rrmm

Doctors carry malpractice insurance.

It's a pedantic point admittedly, but I think it's important to be realistic and clear that Rust isn't a panacea.

If this could be done it seems like the ideal compromise. Everyone gets what they want.

That said eventually more modern languages will be dependencies of the tools one way or another (and they should). So probably Debian as a whole should come to a consensus on how that should happen, so it can happen in some sort of standard and fair fashion.

to introduce certain common vulnerabilities ...

not vulnerabilities in general.

Does it seem that way? It happened at least once (but could have happened many times without "taking over"), and certainly one sort of life seemed to successfully out-compete all others. But none of that says single-origin to me.

Early on I would expect a whole lot of "horizontal gene transfer" sort of things to have taken place. So for example in addition to actual horizontal gene transfer, there are mechanisms like one organism enveloping another to eventually become organelles, co-opting products from each other, etc. All of which would act to homogenize life and make certain process ubiquitous.

Finally, there's an outside chance that "there's only one way to do it".

You are right: this is indeed no smoking gun (and it isn't hyped to be one). This is more like "we can't rule out life having created this, but there are alternate explanations which have also not been ruled out".

Unfortunately most of the evidence is going to be like this. The chances for better evidence would probably require a sample return of some sort, and even then I wouldn't expect a smoking gun (either way).

I think the building blocks of life are so common in the universe it might be a case of "easy come, easy go". It wouldn't be surprising if simple life happened anywhere it was given half a chance at all, but one would equally expect that it would die out just as quickly when conditions changed (which they certainly did on Mars).

And of course nothing is ruling out life in the nooks and crannies of Mars.

Was lead paint as widespread in Europe as it was in North America?

Presumably you'd follow the same regulations regarding actual animals in testing regarding inflicting pain or distress. Usually IRB's weigh whether the scientific results offset the risk of harm and emphasize minimizing pain (doing things under anesthesia, providing analgesia, or not letting animals regain consciousness). The ethical bars you have to clear get higher the "higher" the animal you use.

If you're doing it via simulation, physical pain issues become a lot easier to fix and more over you can probably simulate subsections of the brain rather than the whole thing. You can also limit simulation time to prevent perception of harm, and you can arbitrarily limit negative feedback in the whole simulation (stress hormones, etc).

I would also imagine one should act conservatively to the question of whether you should treat a simulated "thing" humanely.

Coming together to form a single object sounds like the work of a gravitational force.

Second this suggestion for anyone working through parasitic draw issues. He has a very solid, logical process for working through this (among other issues). I always enjoy watching the videos because it's like watching a who-dun-it where you're trying to guess the cause as he gathers evidence.

From what I recall of the last set of bank failures this is pretty much the FDIC's SOP. They swoop in on Friday with little notice, close the bank, work through the weekend and open up for business on Monday. It apparently made for some interesting work environments.