My company is much the same, careful to make sure to maintain a balance between archiving paperwork ("when did we discuss this?") and making sure everyone on the system knows that legally, even off topic discussions are archived and could be subpoena'ed in worst case scenarios (if, say, a customer sues for libel and claims we were trash-talking him). We are also drilled in that company equipment should not be used for private surfing for the same reason, that you should not have sensitive info like personal credit cards where lawyers could hoover it up, things like that. That's what private laptops, tablets and phones are for.

tl,dr: Keep work info on work devices, private info on private devices.

Actually, it no one knows that the coder is female, then the acceptance rate is higher. GitHub was the first to study this phenomena, and further research is bearing this out.

Oh dear, the baseless condescension is stifling.

If this were the case, then the myriad studies where gendered names ("steve", "lisa", "mary", "ron", etc.) were used versus anonymous commits would be baseless.

Here, for your reading pleasure: https://www.usnews.com/news/bl...

Note that I misremembered. One of the characters specifically christened them "Frogs", specifically saying that the German word (Frösche) was too familiar, thus the "foreign language" name.

IIRC, the name was supposed to be an abbreviation/bastardization of fremde Organismen, as the inscrutable aliens were never really shown, only blurry human shapes where they were supposedly standing.

The problem he and many others are skipping is that they go from machine to full fledged human intelligence. Let's scale it back a bit:

If this guy had created a new breed of bee that was deadly to humans, is the bee responsible for killing people? What if it was a mammal, a mouse that he had bred and trained to bite people, are the mice responsible? We're not even at that level of cognisance with this robot.

I think that's the point that ruins his thought experiment. For a robot to be able to accept responsibility, it has to be able to decide. All this device does is inflict pin pricks at random intervals. It has no real choice in the matter.

Take this further, into the realm of biology. If a dog owner trains his dog to attack people of a certain appearance, then the owner is responsible. If a biologist breeds a certain type of shark that prefers human flash, then that biologist is responsible.

So yeah, as a thought experiment it's rather shallow.

I would put it a different way: the argument makes the philosophical statement that all simulations are, in one way or another, universes. Simpler, more limited universes. If you assume that all simulations are universes, then it is a small jump to declare that a good way to describe the observable universe is as the ultimate simulation. It is less about stating the Truth as defining a model to approach the real universe as seeing it as a simulation to emulate, to understand the underlying code base and algorithms of. Like trying to simulate Minecraft using only the tools available within Minecraft, I guess you could say.

A Python!

Running a server on Turtle is just wrong.

There are a few holes that could be poked in your perception, especially since you seem more enamoured of bullet points and appearances. Take for example the Mac/iMac line: Apple's update schedule for the Mac has been coupled to the Intel generation lineup ever since the switch away from PowerPC, and there Apple tends to skip a generation. As Intel has slipped on their schedule and the sales of the Mac are still strong, Apple has decided to wait a little longer. As for the iPhone SE, it may look like a 5S on the outside, but it has the same CPU and camera as the 6S, so you get dinged there as well. And to be honest, I am seeing more iWatches out there than I originally expected, as it does not work properly without an iPhone. It is more or less a fashion accessory that Tim Cook wanted for himself, and so it's made according to his needs. I also think the thing about repairability must be your personal opinion, as the Power Mac lineup used to be the easiest to open and modify, but customers prefer the all in one design of the iMac. Granted, with only the Mac Mini and the Power Mac as standalones to compare, it's not really a fair comparison, but Apple has long since figured out that those who mod or repair their own Macs are a vanishingly small number, they are not even considered any more.

I see Apple today in more or less the same position among computer makers as Daimler is among automobile manufacturers: a premium maker with a good chunk of the middle-high end market.

It does seem as if the intended usage of this protocol is to bring back dongles: want to use the website? You need a "key" to plug in to your USB port. Hooking up a dongled speaker will grant you access to exclusive content, and so on. It seems the proposed protocol intends to make this easier than it now is, getting rid of the workarounds you mentioned.

In a way, it is a return to physical security, locking the key into hardware. But it also runs counter to what Apple and Google are also pushing for, namely that their mobile devices replace all physical cards, fobs and so on. I think the intended use of this is less for banking and more for granting USB devices like speakers and collectibles a simple way to transmit access keys.

Yeah, mostly their business managers. Piracy is often a case of the artist overshooting the sweet spot on the bell curve and leaving too many customers without legitimate access.

It became inconvenient when services offered more comfort and better quality. The payment was offset by the convenience and the trust that you were getting the real deal, not some crappy rip. Yes, the biggest reason people pirated was because the music was unavailable.

If the nominal fee does not bring the wanted convenience, then I can see why people will start looking to BitTorrent, and it really is a case of the artists leaving money on the table that their fans would be more than happy to give them.

It resembles more the shared flat system that Germans call Wohngemeinschaft or WG. The main difference here is that the building and the apartments are actually set up for this sort of arrangement, and that the rules of the WG are set by the landlord instead of by consensus of those in the WG. I actually think it could work, as each has their own private bedroom, and sharing a kitchen and other common areas means more pressure to hold up your side of the deal and keep it clean. The hardest part, really, is landing a spot in an existing WG as the current members hold a sort of casting.

I'm curious, as it has potential. As with everything, it comes down to the execution.

Agreed. It would be worse if it was able to circumvent some of the sudo protections, or if it was able to also lock Time Machine backups, or exposed some social engineering flaw in the install procedure that lulls users into a false sense of security, and so on. It just reinforces the principle of never installing software from dodgy sources, and even trusted sources require a bit of wariness.