Thousands of military drones have been remotely piloted for decades. This news isn’t as ground breaking as it might seem. Some of these drones are large: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_RQ-4_Global_Hawk

I know a military drone isn’t the same as a passenger carrying airplane, but for cargo I think the only reason this isn’t already a thing is because drones are military tech and most governments don’t want that falling into the wrong hands.

Ah, for some reason I thought you were referring to a Roku stick/box, not a smart TV, my mistake 👍.

How does it stream things/what’s the point of a Roku if it’s not connected to the Internet?

I like this sentiment, but giving the US intelligence apparatus what amounts to a veto for elected/appointed officials feels like a recipe for disaster.

The only way I see that being workable is if the clearance grantors are transparently beholden to elected officials or the people directly. Which are essentially what elections and the congressional confirmation process are supposed to be. But both of those processes feel like they’ve been subverted. (Elections by the two-party system and the fact that half the population seems intent on electing a dictator, and the other by the senators/representatives that come out of that electoral system).

This is simply not true. Starvation isn’t the only thing that kills people - they die of easily treatable medical issues all the time because of lack of health insurance. Unhoused people die of exposure every summer and winter.

Not trying to defend Jeff here, but generally these kind of space megaprojects rely on manufacturing materials in space. I.e. capture an asteroid and use its material as the radiation shielding. Not that that’s currently anywhere near feasible ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In 2021 there was some planning/writing done for a prequel, but I don’t think anything came of it.

That film is having a bit of a cultural comeback, so there’s still hope.

The Grand Canyon! Must seem even grander to an ant

Is “research chemicals” a euphemism or are you literally referring to chemical substances/precursors purchased and used by laboratories that are also available to the public?

Power cut

Are kernel maintainers not unpaid volunteers?

My business daddy pays for my Apple machine and it’s great for ssh-ing into various cloud-based Linux boxes.

This article is worth reading if only for this line:

However, though drug companies have had some success targeting the Death Receptor-5, no Fas agonists have made it into clinical trials.

I wish the US had better passenger rail infrastructure so people traveling long distance didn’t need to road trip.

I’m lucky to be in a position where I can ride a train to the two closest cities so I’m picking up an EV. Anything longer distance and I’ll either fly or rent an ICE.

Seedless grapes already exist, but I suppose you could now insert the gene into other plants/varieties to make those seedless as well.

I’m thinking more about how big ag companies could use this to prevent farmers from saving seeds/propagating a copyrighted variety (though I don’t know if that’s common with any crops where the seed itself isn’t the end product) or maybe more charitably, preventing their copyrighted plants from cross pollinating neighboring fields of the same species (e.g. ruining that neighbor’s non-gmo status).

Finally, this could be useful if it can be “switched on” i.e. by deliberately polluting an invasive plant’s gene pool with this gene and then switching it on to stall the invasive’s population growth. But I think most invasives are perennials, so would still need to be removed some other way.