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Comment Re:Suggests abiogenesis is easy (Score 1) 104

There was already an argument that we should expect life to be somewhat easy since if not, we'd expect it to have arisen somewhat late on Earth's existence, not soon after.

What do you define as "soon" and "late"? Depending on how you define "complex life" and when you consider this planet to start being non-viable for life, Earth hosts "life" for only 13% - ~45% of its existance. Some estimates put life as we know it only being viable for another 500 million years, others say out to 1.5 billion years. If we say life started 2.6 billion years ago and say humans can exist for only another 500 million, then intelligent life only gets less than 6% of this planet's existance to function. If we only have 6% of this planet's existance with which to work out how to survive the Sun's expansion, did life start out late or early?

Personally, I used to be generally skeptical of AI being the Great Filter

To leverage off of Silo (TV show), what if someone created nano-bots as a weapon, unleashed them on the enemy, only to find out that they couldn't be controlled and proceeded to wipe out everything living? It's not clear if whatever it was that wrecked the planet in that scenario also died. This is another version of the Terminator world where technology created to defeat an enemy turns upon (all) humans.

Comment T-Mobile is killing burner phones (Score 1) 93

Why would I even want to go in a T-Mobile store? Maybe before iPhones were a thing I would want to browse the phones that were there. Now you just get the newest iPhone or Samsung and you're good.

Like, is it expected I go there to pay my bills? Is this something people do?

Because when you operate a burner phone, everything is done with cash, not a card of any kind. The T-Live app won't take cash.

Comment MITM attack not possible with 5G (Score 2) 172

5G RAN has been designed to make MITM attacks like this not work. The mobile base station would need to be part of the telco's network in order to function - and these SUVs are not part of AT&T or Version's network. What these SUVs can do is force your phone to downgrade from 5G to 4G/LTE (or 3G) and then attack you. I suspect that Israel is making bank on selling equipment to Texas without Texas realizing the limitations.

Comment Re:Barely more than moonlight... (Score 1) 79

Four times that if we assume the mirrors are 1000 km away instead of 500.

I wonder... to what extent can the mirrors be tuned? It seems rather inefficient to use space mirors to target a 3 mile circle. I asked Gemini and it disagrees with your assertions, however I can't paste the formulas into a slashdot comment. The key assertion that would disagree with your back of the envelope measurements however is easier to quote:

Because the mirror is so much closer, its required light intensity (Im) only needs to be roughly 0.000169% of the Moon's actual light intensity to appear just as bright to us.

The final result for the mirror size depends on its curvature (or lack thereof.) Gemini gives me 2000m2 for a flat mirror but 60-100m2 for a specular mirror.

Comment Re:Oh no the Russians! (Score 1) 45

How exactly do you determine a camera is on a major road or route from the internet? This sounds more conspiracy theory than reality when you look at the difficulty in correlating cameras with locations.

Start with knowing the route, then building a list of all the physical addresses on that route. Which ones are business/residential? Are residential addresses multi-unit or single dwelling? Cross check that with the customer databases that you've downloaded from when you hacked into the manufacturer's website.... oh, were you expecting that those customer databases were secure?

Comment Re:This can't just be for "free" power (Score 1) 120

Cooling is easier, no micrometeors to worry about, no need for radiation-hardened chips, the ability to go out and fix something that breaks, and, the largest benefit, you don't have to fling the whole friggin' thing into orbit. How is this even a serious proposal?

There is a standard called "NEBS" and entire systems are certified as NEBS compliant. For something to work in space, I imagine that a new standard (of similar nature) would be required that addresses things like heat management, radiation, and to some extent servicability. A firmware bug that kills all your SSDs in 12 servers simultaneously would but be acceptable - everything would need to be servicable/addressable provided it had power available. SSDs have a finite usable lifetime. what happens when all of he SSDs in a satellite expire, do they deorbit the satellite because SSDs can't be replaced (and haven't)?

Comment Re:Solar fricken roadways all over again (Score 1) 120

I'm really not seeing what the advantage is of putting data centers in space that can't be accomplished less expensively down here on good old terra firma.

For one, they're outside the juristiction of all governments. The data on that satellite in space isn't in the USA or in China. What this means in practice, I don't know. How does the FBI or the police or DHS subpoena data held in orbit? If they can't subpoena data held in the cloud in a foreign country, they also can't get it in orbit (this is "data sovereignty.") If Google holds data about Europeans on servers in orbit, does that meet GDPR requirements? (Basically not in the USA.)

Comment Re:How creators are compensated .. (Score 1) 81

In decades of internet I have never intentionally clicked on an advertisement. Maybe a few hyper-linked products out of curiosity, but never bought even one of those.

If everyone was like me, 1st admitedly the world would be doomed, but then: Advertisements would not be worth anything; Affiliate links wouldn't work to make even a cent; one-click-buy would be dropped due to lack of use; etc. etc.

You're not the only one that acts like this. I think most people are but this fails to understand one of the benefits of advertising: brand awareness.

Brand awareness is what TV (cable & FTA) and radio sell. They're not always selling you something that you'll go out and buy now, but in 3 months when you need to get a new lawn mower and go to the hardware store, your brain has been preprogrammed into recognising certain brands. That's the real power of advertising. Need a new truck? Over the last 12 months, which ads on TV did you like the best? It's not always a conscious though ... yes there are people that will "do the research", but they're a minority.

Comment In 2026, you can still get slashdotted (Score 1) 25

I don't know how or why this is still a thing, but going to the reaction website (https://framagit.org/ppom/reaction) is as slow as a website on a 28.8k modem doing PPPoE. It's almost as if the website has been slashdot'd due to, well, slashdot and web economics. Who knew that was still a thing.

Comment Re: burner phone elsewhere will always exist ... (Score 1) 166

Not sure why you would think that. Almost all American carriers work seamlessly with Canada. Unlike most countries, the U.S. and Canada share a telephone switching system that dates back to before the idea of international calls. And cash payed burner phones are completely legit in Canada.

That's a special arrangement that I didn't know about. Google tells me that Candian burner phones do work in the USA (if you choose the correct telco). Thanks for the heads up. I wonder how long that'll last

Comment Re: burner phone elsewhere will always exist ... (Score 1) 166

If you use a phone from another country you don't need a burner phone, because you don't need to conform with FCC laws, so this law doesn't stop scammers from other countries from scamming people in the USA.

This isn't about scammers. It is about removing the ability to be anonymous when communicating. You seem to think that just using a foreign phone solves this problem. It doesn't. Every country has its own laws around telecommunications and most of them are even stricter than the FCC because they don't have to worry about supporting freedom of speech.

Just because you have a phone from India or China or Vietnam does not mean you can roam while in the USA, it depends on which telco you bought it from and if they have a roaming agreement with a telco in the USA. International roaming isn't some free for all, it is controlled and restricted to customers that a telco wants to let roam.

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