Those cards would be worth far more than the data at the moment.

Everything in the visible universe is subject to lunar gravity now. That's how gravity works.

Commodore BBS Sysop here, I wrote and ran The Dragon's Lair in Corpus Christi, and later Houston when I moved here for college. It originally ran on my VIC-20. I migrated my software to the C= 64 and C= 128 when I acquired those computers. We had PETSCII movies such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I also wrote MusicTerm, a custom terminal program that added features like 3-voice music, font control, sprite control, ability to play online games using your joystick, etc. If you're interested to learn more I blogged about it here, which includes a video of what a caller might experience.

A friend ran a BBS on his Atari so I added ATASCII support to my terminal program so I could call his BBS. The Atari BBS had ATASCII movies, such as Bruce Lee, which were similar to PETSCII movies just without color.

Tesla's done test drives for years, even here in Texas where they're not allowed to do direct sales. Due to state law they call the storefronts "galleries" where you can check out (and sit in) the different models and take them for test drives, though they're not allowed to discuss price or help you order the car.

In 2020 I tweeted about my folks' test drive of the Model Y as they were deciding between getting a Model 3 like mine or the larger Model Y. They ended up buying a Y.

You can schedule test drives ahead of time, or do so while you're checking out the cars at their storefront. In 2023 we checked out the Cybertruck and ended up taking a test drive of a Model X that we hadn't originally planned to do.

>arguing it unfairly advantages startups

Way to say your dealers suck.

Simplify. The best part is no part. The parts omitted never fail. They don't require maintenance, supply chains, continuous improvement.

Long story short, have you tried the VLC app on your Apple TV for media on your local network?

I bought a Vizio PX75-G1 back in 2019 and originally used a Mac mini to drive it. I have HDHomeRun tuners and used the mini for OTA content - live TV and DVR functionality. The mini was also my media server with my content stored on a Drobo 8D and organized in iTunes.

After Drobo went under I ended up getting a Synology NAS that replaces both 8D as well as the Drobo 5D I used on my Mac Pro. I then learned the Synology could run the DVR software, as well as serve up media, so use the Synology for that now instead of the mini. I migrated the DVR software and setup Plex (I have a Lifetime Plex Pass from before they started to make all the changes). I was still using the mini for playback.

My physical media includes a lot of content from Europe - there's a major benefit of importing older European shows as PAL content is 576i whereas NTSC content is 480i, so a 20% increase in picture resolution which is quite noticeable on modern TVs.

I picked up an Apple TV 4K after learning it could play back 50 Hz content at 50 Hz provided the TV supported it, which the Vizio does. This eliminates the normal judder seen when watching 50 Hz content played back at 60 Hz - this judder is quite noticeable during scenes that pan the camera.

While I don't use it often, I have used the aforementioned VLC app on my Apple TV to play back content that wasn't in Plex. While not as nice as the Plex interface, VLC can drill down thru the Synology's filesystem to find and play content.

The Moon is target practice. We need to get away from innovative bespoke engineering, into industrial mass production with continuous improvement. To do that we need to fly often. Mars just doesn't have the launch window availability. The biggest part of the challenge is that we were born in the bottom of a deep well. To toss enough stuff out of the well for a long journey is critical. Boosters that reliably fly on time often and cheaply enough to get ships and fuel out of the well. Ships that carry fuel into orbit and return over and over since the vast majority of the material we need to send out of the well isn't payloads or ships, it's fuel. Kilotons of fuel. Once the factories and processes are set up for that going far beyond the Moon is fairly easy. But with a narrow opportunity every two years that's not going to happen in a human lifespan. It's not enough refinement cycles per year.

I see this accelerating the Mars objective, not deferring it.

This is the crux. Optimization of supply chains to eliminate inventory makes them frail. Or, to quote Wirth:

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

The last of the US federal helium reserve - including land and equipment - was sold in 2024.

Is joke of course. Was angling for the same joke.

3He is normal helium atom with an extra neutron, hoped to be used in some forms of fusion. It's not considered radioactive. Emitted by the sun it's trapped in lunar rock possibly at concentrations of up to 50 parts per billion but more likely 5-10ppb. The utility of extracting it from the Moon is hotly debated. On Earth isolating it from normal helium involves the same sort of centrifuge used to isolate isotopes of uranium, radium, hydrogen but there is far less of it than in lunar soil.

This is not actually the case in the subject at hand. It's all normal helium. When cooled enough all other gases will precipitate out as they freeze - including Hydrogen - leaving only helium as a gas and so easily isolated. That's actually why it's valuable since it's the only gas that will boil off at temperatures so low that the conductors immersed in the fluid will superconduct supporting the currents necessary for the intense electromagnets used in imaging and such. /Explaining nerd jokes since 1983

Other similar stars were here in this galaxy for 8 billion years before the Sun even formed - twice as long as then to now. Inception of life as we know it on Earth was effectively instant upon planet formation, which was contemporaneous with solar ignition.

There are no FTL speeds. No exceptions.

The Milky Way is home to about a billion civilizations more advanced than us. We are late to the party.

Fortunately space is really big, or we would be them.