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Comment Re:Planet with atmosphere 0.000018 light years awa (Score 1) 6

Although, from my two second check just now, Venus is technically considered within the Goldilocks zone for this solar system it is right on the very inner edge of it. This finding differs from Venus in that respect, making it more interesting as a possibility.

All highly speculative of course, but to be fair that's exactly what the article says. Atmosphere detected, everything else speculative.

Comment Priorities (Score 4, Interesting) 97

Years back I was interviewing people for a coding position. We went through the standard tech stuff and then did a bit of project to see how they thought. We said (this is circa 2009'ish I think) - imagine you're on a team creating a new phone. You don't have time to test all the functions, so which would be your top two functions to ensure working?

All a bit Kobayashi Maru - obviously you can't release a phone testing only two functions, but we wanted to see what they'd prioritise. The very best answer we received was this one: "I would make sure it has the ability to call emergency services." Their thinking was that this was likely the most critical feature of a phone for both a user, and also for the manufacturer to avoid being sued. Absolutely great answer.

And yet here we are, with the post above. Taking the thinking of this interviewee - the ability to work with emergency services is important for general society, for the user of the vehicle (so they don't get in trouble) and for the manufacture of the vehicle (so they don't get fined/sued/both). Absolutely critical.

Comment Defy FUD, Meet Expectations (Score 5, Insightful) 110

I don't know what expectations these are defying unless they're from those created by anti-EV FUD. I thought it was pretty clear that EV batteries usually last longer than the cars themselves. If 250K is exceeding expectations, then the expectations are wrong and haven't been supported by the data for a long time.

Comment Re:Volvo but not Polestar? (Score 1) 125

The reason there are extreme left candidates is that the Democrats picked the ONE candidate they will run in the main election. At best they will pick an average Democrat, but because they are NOT using RCV they will probably pick an extremist who appeals to the greatest fraction (far less than 1/2) of them. In RCV there would be a bunch of Democrats and Republicans and others running in a SINGLE election. Yea you can vote for your favorite extremist as #1, but you will also rank people in the middle higher than your opposing side, and since this happens in both directions, the center will win.

It is obvious that opponents of RCV are resorting to outright LIES now. Pretty low.

Comment Re:Isaacman is not immune to the disease (Score 1) 29

I agree there is something fishy about this. Not only will it leave the 2 landers on Mars without a test platform on Earth, it will also leave PROMISE without a test platform on Earth! I'm also surprised the test platform has a working RTG generator when there probably is a wall outlet it could have used instead, though perhaps they wanted to be absolutely authentic.

Comment Re:Cost (Score 1) 131

The tyre burst annoys me. The Air France Concordes didn't have the same safety features as the British Airways one - specifically, the BA ones had guards against burst tyres.

Virgin Airways wanted to buy the BA planes to keep them flying and offered to, but BA just didn't want to give them a public relations win so refused to sell. Shambles all round.

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