And it should be absolutely fine to reproduce the lyrics verbatim and in full. Copyright as gotten completely out of hand.

Countries trying to lure in top academics don't just offer money, but also facilities, research grants and such. Compensation is only part of the picture, and scientists might want to choose the country were they are going to get the most science done, not necessarily the one that pays best.

Nothing would make it “help get a little closer to making it a reality” if it’s not physically possible, and there’s a very strong argument that that’s the case. If nothing else, the maximum specific tensile strength allowed by covalent bonding - which is fundamental physics that we can’t change - combined with the reality of defects in a 36,000 km cable - is far below what’s needed to build a space elevator in Earth gravity. It might be possible to build a space elevator on the Moon or even (in the far future) on Mars, because their gravity is such that real materials could potentially do the job. But doing that involves bootstrapping an entire offworld industry, which is far beyond anything even the most advanced nations are capable of currently, let alone a technologically stunted oil state.

There’s no chance they’d actually succeed in building a space elevator. The Line is at least theoretically physically possible with current technology, even if it was always an obviously spectacularly bad idea. A space elevator is not.

You were comparing manned missions to automated missions. The only practical result of either is science; it will be a long while before we'll see something practical being done in space. Manned mission are more expensive but they can yield way more science as well. I think we ought to at least try and get something of a moonbase established. That is attainable, and will give us a much better idea of what we can expect should we want to venture further out in a manned mission. That experience in itself is worth attaining.
If you want practical, however, space exploration has little to offer anymore, except some spinoff tech perhaps.

There is a huge difference between having a little robotic rover trundle over the Lunar service, and having some scientists present, with a lab. Though I imagine a lot of that research will mostly be useful for further human exploration of them Moon or space, so it might seem a little self-serving. But it may well drive down the cost of human space exploration.

No violence to sea creatures is to be expected. Well, except maybe the tasty ones. We'll have to find out which those are... SCIENCE!

Sorry but from an outside perspective that just sounds nuts. So let's take your 'worst case' - $129M overall cost making it $434 per entry - you're saying there are only 297,235 (129M / 434) tax payers in the US? A quick search from me shows the number of filings to be at 145M+. If everyone could file for free, that $129M would be 88c per person.

And I'm speaking from experience. I'm in the UK. I've recently filed my annual self-assessment tax. I used the free service on the UK government web site and the thing that took the longest was working out how much to put as charity donation. Whole thing done in less than an hour and a half.

I seriously cannot comprehend the approach where you have to pay to be able to pay someone. It's...well...it's nuts.

Professional, or soulless corporate?

Pro tip: walk the store in the opposite direction. When you walk like everyone else, you'll be trying to overtake slow walkers, couples with a stroller who somehow manage to block the entire 5m wide aisle, groups. Walk against the flow, and you'll be parting the crowds like Moses did the Red Sea. And if they appear not to make way, look slightly to the side as if you are not looking at them. They'll move.

As a former landlord I have spent a considerable time in Ikea...

Matter is just an application layer comms protocol, and yes it's open. Often combined with Thread, a low power radio comms network (The new Ikea stuff uses it), in which case you need a Thread hub, or a Thread border router that acts as a bridge to your LAN and by extension to the Internet. Matter devices may or may not require the cloud.

I have a bunch of thermostats and TRVs (Tado brand) that use Matter, and can be added to my own Matter hub (Home Assistant), to the manufacturer's cloud, or both. There are several brands that follow this model even if they don't use Matter. The good news is that you can continue to use these devices or add new ones even if the manufacturer has gone out of business or shut down their cloud. The bad news is... many of these devices need some configuring; often highly specific settings that can only be done through the manufacturer's app. They'll continue to work but you won't be able to reconfigure them.

Matter allows devices to expose device settings, but it seems that not all manufacturers bother, or they are too specific to fit into the generic Matter types (for instance: heating schedules)

Motorola/IBM too, same time period. I talked to the head of their chip division at the time. POWER (not PowerPC) was doing investigation into vertical chips.

Mind you, this guy also told me there would never be a chip faster than 2Ghz due to thermal limits so...yeah.

There are several brands that work totally local (ZWave, Zigbee)
There are also some that can use either the cloud but also work locally. Your story shows why one should be ware of such devices. Some still require the cloud to function, or to change settings, even if they can be operated without the cloud. So you keep them online, there's an update, and something gets broken. Philips Hue will no longer function without registering ab account with the company. Tado removes functionality (allowing thermostatic radiator valves to demand heat for a room even if there's no wall thermostat) for newly added devices: that now requires their monthly subscription. Support for certain APIs get dropped. And so on.

I don't say it often but there ought to be a law, regarding services tied to physical devices owned by the end user. No diminishing functionality when a device is updated, no hiding formerly free functions behind paywalls or subscriptions. And cloud service guaranteed for the reasonably expected lifespan of the last device sold officially (not of of clearance or second hand)

This. Personally I am pretty happy with using Nvidia Shield devices instead of a PC; they run Kodi as well as Prime, Netflix and Apple TV, and you get Twitch, YouTube and other apps as well. And they are not a lock-in, you can always replace them with something else if you want or have to. The TV is not going anywhere near the internet.

For every law that has such an impact on our privacy, I think a few questions would need to be answered as part of the bill:
- What is the impact on our rights, and is that proportionate to the expected effects of the bill?
- What is the expected effect of the bill?
- How and when will that be measured?

With the understanding that if the bill does not have the desired effects (all kiddie porn will simply be moved through other channels), the law will be rescinded, not by vote but automatically