When most people think about job automation, they think about blue collar jobs being replaced by robots. But actually if you think about it many white collar jobs where eliminated through software before most advanced factory automation became feasible. The only jobs that seem to resist automation are engineers and artists.

The thing is, as many other have pointed out, even though the gap between rich and "poor" is widening, the "poor" are often better off than the middle class three decades ago. The net result of automation is that the average cost of living goes down and so far it has shrunk faster then the average income.

I take offence at that. You do know that the interior design is 95% up to the airline to decide? You just flew shitty airlines and it has nothing to do with Airbus.

Although I don't know about Java (last time I programmed early versions in high school), but I can relate with C#, JavaScript and high level C++. Your assertion is correct, knowing about the metal does not translate to actually being a good programmer. But my experience is that programmers that can program C or ASM on average are the better programmers. My experience that these relatively harsh environments separate the wheat from the chaff. Bad code in C# may manifest as a slow and resource hungry application, but in C it will almost certainly cause subtle memory invalidation. Most people will stop programming low level code for their sanity and only the good programmers remain. Most "modern" languages where designed in a way so that it is really hard to shoot yourself in the foot...

Yes and in addition something of around 10 supply missions per year. Just look at the List of unmanned spaceflights to the International Space Station to get a grasp of how much maintenance is required to keep the ISS running. Not going to happen on mars.

If you are not investing directly into stocks but through a mutual fund or retirement fund you are actually getting ripped of. Yes, they are working with your money, but at the same time they are taking a good share of "your" profits an putting them into their pockets. Granted some compensation for their work is acceptable, but the she shear volume they chiffon off is ridiculous.

Add that to areas that already have a high humidity and this thing is useless. Then you don't need a 3d printed brick, you can soak a towel let it dry for the same effect.

It actually get's better, it's on profit, not income. So yes, you really should incorporate; if it actually makes sense. (You need to actually own stuff for it to have a net gain.)

No... these are the taxes they actually payed, or at least that is what their statement of cash flows says. Also that is not 18K and 3K, that is 18B and 3B. I though it was obvious, since all fortune 500 companies have their financial reports in millions.

Just for people who are incapable of actually putting their arguments of facts, here are the numbers: Net Income is 18,024 and the Taxes payed are 3,869. This turns out to be 21.4%. This is not no taxes, even if the actual figure is rather low.

What is so wrong about selling a good product at reasonable price. Now I will agree with you that Apple devices are spec wise not at the leading edge and price/value wise not the best sell. But they are withing reason comparable to other high end products. What I must give them; or rather Steve Jobs, is the fact that they/he embraced the "it just works" mantra and many people want that. Now I like my Android the way it is: open; but issues with apple devices are only rarely seen. Granted it comes at the cost of buying expensive preapproved and compatible components, instead of bargain components. For all accounts I can not see any real evil doing on the part of Apple; and no walled gardens are not evil...

Um? The only thing that gives the value to a currency is the shared trust in this currency. The "gold standard" or any other shenanigans are/where just smoke an mirrors to reinforce this shared trust. (Especially when going from minted gold and silver coins to paper.) But even the value of gold and silver coins is based on shared trust. Sure you can melt the gold and trade that, but there is not guarantee what the gold price will be in the future or that the next person will accept these coins.

Do you know how bit coin works? How do you "pre-mine" a crypto currency. The mining process is part of the running transactions. If today all bitcoin mining ceased, no transaction would ever be validated. This thing with bitcoin is, there are no tokens that need to be mined. The mining process actually is just a clever way to authenticate transactions in a decentralized manner. That the miner gets something out of it, is just a reward so that people provide the computing power to authenticate transactions. Mining just sounds cooler than authenticating transactions.

The alternative is to use tokens, but these need to be authenticated against a central authority... and that not a crpto currency as we understand it.

That does not compute. Why does a company, any size that is, need to convert heir daily/weekly/monthly earning in on go. What is so wrong about converting the payments into local currency as the payments come in. Sure it may make sense to batch some transfers so that the fees are minimized, but apart for that there is no reason to wait.

In addition this is somewhat self regulating, when a company starts to accept payments in BitCoin, it will start low and slowly grow. When it gets large enough to matter the market will have adjusted to the drain. In addition, if a significant amount is taken out of the market and the people continue paying with BitCoin, it means that they need actually buy BitCoin from other currencies.

The problem that companies face is that, if the services are priced in BitCoin, they don't know how much "real" money they will get. But mostly this is not the case; the services are priced, for example "5 USD payable in BitCoin, as by XYZ's exchange rate".

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow

You know, many engineers actually use the computing power given to them. Granted not all the time, but if a project compiles in five min instead of one hour, that actually means something. The complaining normally starts, because they know that with a better system they would not wait that long. On the other hand MANY other office computer users topped their "maxing out" the machine at around 2005.