They missed their window of opportunity. A few months ago they could have just bribed Trump into giving them blanket immunity forever. Now that Trump is failing in so many ways that even Republicans are starting to balk at bowing to his every whim, Meta is actually going to have to play the game the old fashioned way and figure out how to bribe all of congress to get their immunity. Poor babies. They should have planned ahead. They could have saved themselves a lot of time and money.

In the middle ages Kings were publicly admitting they were marrying children. Though in "civilized" societies they supposedly waited to start the actual intercourse until they girl had her first period, which could range from twelve to fifteen or so. In not so civilized? It was whenever the husband/leader lost patience or got randy.

I want Starship human rated so we can load one up with Elon, Zuck, Bezos, maybe Branson and a smattering of others, launch them out past the moon somewhere, and just leave them with surveillance cameras on. Let them experience 24/7 surveillance as their supplies slowly dwindle and they are eventually forced to resort to eating each other to survive. Last one to be eaten wins! What do they win? The chance to starve to death instead of being butchered for Haitian Steaks!

They companies want it because they can use it to consume user data. Usage numbers are bullshit since it's forced into everything people use whether they want it or not. I guarantee you if there were an opt-in instead of an opt-out or an opt-fuck-you-take-it-bitch those usage numbers wouldn't be anywhere near what they are today.

Why don't the billionaires just shake the couch cushions on all their yachts, hand what falls out to the state, and stop whining about it?

Bernie's ideas, at least the way he articulates them, come across as well intentioned. This is 100% the reason none of them ever come to fruition on the national stage. You can not convince the owner class to penalize the owner class, and that's what it would take to make any of Bernie's ideas stick.

As much as I don't want to see him give up the fight he tries to put up, what a waste of a life. Always cutting against the grain and getting bucked back into place for it.

The pilot stepping down could be viewed as practical. On a landable craft, you'd want someone to have good visibility of the ground on away missions in unfamiliar territory, and the Eagle was large enough that the step-down to reach that visibility is a believable component of the craft. It's an altogether well thought out design that I wish more sci-fi shows had mimicked over the decades since.

Ogre has something to say!

NERRRRRRRRRRDS!

As nice as it will be to see his end, the chaos in the US is only going to increase when he passes away. The powers are entrenched, and Trump's chaotic stupidity right now actually slows their progress toward complete dominance. Once he's out of the way, the behind the scenes string pullers will be free to manipulate Vance, who will have zero backbone and less desire to be placated than Trump.

It's gonna get a *LOT* uglier before it turns around. Unless Trump dies right as the mid-term results sweep through. In which case, it'll be a mad scramble until the newly elected folks take office, and another mad scramble to undo some of the damage after.

Cthulhu has no interest in planetary bodies other than what creatures may exist on it that can be mentally manipulated into observing its non-quantifiable visage and teetering their mental capacity into the non-standard state that humans refer to as insanity.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is filled with benevolence and kindness, as well as the quest to consume all knowledge, so that he may impart said knowledge with his noodly appendage upon all who dare to believe in his greatness.

That depends on relative velocity on any potential impact, including directional forces applied. You slap something hard enough outward and it won't be in LEO anymore. Granted, it's slim chances at the moment that this happens, but with how fucked up we've managed to make every other aspect of our world, do you completely discount the possibility of us managing to thread that needle?

We got what something around 30% of the population voted for. The rest of us are disgusted by this continual shit-show, and even the ones who voted for him are starting to realize they've been duped. Well, some of them.

This raises an interesting question. We've seen situations where AI will behave in unpredictable ways to keep itself on track to complete whatever task it has been given. How long do you suppose it will be before some AI system is being used by developers on one hand, and hackers / crackers on the other, and it will intentionally leave in holes on the development side that it's cracker side can then exploit?

I love that software is finally catching up with the real world. Now we can have virtual scams built on top of a world that's essentially scams from top to bottom.

Consumer protection is for real countries. The United States is currently in the process of exposing the fact that it's government is scams built on top of other scams, top to bottom. Illusions of it being anything other than scams are no longer useful, since the power structures are now firmly entrenched and the money flow no longer needs to be disguised.

Are those security issues in the room with us right now? Can you point them out to us?