Actually, I would say you sound more like the cave person in this discussion. “Sounds great, let’s do it” is not a reasoned nor analytical approach.

Is it possible to build it? Maybe. Perhaps even probably. Does it make sense to build it? That’s a much better question. Overwhelmingly, the scientific response, since Regan first proposed it, has been “No”.

The biggest problem is the “plus 1” problem. Say you have an array of 100 killer satellites, each with an intercepting missile. Well an adversary can see all 100 satellites, and simply has to launch 101 ICBMs — or 100 cheap “dummy” missiles and 1 real one. It only takes 1 getting through to vaporize an entire city. The killer satellites would likely be a billion dollars or more each, and they are rendered completely useless by a relatively inexpensive fake missile — mostly costing just the price of fuel. You can’t take the chance that any launched missiles are not real, so you must intercept all of them. No matter how many killer satellites you have, it will be trivial to swamp them with cheap fakes and have a few real ones hidden in the volley. Inevitably some of the real ones will get through.

There’s another huge problem someone else alluded to — such a satellite system would be trivial to completely destroy before even launching any ICBMs. The most likely deployment would be LEO (low earth orbit). Destroying any satellite (either from another satellite or from a ground based launch) would send debris out in every direction. That debris would then collide with other satellites, starting a chain reaction that would likely take out most of the satellites in LEO trajectories around earth (including things like starlink, etc).

There are tonnes of other problems with Star Wars/Golden Dome/Iron Dome but just these 2, I think, make it a complete non-starter with our current technology.

I get how seductive the idea is. And one day, perhaps with high energy lasers and technology we clearly are decades away from today, then it might be possible. Spending 100+ BILLION dollars on this today is simple a pipe dream — or the greatest scam in history (more likely).

“Ever since nuclear-armed intercontinental-range missiles were deployed in the 1950s, the United States (and its potential adversaries) have been vulnerable to nuclear attack. This is very unnerving, and has caused our leaders to search for some kind of technical fix that would change this situation by making it possible for us to defend ourselves against such an attack. Fixing this situation is also very appealing to the public. As a consequence, new systems for defending against ICBMs have been proposed again and again, and about half a dozen have been built, costing large amounts of money, in the hope that a technical fix could be found that would make us safe. But none of these efforts have been successful, because the difficulty of defending against nuclear-armed ICBMs is so great.”

https://www.404media.co/scientists-explain-why-trumps-175-billion-golden-dome-is-a-fantasy/

Well, on Mastodon they are already called “toots”, which is kind of American slang for a fart anyway. So ya, switching to calling them “Trumps” is not far off…

THIS IS WHY TARIFFS NEVER WORK. In the long term tariffs actually encourage manufacturing to leave the country charging tariffs, not move manufacturing there. It’s much cheaper to pay the tariffs once, on the final product, than to pay the tariffs on every part that is required moving back and forth across an “imaginary line” (border in Trump-speak).

None of Trump’s tariff bolstering hurts Apple at all. They are a global company and can easily adjust around the asinine policies of America for a few years. Americans will get sick of paying a minimum of 25% more for EVERYTHING, while the rest of the world continues on as if nothing happened. Eventually Americans will see that the rest of the world has all the nice things and they’ve become a self imposed Soviet-era block country that has nothing and has to line up for toilet paper, and they’ll be right pissed. Until then, enjoy your delusion. 👏

First off, this isn’t Apple Intelligence… it’s Siri. Secondly, “What’s the temperature in here?” — were you trying to get the temperature inside your home? Do you have homekit enabled temperature sensors in your home? Because, if not, then I can’t really fault Siri for being confused. Granted Kyiv seems like a pretty random answer. Maybe try “what’s the temperature outside?”

Epic is a piece of shit company. The only reason they are fighting this fight with Apple is because they want some of Apple’s platform fees for themselves. Period.

The fact that they managed to convince a bunch of simpletons that they are somehow Robin Hood coming to free them from the tyrant (who was actually protecting all those users all along) is laughable. Apple created the platform, Apple managed it, curated it, and controlled it. That gives them the right to profit from it. You might dislike that but — guess what? Nobody forced you to buy it. Buy Android if Fortnight is so important to you. Seriously. Please. We won’t miss you.

Epic thinks they have a right to profit from Apple’s platform and not pay them for all the work they did to get it to be over 1 billion users. That is simply wrong. They should build their own platform and their own App Store and convince 1 billion people to use it. The reason they aren’t doing that is because they know they will never be as successful as Apple has been.

Ya. It was a joke.

I don’t know that their security is “broken”. It may be, I don’t know. But also without anything that connects you to any particular message, it seems that – in itself – is a pretty good form of security.

I just don’t get why people accept Signal’s justification for requiring a phone number. They absolutely don’t need to (session proves that). It is certainly possible for them to say, “If you register without a phone number and access to your phone book then you will lose automatic discoverability by other users of Signal — meaning that you need to find another (physical) way to exchange your Signal username with your contacts”. They CAN do this. I think many users, like myself, would be fine with this tradeoff for greater anonymity. For some reason, they have steadfastly refused. The reasoning behind this refusal is what bothers me.

Yes. That was how they avoided using identifying information from their users.

Thanks for this link but your username also makes this pretty sus. 😜

Session is an alternative that does not require, or request, your phone number (or any other identifying information). Honestly, I have no idea why Signal got popular and Sessions did not. As soon as Signal asked for my phone number that set off alarm bells for me and I’ve never really trusted it since.

Great. So, even if manufacturing does return to the USA – the jobs will not. As everyone predicted. What is the difference if robots have all the manufacturing jobs on US soil instead of foreigners in China? Correct. There is none. Except the company has avoided paying the tariff — whose only purpose was to “bring the jobs back”.

Quite simply we must boycott any company using robotics. The Trump tariffs are an insane policy, lowering America’s standing in the world, destroying the world economy (and there will be unexpected blow back for that too) and they should be immediately reversed.

Another grave tragedy ignored by the right-wing media in the US (ie: all of the media). THESE ARE GOOD PEOPLE, DOING GOOD WORK FOR LITTLE-TO-NO MONEY, IN THE WORLD’S POOREST AND DIFFICULT REGIONS AND AMERICA - ONCE AGAIN - HAS LEFT THEM HIGH AND DRY. Does anyone believe any of these programs are coming back “after 90 days”? These people need to eat - today - they can’t wait around hoping that the USA comes to its senses. America has — once again — proven that it is a friend to no one, and, by all rights, should have no friends. Any country trying to appease these monsters will find themselves annexed or worse.

This is what I’ve been doing for years - since the Apple TV came out, actually. I detest “smart” TVs, but the world has decided that’s my only option now. The first thing I do with a new Tv (I actually just upgraded mine recently) is disable the internet and turn off absolutely everything I can in whatever shit OS they are using. I plug in the Apple TV, set the input to that, and that’s it. It just works™️

I’m very concerned about privacy issues generally but am pretty comfortable with Apple’s stated and perceived privacy. If you’re paying for quality hardware and services through them, they have little incentive to sell you out – unlike pretty much every other tech company out there (I’m looking at you, Google).

The Apple TV is wicked fast (faster than any other TV OS or box I’ve ever seen) and has absolutely zero ads, zero cruft, and requires zero maintenance. If you are at all in the Apple universe with other devices, it’s perfectly seamless and tough to beat. I highly recommend it.

I know a bunch of Android/linux/Windows/Whatever-heads are gonna jump in and list a bunch of features or customizations the Apple to doesn’t have or can’t do… ya, that may be true but if that’s important to you… then don’t fucking buy it. Not everyone has the same use case as you. When I want to watch TV, I wanna watch TV – not update my Linux distro or whatever else I’ve hodge-podged together. I’ve built my own HTPCs and PVRs and, frankly, know this stuff inside-out. For me, and probably millions of others, nothing comes close to the Apple TV in terms of price, time commitment, simplicity, functionality AND privacy.

I’m just gonna go ahead and refer to it as the “Gulf of Canada” — the way Trump is leading America, Canada will extend all the way down there soon enough.

And Google can go fck itself for capitulating even before being asked. Fck that company.

Organic Maps is very good. One killer feature is that it can run completely offline, doesn’t track you, and is considerably more battery friendly than Google Maps.

And if you’re on an Apple device, Apple Maps is actually quite good now and probably has the lowest battery drain of any map app (on Apple hardware).

Being a citizen does not make you any less of an immigrant. Being a descendant of immigrants also, surprisingly still makes you an immigrant. So perhaps we should stop talking about punishing immigrants as if it’s some new novel thing that’s causing all our ills. Immigration evidently worked for all of us, so let’s try not to sh*t all over the people that follow us. Immigration built Canada and, if you’ve noticed our birth rate over the past decade, without immigration, Canada will die. Frankly we need them more than they need us.

** Unless you are a recognized native person, WE ARE ALL IMMIGRANTS ** Jfc, you people are dumb.

In what way? I find it exactly the same as Signal but without needing to disclose my phone number (and therefore more anonymous). The user experience, imho, is the same.

Session is very good and doesn’t require a phone number (like Signal).