Industrialism has added decades to the average human lifespan. We shouldn't be blind to the ill effects, and be open to improving things, but let's not focus on only the downsides.

That's the problem with old laws in the UK. Some of them have become ridiculously lenient, like ones imposing financial penalties that a centuriy and a half of inflation has rendered largely meaningless. However, some others allowed exceptionally harsh penalties - specifically the death penalty - to remain at least a theoretical punishment for crimes like piracy, treason and some military offences until 30 years after the death penalty was "abolished".

Fortunately, with them being old laws piracy was defined as the sort involving ships not computer games.

The greenhouse effect is real, and our emissions are increasing the temperature of the planet.

But.

This really is a non story. The carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has been increasing constantly since the measurements have started (and undoubtably before that). Every year has higher CO2 than the previous year. There is nothing new in reporting this. There is nothing interesting about 430 parts per million, it's not a particular milestone, other than it's higher than 420 but not as high as 440. There's nothing about this particular year being the highest level since well before the beginning of the holocene, that's been true for years.

Except as an excuse to keep carbon dioxide in the news, there's really no new in this news story.

Overall it may reduce global warming since war hurts the economy and lowers the population meaning that there are fewer people around afterwards to burn fossil fuel or buy things created by fossil fuel. Indeed multiple studies after the 2008 market crash showed that the reduction in the economy also led to a noticeable reduction in carbon emissions. At the extreme end nuclear war is believed to cause nuclear winter where the dust thrown into the atmosphere causes a significant drop in temperature lasting for years.

Yeah. Depends a lot on what you categorize as a "smallsat," but a lot of these are cubesats built by students, and they have a huge failure rate.

Didn't "fall out of the sky." It lost power and stopped communicating, but it's still in orbit, and will be until atmospheric drag eventually brings it down.

Article was written by somebody who doesn't understand that you don't need power to stay in orbit.

What in the world do they mean, the satellite was "going off course"?

That's absurd. This is a satellite with no on-board propulsion; it can't change orbit. It can't go "off course." It lost power, and hence stopped communicating, but losing power doesn't mean it drops out of orbit.

Alternate source that is a little more credible: https://www.satellitetoday.com...
Another source, but paywalled: https://spacenews.com/methanes...

It occurs to me that this is a good use of massive solar plants. It wouldn't cost much to idle your oxygen-separation equipment when the sun isn't shining, so you wouldn't need much in the way of battery storage. Grid scale solar without battery backup in a sunny area (like south Texas) can cost as little as $0.03/kWh, which would give you a separation cost of $4.5 to $24 per ton of LOX. Obviously, if you were producing LOX at a scale needed to fuel a fleet of Starships, you'd work to get that towards the bottom of the scale -- so the LOX loadout for a ship could cost on the order of 3500 * 4.5 = $15,750. To launch 150 tons to orbit. Of course you still need methane.

Could you make "green" methane (i.e. without using fossil fuels) with a big solar farm, and what would that cost? You'd do it with the Sabatier reaction to combine CO2 and H2 to get CH4. To make a ton of CH4 you need 2.75 tons of CO2 and 0.5 tons of H2 (stochiometry, dawg). To get a ton of CO2 with direct air capture takes about 2000 kWh of electricity, so 5500 kWh for the CO2. At $0.03/kWh that's $165 for the CO2. However, producing the half-ton of H2 with electrolysis would take 25,000 kWh, so $750. This puts the raw materials cost of green CH4 at around $915. The Sabatier reaction would add a little more, call it $930 in all.

So... Starship could be entirely solar-powered at a cost of around 3500 * 4.5 + 1000 * 930 = ~$946k, assuming $.03/kWh, ignoring equipment and storage overhead. It turns out that the cost is utterly dominated by the cost of methane production; LOX is all but free. But the cost of solar will likely continue to go down so... fuel costs could indeed get really, really low, even with a zero-carbon strategy. Perhaps as low as $2/kg to LEO.

None of the cinemas around here have such high quality equipment. Maybe they do elsewhere in the world but then catching a flight to see a movie that's better than what i can see at home isn't really a sound economic proposition.

It's not that reddit is completely useless, but I have found that since it doesn't generally take even the minimal effort of signing-up for a specific-purpose forum in order to start commenting, there's a lot of people suffering the low-knowledge stages of the Dunning-Kruger Effect weighing in with uninformed opinions on subjects that think they're contributing something meaningful. Because their account allows them access to virtually the whole site (as so few subforums are restricted and the nature of that restriction is all-or-nothing rather than read-only until approved to post) they feel comfortable and confident weighing-in even when they have nothing of value to add.

For technical forums elsewhere, where a forum might be dedicated to a particular subject, usually only those with an express interest will bother to sign up for an account in order to post. The majority of new accounts are people with questions to ask and they start out suitably abashed because they have a problem that's stumping them. Some enthusiasts or experts with real experience also sign up, and end up forming the early core of those providing good answers, and in time many of those who started out asking questions reach a point where they're skilled and experienced enough to provide answers.

But to maintain growth a site really wants as many users as it can get, so low-quality results are almost inevitable for a site to grow to the point that it seems self-sustaining. Many of the forums I've been on for niche topics are a labor of love for their owners rather than truly profitable.

Exactly this... Nowadays everyone already has a portable device capable of reading up to date content anytime anyplace. Buying a paper magazine or newspaper from the few places that still sell them and then carrying it around is massively less convenient. The only people doing this are generally the elderly who dont know how to use the newer technology, and obviously those people become fewer every year.

No i have a smaller room so i sit closer, so i have no need for such a large screen.
Plus i can sit in exactly the ideal location for the sound system and screen, whereas most of the theatre audience are sitting outside of the optimal seats.

Also theatre experiences differ significantly. Some of them have much smaller screens, lousy sound systems, dirty, smelly, crowds of kids, uncomfortable seating etc. There isn't a decent one around here, i have to travel a significant distance for a decent theatre experience.

Stuff I've wanted to know hasn't been readily available for a long time anyway. I want to know things like:

• maximum brightness, if the screen is legible outdoors in full sun
• battery life at maximum brightness
• If the keyboard still has physical pgup/pgdn keys or not
• max effective speaker loudness
• how upgradable the RAM is
• how the rear corners are, in terms of trying to actually use it on a lap

Some of this stuff can be found out through vendor sources but a good chunk of it can be a PITA to find without getting hands-on with the laptop. As a consequence I've either bought used or bought from places like Costco where I can get a feel for the device. If I'm going to drop $1500 I want the thing to work to my tastes and ambiguity in such a transaction is annoying.

If you have to contact the admins to justify yourself rather than even being as simple as pre-signing-up through a web form and then the admins reviewing signups to approve then that's only one step from not being able to sign up at all.

A whole lot of print publications that later went hybrid and then online-only didn't make it even five years past the end of their print versions. It's surprising that they managed to go over a decade without closing up.

And to be frank about it, I'm surprised that the lights are still on at all here on Slashdot. Can't sign-up for new accounts anymore, they're clearly not trying to keep the site alive through new users, and it wouldn't surprise me if one day I go to pull up the URL and instead get a thanks-for-all-the-fish message.