The DoD is known for viruses transporting payloads across airgaps onto Internet-connected machines. One thing it isn't is "so secure".

But, to the extent that it IS secure, it uses pretty much what I outlined. They use Class 3 certs for all users and all machines, and have done since about 2001. The US Navy got to trial run thei system to shake down the defects in the design, before they rolled it out to everyone. Beyond that, they use segregated networks (in principle, physical separation rather than logical separation, but who knows?) and encrypted communications.

What I've done above is take what the US DoD uses today, threw in what the US DoD recommended but never actually implemented in the 70s to fill in some of the gaps, and also included what the US DoD implemented and actually used in the way of Trusted OS deisgns in the 70s and 80s. The NSA and IRS likely use some variants on the same techniques.

So, what I've got above is pretty much why the DoD is as secure as it is.

What I've done is augmented it to handle the fact that you need to verify the hardware and not just the endpoint, and that you need to verify the physical host independently of the logical host. But that's pretty much it.

I agree with the first sentence, but not the second. I think this is an honest attempt to protect kids from something that is clearly harmful to them. I just don't think it will work. I think it's a situation where people see a real problem and feel like they must do something, but don't really know what can work. This is something, and there's a non-zero (if small) probability that it will do more good than harm.

It was never anything more than an invitation. A degree is a prerequisite for many jobs, but it has never been a guarantee.

That's part of it, but the smaller part. The more important parts are that a college degree demonstrates that you can learn, that you can take on a large, somewhat challenging, multi-year task and complete it, and that you succeeded at acquiring some level of broad-based education. Engineers and other specialists tend to scoff somewhat at "liberal education" because it doesn't seem like it's useful... but there have been endless attempts to substitute narrow vocational education in technical fields and they don't stick.

In the late 90s I worked with people who'd graduated from BM's attempt to provide narrowly-focused education. IBM had scoured the factories for the brightest then sent them to an intensive two-year course in software engineering, paying them to learn. The result was competent software engineers who were difficult to work with because they knew absolutely nothing but software. Their thinking was full of the basic misunderstandings of politics, economics, science, literature, etc. that you find in typical people without any post-high school education -- and who didn't pay much attention in high school either.

They knew information theory and could write good code, but their lack of general education negatively impacted their ability to build software systems in many ways. They didn't communicate well in writing (though technical writing courses had been part of their IBM education), but more fundamentally they just weren't very good at understanding the complex problems of the business. It's hard to pin down precisely what the issue was, but it was real. They were as smart or smarter than many of the college grads... but they were just less effective as employees.

IBM ultimately abandoned the approach and started sending bright young factory workers to regular universities. Even that was less effective than hiring people who had gotten to and through college on their own, though.

Indeed... though I also think that the trap is less crushing than many like to describe. I think the biggest issue isn't that the loan repayment is crushing, but that people don't like paying for something they got years ago. I don't mind paying my mortgage because I'm paying for a house I'm living in now. I would definitely resent making payments on a house I already sold and moved out of.

Personally, I didn't get any student loans. It would have been financially smart for me to have done so, actually, but I didn't.

Or a cheap four-year school, which was my strategy. Even better if there's such a school close to where your parents live, so you can live at home. A lot of the cost of education isn't the education, it's room and board, and if you can get that from your mom & dad for free, do it. This was my plan, though I ended up not following it because I got married -- but I married a woman who is a couple of years older than me and was close to graduation herself. She graduated a few months after we got married and started work that fall as a school teacher; not a lot of money but enough. Financially this strategy worked well for her; she quit teaching after a few years and has since lived on my income, which is an order of magnitude larger than she'd ever have made.

Another alternative is to join the National Guard or a reserve branch of the military. I joined the Air Force reserve. It qualifies you for most of the GI Bill benefits, but only requires a few months up front of full-time service for basic training and specialty training. After that, one weekend per month plus two weeks per year (which your employer is legally obligated to allow you to do). If you pick a military job that is related to your career plans, the specialty training could be extensive, as much as three years in some cases. Or you can pick something with less training requirements. I became a Security Policeman because the training was short... though what I learned about physical security has actually been useful in my software career.

I mentioned above that I should have gotten some student loans... I didn't realize until too late that part of the GI Bill benefits was that the government would have paid off my loans for me. I met another kid who was going to school on scholarships + GI Bill money who took advantage of this: He borrowed $20k (in ~1995) for "school", but used it to buy a brand new Camaro, then let the US Army pay it off.

Start to end, it took me 8 years, though I took a two-year hiatus to be a missionary. The last four of those, I was working full time, writing software. The last year of that time I was actually teaching a C++ programming course at night at the university I was attending, getting paid a small amount as adjunct faculty and getting 50% off of tuition for my own final coursework. That last part was not a common situation by any means, not something you can plan on, but it worked well for me.

I think it would have been marvelous to have done a "traditional" college education, living away from home, immersed in the college culture with lots of other young people. But I graduated with zero debt, and having already started my career, and my family, so it was a great outcome.

CaptQuark's main point is absolutely right: You don't need large student loans to get an education.

That is true, but the archaeology shows that this won't work for all island-hopping or all river navigation.

For example, we have clear evidence of hominins not just living on islands across the Mediterranean when no ice was present (it was free-standing water) but commuting to and from shore. We also have evidence of technologies travelling upstream along river-based communities at speeds that cannot be accounted for by simply walking.

So we need a model in which they could actively navigate against the water flow AND across significant distances of open water.

Actually those numbers are from OMB. I didn't ask AI. And, yes, they're percentages of spending.

We know that boats built 1.1 million years ago (so around the time of the split) were capable of going long distances up/down rivers between settlements, and across open waters beyond visual range to islands. This places certain language requirements on the hominins of the time, although we can't be sure hobbits had full access to all of those requirements. (There's not much evidence of boat building.)

However, they must have genetically had the capability, whether or not their brains were large enough to make any use of it.

That is all perfectly true, but we have a problem. Boats were capable of navigating reliably and robustly up/down rivers and across open sea beyond visual range. This requires much more complex communication than a gorilla or a chimpanzee is capable of, but obviously orders of magnitude less than a modern human or a Neanderthal.

It would seem reasonable to say that homo florensis was as much like us as those who first built deliberate boats for voyages requiring complex navigation.

The homo genus arose 2.2 million years ago. Evidence of complex communication exists as far back as 750,000-1.1 million years ago. Homo sapiens arose 300,000 years ago and are technically the "modern humans" as far as outward physiology is concerned. The brain was the size of modern humans for much of the 2.2 million years, but it is disputed how much. Since homo florensis is clearly not being likened to modern humans in the morphological sense, it would seem reasonable to conclude that they must be talking about some intellecual capability.

Fusion is going to be necessary at some point, and you can't start those with solar panels. Reducing wilderness is acceptable up to a point, but beyond that you start to screw up vital corridors and endanger whole sections of the food web - including those not directly impacted by the panels. So yes, you can increase solar and wind, but there are upper limits you absolutely should not cross. We're nowhere near those in the US, yet, but they shouldn't be ignored.

Nuclear as a general purpose fuel is dangerous, yes. So you need much much higher standards for designs and maintenance to keep them safe, and you really need Gen 4+ in order to be able to use nuclear waste as fuel (as we've a lot of that and can then dispose of the energy locked in it quickly and safely). A few more nuclear plants won't cause problems, provided they are Gen 4+ and preferably molten salt not water.

It's hard to not blame TEPCO to some level, as the tsunami was a one in 500 year type and was around 500 years after the last one of that magnitude. Although they're not exactly clockwork, it does become kinda obvious that you need to take such things into consideration. Yeah, yeah, there was no "legal obligation". Honestly, that isn't worth a damn. Either you update the design as new risks are determined (regardless of the law) or you knowingly take that risk.

However, you're absolutely right that the tsunami and the earthquake caused most of the property loss.

On a percentage basis, mostly what we get for our tax dollars is entitlements, like social security (22%), medicare (14%) and medicaid (10%), plus interest (14%).

AD or BC? This matters. If Bill Gates is a time-travelling reptile from the Pleiades, and put chips into vaccines, it could be that all who took the vaccine will be spirited back into the Bronze Age and offered up as human sacrifices.

The truth is way out there.

Yeah, Musk could definitely drive the whole thing sideways. I'm afraid he might be getting increasingly detached from reality. I'm not so worried about the lack of focus on the chomper; it seems to me that the real issues facing Starship are all about how to handle re-entry heat. Also engine re-lights, but I have little concern they can solve that; it's been done many times before, including by SpaceX. If they can solve the rapid reuse after reentry problem, something no one else has done, ever, building various form factors will be a simple matter of engineering.