Ok, so let's say that it's impossible to travel between stars at "Warp" speeds. There are still other possibilities.

What about prior Earth civilizations that were wiped out (war, climate change, asteroids, whatever) and left remnants of themselves in the solar system? Can these be considered aliens? Could such remnants possess advanced tech and be posing as aliens from other stars to protect themselves from us?

I'd highly recommend the book "The Mote In God's Eye". It's about humans who encounter an alien race that didn't previously have access to the jump points that humans use for FTL travel. The "Moties" go through cycles of expansion, war, desolation, and re-expansion. Where the home planet always bombs itself to oblivion, and their separate asteroid/Ort Cloud civilizations have to re-colonize centuries later.

HA! If only Microsoft would get their act together so that Apple had a reason to improve itself. They're minting money right now because Microsoft screwing users over even more. I paid good money for my windows box, but I don't even feel like it's mine. Since despite my best efforts to geld it, the damned thing just auto-updates unwanted crapware onto itself whenever it feels like it. At least Apple asks first before updating, and doesn't try and decide what non-system software I should have the honor of having. Or which of those useless apps I'm actually allowed to delete.

Not even gen-one apple products are THAT bad. Well, not usually. :)

That sounds like my Hackintosh experience. Which is why I went back to buying real Macs. My "Hackintosh" now sits under my desk running Win10 games and the occasional windows-only graphics app.

...in mice. ;)

And how would a "benevolent" socialist A.I. avoid the need to use force against the humans who don't wish to follow its dictates? Is Libertarianism only unworkable because you've chosen not wave the magic tech wand at it?

There is a reason why human-organized systems break down, and the Catholics even have a word for it: Subsidiarity. Humans function best, regardless of the type of government they're under, when decision making is left to the lowest possible level of the hierarchy that still serves the common good. But as a system's decision-making is inevitably raised to higher and higher levels (the autocratic King/President/CEO, the Supreme Soviet, Billionaire Corporate & Bank Cartels... etc.) then corruption sets in and rots away the ability of the people at the lowest level of the system to make their decisions locally and rationally according to their specific situational needs. Eventually, all decision-making becomes top-down and irrational, and the system collapses. Due to the inability of those wielding the power (and making all the decisions) to understand, much less care about, what's happening to the people at the bottom of the power pyramid. Sound familiar?

Some governmental forms are more resistant to this rot than others, or rot in different ways. But the solution is the same: De-Centralize the decision-making of the system to the lowest hierarchical level that serves the common good.

That label is also mis-applied. Socialism has nothing to do with the idea of unionization. Which is simply workers forming an organization of their own free will in order to win concessions (better pay, less overtime) from the management of the company they work for. The socialist label would only apply if the workers in question were forced by law into joining a union.

I'll admit that as a libertarian-minded worker in the animation/game industries in my 20's, I didn't grok this distinction properly. There was talk even then of doing something to address the crazy working conditions, and raise the pay – which I rejected. But my 45 year-old conservative-libertarian minded self can now see just how stupid it was to work 12+ hour days for such crap wages. If I hadn't left Silicon Valley just prior to turning 30, I never could have gotten married and started a family on what little I was making. I saw friends with high-profile jobs at places like Lucasfilm, Dreamworks, and Pixar that were barely getting by. Lucky to be able to buy a money-pit fixer-upper in the Sunset district, and have one kid that they might get to see on weekends, if at all.

Try going back 500 years and describing our technological wonders to those living in the Middle Ages. Such as how one family can farm the land that 10,000 much larger families used to (leading to empty farm towns across America). How we have machines that allow a dozen men to build what would to them be a huge building. How almost anyone can fly above the clouds to go visit family half a world away. Or how we can instantly communicate with the other side of the world, not just with "letters", but audio and video too. Or the sheer number of people who live in our cities.

Then you can explain to them why, with all of these wonders, we still have a need for money.

Oh please... Nothing is free. Even if we have self-replicating robots, the resources to build them are finite. So are the energy sources to run them. The pollution they produce will be non-zero. Their maintenance and design will require human or genius-bot input, and both of those will be limited in number.

Most importantly, the desires of humans for labor are essentially unlimited in scope. Give a family one robot, and they'll soon "need" 2, 3, and... how many computing devices do you have in your house again? Be sure to count every PC, laptop, tablet, phone, calculator, thermostat, furnace, water heater, oven, game system, TV, and electronic toy, and god knows what else. Robots would proliferate similarly, and we'd still have to have prices to decide who gets more or fewer robots.

And THAT's assuming that the robots don't develop their own desires and dreams.

The monitoring station is in Hawaii. The map shows nothing between Hawaii and Asia because there are no monitoring stations in-between. RTFA and you'll see that there are four major monitoring stations that form a roughly north-south line, and are roughly equidistant from each other.

"Progress" is not a one-way road. Scientists make mistakes all the time (see the low-fat diet fiasco that's killing millions). Scientists makes horrible assumptions constantly (all brains assumed to be same as ONE SINGLE dissection in the 60's until MRIs revealed the multiplicity of structures). Pop-Science gets manipulated by corporate marketing (see the efforts of tobacco and sugar companies to downplay the dangers of their products). Real Science gets highjacked again and again by political interests that control research funds (see the Global Warming/Cooling/Change insanity that every new project has to reference somehow). Real Science, in a false dichotomy against religion, also gets misused and twisted into it's opposite: Dogma (see the cult of the Big Bang).

"Science" needs to rid itself of political chains, encourage not just discovery, but reward positive/negative confirmation, and recognize that it can only observe and describe natural processes. The instant a scientist tries to create moral meaning out of what they see, they are no longer practicing science.

Seriously, Wall Street hates the Bitcoin casino because it's sucking up potential "investment" money from their stock market casino. They're just hating on their competition. It's the same reason that the TV industry spent so much time demonizing video games in the 80's and 90's. The latter reduces the demand for the former.

I still remember a friend of mine buying the original titanium PowerBook upon release. If you picked up his shiny new laptop by opposite corners, the battery would fall out.

Which is why you NEVER, EVER, buy the first version of any Apple product. They test intensively, but not widely, due to their desire for secrecy.

So to those who are buying the new iMac Pro in a few weeks... Good luck suckers!

"Not being racist is the new racism." - Jeff Winger on "Community"

Bah... Did you see who the executive producer is? Akiva Goldsman, the most overrated writer in Hollywood. One who has NEVER done a decent Sci-Fi project.

"Lost in Space" – I rest my case.

There's also the rumor that next season will take place in a new setting, with new characters. And that the show will be retro-branded as an "Anthology".