Certainly the OS can't optimize it to a no-op, since `dd` makes separate read and write syscalls.

I suppose your `dd` implementation itself could do so, but I don't know why it would.

Thoughts on that: (1) you'd need a way to visualize the magnetic fields, (2) the data is frequency modulated, (3) due to helical scan, the video field lines do not line up evenly one over the next as they did so nicely in the Laserdisc / CED (there'd be a skew).

So I don't want to say it's impossible, but I think it would require a lot more creativity.

Nit: ISPs don't have access to path names / query strings of browsing activity. Those are encrypted by TLS. (They're also not part of "DNS".)

Honestly, <span content-filter-level="adult">fuck</span> that.

What's a computer?

Addiction. Misappropriation of others' secrets. Perverse incentives.

As a German train driver this excites me greatly.

I don't think it's inherently impossible, but Apple at least seems to do a really poor job at local cache management on iOS for Photos and Messages attachments. I am constantly amazed to find my non-tech-savvy relatives deleting stuff from their phones to free up local storage.

As long as a mutation isn't strongly maladaptive, it can evolve prior to its being useful.

No -- use doors.

So a bunch of doors everywhere you don't open for potentially 100 years?

The first sentence of the article should make that clear. In any case, it's a pretty well-established abbreviation in US policy discussions.