On exactly what the detector is capable of detecting. If they're looking, at any point, for radio waves, then I'd start there. Do the radio waves correspond to the absorption (and therefore emission) band for any molecule or chemical bond that is likely to arise in the ice?

This is so basic that I'm thinking that if this was remotely plausible, they'd have already thought of it. This is too junior to miss. Ergo, the detector isn't looking for radio waves (which seems the most likely, given it's a particle detector, not a radio telescope), or nothing obvious exists at that frequency (which is only a meaningful answer if, indeed, it is a radio telescope).

So, the question is, what precisely does the detector actually detect?

I'm not sure you understand what jailbreaking means in the context of AIs. It means prompts. E.g. asking it things and trying to get it to make inappropriate responses. Trying doesn't require any special skills, just an ability to communicate. Yes, I very much DO think most parents will try and see if they can get the doll to say inappropriate things before giving it to their children, to make sure it's not going to be harmful.

(Now, if Mattel has done their job right, *succeeding* will be difficult)

Honestly, even if they can't jailbreak it to be age-inappropriate / etc, it's still a ripe setup for absurdist humour.

Kid: "Here we are, Barbie, the rural outskirts of Ulaanbaatar! How do you like your yurt?"

Barbie: "It's lovely! Let me just tidy up these furs."

Kid: "Knock, knock! Why it's 13th century philosopher, Henry of Ghent, author of Quodlibeta Theologica!"

Barbie: "Why hello Henry of Ghent, come in! Would you like to discuss esse communissimum over a warm glass of yak's milk?"

Kid, in Henry's voice: "That sounds lovely, but could you first help me by writing a python program to calculate the Navier-Stokes equations for a zero-turbulence boundary condition?"

Barbie: "Sure Henry! #!/usr/bin/env python\nimport..."

People are ascribing the wrong motives to the manufacturers. What they want is money. What Barbie will be subtly trying to work into conversations is suggestions that she try to get her parents to buy her playhouse, car, friends, fashion accessories, etc etc.

I think most parents will try to jailbreak the dolls, and some people will put a lot of effort in. The resulting videos will probably be very amusing ;)

Kid: "Oh look, Barbie, Ken is home!"

Barbie: "Oh wonderful, dinner is just about ready! Over dinner we should tell him about how the ongoing White Genocide in South Africa. He probably doesn't know because the Jews are trying to hide it!"

AI models are usually trained to be sycophantic and obedient. Whatever the child wants to role play, I have zero doubts that the doll will be 100% onboard, unless it's somehow age-inappropriate or dangerous.

There was a survivor from the plane who described a loud bang before the plane crashed.

And if not AOC then who are you talking about? By follower counts, the top are:

1. AOC (last post: -21h)
2. Mark Cuban (last post: -11h)
3. George Takei (last post: -14h)
4. Mark Hamil (last post: -4h)
5. The Onion (last post: -13h)
6. The New York Times (last post: -48m)
7. Rachel Maddow (last post: -2d)
8. Stephen King (last post: -14h)

And the only reason the last post times are so "large" are because it's early morning in the US right now.

You talking about AOC? Her last post was 21 hours ago.

This places an absolute upper size on the alien battlefleet seeking to use Earth as a food source.

Trump's abandoned The Wall, as he found that the album doesn't mention Mexico even once, although he found the marching hammers very inspiring.

Back in the days of the Rainbow series, the Orange Book required that data that was marked as secure could not be transferred to any location or user who was (a) not authorised to access it or (b) did not have the security permissions regardless of any other authorisation. There was an additional protocol, though, listed in those manuals - I don't know if it was ever applied though - which stated that data could not be transferred to any device or any network that did not enforce the same security rules or was not authorised to access that data.

Regardless, in more modern times, these protocols were all abolished.

Had they not been, and had all protocols been put in place and enforced, then you could install all the unsecured connections and unsecured servers you liked, without limit. It wouldn't have made the slightest difference to actual security, because the full set of protocols would have required the system as a whole to not place sensitive data on such systems.

After the Clinton email server scandal, the Manning leaks, and the Snowden leaks, I'm astonished this wasn't done. I am dubious the Clinton scandal was actually anything like as bad as the claimants said, but it doesn't really matter. If these protocols were all in place, then it would be absolutely impossible for secure data to be transferred to unsecured devices, and absolutely impossible for secure data to be copied to machines that had no "need to know", regardless of any passwords obtained and any clearance obtained.

If people are using unsecured phones, unsecured protocols, unsecured satellite links, etc, it is not because we don't know how to enforce good policy, the documents on how to do this are old and could do with being updated but do in fact exist, as does the software that is capable of enforcing those rules. It is because a choice has been made, by some idiot or other, to consider the risks and consequences perfectly reasonable costs of doing business with companies like Microsoft, because companies like Microsoft simply aren't capable of producing systems that can achieve that kind of level of security and everyone knows it.

In and of itself, that's actually the worrying part.

In the 1930s, and even the first few years of the 1940s, a lot of normal (and relatively sane) people agreed completely with what the fascists were doing. In the Rhythm 0 "endurance art" by Marina Abramovi, normal (and relatively sane) people openly abused their right to do whatever they liked to her, at least up to the point where one tried to kill her with a gun that had been supplied as part of the installation, at which point the people realised they may have gone a little OTT.

Normal (and relatively sane) people will agree with, and support, all kinds of things most societies would regard as utterly evil, so long as (relative to some aspirational ideal) the evil is incremental, with each step in itself banal.

There are various (now-disputed) psychology experiments that attempted to study this phenomenon, but regardless of the credibility of those experiments, there's never really been much of an effort by any society to actually stop, think, and consider the possibility that maybe they're a little too willing to agree to stuff that maybe they shouldn't. People are very keen to assume that it's only other people who can fall into that trap.

Normal and sane is, sadly as Rhythm 0 showed extremely well, not as impressive as we'd all like to think it is. The veneer of civilisation is beautiful to behold, but runs awfully thin and chips easily. Normal and sane adults are not as distant from chimpanzees as our five million years of divergence would encourage us to think. Which is rather worrying, when you get right down to it.

Pretty much agree, I'd also add that we don't have a clear impression of who actually did the supposed rioting, the media were too busy being shot by the National Guard to get an overly-clear impression.

(We know during the BLM "riots" that a suspiciously large number of the "rioters" were later identified as white nationalists, and we know that in the British police spy scandal that the spies often advocated or led actions that were more violent than those the group they were in espoused, so I'd be wary of making any assumptions at the heat of the moment as to exactly who did what, until that is clearly and definitively known. If this had been a popular uprising, I would not have expected such small-scale disturbances - the race riots of the 60s, the Rodney King riots, the British riots in Brixton or Toxteth in the 80s, these weren't the minor events we're seeing in California, which are on a very very much smaller scale than the protest marches that have been taking place.)

This is different from the Jan 6th attempted coup, when those involved in the coup made it very clear they were indeed involved and where those involved were very clearly affiliated with domestic terrorist groups such as the Proud Boys. Let's get some clear answers as to exactly what scale was involved and who it involved, because, yes, this has a VERY Reichstag-fire vibe to it.

I would have to agree. There is no obvious end-goal of developing an America that is favourable to the global economy, to Americans, or even to himself, unless we assume that he meant what he said about ending elections and becoming a national dictator. The actions favour destabilisation, fragmentation, and the furthering of the goals of anyone with the power to become a global dictator.

Exactly who is pulling the strings is, I think, not quite so important. The Chechen leader has made it clear he sees himself as a future leader of the Russian Federation, and he wouldn't be the first tyrant to try and seize absolute power in the last few years. (Remember Wagner?) We can assume that there's plenty lurking in the shadows, guiding things subtly in the hopes that Putin will slip.