FWIW it's always been expensive for someone to go to space. The difference with this versus that is with this the travelers are being charged directly (or being paid for by Bezos in the case of Funk). With others the taxpayers are being charged and the cost spread amongst them. However, the taxpayers have 0 chance of going to space even though they share the cost.

Don't argue that amazon customers are sharing the burden. Amazon customers are paying for products they receive. They aren't forced to buy those products, and they receive (mostly - considering the fuck-ups in delivery) what they agree to pay for.

trickle down economics is a straw man argument here that has nothing to do with the progress of technology

Enthusiasts (specifically the rich) have almost always been first adopters outside of the government. That goes with most all technology even down to something as small as a new top of the line GPU. Obviously the larger/more expensive the technology the richer or more dedicated with your money one needs to be. Even mobile phones and computers used to be pretty exclusive.

It especially goes for travel.

https://airandspace.si.edu/exh...

The mercury program was built with the initial intent of just getting someone into space. The long term goal was to learn and progress towards other achievements. I don't see how Space X, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin are much different. They've stated their long term goals, which are more than just launching one to four people on a suborbital rocket. These are baby steps - and yes, they are ensuring that the baby steps fund the next steps.

Familiarize yourself with history, not just YOUR personal history.

no analogies are needed.

you get an unlimited amount of data without extra charges

this hearkens back to its beginnings when you had to either pay per MB/GB of data or pay per MB/GB of data past a certain point.

you don't get an unlimited number of phones, an unlimited number of phone numbers, unlimited speed (or even consistent speed), etc etc. you get unlimited amount data without being charge extra for more data.

plan 1
Unlimited talk, text, and data
Unlimited high-speed data that can’t slow down based on how much you use.

plan 2
Unlimited talk, text, data + 50GB of Premium Data
After 50GB, AT&T may temporarily slow data speeds if the network is busy.

plan 3
Unlimited talk, text, data
AT&T may temporarily slow data speeds if the network is busy.

The details are provided for each plan. Relying solely on the name (or part of the name) is like relying solely on the title of an article posted on slashdot or twitter without actually looking at the article.

and for what it's worth, one of the locations I lived with a government power monopoly began a program of adding smart thermostats to clients (choices between nest and others) with the ability for the provider to cycle their air conditioning systems during peak and other times of high usage. They weren't required by the time I left, but they were moving that direction.

12 cents/kw hr may still be the national norm for off-contract rates, I believe, but it's a terrible rate for those that are able to choose between different resellers on-contract (where it's allowed). I'm assuming 12 cents after fees for you. You may be somewhere in a higher market where 12 cents IS an on-contract rate and it's much higher off-contract (or contracts/competition are non-existent) so I may be mistaken.

I've lived in places where the municipality manages the power at a fluctuating rate with no other choices, and I've lived in places where there's competition via power resellers (the underlying provider is regulated and required to resell). I really preferred the 8cents/hr (after transport fees, gone up past few years) on-contract rates over the 12cents/hr fluctuating non-contract rates.

It's also nice to be able to choose between green/renewable energy providers if you so wish.

tl;dr you may be getting a bad deal, but I can't say that for sure with the information given.

fyi, this isn't an argument pro or against municipal power, competition, or even regulation. it's really more that you, specifically, may be getting a bad deal (assuming you don't have a choice).

Here's an option to browse providers in Texas. Your locale may have an equivalent service.
http://www.powertochoose.org/e...

Chrome may only be 59.49% of the market share, but it owns 99% of the memory out there. It's the browser one percenter!!

"but most likely from donation records, social media scraping, and on-line tracking"

only the first item is most likely (but not necessarily) non-public data. the latter two could very well depending on how it was posted/obtained. privacy settings and who they shared posts with determine whether it was public or not.

I think you are all right (if that makes sense :-).. The key with digital (pc and console) is when they are on sale (which tends to be pretty frequently and pretty substantial when they are). When they are not on sale, yeah, parity and expensive. Steam has its uber sales and Microsoft throws shit on sale all the time with its Deals with Gold (admittedly you have to subscribe to Gold, though).

Valve has done more damage to first-sale doctrine than everyone else combined (with regards to games). The EU has taken notice of that and has been taking action. What Valve has done with Steam will probably bring down legislation upon everyone, including Microsoft to make the point moot.

Also it does kind of suck that the option to convert from disc-to-digital was removed as part of the backtrack. All games are installed to the hard drive prior to being playable whether from disc or digital. I don't sell my games back to places like GameStop so obviously I have a different take than those that do.

This is kind of in support of what you're saying (innovative stuff) so don't take it as a counter post, but a supportive post clarifying part of what they were trying to do for anyone reading it.

Steam Library Sharing, while progressive, is not nearly as good as what Microsoft was trying to do (and to a limited point actually did) with the family sharing.

Owning two XBOX One machines, I do not have to buy every game twice for me and my wife. She can play on my Home Xbox and I can use my Roaming License on the other Xbox so that we can both play the same game at the same time.

With steam only one user can access the library at a time.

If Microsoft could have expanded the licensing to the entire family (instead of just giving one home xbox license and one roaming license) then a family would only need to buy a single license for a game and the entire family could play it at home on separate xboxes. Steam does not do this. In fact, almost nobody does this aside from GOG. You typically need to buy the game for each family member (whether disc or digital) or play one at a time.

Single people and people with only one xbox are not affected by this as much as those with multiple machines. Blizzard used to do something similar with their games (spawns).

tldr; Microsoft gives users two (2) licenses for each digital game that they purchase on Xbox One.
Xbox Home Gold Sharing (digital game and xbox live gold sharing) > Steam Library Sharing, assuming you have more than one person in your family that games.

https://support.microsoft.com/...

This is misleading. Once you have at least 128GB of ram then most of Chrome's features are able to be loaded and then it becomes the safest browser. Edge may only be safer in situations where users have less than 128GB of ram...

Microsoft believes they know what's best for their services and/or products. Whether that is true or not is moot. You the freedom of using different services/products. Who are you to tell them what they can and can't do with their products and/or services? Speak with your money if you disagree with it.

I haven't looked at all of the OPs linked articles, but are quality or accuracy pretty bad in them?

The headline didn't seem too sensationalist and the summary actually listed the best and worst from the article.

There doesn't seem to be an over abundance of ads on the page, though there are some links to the right.

Clickbait makes me thing of posts/articles that weigh revenue over content (though that's my opinion). Just because a person only links to one site (maybe it's a site employee) doesn't necessarily mean there's not interesting/relevant information in those articles.

It may be clickbait, or it may not be based upon more criteria than ''Every article posted by submitter has a link to news.sciencemag.org."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Clickbait is a pejorative term describing web content that is aimed at generating online advertising revenue, especially at the expense of quality or accuracy, relying on sensationalist headlines to attract click-throughs and to encourage forwarding of the material over online social networks. Clickbait headlines typically aim to exploit the "curiosity gap", providing just enough information to make the reader curious, but not enough to satisfy their curiosity without clicking through to the linked content.

I'd say that A decent size monitor, full sized keyboard, and mouse is the current dominant form factor for getting work done. Whether they are connected to a desktop or mobile device is irrelevant to our physiology.

That said, performance of the device connected to the monitor, keyboard, and mouse is what should be considered for productivity.

source: See computing history from mainframes to minicomputers to microcomputers to mobile devices for their form factor relevance..