Something I wrote on this in 2001 and posted to gnu.misc.discuss: https://groups.google.com/g/gn...
        "... I definitely do not want to see a future world of only proprietary intellectual property where basically everything I want to do requires agreeing to endless licenses and royalty payments, such as described in [Richard Stallman's essay] "right-to-read". ...
        However, on a practical basis, living in our society as it is right now, any software developer is going to handle lots of packets of information from emails to applications to program modules under a variety of explicit or implied licenses. If a developer is going to do this in a way that makes his or her work most useful to the community (under the terms he or she so chooses), proper attention must be given to the licensing status of all works received and distributed, especially those that form the basis for new derived works to be distributed. Note that even in the case of purely GPL'd works, one still needs to know that a user contributing an extension to a GPL'd work was the original author and/or he or she has permission to distribute the patch (if say an employer owns all the contributor's work).
        My question is: should software tools, protocols, and standards play a role in easing this required "due diligence" license management work (at least as far as copyright alone is concerned)? ...
        For example, consider this situation. I go to the Choral Public domain site and download a MIDI tune picked at random, say "Ecce nunc benedicite" by "Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina" edited by "Claudio
Macchi". Let's say I like it and want to pass it on. ...
        As soon as I have this file on my computer, much of the "meta data" about licensing is lost, since the meta-data is not all kept in the same file but is implicit from having the file on the site. If I pass the file to you, how do you know it is freely redistributeable? Do you tak my word for it? Do you check the site? Am I myself even sure enough what license it is under when I downloaded it that I can give you assurances you can use it? Why should you trust me if I do? Did you get the identical version I downloaded, or did I slip in a change which I might later use to make a claim against you if you use the file in a work of your own? If I (not the author) bundle the midi file with a CPDL license in a zip file, how do you know I had any right to do that? How much time do you need to take to verify the situation? ...
        Note that ultimately, having such meta-data in every file might require operating system support, or at least very smart tools, like a MIDI player that ignores the meta-data when actually playing the file. That in turn might require a more sophisticated repository approach to storing all file data (at a minimum, perhaps "license forks" like the Macintosh has "data forks", although this doesn't address the notion of one license covering multiple files taken as a whole). ..."

Rides to and from airports are regulated, and there's a lot of money involved. That means the existing players are lobbying hard to keep the new competition out. If this is like everything else in history, they'll succeed only in delaying it. That delay will make the finances that much harder for new players, which may result in some failing, but eventually they'll get in. Considering that Tesla and Waymo have significant resources, they'll probably be the ones to break in to airport rides first. (Tesla just started trying to get the permits in California.)

I prepared a five minute "lightning talk" for LibrePlanet 2021 on "Empowering users through Dialogue Mapping using IBIS".

https://libreplanet.org/wiki/L...

The text of the talk in IBIS outline format with some minor changes is available here.
https://pdfernhout.net/librepl...

That talk is a much-shortened version of a longer talk I gave in July 2019 for the Cognitive Systems Institute Group Speaker Series where I suggested using AI to help with the Dialogue Mapping process:
https://twitter.com/sumalaika/...

More on Dialogue Mapping with IBIS:
https://cognexus.org/id41.htm
"Dialogue Mapping is a radically inclusive facilitation process that creates a diagram or 'map' that captures and connects participants' comments as a meeting conversation unfolds. It is especially effective with highly complex or "Wicked" problems that are wrought with both social and technical complexity, as well as a sometimes maddening inability to move forward in a meaningful and cost effective way. Dialogue Mapping creates forward progress in situations that have been stuck; it clears the way for robust decisions that last. It is effective because it works with the non-linear way humans really think, communicate, and make decisions. ... As the people in the meeting speak, the facilitator paraphrases and captures what they are saying in a hypertext diagram on the screen. ... The icons represent the basic elements of the Dialogue Mapping grammar (called IBIS): Questions, Ideas, Pros and Cons. ... In Dialogue Mapping, as the conversation unfolds and the map grows, each person can see a summary of the meeting discussion so far. The map serves as a "group memory," virtually eliminating the need for participants to repeat themselves to get their points made."

Dialogue Mapping could potentially help people who take different sides on so-called "settled issues" to help understand the different points of view, assumptions, and priorities involved.

As an example, while not exactly Dialogue Mapping with IBIS, Kialo uses a pro/con format to structure online discussions related to controversial topics. Here are some Kialo maps on abortion:
https://www.kialo.com/search?q...

A specific example there: https://www.kialo.com/should-a...

People may not all agree after participating in such systems, but at least they will get a better understanding of where specifically they agree or disagree with others as they all collaborate to build a visualization of the topic.

The only people arguing against EVs on environmental grounds are either people on the far left who are opposed to cars in general or people on the right who don't care about the environment to begin with.

No.
More like basically decent people don't think it's alright to follow the bad example of a few people around them, so the number of people being obnoxious drops to where those who do really stand out. Social pressure can be an effective way to minimize disruptive behavior.

This sounds like an education campaign, not new rules. Unless I read it wrong (or the summary left it out), this is about trying to set the social norms, not about issuing fines.

See the HF Acid Leach Process on page 290-291 (and in general the rest of Appendix 5E LMF Chemical Processing Sector, all outlined with an eye towards self-replicating lunar factories, from NASA under the Carter presidency): https://archive.org/details/Ad...
        "[From the Intro] Mission complexity has increased enormously as instrumentation and scientific objectives have become more sophisticated. In the next two decades there is little doubt that NASA will shift its major focus from exploration to an increased emphasis on utilization of the space environment, including public service and industrial activities. The present study was sponsored by NASA because of an increasing realization that advanced automatic and robotic devices, using machine intelligence, will play a major role in all future space missions. Such systems will complement human activity in space, accomplishing tasks that people cannot do or that are too dangerous, too laborious, or too expensive. The opportunity to develop the powerful new merger of human intellect and machine intelligence is a result of the growing capacity of machines to accomplish significant tasks. Indeed, the growth in capability of onboard machine intelligence will make many missions technically or economically feasible. This study has investigated some of the ways this capacity may be used as well as a number of research and development efforts necessary in the years ahead if the promise of AI is to be fully realized. ...
        [From Appendix 5E] Mining robots deliver raw lunar soil strip-mined from the pit to large input hoppers along the edge of the entry corridors into the chemical processing sector. The primary responsibility of the materials-processing subsystems is to accept lunar regolith, extract from it the necessary elemental and chemical substances required for system growth, replication, and production, and then return any wastes, unused materials, or slag to an output hopper to be transported back to the surrounding annular pit by mining robots for use as landfill.
        It is possible to achieve qualitative materials closure (see sec. 5.3.6) - complete material self-sufficiency within the Lunar Manufacturing Facility (LMF) - by making certain that chemical processing machines are able to produce all of the 84 elements commonly used in industry in the United States and the global economy (Freitas, 1980). However, such a complete processing capability implies unacceptably long replication times T (on the order of 100-1000 years), because many of the elements are so rare in the lunar or asteroidal substrate that a vast quantity of raw soil must be processed to obtain even small amounts of them. By eliminating the need for many of these exotic elements in the SRS design, replication times can be cut by as much as three orders of magnitude with current or foreseeable materials processing technologies."

Whether that is "reasonable technology" in today's economic system is obviously debatable. I also did not see any of the critical minerals in the article (like Cobalt or Neodymium) on the list of the "Total of 18 elements" the study listed as key to build these systems in the box on page 282 on "TABLE 5.11. MINIMUM SEED ELEMENT AND PROCESS CHEMICAL REQUIREMENTS" . So maybe, as you suggest, they are harder to extract but the study participants knew of workarounds -- for example using Iron in a battery or to make electromagnets?

Anyway, I had a copy of the page with that HF Acid Leach process up on the wall in my office for many years as a symbol of hope and abundance -- even if in reality HF acid is nasty stuff best avoided (or left to automation in far-off places).

It would be ideal to find a better way on Earth like perhaps bacteria or plants or other organisms that concentrate specific materials... The short-story "The Skills of Xanadu" from 1956 by Theodore Sturgeon, for example, suggests breeding a shellfish that concentrates strontium in its shell...
https://ia601205.us.archive.or...
        "At first, it seemed to Bril totally disorganized. These attractive people in their indecent garments came and went, mingling play and work and loafing, without apparent plan. But their play would take them through a flower garden just where the weeds were, and they would take the weeds along. There seemed to be a group of girls playing jacks right outside the place where they would suddenly be needed to sort some seeds.
        Tanyne tried to explain it: "Say we have a shortage of something -- oh, strontium, for example. The shortage itself creates a sort of vacuum. People without anything special to do feel it; they think about strontium. They come, they gather it."
        "But I have seen no mines," Bril said puzzledly. "And what about shipping? Suppose the shortage is here and the mines in another district?"
        "That never happens any more. Where there are deposits, of course, there are no shortages. Where there are none, we find other ways, either to use something else, or to produce it without mines."
        "Transmute it?"
        "Too much trouble. No, we breed a freshwater shellfish with a strontium carbonate shell instead of calcium carbonate. The children gather them for us when we need it." ..."

For example, on Cobalt, maybe we could breed cows and their gut bacteria to concentrate it? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Cobalt is essential to the metabolism of all animals. It is a key constituent of cobalamin, also known as vitamin B12, the primary biological reservoir of cobalt as an ultratrace element. Bacteria in the stomachs of ruminant animals convert cobalt salts into vitamin B12, a compound which can only be produced by bacteria or archaea. A minimal presence of cobalt in soils therefore markedly improves the health of grazing animals, and an uptake of 0.20 mg/kg a day is recommended because they have no other source of vitamin B12."

I keep seeing these posts about what's needed to get people into an EV, and the bar keeps getting raised.

Frankly, we don't need high speed chargers to be as common a gas pumps, as the majority of gas pumps are for local use, and most charging is slow-speed at home. (We do need good solutions for those who rent or have on-street parking, though.) And for trips in the USA, if you're on the Interstate, you shouldn't need to think about it if you can use the Tesla Superchargers. Non-Interstate trips are getting more coverage, so most of those trips work now, too.

Posts about why you can't switch to an EV now sound more like excuses that real reasons, which is why goal posts keep moving. There are many good reasons why people who switch to EVs rarely switch back.

MicroSD has been around for 20 years now, and it's been another 6 years of SD before that. They can now fit tons of storage in the format, but they can't bump it up to modern performance speeds. It's time to find a new format that overcomes that. Now I'm not saying that this is necessarily the right answer, but it's certainly something in the right direction.

YES!

I was going to suggest the same thing. The ship could go into orbit around the best candidate planet in the target solar system, then seed it with life to try to get it to optimal conditions before raising humans to live there from frozen embryos. They could send sufficient DNA to eliminate any inbreeding concerns, and not for humans, but all the species introduced. And in many cases, it may be simplest to have a database and synthesize new DNA as needed for each new seed or embryo.

I imagine sending out a fleet of them to dozens or hundreds of star systems in the hopes of finding some good planets to colonize.

But at the same time, it's always interesting to consider what it would take to build a generation ship.

I use the RSS feed reader in Thunderbird to have a local copy of things. If I don't check my email on my laptop twice a day, I tend to lose Slashdot feed items because the Slashdot RSS feed keeps less than a day's worth of items. For example, I only checked my Thunderbird RSS feed on 2025-08-04 once early in the morning and lost about half a day's worth of Slashdot feed items by the time I checked it the next day.

I did not see a mention of that short feed limit here: https://slashdot.org/faq/feeds...

What software could I set up somewhere so that I always have access to a complete local set of Slashdot RSS items? Ideally I think I'd like something so I could maybe have copies on a home server (Linux) which is usually-but-not-always running, my laptop (Linux), and perhaps even a remote server (Linux) to help with local outages -- and then perhaps somehow use a tool to bring all the feed items together now and then.

On a tangent, there are also occasional days when Slashdot's RSS feed seems to get stuck with the older feed items being hours old (when there are newer items on the site). Usually it fixes itself in less than day, although a few weeks ago I emailed Slashdot support when it had been stuck for over a day, and then it started working soon after. I know Slashdot briefly suspends RSS feed access if you check it too often (something made more likely by the short feed duration) -- but I don't think that was the issue there. Nothing much I probably can do about that other Slashdot feed issues though, but maybe people here have some insight into that anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Takeaways [by Nate B. Jones on his video]
  1. Compression Trap: We default to using AI to shrink information--summaries, bullet points, stakeholder briefs--missing opportunities for deeper insight.
  2. Optimize Brain Time: The real question isn't "How fast can I read?" but "When should I slow down and let ideas ferment?" AI can be tuned to extend, not shorten, our cognitive dwell-time on critical topics.
  3. Conversational Partnership: Advanced voice mode's give-and-take cadence keeps ideas flowing, acting like a patient therapist and sharp colleague rolled into one.
  4. Multi-Model Workflow: I pair models deliberately--4o voice for live riffing, O3 for distilling a thesis, Opus 4 for conceptual sculpting--to match each cognitive phase.
  5. Naming the Work: Speaking thoughts aloud while an AI listens helps "name" the terrain of a project, turning vague hunches into navigable coordinates.
  6. AI as Expander: Used thoughtfully, AI doesn't replace brainpower; it amplifies it, transforming routine tooling into a force-multiplier for deep thinking."

So will global warming eventually kill the .tv top-level domain? That's something like 10% of the country's GDP.

As another example, sometimes a genetically-influenced mental trait can be good in one environment and problematical in another. For example:
https://www.psychologytoday.co...
        "One source of such variation in adaptive stability is surely genetic difference among infants, but genes alone do not make a child an orchid or a dandelion. As work by other researchers has shown, the genetic characteristics of children create their predispositions, but do not necessarily determine their outcomes. For example, a consortium studying Romanian children raised in horribly negligent, sometimes cruel orphanages under the dictatorship of Nicolae CeauÅYescu, before his fall in 1989, discovered that a shorter version of a gene related to the neurotransmitter serotonin produced orchid-like outcomes. Children with this shorter allele (an alternative form of a gene) who remained in the orphanages developed intellectual impairments and extreme maladjustment, while those with the same allele who were adopted into foster families recovered remarkably, in terms of both development and mental health.
        Similarly, a team of Dutch researchers studying experimental patterns of children's financial donations--in response to an emotionally evocative UNICEF video--found that participants with an orchid-like dopamine neurotransmitter gene gave either the most charitable contributions or the least, depending upon whether they were rated securely or insecurely attached to their parents--that is, depending on factors that were not genetic."

So, potentially parents can select, say, for children who may be less likely to get depressed or miserly in bad circumstances, but you will also select out children who might excellent or generous in good circumstances.

More examples: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+...

Other ideas include "tulip" children:
https://nurtureandthriveblog.c...

Is it ironic or intentional that the company has "orchid" in the name?

https://newpublic.org/
"Reimagine social media: We are researchers, engineers, designers, and community leaders working together to explore creating digital public spaces where people can thrive and connect."

Their Digital Spaces Directory listing hundreds of alternative platforms (including Slashdot):
https://newpublic.org/study/33...
"As the social media landscape changes and a new wave of digital spaces emerges, this Directory is meant to be a resource for our field -- a jumping-off-point for further exploration and research for anyone who's interested in studying, building, stewarding, or simply using digital social platforms. We hope this will inspire creative exploration, spark new collaborations, and highlight important progress."

Ultimately though, standards (open protocols, of which there are many good examples better than Bitcoin, like, say, email RFC 5322) are probably more important that implementations for distributed social media. I gave a five minute lightning talk about that for LibrePlanet 2022:
"Free/Libre Standards for Social Media and other Communications"
https://pdfernhout.net/media/l...

The text of the talk in IBIS outline format is available here:
https://pdfernhout.net/librepl...

From there:

What are key insights for moving forward?

        * Standards unify; incompatible services fragment
        * The power of plain text
        * Simple Made Easy ( Rich Hickey https://www.infoq.com/presenta... )
        * A democratic government is a special case of a free/libre software community

What are current free alternatives?

        * Matrix.org
        * GNU social
        * Mastodon
        * Mattermost (can import from Slack)
        * Wordpress + plugins
        * Drupal + plugins
        * Nextcloud
        * Email with better clients and servers including using JMAP, Nylas, mailpile etc
        * IRC with better clients
        * Smallest Federated Wiki (Ward Cunningham)
        * Citadel
        * Kolab
        * Diaspora
        * A plain website of text files using Git
        * Twirlip (my own experiments, very rough)
        * Many others

What are problems with free alternatives?

        * Usually more about implementations than standards
        * Hard to start using
        * Fragmentation of user bases with walled gardens
        * Often not federated
        * May not scale (like to trillions of messages)
        * Design missing the big messaging picture (e.g. whether email can be used to edit wikis)

What is my guess at what the future holds for innovation in messaging?
        * Free/Libre standards that unify messaging, with free implementations (a social semantic desktop?)
        * Obligatory XKCD on "How Standards Proliferate": https://xkcd.com/927/
        * It is the social consensus issues that are hard at this point, not the technical ones
        * We need less, not more: less standards, less code, less features, less division & stupidity
        * We need better: better standards, better code, better features, better peacemaking & sensemaking