All I see here are a bunch of cowards, just look at all the top posts here, what do they have in common? Bedbugs, ticks, mosquitos… all parasites that target humans.

I’m actually willing to step out on a limb and say something unpopular. Manatees. What have manatees done for me lately? Laying about… Aggressively loitering in our estuaries! Get a job you lazy sea cows. You think kelp grows on trees? They’re a drain on the global economy and a blubberous aquatic menace!

Heh, so there is work for CS majors in one field… Sigh.

But a chain reaction in low earth orbit is generally short lived, atmospheric drag clears that up. A chain reaction in high earth orbit is exponentially less likely to happen. It’s the medium orbits to worry about, luckily they’re less popular for now, but as LEO fills up, they’ll likely start to be used more.

That’s legit, I mean I use Libre myself.

I guess I brought up old MS Office to point out that the world was not always like this, it used to be that sanity was mainstream.

Here’s a solution for you. Use your old MacBook, the one with 2GB of RAM. Use your old copy of Office 2008, the one that requires no subscription and offers no AI assistant. Stop paying for Spotify, find your old mp3 collection, convert all those CDs you never play anymore. You want television? Don’t pay subscriptions for that either, buy an HD antenna, get your local stations over the air. If it doesn’t have everything you want, suck it up or pirate it, your call.

My point is, you can choose a different path, but it takes a choice.

You know, dumb flip phones are coming back, people are realizing they don’t need all the crap they’re paying for, it doesn’t all make life better. It takes conviction to trade in your smart phone for a dumb one, but people are doing it.

No, not really. But it was way easier to talk to people 20 years ago.

Yeah that’s true, calculating the actual collision risk is a whole different thing.

It was really just a joke, cause you know space is bigger and more empty than most people realize. Because what I said was “technically” true, if not super meaningful in any way.

That said, orbit isn’t too crowded yet, more is definitely going up, a lot more. Truth be told, 50 years from now, the number of satellites orbiting earth could easily be in the hundreds of thousands.

Well let’s run with that. If you put a single mosquito in my house, I would have a higher ratio of mosquito to air than low earth orbit currently has in its ratio of satellites to empty space. (Seriously)

Well I’m also curious about how to mount a camera, sounds tricky. And if you do use some kind of swivel mount for a stable camera, well that breaks the whole “invisible” thing. Although alternatively, you could just mount it spinning, take 360 degree video.

But to be clear this was human designed with some AI assistance. I think it’s a bit insulting to call this “AI designed”, that took skilled engineers.

I don’t know how they control pitch and roll, as far as I can see it has no control surfaces and just one motor, so it can’t do variable thrust…

Pretty impressive feat truth be told.

Well, technically there really isn’t much up there now.

I mean in low earth orbit it’s what, 99.999999999999999999999 % empty space? With the tiny fraction left being satellites.

My advice is you’re on the fence about kids, don’t adopt.

We adopted because we thought “we’re actually pretty good at this, and hey, there are kids out there who desperately need a family”.

Let me tell you, it is so much harder, for so many reasons. I can’t even fully express it, it’s so much harder.

law enforcement sources have put the running national tally at more than two dozen destroyed cameras across five states dating back to April of last year.

Wait, what? Your saying this article and all this concern is over about 25 cameras? Like not 25,000, just 25?

The bigger concern I have is that only 25 cameras have been vandalized… I thought this was more of a popular movement, but those aren’t “national popular movement” numbers.

Wow, I have to congratulate them on reaching a successful orbit in the first try! And not only that, they built this from the ground up. Most of these Chinese commercial rocket companies are starting with working icbms from the Chinese government and building off of that. And even then, many of those don’t work on the first flight.

You should read the Scythe series. It’s YA, so don’t expect anything too gritty, but it’s a good story and one of the better depictions of an AI Superintelligence that I’ve seen.

Also, the Superintelligence is core to the story, but not the subject of the story, which is nice .

That’s a good thing.

Truly a horrifying read. As a parent of a tween, I don’t think I could be more worried. This is going to suck.

Ok, yeah I can believe that. And if you’re using it for art printing, you may even be printing often enough that the feed lines don’t dry up and clog.

Personally, I like that with laser prints, if someone gets the paper wet, the toner doesn’t immediately run all over the page like with ink.

But again, less of an issue for art prints, as the results are more likely to be put in a frame than left out on a table where they can get splashed.

You could if you want. But then again, remember that most people will be replacing that toner cartridge only once every 2-5 years. So it’s not like a major expense.

It depends on how much you print of course, like if you’re a teacher or something, you might print a lot.

Having been an IT guy for a very long time this is my recommendation to everyone. Buy a cheap laser printer for your home. Ink jet is garbage it will piss you off every time you want to print something, it’s a trap. Go with whatever brand you want, but brother is the one I’d recommend most

In my home I have a brother color laser printer, it may have run over $300, I don’t recall. But I don’t recall because I think I bought it 15 years ago and it still works just fine every time I need to print. No regrets.