Oh for sure! Running any of the jailbreaks for iPhones has mostly meant installing a huge heap of packages from Gwd Only Knows Where

Useful for having a run-time environment to study an application from you do plan to use on an uncompromised device, perhaps for reusing older hardware for some other non security critical use case, but no frigging way would I consider using a jailbroken phone as my actual phone, with real contacts and access to real data and accounts I care about on it.

This is a case where regulation KILLED.

Basically this a was thing that was essentially marketed to wealthy tourists. It WAS done under a regulatory environment, and so those people had far more trust in it than they should have. I bet had they been forced to drag the thing out to international waters and do some sketchy bitcoin transaction to pay or whatever they would not have found takers!

Regulation of this kind of stuff simply does not work. What regulator has any experience inspecting a deep sea sub? - None.. What engineer could draft what appropriate safety standards are for something like this? - None at least not without completely stifling innovation.

Yes we know from the post incident analysis corners were cut compromised materials were used and engineers and officers on the project should have know better, but that is negligence and it is why we have torts.

Modern rail roading is a good example, we have a lot of regulation. Mostly it works, but there are still the occasional accidents. Pretty much every rule in the book has one or more corpses behind it, it isn't like someone say down and just wrote out the FRA's inspection schedule, we learned the hard way the inspection frequencies required to catch certain problems before they turn into dead bodies -> then -> we said ok everybody is going to do that.

Honestly the DOT (US or CANs) should have exactly one regulation covering something like this, something akin a product safety label that says, "the safety of traveling aboard a device of this class is not well understood, proceed at your peril"

I disagree. It actually needs less regulation.

The siloing of knowledge and duties is why it was always somebody else's problem. So you simply take out all the regulations that obligate siloing and replace all of that kerfufle with a single rule: "If it's on your plate and nobody else has published that they've done the work so far, it's your responsibility, silos be damned, and failure leaves you liable".

That's it.

That's all we need. A removal of siloed thinking and a duty to complete all of the scheduled work regardless of whose toes it tramples.

That would have solved the problem. But, because departments never like to give up powers they obtain, a side-effect would be that departments would be proactive. They wouldn't walk down piers, looking for strange things. Rather, if they heard of strange things that are their department, if they don't want to be shamed, then they need to ask the company for more information. Because then it's on their plate and not that of a rival department.

The other benefit of using this approach is that it isn't about the special cases, it's about the general problem that underlies all of the special cases of this sort: nobody takes responsibility until it's already a disaster.

If a department is liable for pretending the problems aren't there, then the department wil CYA. If the only way to do so is to do all the outstanding work, regardless of title, then that work will get done. If the only way to get it done right IS to give it to the right department, and they're on the hook until that has happened, you're damned right it'll happen.

I've worked in the public sector, I've seen the paranoia and closed-mindedness first-hand. That's not going to go away. So you solve the issue by exploiting those traits, since you can't eliminate them.

I am fan of owning your own device so I generally consider a positive thing when this stuff happens, provide the exploit path requires physical device access that inst possible to do superstitiously, IE tether then thing and put it in DFU mode, with the full restart that implies, vs pairing some bluetooth thing or something and exploiting the running OS.

Yeah I get it it means it isnt secure to travel with it - fair argument.

This though is almost cruel to release. Most of the affected devices are old enough Apple will probably just move up their end of support plans for them. Probably harms more people trying to save a buck and hang on to old kit, than helps people who might like to play with it without the lock down..

Ah, I see what you mean, now. Yeah. I do my best to make lore make sense, but that's one I can't fix.

They are already at the door of those who earn less and have less. What are you talking about?

If a society wants to reduce tax burdon on the poor or less wealthy, then you must impose tax on those that have wealth.

The burden of living is SIGNIFICANTLY less on those WITH money than those WITHOUT money.

A rich person is not giving the homeless a place to live, they are not giving them food, they are hording that money for no other reason than to flex.
Fact is, with a stronger middle class, a stronger economy exists. We learned this after WWII and its odd people dont know this.

Anyways....

I suppose one could argue that you want the more dselicate computers behind the pilot, since then it has the greatest achievable shielding on all sides without having excessive distance from the flight controls and without becoming inaccessible if the pod that is loaded into the middle is not traversible. Similar reasoning is used in Formula 1 - delicate bits of the car (such as the fuel tank) are placed between the driver and the engine, to keep them as safe as possible without creating a burden. This would necessitate there being a step down to get to the pilot's chair. It's not a particularly good piece of "lore repair" but it's the best I can do.

The nuclear waste silos were, though.

The feet operated as vertical rockets, so I'd say the designer was thinking along the same lines you are.

The landing pads are also vertical thrusters (which is how they can skim), so you need space for the nozzle, engine, and fuel. The size of the landing pads would seem fine, given everything that needs to be in them.

I'm calculating mass in terms of filled volume. The entire mid-section of the Eagle was a mesh of girders, rather than a solid hull. Since the total space filled is 1/Nth that of a solid hull that has to be able to handle the same rotational forces, the total mass is reduced. The cross-hatch patterning is likely to be good there, as it's strong along those lines. We don't need to specifically know what the material is, or the specific mass, as long as we can use engineering techniques to figure out the percentage of material we need relative to having a solid hull.

That's true of all sci-fi, by nature. The challenge, though, is to make it as plausible as possible. The "traditional" rule (variously ascribed to Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov) was that good sci-fi was allowed to violate one law of physics (although this had to be justified and explained) but everything else shoud be as plausible as possible. S:1999, as a whole, certainly did not comply with that, but if we restrict ourselves to the Eagle, then I'd say that it would just about pass muster there.

There are many ways to manipulate markets, hence the large amount of laws and rules regulating it.

One is not better or worse than others, so nitpicking isnt exactly a solid argument to make.

Let's look at the various aspects of the Eagle design.

1. It was "designed to work in space" so wasn't designed to be aerodynamic
2. It was modular
3. Mass was kept to a minimum without compromising strength, which is precisely what you would want if your job is to carry a significant mass in space and be able to manoever without ripping apart
4. Cockpits were functional and minimal, not glamorous or more advanced than necessary to do the job

There were terrible aspects as well (nowhere to keep fuel, for example), but if you were going to design a sci-fi ship that is intended to be a simple short-range transport, then the design for the Eagle is close to perfect in a way that most sci-fi vessels really aren't.

Brian Johnson really did a superb job of actually making something LOOK like a practical workhorse.

So what? This is literally capitalism and because it comes from China, everyone is all baby about it?
Is this a problem? yes... but its also capitalism. you cant wave away "capitalism" when it benefits you, but not others and then be upset when others are benefiting and you are not.
This is more a problem for the companies to fix, but they wont, because US taxpayers will pay for the bail out, yet again while the correction of "capitalism" never happens due to it.
We are backwards on a lot of our policies and governance here, and the point of capitalism is looking a lot more like communism and Oligarch rule.