We are facing the same problem that Gutenberg created in the 15th century: a proliferation in the ability of everyone to create and communicate whatever they want and whatever people want to read. Due mainly to a dramatic fall in the cost of production of books. But its far more extreme than Gutenberg because the drop in costs is so much greater. In an era in which everyone has Internet access, a smart phone and/or laptop, writing in publishable format has become much easier and publishing itself has basically become free.

And the problem arises in the same areas it arose back in the day: pornography, religious heresy, political subversion. The same thing happened in 17c France, where people took their manuscripts to Holland for printing which their local booksellers in Paris were afraid to touch. Holland was also a center of piracy, where you could get a run of some best seller quickly and smuggle it back to Paris or London to sell at a discount. A sort of early predecessor of the Pirate Bay.

There is really no solution to this. You can see the same sorts of measures being taken up - the creation of a sort of index, the banning of some materials by righteous jurisdictions, For instance, as late as the 20c the works of \Joyce being banned in Ireland, Lady Chatterly in England, lots of books in the US. In the end this, and the Papal Index, were dropped because they were widely ridiculed and were not working. When the main result of your policy is to drive your best regarded novelists abroad and their works to be published in France, something is not working. And its not achieving its goal, if anything its increasing the interest in the banned material.

Governments however do not feel they can simply stop trying - and one understands this. Along with kinds of freedom of speech most here would find important and valuable, there is also the darker side of human nature that flourishes at the edges. What do you do about it? Do you decide to just give up? One understands why they feel they cannot. And one also understands that regulation and censorship of the truly vile is only possible by measures which have a dramatic negative effect on privacy.

Its a bit like speeding. You can pretty much stop speeding dead if you have enough cameras and you have number plate recognition. The side effect is that all trips and all car use then become trackable. You lower accidents. But the temptation to increase the use of the data is enormous. Similarly with facial recognition - you probably could use it in conjunction with other draconian measures to stop phone snatching and shop lifting. And there seems to be no other affordable way to do that. But the cost in privacy of such a total package is not small.

I see the problem and its historical parallels clearly enough, but don't know the answer.

Still, Slashdot doesn't have to play along with their weasel wording. For example, "ergonomic collars that deliver an electric pulse" - just say "shock collar". Don't help them whitewash what they're talking about.

I'd say a slot machine is a pay per rep piece of fitness equipment. No expensive gym membership needed for a workout It also has a randomized reward system to help people maintain interest in their workouts.. :-)

I believe radiation hardened 486s for aerospace applications are still being sold.

Why was VRTX chosen? Because of the embedded environment or because of real time needs?

If the decision was about embedded and real-time was not required, then Linux would be a viable solution today. Today, embedded Linux is a fine choice for non-real time needs.

- Specialization and optimization, ie cost reduction, on each leg (up, across, down).
- Expansion, servicing flights to/from asteroids.

I would expect flights to mars to eventually be originating from both earth and the moon. Different missions, different needs. Plus the moon is also its own destination independent of mars.

I'm thinking payloads. Something mined/manufactured on the moon useful to mars. At least until we get good at mining asteroids.

I don't think colonization is the only justification. Sometimes the science will benefit too.

I blame the weak FP?

Why did someone try to censor that comment? Not the strongest FP, but whose political sensitivities did you manage to offend? (Maybe another approach to fixing the moderation would be to remove the anonymity?)

I actually think you are touching on a big question there. Why? I think it's basically because they didn't want to have a gap with no living humans who had been to the moon. They're getting old and dying off and that basically created a kind of fake pressure on Congress to fund Artemis, even though America's government has become almost totally dysfunctional in recent years.

The story did produce a number of jokes, some of them good, but the one I was looking for would have involved Musk. Proof of incompetence. How come DOGE didn't manage to kill this one? If Musk is really so clever, then he would have found a way to transfer the business to his company. (More complicated joke involves "might not making right", but winners think they must be morally (or politically) correct because they won. Reality is much more random and lucky and the truth is more like the lottery: "Someone had to win." (Latest data from another pesky book, so I might as well stop.))

Hmm... Maybe that's why I never select playlists? One of those problems I learned about and solved with "Don't do that" a long time ago? I do think that these days a lot of "getting used to" has become "learning how to avoid undesired features". The feeping creaturitus is strong with YouTube.

Perhaps the most interesting aspects of Microsoft Secrets by Cusumano and Selby involve their methods of avoiding feature creep.

Spazis?

Mars will likely require the following infrastructure: space station in earth orbit, space station in lunar orbit, lunar base, space station in orbit around mars, and then a mars base. Like military operations, it's all really about logistics. Can we squeak in a direct recon flight, sure, but more serious stuff will require infrastructure.

Toss in some local acquisition and processing of resources at some point. Ex H2 O2 -- for air, water, and fuel.

A human on site is far more capable than a robot. A robot will have far greater endurance at a site. Which is better depends on the mission, the tasks to be done.

Also a big part of these missions is to develop and test the tech necessary for manned missions.

Frustration indexes have been used before in other customer facing industries, in particular to determine if users are being over served or under served. A certain level of dissatisfaction is expected, if it's too low then too many resources are being spent per user. Ie wasting money. Maximizing revenue often involves a non-zero frustration index. Seriously, service that is too good is sometimes considered a bad thing.

Not host OS based. There will likely be some trusted age verification service. Much like the various trusted certificates we already use on the web.