Well, after Starliner's fab debut the other day, maybe it could be repurposed?

This makes about as much sense as a gingerbread man and cookie monster performing together, with the gingerbread man getting eaten at the end of the show. Seems I've seen stuff like this promised back in the old days of computing, when there was software that could code in BASIC.

The major factors in wildfires endangering the human population is the spread of those communities into areas that historically had few people in them. Furthermore, as those communities were allowed to sprout, they upset a balance that put laws intended to protect certain species of flower and fauna used as ways to discourage buildup of brush and dead trees, which were essential to minimizing fire spread and using natural barriers for containment. Pile up too many matchsticks, and that fire kindling (usually with help from nature in a thunderstorm) eventually produces catastrophic results. Other factors, such as drought cycles that existed long before they were discovered, resistance of bugs to pesticides, mono-culture in forests harvested for wood and paper, and inefficient or ineffective control burns in forests have made things worse, not better. Like a product, sometimes it's better to start with a fresh approach and clean sheet of paper to get to what works and what does not.

Infrastructure spending was promised, and not delivered, by the current administration because the legislative branch seems more hell bent on impeachment on one side and winning back control on the other in one chamber. The roads that were built over 60 years ago are in bad need of repairs and replacement, never mind the outdated systems for water, sewer, and electricity/gas that have outlived their engineered lifespans. The problem then turns to who pays for it, and how. When the once vibrant tax base of our industrial sector got shipped overseas, it became more difficult to adapt a way of backing bonds that had little hope of a fair return on the investment long term. The marketplace is all focused on short term, and it'll eventually run out of schemes. The changes have to happen in the investment sector, where the rich that save need to invest in the future and less in the short term, or lose it to the politics of the hard left. This is where the rubber meets the road.

If it's dumped, it got into a landfill because if it made the shelves at a Pic & Save or Dollar Store, it would show how much true worth that thing really has. That's a gig I could see the underworld doing. Diverting the landfill stuff back into an underground network of shady stores in inner cities.

The idea works in a world where the costs of developing, creating, and distributing content clash with the way a one stop shop works. The studios tried to work with Netflix, but their costs were not being met by their idea of a fixed fee model. That's why they finally decided to create their own streaming services, because it was better suited to their cost structures. The lawyers get involved because there is no global agreement that would satisfy the regulations of different areas. What works in the US does not in the EU, etc. The business world works in ways the average consumer doesn't understand, but when you take time to dive a bit deeper, it makes sense.

The creator of this mess sold out to Disney, and knew (against his better judgement) that the world he created was going to be gutted, slashed up, put a few things here and there in a different order sometimes, etc. to make what passed for a classic film from the 1970's into regurgitated formula garbage. It's how the business works in this day and age. No different than the Star Trek franchise, or James Bond. When the original material was used up, it took different forms, but never equaled or surpassed the original. Hint for Disney, that should be cannon there. It's about the story, first, and always. Never shoot a frame of film until you get the story right.

Alcohol, nicotine, etc. are all drugs of choice, just like the addictive ones that get more press and are more destructive. These government studies are more based on the costs involved when disease (which is inevitable) begins to degrade lives. That's how insurance (or government run healthcare) works. Higher risk behavior pushes costs up, and an aging population also has it's impact on the costs of keeping people healthy. Taxes (or outlawing it) don't seem to be much of a way of discouraging it, as the US found out almost a century ago with alcohol.

China's idea of using captive and politically restrained people won't work any better any more than the Russians tried that stuff decades ago in the gulags. What it wound up doing for the Russians was opening up huge human intelligence gaps that were difficult and expensive to shut down. It's a big part of why the Soviet Union went out of business. A security state has costs and difficulties that technology cannot really help much with, mainly because the dissenter has the edge in any sort of tech based solution. A good way to describe that is the time it takes for a huge ship to turn and go in a different direction. That's how a security state works. The dissenter has the edge in being able to counteract that sheer force with being nimble and using open information as power, without centralized command and control. The problem China has is they are reaching the point of diminishing returns on their heavily leveraged use of their population to please corporate interests. Tech cannot solve this problem, only make it even easier for the people who use those solutions to their advantage.

Will's predictions were based in their time. I enjoyed MaxPC back in those days, not so much for the articles, but the build ideas and of course the demo disks they gave out with each issue. (I think I still have a few stashed away in a dusty old cd folder somewhere.) At that time, the PC was still seen (in the win98 view of the world) as the center of the entertainment for many, despite the pending release of the iPod just a few months later. That was the real shakeup, which led to the gadgetry we use today.

The increasingly toxic political divides that are happening across the world created this mess, and now the pressure on FB is on. Big time. Advertisers are trying hard not to be forced to take sides on this stuff, but it's got to the point now that governments, regardless of how democratic they are, have to do so because of FB's open nature. Having to invest actual capital in this sort of content filtering to keep those parties happy is going to wind up a big mess. Out in the jungle, it's survival of the fittest. FB already has experienced problems with various frauds against it, and now it's costing them real money and people time. $130 Mil is small potatoes compared to their last revenue statement, but everyone knows that cost escalates quickly and degrades their product as more and more people have to be used where computers fail. Sort of like a small scale intelligence agency?

Null Island is still not on Google street maps. Still waiting...

Billboard, whose charts have had less relevance than ever in the digital age, are still playing catch up. The trade rags from the vinyl era of music, which were originally used by radio station programmers, seem completely lost in today's far less constricted marketplace for music. The streaming model is where the numbers are at, and where the revenue is made these days. YouTube, in one sense, has become the master distributor instead of retailers, which is why takedowns of some music is becoming troublesome. That loss of clicks and force feeding a particular edit or version of a song means lost revenue, which can alter where a 'charted song' is and/or who and why it's popular. We'll not discuss the bot based payola, which is also an increasing problem when calculating relative popularity as well.

In a broader sense, yes. Convergence, which was the buzz word back in the Win98 days, went out the window long ago. Most consumer electronics have massive amounts of untapped performance capability already. Cryptominers have figured out ways to use discarded earlier generation gear to make cheaper ways of doing blockchain stuff, and still be relatively cost efficient. The point I made was more about 8K resolution chips in something that was passively cooled. The transistor count keeps rising, and despite shrinking die sizes, the heat those things make is beginning to exceed what passive cooling alone can do and still maintain enough performance and reliability in a consumer grade product. It's a tricky balance that may not even need to be accomplished, given the changes in mass market gaming that are evolving right now (Stadia, etc.)

Maybe if you were looking for a good salesperson, where personality counts. The problem here is companies are getting lazy and implementing prejudicial (yes, pre-judging people) solutions that use AI, but can both be considered discrimination as well as miss great opportunities to hire people that take direction and learn skills well. Even a dog has capabilities to sense deception and questionable behavior, based on things that cannot be detected by a machine. Our landlords have used that stink test for years when screening potential tenants, and based on where those people eventually wind up (and out, in time), based on conversations with some of their competitors, it works well.