There *is* a heck of a lot .. on 16 Psyche.

I dunno about you, but the idea of shipping off in a space ship for a year or two, to mine my fortune in space minerals, sounds kinda .. fun ..

>>> reviewed by actual humans. .. Max Headroom!

Set up IceComm on a web site that only you and your kids can access, and give them the Chrome browser with a bookmark to go there at scheduled times .. https://icecomm.io/

Very easy to set up server less video conferencing. Add a bit of TogetherJS to the mix and you've got realtime chat as well - without needing to install anything on any local computers besides the Chrome browser.

I use IceComm on my main server as the 'front door' to my business - I have a browser sitting on my front door all day, and whenever clients visit I'm ready for them. Its just like having a virtual front door to the business .. very handy and very care-free for the customers.

I agree: Lua is absolutely one of the best things to be teaching high school students. You can either sit entirely in the Lua language itself, or you can learn to extend the capabilities of the VM and interface with outside libraries and frameworks.

I think the big elephant in the room is more to be found further upstream, in the area of manufacturing. Worrying about software hacks is one thing - not having the faintest absolute clue exactly *what* is inside the chip package is something else entirely. Think its an accumulator bank? Oh sorry, maybe we forgot to mention the harmonic bundles associated with wave guidance within the interstitial distances of the rapidly blinking transistors .. yeah, those can be read from space. With a satellite (or 12).

The game is over folks, or rather .. the game is on, depending on how you look at it. Until you are capable of investigating and participating, directly, in the sub-assemblies, you will always have a weak back door. Either we, ultimately, become able to assemble our own chips on the desktop, or there will always be a power class: those who can build such devices, and those who can only be ruled by them.

We need to evolve to adapt to this new threat to the species, and instead of seriously *resisting* its effects on our being, we - the true power - direct the feature to our favour. If, out of the NSA catastrophe, we gain a "New Internet" wherein *everything, everywhere* for 15 years, was available to everyone, then we'd have indeed a new era in the human species. A truly evolutionary step, made by mistake - perhaps.

The end of the episode actually does make me cry a little. Saddest damn thing I've ever seen in a cartoon.

I'm so glad that others feel this way.

Completely agree with you on that episode. "The Late Philip J. Fry" is perhaps one of the best episodes of the entire series. In fact, I think it holds up pretty dang well just as pure science fiction. Take out the comedic elements and it would make a short story to make Ellison proud. Or something like that. I really enjoyed it, is what I'm saying.

you sir understand us very well... kudos!

"There. . . are. . . FOUR. . . lights!"

so if your console breaks you also lose all your games? sweet!

One of the entry level jobs at my company is working in our Network Operations Center. This job is part system administration, part customer service and part security guard :) Typically a NOC engineer watches monitoring systems and performs actions when things go wrong. They also execute changes on our production systems and occasionally communicate with customers about system issues. There are also routine administration tasks that need to be performed.

The hours can be challenging since the NOC is staffed 24/7. But the shifts are regular and predictable, and more desirable shifts open up after some time on the job. The best NOC engineers are resourceful and reliable, which seems achievable by retrained elderly workers. You can learn quite a bit on the job as well, since there are so many different ways that systems can fail :)

Didn't know I wasn't logged in. Though I'd post this again as me.

You, sir, are absolutely correct in your assessment of us. And I, for one, wish to apologize for the behaviors you describe. Please be aware, however, that the people you describe only account for roughly half of our population. Unfortunately, the nature of our political system means the rest of us are almost completely powerless to move the country forward with all that dead weight dragging us back. Maybe in another generation or two. Sigh.