Let's take the other counterfactual by consulting present reality. Let's say Mosadegh got into power and cozied up to the Soviets in the 50s. Okay cool. What would it have looked like if Iran were aligned against the West and with the Russians? Well...that's the facts on the ground now and it doesn't seem to be working out for them given that their leadership is being bombed out of existence and the Russians can't do anything for them.

Well if the beatings don't do the job...

y'all get together in a big room at the same time.

Why here's an inviting one in pristine condition...

Then it doesn't matter if there's a glaring bug or missing features because the glaring bug can be avoided by handshake agreement and the missing features simply don't exist in your little social bubble of geeks.

I've written and worked on several large (100kloc+) pieces of software like that over the past 20 years or so.

And then a commercial package comes along that costs something north of $50k/seat but actually fixes all those bugs and handles the corner cases y'all were too lazy to implement.

But of course it doesn't do what it does in your self-evidently correct way so there'sa ton of glue code you need to write...and it's expensive...and who knows if their guys *really* understand the domain-specific subtleties the way our guys do...and you've already got your workflow down so...why acknowledge it exists at all?

They can probably make one themselves from scavenged metal and spare parts.

It's a carrier. They could land on it directly. No need for a chopper.

The design could also be overly complicated and dependent on components that couldn't be easily.

The ability to repair at sea needs to be a core part of the design and written into the contract.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

You're flying an RF receiver 37 km above somewhere near the magnetic pole and you're surprised you're getting 30 MHz signals from all directions?

How about instead of a second stargate emitting from under the ice...something is just getting ducted under the ionosphere and popping up at your balloon. Same way you can hear 1 MHz and 10 MHz from far away at oddball times of night as the ionosphere rises and falls through the evening.

That, times an average Japanese life expectancy of about 80 years is a country of 50 million people when this all shakes out.

Kind of a step downward from 120m and growing, and about to take over the world.

Maybe they oughto do like handmaids tale and something something.

Picture in picture ads.

Broadcast TV does it sometimes.

Sure, I'm going to need a time machine and a planet materializer. Also a lien on the space around Earth so it doesn't get blown up to make room for a hyperspace freeway.

Most of what ATC does is routine. New airplane arrives in their airspace and calls ATC. ATC sends the first step of the standard arrival route and any known issues with the flying condition reported by other aircraft. Then it's time for a turn and descent in the route. ATC radios them direction and altitude. Repeat this half a dozen times. The plane might be flying a bit fast. ATC tweaks the route slightly to give them more air miles and tells them to slow down. Now the plane is at the initial approach fix and it'll join and follow ILS all the way down to the ground, with the ATC giving altitude clearances and eventually the landing clearance.

Frankly most of that can be done automatically, and in some cases better. The computer won't forget to give a descent clearance, it'll speak clearly at all times, it can talk to 2 planes at the same time, it can project flight paths way more accurately. ATC only needs to step in when something unusual happens, and even then there can be pre-programmed processes that can happen much faster with computer support, e.g. telling all planes to enter into a holding pattern at non-conflicting altitudes or telling them to all go to their alternates.

This is why content moderation should not be left to large corporations.

There needs to be open access to anyone who truly wishes to see the disagreeable content, and a competitive collection of filters that one can pick and choose from to change their browsing experience. These filters should be very easy for anyone to set up, so if you disagree with the choices of one, you can easily switch to a different one, or even make one yourself.

More of a riot in my opinion.

So here's a story from some relatives just outside the Philadelphia city limits from 2020:

PA had a messed up food fight of election rules in 2020 (Dem governor vs Republican legislature) and the rules that were nominally on the books at the time were something to the effect of mail ballots having to be in secrecy envelopes, with the outer envelope signed and dated by the voter. Envelopes without a signature or without a date were technically invalid.

Unless.

The election workers, without peeking inside of course, spotted the error. Then they were allowed to contact the voter and have him come in to "cure" the ballot by placing his mark in the correct spot on the paper.

But see this "cure the ballot" stuff, while legal, was not mandatory. And poll volunteers in heavily blue Philadelphia and Pittsburgh made a point of doing it, while poll volunteers in other parts of the state weren't as active about it.

Now, even though the poll workers ib Philly weren't supposed to peak inside the envelope to look at the votes that needed curing, there was nothing stopping them from looking at the party registration of the ballot caster. In fact, they pretty much had to see it when they checked the mail ballot.

Rumor was, they were a little more enthusiastic about contacting registered Democrats to cure their ballots.

Provably illegal? Certainly not. Kinda fishy? Oh yeah. Fishy in concert with a whole school of fish...all of which was probably still legal...in the sense that the laws were changed to favor broader access over authentication? You bet your ass it was.