Not at all. In fact my wife is trans. And I do know a bit about the subject

And of course there are outliers. The question is what we (society) do with that. They used to be marginalized, then we went completely the other way. In particular, not only trying to convince kids that they might be one of those outliers, but offer them gender affirming care (or whatever we're supposed to call it these days), with far-reaching lifelong consequences. In the past, the incidence of regret after the surgery used to be incredibly low (around 0.1%), but it is already climbing (3-5% now). A German study showed that of people aged 5-12 and diagnosed with "gender identity disorder" (their term), more than half no longer carried that diagnosis after 5 years. Yet some people are so stuck in their ideology that they refuse to understand that the diagnosis in kids is highly unreliable, and continue to push them towards treatment. And yes, even "just" hormone treatment at a young age has serious consequences, regardless of whether the person transitions later in life or not.

That's the ideological "nonsense" I was referring to.

Really? The gender fluidity nonsense. CRT and Intersectionalism. Or half of the field of Sociology and most of its departments that have devolved into an echo chamber devoid of scientific fact, imposing groupthink instead and ousting those who do not toe the line. The nutty left is just as nuts as the nutty right. But culturally they are a hell of a lot more influential, billionaire propaganda notwithstanding. The best trick that the radical left has pulled is somehow convincing the intelligentsia that their brand of insanity was in fact truthful, mainstream rather than radical, and the only decent opinion to hold.

Maybe. I first read the headline as if the Vietnamese jails were the ones doing the pirating.

That is what Danfoss recommended after the last attack: update your crap and disconnect it. The supermarkets (and I guess blood banks) that were hit in the second attack failed to follow that advice.

The answer is to actually hold actual miscreants to account, after you have established that they are in fact miscreants. Not label an entire social class, political party or the people who voted for them as such. What is happening is part of what you describe: it is easier to label a group as "evil", especially if they aren't a particularly popular group, than it is to go after individual who have done actual wrong.

This statement exemplifies what's wrong with politics today. This attitude of "We're right, everyone knows we're right, so whoever is against us is either stupid or evil". Old-school elected officials at least tried to be a leader for everyone in their bailiwick, from millionaires, entrepreneurs, landlords, students, blue-collar workers to single mums on the dole. They might have certain priorities, spend more on one group than another, but they understood that everyone's interests were theirs to be concerned with, even if they conflicted with their beliefs or with each other. What they looked for was balance, rather than absolutes.

Now there's this us-vs-them mentality pervading politics, even amongst elected officials. We're here for those who voted for us and fuck everyone else. They are "trolling the libs", or we have Mamdani addressing the rich in a TikTok video, knocking on the camera lens and declaring: "I'm coming for you". Fuck that, seriously. It's fine that an elected official increases taxes on a certain group, but instead of pretending that this group is evil and had it coming, how about a simple: "thank you for your additional contribution".

We need to start treating political opponents and social classes other than our own as if they too have society's best interest at heart, treat them as fellow countrymen on the same journey, or at least treat them as human fucking beings. And I say this as a European, because it is the exact same shit show over here.

Religion should be relegated to its proper place: a private belief, or a hobby. No more exemptions: what is good for the goose is good for the gander, same rules for all. And no more protected status. Most religions' tenets are reprehensible. Some not so much in practice, others very much so, on average. But in either case we should have the courage to stand up to such ideas... and not be stricken down in name of the law for it.
"Life of Brian" could not be made today. A Muslim version would be completely out of the question. That's the position that religion has in our lives these days.

Now with more... molecules!

The summary mentions 1kW for the satellite with 4 TPUs, but the latest TPUs do seem to have a power draw of 1kW for a single chip.
Your calculation seems to be pretty good; a quick search turns up a paper that mentions 1.1 m^2 to 1.4 m^2 per kW for the proposed SpaceX datacenter sats. I've no idea how large they could make the radiator, maybe 500m^2 is doable. Enough for a tiny data center, but keep in mind you need almost twice that area again in solar panels, to generate the required power.

Looks like a truck/pickup body on a regular car platform. What they call a "Ute" Down Under.

The only thing I ever got out of doing homework at Uni was a case of beer. The reward for our team coming first in an assignment to devise a strategy for maximizing throughput through a telecoms switch. A far as grades went, midterms and finals set them, 50/50.

But my high school was the same, come to think of it (though it was a Montessori school, a bit different from others). Teachers assigned homework, some even checked that you completed the work, but the only homework that was actually graded were essays. Teachers usually covered the homework quickly at the start of the class, pausing to clarify things if a student had questions. Seems like a good way to find out what students are struggling with, and provide some reinforced learning.

In other words: homework can be a tool to help struggling students to catch up with the class, not to punish them for falling behind. Grading homework is worse than pointless. And in this age of AI, grading homework only further encourages the use of AI.

Reminds me a little of the short story "Manna" about AI taking over all production, and 2 outcomes for society. As a staunch capitalist, I think that in an AI-driven world, or a "post labour" world or whatever you want to call it, capitalism as a means of distribution of wealth is not going to work. Yes, I think many would argue that it is already failing in that regard, but I would counter that the safeguards we have against people falling through the cracks still mostly work... and more importantly, that we have no better system to replace it. But if work itself pretty much becomes redundant, capitalism will only continue to work if we can find a good answer to the old question: who owns the means of production? And those means ought to include natural resources and land as well.

I am sure there are some good answers, and a way to organize society around that new reality. But I'm not at all convinced either that this is where we are headed. By the time governments would have to take action, they'd be wholly owned by the new aristocracy.

The proposed EU age verification app is a good deal less intrusive than any of the nasty mechanisms that some social media is already employing. Most of those are a privacy nightmare. The EU app, in contrast:
- Site / App operator does not get your identity, only a proof of age.
- Government does not get to see which sites you visit.
- Actual verification takes place once, and whatever ID you use does not need to be stored (and can't be subsequently stolen)
- App is open source, so the workings can be verified.

Has it though? In the West, certainly. It's what the MBAs all parrot: focus on your core strengths, divest everything else. Or at least split it off under different names. But there are still Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean conglomerates that make everything from oil tankers, appliances, musical instruments to motorcycles. All under the same name. Somehow they are not too concerned about brand name dilution or core strengths. Like the MCP guy says in Robocop: "Good business is where you find it".

The stock argument is a good point... I'd love to invest in SpaceX the aerospace company, not so much in SpaceX the AI company with a satcom division and its own rocket department. Certainly not if they add an automotive department that seems to have lost its way. Though I don't know if this is about Musk's wants, it smells a lot more like the acquisition of X and xAI by Spacex: a trick to artificially pad the company's valuation, or something like that.

Capitalism just means that the means of production are privately owned, by investors with a profit motive. That's all. You mention the post WW2 era as an example when life was still good for even the lower incomes, and that was also a capitalist era. Capitalism has brought a standard of living unheard of in most of human history, not to the rich but to the working class.

It took more than capitalism to make that happen, capitalism does not provide equal opportunity to everyone nor does it necessarily distribute wealth fairly. And it seems that capitalism tends to concentrate money and with it power into ever-smaller groups. It takes unions, governments, laws and watchdogs to ensure that businesses keep their proper place, play fair and do right by everyone. And they used to do that fairly well for over a century. It's those entities failing us now, not capitalism. GP is right about that.