Almost all aspects of the "old" Internet are still available to use for those who care.

If you want to run an IRC server and communicate that way the technology still works. If you want to telnet into a BBS there are still thousands of them out there for the curious. Spin up a server running phpbb if you want a place to discuss something. If you don't want to run Windows 11 or enable secure boot then use Linux.

You decry that money and non-free software ruined the internet but realistically the parts that they ruin are the things that involve . . . money and non-free software.

The "old" Internet is still there to be used. I'd wager it'll continue to be that way for a long time. And if the whole thing gets locked down then I'd wager hobbyists will have other ways of communicating even if it means going back to analog modems or wifi mesh networking.

Only if its something you don't want to be doing. You're not billing yourself for your hobbies.

No we're not going to die, but its nice to have things to do in such situations. When I was a kid we had a hurricane come through that knocked out our power for over a month.

That's not ideal unless you want to self-host a web-enabled local one. Most people need access to their password manager while on multiple computers and devices.

Most of the big ones have browser plugins, web management, and mobile applications.

If you subscribe to just about any VPN service (I do ProtonVPN) most of them have a good password manager.

They're just being a bit charitable with the definition of "void." They don't mean completely—or even mostly—empty; just that the density of matter is lower here than in most other parts of the Universe.

if I recall correctly, its on the scale of the Local Group that we are in a void. There are only three galaxies of any note nearby: the Milky Way (us), Andromeda, and Triangulum. All the other galaxies in the Local Group are relatively small and insignificant. Most other large galaxies have more massive neighbors within their respective groups than we do.

From my understanding, the solar system itself is also currently in a region of lower stellar density within the Milky Way, though that's a transient phenomenon that changes as we orbit the galactic center. I.e., if I remember correctly, around the time the dinosaurs went extinct, the solar system was passing through a denser region. One theory suggests that gravitational interactions with nearby stars may have increased the likelihood of asteroids being deflected into the inner solar system.

When looking for a picture of something, you're looking for a light reflection. The planet 110 light years away is close enough to its host start that it reflects a lot of light - to the point where there's still a tiny bit visible this far away. We also know exactly where to look - from this distance its basically right beside its star.

Any hypothetic planet 9 though, is much, much farther from its parent star, and will reflect very, very little light. And what light it does reflect would have to travel dozens to low hundreds of AU back to Earth again where it would be further reduced. Also because it is gravitationally bound to our own star but outside of our orbit, it could essentially be almost anywhere in the night sky.

Nothing would be confusing about it if that's what was written. The summary says "400m years ago" - which is apparently incorrect.

RISCV has ambitions greater than microcontrollers. Its a royalty free architecture as apposed to ARM which requires licensing fees.

There are already RISCV ITX motherboards (the Milk-V Jupiter) and small SOC computers that can run more complex setups.

Basically, this.

Degrees aren't magic. Someone without a degree can know a hell of a lot more about a subject than someone who does have one - even for advanced subjects.

What a degree is though, is some level of proof to the rest of the world that the person has at least some baseline level of knowledge. If I'm hiring a programmer: 1 has a Computer Science degree and one doesn't. The guy without the degree MIGHT be significantly better, but I'm taking more of a risk because he also might be clueless. Now there's some risk in hiring the degree guy too, but there's LESS risk, because an accredited school has said that he has taken their classes and passed their exams to demonstrate at least some minimum level of proficiency.

They also show some level of commitment. A person who is willing to attend a school for 4 years and see the process through to the end has at least in 1 facet of their life finished a long and complicated task.

I'm personally in favor of the degree approach. That's what I did. Now when hiring I'll interview both sides and give everyone a fair shake. I've had good and bad results from both groups (degree and non-degree), but for younger people I still advise getting the degree as the better option.

Thanks - when I read TFS it sounded bad in my head. Thermal expansion would be very difficult to precisely repeat over extended intervals, which would make me very leary of trusting any storage technology that was relying on something constantly thermally expanding and contracting at set rates over a period of years.

Yeah - modern cars last a long time compared to those of old. I get some motivation to replace old cars for environmental reasons, but nothing is free. A more efficient vehicle required a lot of energy output to produce it in the first place and will still require some form of potentially non green energy to keep it going in the future.

Even if it pollutes more, keeping an older vehicle on the road may be more environmentally friendly than replacing it due to having to effectively make up the production energy cost.

Never underestimate the environmental benefits of just keeping things longer and not constantly churning production lines.

Don't know if I can switch as I'm still on a locked in rate, but I'm already a customer paying the extra for unlimited data.

Yes Comcast is notorious for high prices and bad customer service, and I'd love to support my local ISP (which I did for a long time), but the local guys have absolute shitting reliability. I'm paying more for Comcast and I'm locked in for a year or two but honestly the increase in reliability has been more than worth it (with the local guys I was getting disconnects probably a dozen times per day - with Xfinity aside from a cut cable that resulted in several hours of outage, its been rock solid).

Maybe it'll help some iPhone users migrate, but that's a hard no for me. Every time somebody hands me an iPhone I'm confused for a second on why the URL bar is at the bottom.

Doesn't matter if it takes years. Steam isn't going to get all gamers to switch to Linux overnight.

Understand - I like Linux. I first installed it in 1998 and have been a heavy Linux user since 2001 or so. Nobody would like to see Linux succeed as a desktop OS more than me, but Steam isn't going to be able to do that.

And frankly Microsoft isn't likely to want to go that route anyways. It would likely draw anti-trust penalties and they're already doing pretty well as it is.