Story buries the lede... 652 unpatched vulnerabilities on Windows 11 isn't really much better than 1,903 on Windows 10, since it only takes one actively exploitable vulnerability, though I realize most of those are (hopefully) not critical vulnerabilities. Course take it all with a grain of salt, since the article is basically an ad for a company selling Windows security compliance services.

I know of dozens of people still using Windows 10 (without updates) -- at this point it's probably still not really a big deal for the vast majority of people.

I don't get it either. I use AI a lot, for all sorts of different things. In none of them do I want to talk to it. The only exception I could imagine would be if I wanted to brainstorm about something while driving.

Also, all of the voices have (to my ear) an annoying, fake-bubbly-happy California accent.

Every company ought to always be required to make technical documentation and replacement components available for their products.

I just had this on a much smaller scale: a cordless Bosch vacuum cleaner. It almost certainly needed a battery replacement. Nowhere on the internet is there a diagram of how to disassemble it. Remove all the visible screws and...nothing. Finally get it apart, and: the seven batteries (in series) are installed in such a way as to be very difficult to remove. Of course, there is no information on what their specs are, and as far as I can tell, Bosch won't sell you replacements. Ultimately, we threw it away and bought a new one (from a brand that does sell replacement parts).

It's absolutely irritating to have to trash an appliance that just needs a simple repair. This is where government regulation would actually be important.

Cool idea for satellites near the earth. The thrust will be pretty minimal, but since it's basically "free" that doesn't matter.

Moon and Mars...hmmm...gonna be a slight lack of magnetic fields to push against, as soon as you are away from the Earth. Neither the Moon nor Mars has a significant magnetic field.

ChatGPT points out that the magnets are likely more useful to maintain orientation. Any actual thrust will be on the order of nano-newtons. Let's be generous and assume an entire micronewton of thrust, and that this can be maintained throughout the entire orbit. For a 100kg satellite (that's quite small), that could give you a velocity change of 0.3 m/s over the course of a year. That could be useful for satellites in mid- to high-orbit. It is far too little to be useful in LEO. Of course, the magnetic field is weaker at higher altitudes, so...

Anyone with the info off the bottom of a check can withdraw money from your account. There is basically no security.

Join the modern world, folks.

"the difference between a story originating from the Guardian or some Russian bot-farm..." But how much difference is there? The Guardian is just a bot farm staffed by humans following a party line. Or they have been humans, though increasingly it seems like they too may be largely bots.

Yes, this is what the government has in mind. The Guardian, BBC and other certified righteous outfits would have to come at the top of searches. Other misinforming broadcasters like GBNews would come at the bottom with the Russian bot farms or not appear at all.

The faked news clips of Trump that the BBC broadcast would be at the top of the searches, and the stories that GBNews carries pointing out how they were faked would not feature at all.

This would be 'Verified Live', and challenging it would be misinformation. It would be sort of like the gender mafia at the BBC, but on a national scale.

And as a late great anti-psych writer once wrote: if you cannot talk about it, you cannot talk about the fact that you cannot talk about it. VPNs would be next, and pretty soon after that it would not be permitted to mention that there are such things. The Great Wall of Britain, Chinese media control with British characteristics. To protect people, or course.

The license fee is taxation tied to supporting one particular broadcaster. Its a government imposed tax on watching live TV from any broadcaster.

If you want an analogy from the cases you cite, it would be if you had to pay a tax on every newspaper purchase, whose proceeds were handed on to the Guardian. And if it were a criminal offence to read any newspaper without paying this tax. Go into a library, and you cannot read the papers without producing a paid permit. Go into a newsagent, and you cannot buy a paper without producing it.

Or it would be like a tax on shopping at any supermarket, whose proceeds went to Tesco. You would have to have a paid supermarket permit to allow you to shop at, for instance, Sainsburys or any other supermarket, and the proceeds would be given to Tesco, and it would be a criminal offence to shop at any supermarket without buying such a permit.

Or, put it another way, you would have to have a paid permit to drive a car, any car. The proceeds would be paid to Ford.

Still strikes you as reasonable? Still think its good value? For who is it good value? Its good value for all the people who like the BBC and would subscribe to it were subscription voluntary. Its good value because the other half of the country, or maybe more, are subsidizing them.

Its the great liberal tradition. Get something we want, then make everyone else pay for it whether they want it or not, call it 'public service xyz', then claim its great value. Because the fee, paid by everyone including all those who do not want or use it, is lower than the fee for, for instance, Sky. Which is only paid by those who want to watch it. So no wonder its cheaper.

Its like if beer from one brewer, every pint, half the cost was paid out of taxation, and they all go around saying what great cheap beer this is. Yes, because the whole country is paying half on every pint drawn, whether they drink it or not.

And then, immune from commercial pressures, the BBC goes around unaccountable and systematically making up fake news, and there is nothing you can do about it, if you want to watch any kind of live TV at all.

A garbage system. No wonder the French have dropped it.

You wouldn't get more for your money elsewhere. Energy returned on Investment for nuclear is high.

More bullshit from you.

Cause solar is going to have a high capacity factor in Canada. \s And yes I want a nuclear power plant in my backyard.

Climate change, air pollution, and energy poverty. Having a reliable grid is a good reason in itself.

In the absence of a moon, I would have thought plate tectonics unlikely?

its a noble effort, but you are posting to an environment where everyone here knows that wind+solar+batteries is cheaper than gas or coal, because the wind and the sun are free, and they have no fuel costs. They also know that the only people who are skeptical about this are climate deniers.

These deniers keep talking about something called Net Present Value and claiming that is the correct way to evaluate and compare costs of generating systems. Net Present Value is a concept you will find in all kinds of Corporate Finance textbooks, well, do I need to say more? Its hetero-normative, racist, patriarchal and neo-colonial, and probably Islamophobic and transphobic with it and denies indigenous wisdom. Its on the wrong side of history, like coal, gas and nukes. Of course it pretends that wind+solar+batteries is actually a very expensive technology.

Well it would, wouldn't it?

What's the problem?

All they have to do is build more wind and solar (and batteries). Everyone except a few climate denialists knows that wind+solar+batteries is far cheaper than coal, gas or nuclear and can generate all the electricity anyone could conceivably need from free fuel, the sun and the air.

There is absolutely no need to restrict the installation of data centers, and there is no reason whatever why their power demands should raise prices. In fact, they should lower prices, because they will be at the spearhead of the energy transition, because it will lead to a larger and larger proportion of generation moving away from legacy technology to cheap clean power.

This is so obvious to us all here on Slashdot that its a mystery why the local politicians don't see it too.

...just around the corner - and has been for 50 years.

They not only need to show that they can generate net energy - a lot of net energy. For commercial success, they also need to show that the reactor can sustain that level of output for weeks, months, and years. That's an area that has not really been looked at, because no one has sustained a fusion reaction for longer than minutes. Personally, I expect that to be a huge hurdle, because of the temperatures involved.