We should be cautious about germline genetic engineering, mostly because of the potential for causing harm to the individual, but also a broader fear of creating a larger divide between the haves and have-nots.

The idea that such caution should result in an absolute ban on such things is due to fear, and it's stupid and those fears should be discounted. If they aren't, the fears will result in what they are trying to prevent as the work continues in private.

If I were planning on having a child, and I had the money, nothing would stop me from having my offspring's DNA tailored as far as known genetics would allow to optimize their heath.

Stargate SG1 had a great setup for cheap production of an episodic planet-of-the-week show but that's hardly unique.

The Stargate isn't what made the show special, it was the self-aware humour and the charismatic cast. And the original cast is too damn old now, so you'd be rolling the dice with a remake.

In my opinion, it's better to build a new setting than try to reinvent the old one. At least that way you don't have baggage to worry about.

It's intellectual laziness. Our rulers are just people, after all.

The goal should have been self-sufficiency on critical infrastructure and food supply, then let non-critical trade build relationships and trust over time.

That and a global NATO-like club with a rule like "everyone is obligated to take action against a member who attacks another member" for military security.

It's still not perfect, because people lie, but there's nothing you can do about that.

There are some guns you can only fire once, so you save that shot for only the most existential of risks.

If you're the US you do it on a whim, and it not only never works again but you damage political and business relationships that reduce your nation's influence and hurt your economy.

You let them get too entrenched. Good luck with peaceful options, but I don't see the US' issues being resolved without internal violence.

War has always been about resources... for rulers, that includes human resources, the people they can get to implement their will for them.

Ukraine is just showing us how true this is - it doesn't matter what you attack the enemy with, you're trying to exhaust their resources before they exhaust yours. Better robots than people - maybe the next war can be entirely robotic and we can leave soldiers out of it.

It would be nice if technology could prevent the wars in the first place, but as long as there are humans in control I don't see that happening.

Our fundamental nature hasn't changed significantly since our distant ancestors were wandering around in small family groups.

Social structure flows from the fact that we're all social primates looking to have a popular / strong member of the group lead us against those 'others' we fear want our stuff.

Until that changes, you must assume that anything that can be bent to the task of benefiting one of us over others or one group of us over other groups will be. It takes a lot of effort to build up social structures to counter this and not much to tear them down.

It usually goes to the lowest-ranking person on the team or the one everyone's trying to keep away from actual coding.

It remains worth the effort to write a novel around your code - not just what you did and why you did certain things a certain way, but the meta-reasons. The more those who come after you understand, the easier it is for them to figure out and maintain your code. It also tends to focus you more on writing good code, because you don't want to document, "Well, it looked good enough and didn't immediately produce errors and I'm tired of this and want to move on".

AI code? Well, AI should be very good at generating plain-language documentation of 'what', but it is absolutely going to fail at 'why'.

The additional cost over a normal horizontal ducted turbine is, of course, the new shell and the actuator it requires.

It's like you didn't bother actually reading my post and just responded in ignorance.

It happens here, but perhaps you'd be happier on Reddit?

Start with a ducted horizontal wind turbine. If you imagine a bunch of salad bowls stacked with spacers and you get the idea of what it would look like from the outside.

The ducts collect air from any direction and drive it down, through the turbine, and out the bottom. Water doesn't turn corners quiet as easily as air, so you can use the ducts to separate out the majority of liquid and drain it away from your turbine.

Then you and an armored shell of horizontal bands that can be moved up and down to reduce or enlarge the duct input slot area. Instead of having to worry about wind load and braking at the turbine, you control dangerous wind load at the intake.

There's your monsoon-resistant wind turbine.

It wasn't a big theatre-experience movie, it was more like a handful of really good television episodes strung together.

In that sense, it was both a good movie and deserved the bad reviews it got.

1) Not tied to frequent fuel deliveries

2) Does not require much that humans don't already need - sun and air. (Variability will affect your power storage needs)

3) It can be deployed almost anywhere, and even be portable.

The main issue is energy density - if you want to drive hundreds of kilometers a day, run your AC all summer and heat all winter, etc., you're going to need a lot of land dedicated to power collection.

I imagine there are a lot of places in a continent like Africa where people might be happy to get by on what solar can give them in return for not having to worry about burning oil or anything else to get electricity.

A deep crater at the south pole in eternal darkness, with the ability to raise solar collectors above the rim for eternal sunshine, and you have excellent conditions for observing the skies.