57 points Ariarule 2 hours ago 18 comments

thisisauserid 1 hour ago | parent

Based on the article, there is solid proof that microbes can remain viable for up to 100,000 years.

karbak 1 hour ago | parent

For a brief moment there, seeing just the headline, I thought this was going to be about Pinboard.

shevy-java 1 hour ago | parent

I hate the website. Why? Because when I scroll down, I get blocked, that is, I can not easily copy/paste via a selection anymore; the selection simply does not work, and is connected to the slow-fade out and pop-in of an irrelevant widget I can not want to be bothered to even look at.

Any author who uses such a website strategy gets insta-perma-banned by me.

It is not worth my time "reading" anything that is made useless by really horrible UI choices, be it infinite scrolling or fafe-out-scrolling-click-to-continue. No, I do not want to click on anything to continue. I don't even want to see accept-cookies. Whenever such a question comes up I'd auto-say no, no pester-widget. Thankfully for the latter there are extensions available, but I have not found a strategy against the slow-fade-in-pester-strategy.

Why can I not easily select the text I wish to copy/paste here, from that horrible website? I have no clue, but I can not invest time to investigate this. Hopefully more and more people realise that any strategy to pester people means you devalue YOUR OWN CONTENT as-is. The same applies to medium.com too - it is one reason I do not read anything from there anymore. People need to stop putting up barriers if they want people to read anything.

r_lee 49 minutes ago | parent

> Any author who uses such a website strategy gets insta-perma-banned by me.

can we make this into a copypasta? lol

stevekemp 22 minutes ago | parent

"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."

schiffern 1 hour ago | parent

One thing about panspermia math: why assume current travel conditions between the stars?

Today the Sun is very far from other stars, but early in star formation (within nebula) the stars are

1. much closer together

2. have a higher rate of material ejection (mass exchange)

3. likely have more more benign radiation environments unless near a star, due to GCR shielding by nebula gas

4. likely have higher equilibrium temperature in 'interstellar space'

Combined, these factors yield orders of magnitude improvement in panspermia efficiency vs the Sun.

themanmaran 1 hour ago | parent

> But if 2-9-3 really had been isolated from its relative for a quarter billion years, enough random mutations in the rDNA should have accumulated for there to be a difference of at least 50 base pairs

Occams razor definitely points to this just being a sterilization problem. But it would be funny if the bacteria was just way more stable than people expect.

gb2d_hn 56 minutes ago | parent

I thought this was going to be about my poor work-life balance from the title!?

Varelion 43 minutes ago | parent

Same

e1g 42 minutes ago | parent

Me too, and my heart sank. I guess I don’t need an article to know what to do.

einrealist 41 minutes ago | parent

For you, life cannot wait. Please go out and make contacts. Be welcoming to people. Fall in love.

I wonder how my life would have turned out differently. I am a nerd. I am an introvert. I am single. Mostly, I am enjoying it. Sometimes - and increasingly more often - I am questioning it. I have baggage. Was visiting my (younger) sister's grave today. She had baggage with a sad outcome. I am thinking more about my existence.

I wish this world would be a more kind place. And I am praising anyone who is contributing to that. Try to be a contributor.

srean 36 minutes ago | parent

Amen.

What you seek is seeking you -- Rumi

I used to think this was yet another feel good quote, then I met my would be wife.

jpablo 39 minutes ago | parent

I would have liked to find life in mars/the moon. At this point I think we should be tying to spread life everywhere.

almost_usual 29 minutes ago | parent

Life doesn’t wait.