I've read this book recently and found it a very useful overview of ML. It is a bit theoretical which is good for somebody that comfortably reads math notation. Also the notation is pretty consistent which makes connections between methods and algorithms stand out.
These images were rendered with a "white" bias. Facial features is one thing, but skin color is clearly not conveyed by statues, yet a clear choice was made here.
My take on the Drake equation is that it gives you a way to play with numbers and break down your guesses in a rational way. The article suggests an estimate of N(Earth) so this is one step in the direction of not entirely ruling out an N<1.
Stable against what perturbations? What impact would a large body passing through the system have? Stable as in self-correcting (up to a limit)? What is the limit. Even long running accurate simulations of the three body problem are sensitive to perturbations...
The math for the time to transfer comparison is interesting:
"Even with high-speed Internet connections, it can take months to transfer large amounts of data. For example, 100 terabytes of data will take more than 100 days to transfer over a dedicated 100 Mbps connection. That same transfer can be accomplished in less than one day, plus shipping time, using two Snowball appliances."
With a 100 Mbps connection it takes over 100 days [1] but with a 100 times faster connection (10 Gbps) it takes less than a day :)