they actually know what specifics to shout at each other about.

But, if the claims are remotely accurate, then there were a number of well-known flaws in the design and I'm sure Boeing will just love to answer questions on why these weren't addressed. The problem being, of course, is that none of us know which of said claims are indeed remotely accurate, and that makes it easy for air crash investigators to go easy on manufacturers.