Posts by ThatOne

Re: Why do people call a small outpost a colony ?

> I have concerns about how useful these studies can be

They are indeed just approximate answers to the wrong question...

It would be more pressing to know what the purpose of this "colony" thing might be, and what the technical realities governing it are. In real life return on investment will heavily dictate, not only the initial investment, but also the resupply frequency (or even existence!): Nobody will shell out billions yearly just so the Martians can get the latest iPhone.

So, is this a vanity project, just so we can say "we did it", move on, and never set foot on Mars for the next 50 years (like the Moon)? Is this a new settlement supposed to be or eventually become self-sufficient? What would it be for (the Americas were colonized because the was wealth to be found here, not because some billionaire had cash burning his pockets)? What would be the political status of this colony be (does a terrestrial nation claim sovereignty over that settlement? I'm sure all the others nations will disagree. On the other hand if it's independent, it will be left to fend for its own, i.e. starve).

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BTW I like the obvious things that study claims to have discovered. Brace yourself: Neurotic people = bad in a group, Agreeable ones = good... I guess the number of psychopathic mass murderers would have to be limited too - Surprise! Now I have to go claim my Nobel.

Security theater, so their website looks "just like the big sites"...

"See, we're so important we have to block bots." Never mind why.

Re: Task failed successfully.

There is only one sure method: If you're a bona fide human, send us one of your fingers (DNA test to confirm ownership).

This also limits bandwidth usage to a maximum of 10 connections per user (Toes are not accepted), keeping costs down.

> if there was the will and the finance

Unfortunately you said it, right there: Why would the bean counters want to spend outlandish amounts of their precious money to send something into deep space? For them there is only one important thing in the world, and that's the quarterly earnings statements.

We nerds might get all starry-eyed about some old piece of technology zooming through the great void, but we're exceptions, for the average Joe the whole idea is absolute nonsense, and that money should better be spend for them and their immediate creature comforts. (We have some people of that persuasion even here.)

TL;DR: Unlikely to happen, bordering to impossible. Unless you convince them there is an asteroid of massive gold waiting for them out there in the Oort cloud...

Re: Alien UFOs

Also strange that "witnesses" never agree on one shape: The UFOs they describe are all of wildly different shapes and looks, and before somebody says "different craft for different purposes", please have a look at our planes: They all have a similar look, it's always a body with wings, and they all fly more or less the same way. Any plane looks like a plane.

UFOs are of all kind of (very simplified) shapes, and there aren't two which have similar flight characteristics -- well, except the "they fly much better than our gear" part...

If aliens did indeed arrive, and even if after that long and costly trip they only chose to play hide & seek with (always!) isolated persons, they still would only have brought one type of vessel, maybe two, not dozens of totally different ones. What is this, an intergalactic aerial meeting?...

Re: The best

> I can imagine consumers aren't dying to pay Microsoft a monthly fee for their computer

Since most computers come with Windows preinstalled (and require Windows for their (obligatory) firmware updates), this is a moot point. People will pay for some form of Windows, nobody asks if they need or want it.

Re: The best

As Jake said -- They simply don't know better.

Windows updates (of all kind, not only Microsoft) are jarring when one is used to Linux. They take ages, you don't know what's going on, if it's still working, stalled or dead, you can only wait, a long time, and hope you'll eventually get your computer back in a working condition. It wasn't like that back in WinXP/Win7 times IIRC. It was still very cumbersome, but faster, and you usually knew what was going on. IIRC.

Re: "We're doing better!"

> reason to believe Feds are getting better at not abusing snooping powers

Nah, they just getting better at not being caught.

If you think about it, snooping is what they live for, and the law is irrelevant since they are the law (defending our core values, whatever they might be, and all that).

Re: @Bitsminer -- Snooping data

Exactly. The fact your comment is not very "interesting" is a sign that you have something to hide, something potentially very, very dangerous to Western Civilization.

Re: SuperAwesome (which teams with advertisers to help them target kids online)

> "The live scans used for this process are never stored

Pull the other one.

It's the standard marketing perv's wet dream, not only does he have the whole curriculum including family ties, but also all their individual mugshots to boot! So you can sell the opportunity to identify/track them at leisure. Profit!

^{(Entering a hardware store) "Welcome Mr Smith, I see you have bought a set of precision screwdrivers online yesterday, could we interest you in our high quality ACME precision screwdriver set currently on sale?"}

Re: Only worrying about crashing the OS?

> I don't switch the box on because I like the idea of running the OS

So you're not Microsoft's core marketing target?...

Re: Why?

> stopping bots

That's just an excuse, and an extremely fallacious one too: According to their own claims, all it can do is catch "a computer that attempts to pretend to be multiple machines", and how often is that a problem? If you want to catch a computer pretending to be multiple different users the IP address might be enough. Not to mention way faster and cheaper.

Mostly it will be used to fingerprint computers for marketing purposes (that's where the money is), and also to try to destroy them remotely for lolz and petty online vengeance...

"Fight fraud with Rowhammer", sure, pull the other one.

Re: Until we manage to screw up with orbital debris

> Using satellites is trading one risk for another though

Irrelevant, the author has a habit of posting opinion pieces where Starlink is shoehorned as the solution to some problem humanity has.

A previous one was amusingly suggesting Starlink technology enabled MIT Haystack’s future "Great Observatory for Long Wavelengths" despite them having nothing in common besides both "being in space"...