On the other hand, something like ReactOS could, in theory, work if it was much more mature and had more developers behind it.

Not usually. The main thing for lab equipment is that it is controlling hardware. So you are often using proprietary drivers for custom hardware. Wine can't handle drivers and for security reasons can't get low level hardware access.

Wow, 14/24 that was more difficult than I thought. TBF I haven't fully reread the Silmarillion since Middle School, but I didn't expect it to be quite this hard.

They can't make them non-reflective enough to not interrupt really deep observing. Also, that just shifts the problem around. If they are absorbing in the visible, they will likely have huge amounts of blackbody radiation in IR, sub/millimeter, and radio. You would need to make a satellite out of dark matter to not interrupt astronomy.

Man, I just went to a good seminar today on finding habitable exoplanets that emphasized that we currently need ground based telescopes, because it is still impractical to make 30+ meter telescopes in space and would be very expensive, even if could be done. But progress is just launching a bunch of bullshit into orbit to avoid real investment in infrastructure like fiber and other telecommunication lines.

sci-hub has already been mentioned, but I will say that though it is not piracy, depending on the field, you can find free version "pre-prints" of papers on arxiv.org and socarxiv.org

But imagine the quality of service. Unfortunately, the rice in the back kitchen has been spilled, and no food will be prepared until the staff counts all the grains of rice.