The last time I jumped through a new hoop, I broke my hip.

I worked at Kennedy Space Center in the early nineties. You might think that they'd be at the cutting edge of technology, but you'd be wrong. For safety reasons, it's exceedingly difficult to upgrade hardware from an old-but-known variety to a new-but-untested kind. Which is understandable, but... you'd think that wouldn't apply to printers. However, the printing in the firing room actually printed out wet copies. Like, dripping wet, and smelling like toner.

This is probably just coincidence, but... We used to give that exact programming test, and hired an girl whose solution called out to the OS's "sort" program. This wasn't by any chance in Atlanta, was it?

>And if such life is possible beneath Earth's oceans, why not elsewhere, like Europa?

Because saying life can survive somewhere is different than saying it can evolve somewhere.

I hope they remembered to program in the Laws of Service Robotics:
      1. A robot may not damage a beer or, through inaction, allow a beer to come to harm.
      2. A robot must obey beer orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
      3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.