I was restricting my comment to the North American market, which was as I described. I agree 100% about Blake's 7. British television was far in advance of what we had over here. All in the Family and Sanford & Son, for example, were less edgy adaptations of English TV comedies.

Biochemist here. I've done genomics, I've done proteomics, I have customers in diagnostic medicine currently. My PhD was on protein-protein interactions, which is a big part of how our immune system works.

A lot of people are quick to jump on the fact that the Theranos system didn't work, and many others claim that it was impossible and never could have worked. While indeed their system didn't work, that doesn't at all disqualify the principle.

For one case study of how far we've come in recent times I point to genomics. The first draft of the human genome took more than a decade start to finish and cost over $1B. Now we can sequence full human genomes on a commercial scale for $500 or less, and it's done in less than a week with far better resolution than the first draft.

From genomics we went to proteomics; classifying proteins in a organism instead of just genes. This tells us more about what cells are doing (although transcriptomics can bridge the gap to a certain extent). Proteins are often better disease markers than genes as well for a similar reason. When proteomics started getting off the ground we were cataloging proteins from large amounts of cellular extract. Now we can catalog and in some cases quantify proteins from individual cells. We can also use protein staining and imaging mass spec to show which cells from a biopsy are expressing aberrant proteins (again as disease markers); we've reached a point where we can do this in real time on live tissue.

One of the biggest faults in the Theranos system was in the fact that blood is not the best serum for disease markers. Yes there are markers in there but not everything goes in there, and not always in quantities that are easy to observe. Blood is great because of how much is in there but lots is missed there as well.

Buddy...when the original Star Trek ran, it was a different world, especially in the case of what was allowed on television. The bedrooms of married couples showed twin beds. The first interracial kiss in US television history occurred on Star Trek, and that episode was banned across much of the South. Women were not considered worthy of positions of authority, especially if it included having authority over men. It was literally a different world. Until the advent of Star Trek, "science fiction" on television consisted of simple-minded fantasy series like Lost In Space, Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, etc. Tropes such as faster-than-light travel and interstellar conflict, which Babylon 5 relied upon, barely existed before Star Trek. Even sub-plots that carried on for whole seasons were rare. Episodes were expected to stand alone.

Let me put it this way: The original Star Trek swam in very different waters than Babylon 5, and it changed the rules in ways that allowed Babylon 5 to be what it was (which was excellent, by the way).

I think you two are both correct here. The company was mostly funded by very wealthy investors, those folks lost money and are getting their pounds of flesh back by way of seeing her rot in jail. As you point out there were also actual patients who had tests ran (uncertain now what tests, where, by whom) and received crap results; those people of course are getting nothing back because they don't have enough money to be considered worth anything in the courts - even if they died as a result.

You're not wrong that the democrats are run by a bunch of cowards. They propose a plan, and reliably fold on it as soon as the MAGA party comes up with a (not at all) clever insult that invariably tears the plan down to a single word bite. The democrats do have ideas, they just have no spine to actually push them through.

I wonder if a better answer to the lack of organs suitable for transplant might be to direct more resources toward research into cloning a patient's heart or liver or kidney for subsequent transplant. I realize there's a huge difference between sausages made from vat-grown meat and growing somebody a new kidney, but I just can't get past the advantages at the other end if we figured it out. I'm talking about growing an individual organ, by the way, not cloning a human to be looted for replacement organs.

"Israeli first Zionist"? Sanders? You are so completely full of shit you're on a level with Trump's diaper.

Show us how you know essentially nothing about the Ford Pinto without telling us that you know essentially nothing about the Ford Pinto.

On the plus side, at least we still have enough readers on this site to have at least one person who meets that criteria. I guess that's something.

As somebody once said, "If I won $30 million, I'd spend half of it on hookers and coke. The rest, I'd just waste".

"We took on this high-risk, high-reward challenge and are proud of the milestones we reached along the way," [Katalyst CEO Ghonhee Lee] said in a statement. "We have already learned a tremendous amount."

I'd be delighted to learn a tremendous amount from NASA, and I'd be prepared to offer them my willingness to learn for maybe 10% of the $30 million they paid Katalyst.

A deal like that...how can NASA say no? I will wait with relaxed confidence by my desktop communications centre for their response to my generous offer.

The flaw here isn't that the software got it wrong, it's that a corporation is allowed to use it at all. What's next, cameras positioned to capture "legal" upskirt video because, of course, that's one of the best places for shoplifters to hide their stolen merchandise?

We need to let governments and corporations know that as citizens of a free country, we will not put up with mass surveillance backed by software that can track every individual person every moment of the time they are outside their homes, and even when they're inside them if somebody's interested enough.

Social media addiction is a subset of screen addiction, and screen addiction is destroying Gen Alpha at an alarming pace. I have so far found zero specialists who can help with this. It's not just a matter of taking screens away, we have literally turned an entire generation into junkies who will lie and cheat to get their fix. The adolescent mind never stood a chance; male or female.

If Meta wants a nicer spot in hell they can at least help with the mess they have profited off of. Help train the next generation of rehab specialists and help people find help. We made big tobacco do it, we can make these monsters do it as well.

That is not a trivial feat in the least. You don't have to give your kids smart phones, you don't have to have a PC at home. You can try to send your kid to a school that deemphasizes technology. And yet your kid will still end up with a screen addiction because it is that consuming. Kids don't have a chance. What today's kids face today is so far beyond what any of us grew up with that there really is no comparison.

My youngest siblings grew up on a heavy diet of Barney and Friends and it drove me up the wall. At least there was only a certain time of the day that was available on broadcast TV. And my 8 bit NES was not portable in any reasonable meaning of the word. Those barriers are gone now and the programming targeting kids makes Barney look like Mr Science.

What breaks privacy is the mass surveillance. EVERYBODY has their life recorded in detail. At best, all it takes is a friendly judge, and the police will be sticking their long, flexible noses into your business, and probably the business of your friends and relatives as well. But do you really think a nosy cop needs to run a plate? Existing software can track a car from the moment you park it in your driveway for the first time until the time you have it carted off for scrap.