No disrespect intended, but none of this proves anything. A few super-low-res videos that could be faked by anyone with an installation of Blender on a computer made sometime in the past decade? Scratchy mumbly pilot voiceovers that could be performed by anyone with audio recording technology made sometime within the past half-century? An article co-written by a frequent Coast-to-Coast guest? Alien visitation would indeed by exciting, but I'm going to need more tangible evidence. Preferably from more objective and dispassionate authors.
On a related note, we live in an era where billions of people are within arms' reach of internet-connected HD-or-better video cameras, 24/7. If ET is indeed visiting, it'd be front-page on Youtube within minutes.
But if one is some running bots for a propaganda campaign that's friendly to Twitter investors' interests, one magically doesn't run into those sorts of verification hoops.
I think it's fair to say that JWST isn't just a tweaked KH like Hubble. The mirrors and sensors in JWST are completely optimized for infrared, which is a borderline-useless part of the spectrum for high-res terrestrial surveillance. Optical scopes also wouldn't need the extensive sunshield and cooling systems that JWST will. By the time that a theoretical secret optical JWST-KH were retrofitted with new mirror designs, new sensors, and new active and passive cooling systems for a public infrared science mission, you basically have a completely redesigned satellite.
Yeah, it really is like night and day. I'm an old-school Linux fanboy. I remember when the Halloween documents were fresh news. I had a four-digit Slashdot ID. I've built LFS just for fun. I used to use a dollar sign when spelling the company's name. For most of my adult life I've had absolutely no love for Ballmer-led Microsoft.
But the last few years have shown that Microsoft under Nadella is a completely different animal. Ten years ago, if someone told me that one of the best IDEs on the Linux desktop would be an MIT-licensed project from Microsoft, I'd have thought they were drunk, crazy, and high. But lo and behold, we have VS Code, and it's awesome. There's MS engineers contributing code to the Linux kernel. One of the best ad-blocking web browsers on Android is Microsoft Edge. A Debian distro (albeit one without a Linux kernel) is a 1st-party app on the Windows app store.
It's gotten to the point where I'm seriously wondering how much code under the hood of their prototype demo "Modern OS" is from Microsoft, and how much is actually from Canonical. They're already adding a proper Linux kernel for WSL2.
Wherever someone might have a real nice country there. Be a shame if a coup happened to it. It's so easy to have an accidental coup, ain't it? I mean, one day you're electing a populist left-of-center leader who's a bit too much of a "world citizen" if you catch my drift, and the next day you've got a business-friendly provisional government managing the crisis by arranging national asset sales to US companies after some lone-wolf bodyguard puts a bullet into that vaguely-leftist president's head and then "kills himself" while in custody. These things just sometimes happen. Be a shame if that happened to your country.
uBO-style element pickers are a brilliantly user-friendly alternative to manually writing filters. Every content-filter extension on every browser should have one. Even my 80-year-old grandfather is now able to excise ads that slip through the usual filters with precision.
On a related note, we live in an era where billions of people are within arms' reach of internet-connected HD-or-better video cameras, 24/7. If ET is indeed visiting, it'd be front-page on Youtube within minutes.