Although, from my two second check just now, Venus is technically considered within the Goldilocks zone for this solar system it is right on the very inner edge of it. This finding differs from Venus in that respect, making it more interesting as a possibility.

All highly speculative of course, but to be fair that's exactly what the article says. Atmosphere detected, everything else speculative.

Years back I was interviewing people for a coding position. We went through the standard tech stuff and then did a bit of project to see how they thought. We said (this is circa 2009'ish I think) - imagine you're on a team creating a new phone. You don't have time to test all the functions, so which would be your top two functions to ensure working?

All a bit Kobayashi Maru - obviously you can't release a phone testing only two functions, but we wanted to see what they'd prioritise. The very best answer we received was this one: "I would make sure it has the ability to call emergency services." Their thinking was that this was likely the most critical feature of a phone for both a user, and also for the manufacturer to avoid being sued. Absolutely great answer.

And yet here we are, with the post above. Taking the thinking of this interviewee - the ability to work with emergency services is important for general society, for the user of the vehicle (so they don't get in trouble) and for the manufacture of the vehicle (so they don't get fined/sued/both). Absolutely critical.

So George Orwell's "1984" was overly optimistic?

This is not good.

Likely bots.

The tyre burst annoys me. The Air France Concordes didn't have the same safety features as the British Airways one - specifically, the BA ones had guards against burst tyres.

Virgin Airways wanted to buy the BA planes to keep them flying and offered to, but BA just didn't want to give them a public relations win so refused to sell. Shambles all round.

Another ancient here - I still try to convince the admins to give me my first account back, this one - number 13802. The place both has and has not changed - it always had its share of ranting, but people do seem to knee-jerk more negatively to developments than in ye olden days.

Note that I created my account, saw that nearly 14,000 people were here and thought "what's the point? Who will ever possibly hear me in a place with 14,000 people?". Now of course, you can get ten times that for a picture of a dog's nose.

I have no problems with your suggestion.

I can predict that some of those IP addresses will change, and that will be annoying.

With the rate datacenters are gobbling up all the electricity they can get, I don't think 'abundance' is quite what you expect it to be.

For those who don't get it, the UK government has carried out genocide against the indigenous peoples of the British Isles, including a campaign of over 250,000 rapes and pogroms against their freedom of speech. This included the UK arresting more people for social media posts than every other nation combined. Now their PM is trying to ban under-16s from all social media to prevent them from begging for help when they are raped. Instead, they are supposed to call the police, who we now know were also raping 11-year-old little girls, and who returned rape victims to rape gangs, saying “here she is, have fun with her.”

This is easy to fix.

We need an enforced standard demanding all traffic that does not have to be encrypted (e.g., anything other than payment details or PII) be visible to the person using or paying for the computer.

Home users could actually see what traffic is being sent over their home networks.

Right now, device manufacturers encrypt things like "The refrigerator's average temperature has been 40 degrees F, and the door opened 20 times in the last 48 hours." These manufacturers pay fake consumer rights activists to demand even more encryption. Meanwhile, ISPs try to block us from seeing what is going out the connections we pay for.

I should not have to configure my own white box router to see what is happening on my network.

All we have to do is pull power away from corporations and governments...never mind. I'll be quiet now before the close my bank account.

Surely the Commodore Callback will come to save us. Surely. Any moment now. Phone of the moment.

Similar to phones though, you don't have to buy every 18 months. The one thing it might do though is affect second hand prices more, which is likely a good thing for affordability.

Yes, often as a first step to legislation. In the sense that "we tried to let you self-regulate, you didn't, and so...".

I'm speaking here about EU and UK politics, can't speak for the US. It's actually quite usual to do it this way.

People should watch Dark Star. "How do I know you are not false data?" "Doesn't matter, the concept is valid no matter where it originated from".

Anecdote only from me of course.but for what it's worth...I'm left-handed. Subconsciously I consider left = "towards what I know" and right = "going further out". This applies to walking, driving...all of it.

I know it's not actually true of course, but if faced with an unfamiliar t-junction while driving or perhaps I'm just out on a walk to get some distance in, that's how I think of it.