I used ZIP drives extensively in the 90s. I still have a drive and some disks. As far as I know they still work though I haven't tried them in quite a while. They were a huge improvement for people like me who had relatively large files (speech data).

This is interesting but it is only half-true that the use of consumable chemicals has been the barrier to the creation of scent emitters. The other problem is that no orthogonal basis for olfaction is known. In the case of color, for example, we know that you can combine red, blue, and green to form any desired color. There is nothing comparable for scent. We don't know that you can use, say, rose, bitter almond, and sandalwood to create any desired scent.

The article mentions the state's tax revenue as if it would lose it if liquor sales were privatized. Really? States manage to collect taxes on all sorts of privately sold products. As far as I can see, privatizing liquor sales need not mean giving up any tax revenue.

That's already the case. The so-called National Security Law is used against any kind of political dissent.

Agreed. This sounds like a useful feature for me.

Not sure of the specifics, but it is possible to measure the senses of non-human animals, measure various aspects of cognition and memory, and to detect anxiety etc.

You can stare at the full moon all night if you like, because the albedo of the moon has filtered most of the light including the UV band that naturally passes through our own atmosphere. The three mile circle illuminated by a mirror would bounce a significantly higher amount of UV than the moon's albedo. If you treat the 60ft reflector as an analog to a pinhole in a pinhole camera, the circular area on the Earth surface would be a rough projection of the image of the sun.

(1) I wonder how they calculate the UV exposure for the observer on the surface within the illumination area.

(2) I wonder if you'd be able to detect places in a coherent projection where sunspots or coronal ejections are reflected through the "pinhole" effect of this arrangement.

There have been studies of the reactance of bananas. It apparently decreases as they ripen.

What gives the UK government the authority to order the deletion of the archive? Is there a contract between the government and the archive that gives them this power? Generally, once the government has released information, it loses the power to control it.

Nope. You're showing that you don't actually read the post, which says: " iPhones and other modern smartphones". And incidentally, I have a Samsung Android phone. I avoid Apple products because they're too controlling. I run GNU/Linux.

Really? It mentions other phones, which would include Android.

Yeah, but this is the Trump administration. They're probably planning on using cell phones in place of the radio communication systems, relying on an all natural organic wifi system designed by Robert Kennedy, Jr. and his buddies.

Does anti-virus software even exist for extra-terrestrial viruses? Do we know what hackers from Alpha Centauri are up to?

In the pocket on the driver's door of my vehicle I have a hand-powered flashlight and a glass-breaking device. Hardly anyone else I know has a glass-breaking device, although they are readily available and cheap. Too many people just aren't safety conscious. And yes, on one occasion, I was in an accident (not our fault) in which we couldn't open the doors and had to crawl out through the windshield. It happens.

I was a year behind Gates at Harvard and don't remember signing any such thing. It's conceivable I've forgotten, but any evidence of this?