Too late. I’ve already switched to Linux Mint and am never going back.

There’s a difference between calculating the necessary tensile strength of a chain and calculating how much energy would be required to make a chain of that tensile strength. For example, if an undiscovered element is required, does that mean it would need to be generated from nothing, so to speak, with a particle accelerator? How much energy would that take for a cosmically large chain? Or are we to assume that a massive asteroid composed entirely of this miracle material will simply pass Earth closely by?

Generally speaking, thought experiments need to yield useful conclusions before they’re worth publishing. Even if your “mithril” could exist, this thought experiment doesn’t even cover the question of whether this system of chains would yield enough energy to justify the amount of energy that would be spent creating and maintaining this cosmic-scale mechanism. And wouldn’t the “biological organisms” be constantly spending colossal amounts of energy just to prevent these chains from ripping away from their anchor points?

And not all types of energy are equal. Energy needs to useful. Even if this system could be created at an energy profit, how would we harness that energy towards useful ends? Would the energy be used to somehow boil water to turn a dynamo to generate electricity? Does enough water even exist on Earth to be put to that purpose? We can currently cause fusion reactions if we want to, but the problem is harnessing them towards useful purposes. We don’t need to invent an even bigger bomb.

That’s not a revolution.

Can you explain what you think the problem with this deal is? Frankly, I’d be far more worried if it was Mistral using MS servers, as MS would then have physical access to Mistral data. MS using Mistral servers… I’m not sure I see the problem.

If you insist that strict capitalism has never failed because neither the USA nor any other Western nation has ever practiced pure unadulterated capitalism, then you necessarily have to accept that strict Marxism has never failed either, because neither the USSR nor any other communist nation has ever practiced pure unadulterated Marxism.

Yep.

If Trump refuses discovery it would be a huge payout for the BBC, not from them

I’d be shocked if the BBC’s defence didn’t include a countersuit to the effect that his original suit calling them liars amounted to defamation. Trump can drop his suit but has no control over whether the BBC can file or continue a countersuit.

Go on

And, therefore, spirit.

No, no, you don’t understand. Afghanistan has been the place where external empires compete with each other for much longer than that. Nobody ever really succeeds there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Game

Even when they wear badges they always have some strap or other piece of gear obscuring the badge number.

It’s a clever way to beat hotlinking: you can get the comic punchline by hotlinking, but if you want the red-button punchline or the tooltip punchline, you have to actually visit the website so that the creator gets some ad revenue.

I can only imagine two possible reasons:

1. If Infantino thinks he might be forced out of the FIFA job soon

2. If the UN job has greater potential for bribes

It really is hard to find a job where you can go home at the end of the day and feel like what you did that day has benefitted the human race at all.

Yeah this issue seems to just keep going and going. Are there any South African users here that can comment? I get the feeling that this issue has more complicated origins than at first appearance, and some local insight might help.

1. The EU shares territorial fishing rights across member states in a way that seems to make noone happy, except perhaps France, Spain and Portugal. One of the lesser-known (outside of the UK) arguments that Brexiteers made for Brexit was that the UK would regain control of fishing rights. When Brexit happened, France was insistent on hinging a large part of the negotiations on retaining fishing access to British waters.

2. Iceland is intensely protective of its territorial fishing rights… just ask the British.

If the EU were willing to overhaul the CFP, it might entice Greenland and Norway too…

I’m excited at the prospect of Iceland joining, but I dunno how they’ll overcome the obstacle of the common fisheries policy.