Long ago, the UK courts ordered all the major consumer ISPs to block The Pirate Bay along with various other popular services. Ever since, we've had to keep up to date on what the latest proxy address might be.

Of course, thanks to the new censorship laws introduced more recently, we're all on VPNs now, so as to avoid having to hand our ID to the wallet inspector for every last website we ever use. And once that was set up, it was nice to discover that the original is still in play!

The jokes about Darth Jar Jar were everywhere of course, but it could have worked. Star Wars lifted a few ideas from classic SF sources including Asimov's Foundation series - in which, we might recall, the terrifying, unstoppable galactic warlord known as The Mule was hiding in plain sight as a clown, who seemed to be merely a harmless entertainer at court. His military success was chiefly thanks to his psychic ability to manipulate others' minds to his liking - Darth Jar Jar could have done very well that way!

I saw three Star Wars movies when I was young. They were great. Mainly because I was a child and this stuff was new and fresh and exciting to me. Even the Ewoks.

I saw three more when I was not quite so young. They were... poor.

I saw a couple more when I was older. One was great, the other was okay but a retread of one of the old ones, and I never got round to seeing the rest. Didn't care enough.

Now they've got more, and apparently they're based on a TV series they did, which I didn't watch because I wasn't subscribed to that streaming platform at the time. So I'm not going to see those either. Same reason I've not seen a Marvel superhero film since the first Avengers one - just too much homework required with all the backstory. Every scene is a shout out or reference that I won't get. Every character seems to be getting ever louder and angrier and more and more of them have access to time machines. I just don't have it in me to care anymore.

I like the sound of these horror films, though. They're going to tell a complete story? In one film? With a beginning, middle and end, that don't ask me to be up to date on an entire Cinematic Universe? Sounds great, time to check where they're showing!

A modern version of GTA London would be the absolute dream. Been long enough now, you could set it in the nineties and have the same retro value to it!

... why unions aren't much more common among technology workers. Especially given what you hear about the videogame industry in particular, with that mad 'crunch time' culture in which workers are ruthlessly, well, crunched. I'd always ask, well, what does your union say about it? And what do you know, there isn't one, how about that.

Nice to hear of some progress being made, then. I suppose the risk with this for the rest of us is that GTA 6 might be late to release, but, uh, at this point I think we're over that

Ok he managed to lie and bluff his way up, but at some point he had to have gone through an FBI background check for a security clearance, right??!

Yeah you might get something past Eunice in HR, but a security clearance background investigation??

i would generally agree that recomputing a contract is generally good, IF the competing entities have the experience and expertise in executing the terms of the contract. I think the thought process here is that the contract will be steered towards one of Trump's political allies that has no experience or business running JPL.

I was about to make a comment that you had to prove you are a US citizen to get a RealID, but then found that it is for identity only, not citizenship.

https://factually.co/fact-chec...

"The REAL ID regime sets federal minimum standards for state-issued driver’s licenses and ID cards and requires applicants to present documentary proof of identity and lawful status, but the card itself does not definitively prove U.S. citizenship because compliant REAL IDs may be issued to noncitizens with lawful presence [1] [2] [3]. Practical proof of U.S. citizenship remains specific documents — U.S. passport, Certificate of Naturalization or Citizenship, or state-issued enhanced driver’s licenses in some states — and those documents, not the REAL ID star, are what federal and administrative processes treat as evidence of citizenship [1] [4] [5]."

This will get kicked down the road again, just like RealID (so important to airline security after all) was kicked down the road 20+ years.

The only way I can express it is by borrowing a line from (I think) WWII British prime minister Winston Churchill: "The Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing, when all other options have been exhausted."

This reminds me of the line from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" when Dr. Jones (the elder one) is asked about something regarding the grail contained in his diary (at that point being in the possession of the Nazis) but he couldn't remember it. When given the scornful "what do you mean you don't remember?" look, his reply is "I wrote it down in my diary so I wouldn't HAVE to remember!"

The key phrase is "if used correctly." Part of that is knowing when to look something up "in the moment you want to know them," and when looking up a particular thing can wait until later. Too often I see searches being made for answers to questions that don't warrant an immediate answer, interrupting the ongoing conversation or activity, or even diverting the whole train of thought onto a dead-end side spur completely unrelated to the original topic.

If it's germane to the present topic, then sure, look it up. If not, it can wait. If you forget to look it up later, then it wasn't that important.

This is called "Slashdot Editors Not Doing Their Jobs." Another example is the story headline: "How Teachers Fight Students' Shortening Attention Spans *(missing a : here)* Shorter Activities, Hands-On Projects, and Meditation."