Lots of things are pointers under the hood. But that's really irrelevant to the point.

Yeah, EVERYTHING is implemented at the base level in assembler, so pointers are in use everywhere. And I learned assembler first. But if that's your idea of where one should start, someone else can say we need to start with transistor theory, with just as valid an argument.

Pointers aren't required for most purposes. They're often just an optimization, frequently a questionable optimization. It's true that C pretty much requires pointers, but in C++ references can generally be substituted with greater clarity. Pointers are almost never used in Java (are they ever?), and certainly not in Python. Or many other languages I could name. (Yeah, they still exist "under the hood", but that's not the point of an exam of early or intermediate programming skill.) For that matter check out D https://dlang.org/ . That's a language that would be my favorite if they had a better way to document your code (last I checked Doxygen didn't do a good job) and it it had a slightly better library. (As it is I currently prefer C++ except for stuff that's heavy in unicode, where I'll switch to Python.)

C is actually easier than Java, though doing anything complex is harder.

A C++ subset doesn't have to be any harder than Java, and can be at least as capable. (The problem would be documenting it...and for students, learning to use only the subset.)

What's the storage *density*? I have the impression that grid scale batteries often use (relatively) low density storage, so they take up a lot of space. Lithium batteries are relatively high density (lots of storage/volume). Dense storage is, of course, part of what makes them so dangerous when they catch fire.

Perhaps it you wanted this to last through a blackout you'd need to give up your basement, rather than just part of it as with lithium batteries.

Unnh....there must be a reason Japan was researching whether uranium could profitably extracted from sea water. I believe that it was because decent ores for uranium were becoming scarce. (I used to know whether that was the reason they gave, but I can't certainly remember any longer....I think that was it though.)

AltaVista gave me more accurate results than Google ever has, much less recently. But you did need to use reasonable logic, and "near" was an important addition.

Google was easier to use. That was their sole advantage.

The assertion is that it does more than that, that it allows to systems to be remotely disabled.
OTOH, I've read of precisely such a feature being requested by some who were fearful of AI, so it's not unbelievable (though it would clearly need more than one chip to accomplish this).

It's not really clear to me. It *could* be either way. But I *suspect* the Chinese are both being honest and grandstanding.

That explanation depends on a degree of friction that I'm fairly sure you can't find signs of. Remember, we aren't talking about within a galaxy, or even within a galactic cluster, but rather *between* galactic clusters. I think it would also run into problems with requiring superluminal communication between the vortices.

Just about all cosmologists assume the basic principle is correct. It's demanded by General Relativity. But doing the calculations is pretty intractable, and depends on data measurements that are of uncertain accuracy. THAT's why these theories have never gotten anywhere.

These folks are claiming that now we have good enough data and good enough computers to reliably do the calculations. ... Well, most folks haven't even looked at the problem. And it's a change, so they're dubious. And being dubious is probably the correct stance, even though the theoretical basis is sound.

It's not *really* cherry picking, but what it shows is that people have ideas that fall in clusters, and they have a lot of difficulty thinking outside those clusters. The Hindu mythology is pretty much as described, but so loose and ungrounded that it's impossible to say if they were dealing with the same ideas. (The way to bet is "not really".)

I expect that AIs will come up with a cosmology that people can't understand, but which will match the same equations. This is based on some experimental tests that they've designed. The machines that they designed were basically unintelligible by humans, but when repeatedly simplified until they reached something a human could build, they worked. And the experimental results matched the same equations that people had been using.

Is the void they're talking about an intra-galactic void or an inter galactic-cluster void? I assumed the latter, in which case the Drake equation would be irrelevant. We *are* living in an intra-galactic void, but the measured density variation isn't enough to meaningfully distort time.

IIUC, "The Gulf Stream" is the name for one section of the "AMOC". E.g., I don't think it's called "the Gulf Stream" off the coast of Ireland.

IIUC, ethanol *is* one of the standard choices. But which choice is best depends on lots of details. (OTOH, I don't know if bleach is *ever* best...but it ought to at least sort-of work.)

They aren't the only one, but ISTM that they're currently the most aggressive intruders.