The U.S. Solicitor General has urged the Supreme Court to accept Cox Communications' petition in a landmark piracy liability lawsuit. The USSG argues that ISPs are not necessarily liable for pirating subscribers and warns that the current precedent may lead to disconnections for many innocent subscribers. At the same time, the USSG urged the court to deny a petition from the opposing music companies, which seeks to expand the current liability verdict.

Sharing information on social media is common for many people nowadays, but it's not always without consequence. In some cases, simple 'likes' can be used as evidence in court, as a Florida man recently discovered. His Star Wars and Minion 'likes' were presented as evidence to support allegations he may be a prolific BitTorrent pirate.

You should assume that dbzer0 will eventually get a legal request to turn over records.

I would like to add terminal sounds to my computer. Think the sounds on terminals in Fallout or Starfield. Has anybody already attempted the project and how did they achieve success?

In Leviathan Wakes, Miller is shown eating fake beans with real rice. But why? My knowledge of agriculture is below zero but I feel like if you can supply real dried rice in space you could also supply real dried beans as well.

An hour later, his blood warm with drink, he heated up a bowl of real rice and fake beans—yeast and fungus could mimic anything if you had enough whiskey first

I'm sure everybody can recall Prax's confession to the free navy:

“The thing you need to understand,” he said, an irrational, intoxicating courage blooming in his heart. “Biological equilibria? They’re not straightforward. Never.” “Equilibria,” the man repeated. “Yes. Exactly. Everyone thinks that it’s simple. New, invasive species comes in and it has an advantage and it outcompetes, right? That’s the story, but there’s another part to that. Always, always, the local environment resists. Yes, yes, maybe badly. Maybe without a clear idea of coping with novelty. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I am saying it’s there. Even when an invasive species takes over, even when it wins, there is a counterbalancing process it has to overcome to do that. And —” The tall man was scowling, and his discomfort made Prax want to speak faster. To say everything he had in his heart before the hammer fell. “And that counterprocess is so deep in the fabric of living systems, it can never be absent. However well the new species is designed, however overwhelming its advantages seem to be, the pushback will always be there. If one native impulse is overcome, there will be another. You understand? Conspecifics are outcompeted? Fine, the bacterial and viral microecologies will push back. Adapt to those, and it’ll be micronutrient levels and salinity and light. And the thing is, the thing is, even when the novel species does win? Even when it takes over every niche there is, that struggle alone changes what it is. Even when you wipe out or co-opt the local environment completely, you’re changed by the pushback. Even when the previous organisms are driven to extinction, they leave markers behind. What they are can never, never be completely erased.”

My question is that it seems to fall flat with the existence of the gate builders in the same fictional universe. I'm pretty sure they've remained unchanged after every single planet they've terraformed.

If fusion drives are described as being hot enough to melt space ports if you point them the right way, why don't ships use them for self defense? Point them at a missile and melt/vaporize it before it can detonate? Melt PDC fire etc?

On April 9, Carney made a speech addressing the rights of LGBTQ+ Canadians at a political event in Calgary, the first time he’d addressed LGBTQ+ issues during the election campaign.

The Yukon News reports that Dylan Robertson, a reporter with the Canadian Press, asked Carney if his government would protect access to gender-affirming care under the Canada Health Act, and also what would be done about “the backsliding” that Robertson claimed gender and sexual minorities in Canada are facing.

Carney responded to say he would defend the rights of “all Canadians,” stating: “We are all Canadians, but we all have different identities and distinctions, and one of the great strengths of this country is recognizing that people can be who they are, they can love who they love, they can live where they are, and it’s fundamentally important that the federal government is the defender of those rights, defender of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms”, adding: “access to health care in Canada is not a business, it is a fundamental right for all Canadians without exception.”

With the April 2025 release of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered, it feels like the era of Starfield is coming to an end. The latest original IP from Bethesda Game Studios, Starfield, got a considerably more lukewarm response than anyone could have predicted, and, at this point, it feels like Microsoft and Bethesda are trying to brush it under the rug. A rumored Starfield PS5 release was recently reinforced by a trusted insider, but after that, it seems like Bethesda's premiere space-exploration RPG will end up being grounded.

Credit u/SpicyEggyolk

Nemeria IV-A, swamp (coast) biome!

Abstract

Free space optical (FSO) communication using lasers is a rapidly developing field in telecommunications that can offer advantages over traditional radio frequency technology. For example, optical laser links may allow transmissions at far higher data rates, require less operating power and smaller systems and have a smaller risk of interception. In recent years, FSO laser links have been demonstrated, tested or integrated in a range of environments and scenarios. These include FSO links for terrestrial communication, between ground stations and cube-sats in low Earth orbit, between ground and satellite in lunar orbit, as part of scientific or commercial space relay networks, and deep space communications beyond the moon. The possibility of FSO links from and to the surface of Mars could be a natural extension of these developments. In this paper we evaluate some effects of the Martian atmosphere on the propagation of optical communication links, with an emphasis on the impact of dust on the total link budget. We use the output of the Mars Climate Database to generate maps of the dust optical depth for a standard Mars climatology, as well as for a warm (dusty) atmosphere. These dust optical depths are then extrapolated to a wavelength of 1.55 μ𝜇\muitalic_μm, and translated into total slant path optical depths to calculate link budgets and availability statistics for a link between the surface and a satellite in a sun-synchronous orbit. The outcomes of this study are relevant to potential future missions to Mars that may require laser communications to or from its surface. For example, the results could be used to constrain the design of communication terminals suitable to the Mars environment, or to assess the link performance as a function of ground station location.