The article is also based on some terrible reasoning, like:

That means there will be no asteroids left in the Solar System, because they all will have struck Earth, in another few hundred million years. Think someone’s overestimated something there? Yeah, me too. Let’s take a look with the flaws in our fear-based reasoning.

Yeah, in a universe where our solar system is some sort of perfect steady state. Which, of course, it is not. Asteroids collide or - more commonly, come close to other bodies and gravitationally interact - and throw each other into different orbits. When that happens, non-Earth-crossing asteroids can become Earth-crossing ones. For example, one of the candidates for the K-Pg extinction event is a Batisma-family asteroid. This family came from an asteroid breakup 80 million years ago.

A person well versed in the field would be aware of the fact that asteroids are not in some sort of unchanging steady state. Which is why they're the ones paid to do the research on the subject.

And more to the point, we really don't have a good handle on what's out there. We have trouble making out dwarf planets in the outer solar system. We really have no bloody clue what could be on its way into the inner solar system, apart from studying how often major events happen.

And on that note, another flaw in his logic, given that until recently, the vast majority of Tunguska-style events would never even have been detected, having occurred over the oceans, remote deserts, the poles, etc. So by all means it's perfectly fair to say that the fact that an asteroid hitting earth is more likely to hit a remote uninhabited area is perfectly fair. But saying that while mentioning the rarity of inhabited areas having been hit in the past is double-counting. The historical record is evidence of how often they hit populated areas, not how often they hit Earth.

Lastly, his claim that only one person has ever been "hit by an asteroid" is ridiculous. 1500 people were injured by the Chelyabinsk one in 2013 badly enough to seek medical attention. Yes, they weren't "hit by rocks", but that's not what large asteroid impacts do; they mostly or completely vaporize by exploding in the atmosphere and/or on impact. And there's lots of reports throughout history of people getting struck by asteroids; just because they weren't documented by modern medical science doesn't mean it never happened. Seriously, what's the bloody odds that the only person to ever in historical times be hit by an asteroid would be in the 1950s in the middle of a first-world nation? Now what's the odds that someone being hit in the 1950s in the middle of a first-world nation would be well documented, publicized, and believed?

Just a lot of really bad arguments.

This is why people with substantial power — such as, first of all, government officials — must not engage in adultery or anything similarly reprehensible even if it is not illegal for the rest of us. Not because of some wicked "puritanism", but because it opens them up to blackmail, that corrupts government thus affecting all of us.

And if I do it, it opens me up to getting my throat slit in my sleep.

There are plenty of men who are killed by their wives too. Here is a handy list of domestic abuse studies http://web.csulb.edu/~mfiebert...

It's still over three to one, with three times as many men killing their female spouses as women killing their male spouses.

So, when you say, "plenty", you are definitely not speaking relatively. For example, last year we had 1500 women killed by intimate men and 400 men killed by intimate women (and yes, that includes women who had a second man kill the husband).

Now, if you want to look at the ratios of non-fatal abuse, it's even more stark. Despite what you will see on PUA websites, men are far more likely to abuse their female spouses.

I'm under the impression that: as currently lots of the precussors of future IoT projects are from the maker culture it's probably one of the more hipsterish languages like Python and Ruby which might see more rise.

If you think of it, currently it's platforms like Raspberry Pi which are the forerunner of all the future connected small things. It's the "plant tweeting when it needs water" of today, that are the "intelligent fridge which automatically fills your grocery list" of tomorrow.
And currently, Python is *the* most popular rapid prototyping language on these platform.

Well, try to be gentle with them. Do to run too fast so they can try to pretend they can keep up. And while running, please push aside all the various garbage laying on the ground so that these Javaminators don't trip on them and fall (or stop to automatically collect it up).

Also be kind: if you meet more than 1 of them, it would be proper etiquette to act as a translator between them so they can understand each-other (specially if one of them speaks microsoft dialect)

Try also to be understanding toward their sensitivities. There are a few of their kind that the remaining Javaminators consider untouchable (specially the one called Dalvik). Try not to madden them because you don't agree with that rejection (Even if you consider that actually that pastry-obsessed-outcast is the cool guy you want to hang around with).

I think you're confusing two different things here. The "right to be forgotten", as much discussed recently with regard to Google and the like, is primarily about search engines digging up old information that would otherwise naturally fade into obscurity, and in particular the danger of finding old information that looks plausible but may in fact be misleading without context or now incorrect/outdated.

Sadly, most of us even in Europe still have rather limited rights to compel businesses not to store personal data about us or to delete that data on demand, if the data is correct, they register the fact that they are doing it with the appropriate national privacy regulator, and they can come up with some vaguely plausible argument for why they want to have the data.

I guess a few million people are about to find out the hard way why some of us have been arguing for a long time that we should have stronger privacy safeguards in the Internet/big data/data mining age. I wish they didn't have to find out this way, though.

Funny that here around I've regularly seen and read different numbers (random source in fr. key point < 10% for latex based condoms, < 5% for polyurethan. that's just a random example. I don't have enough time to kill to do a complete litterature mining and meta analysis)
Either North American are much dumber or worse at using condom than European, or your condoms tend to be made of a self-destructin material~
Xenophobic jokes aside, actual result vary *wildly* depending on the considered population, specially the level of sex-ed.

*when used properly* condoms can be very much safe. When used *haphazardly* not so.
See this table (again quick search). Pregnancy rates vary a lot. (See the specially low level among "motivated women" in israel. They probably had better knowledge on proper prevention than the (poor) women in the philiphine that still did get pregnant up to 60%).

The difference in number seem to be linked in the level of education and motivation of the people. A *properly* used condom is effective. That means that you need to educate better the people, to that they use the prevention better.
(instead of completely ignoring condoms, and opting to outcast HIV positive people, as suggested by top troll).

(I know it's only an anecdote, but that also match my personnal experience with <1% breakage among the hundreds of protected intercourses I've done. But both I and girl(s) knew how to use a condom properly and the necessary precautions to take).

Not everyone is a crook like Hillary.

No, but Rand certainly is a crook like Hillary. Just not quite as successful a crook yet. But he's young.

Sure there are. The trouble is, every single one you listed has serious drawbacks compared to the current model.

Yes, they did. Plenty still do, though for most of them it's beer money rather than a career.

But before recordings you didn't need a sound engineer in a studio with a mixing desk and a lot of expensive equipment. Who pays the sound engineer in your world? Or the composer of the symphony? Or all those people whose names come after the actors when the film credits roll? Your model might work for the latest production of Hamlet. It isn't going to produce Fast and Furious 8.

That damages the experience for the majority of viewers, who no longer have the option to enjoy the movie in the comfort of their own home.

Because an ad-funded internet is so good that people invented ad-blockers, and blatant product placement doesn't in any way reduce the enjoyment of TV shows.

This is one of the more promising ideas on your list. However, right now, even the most successful projects on Kickstarter and the like are still coming in with an order of magnitude or two less funding than comparable projects generate through a copyright-based system. When GTA VI comes along, do you think it's going to be supported by a successful crowdfunding campaign?

People like stuff for free. I'd agree that some people rip content illegally just because of the convenience factor -- films out in theatres before you can buy physical media or stream a legal download, DRM, and so on. But the idea that the only reason people don't pay for stuff they can download illegally for free is because it's inconvenient is implausible.

Do you know what does work, very reliably, by your arguments about violating property rights? Locking down the Internet and limiting devices you can legally buy/sell/own in the first place to those that play nicely with your closed ecosystem.

The trouble is, the "information wants to be free" crowd think this is a joke and can never happen, and that cute sound-bites like "censorship is damage and the Internet routes around it" will overcome the will of the billion-dollar infrastructure companies that actually produce a lot of popular content and the governments with laws and police and jails. They will not, and all you're doing is pushing those powerful organisations towards systems where -- as, ironically, you suggested -- content providers will keep everything under their control. The only way to enjoy any content will be to rent it and access it via limited mechanisms.

If you ever meet another person that is also a regular of MSNBC's audience and regular reader of bible-prophecy.com, MARRY them. Right away.

And if you meet such a person, I'll bet they're a Rand Paul supporter. Probably want a Rand Paul/Alex Jones ticket.

Or a just plain nutz sites like DailyKos, Lucianne, or the festering pit called DemocraticUnderground?

Here is the link to http://www.bible-prophecy.com/. Note the biggest headline.

You really want to go nutz for nutz with me?

How exactly would raising funds for his political campaign help him personally?

He can donate the money to his Rand PAC (http://www.randpac.com/) or just let it sit there for future elections. He becomes more influential by virtue of that money. He can use it to generate support for a bid for certain Senate committee positions. When you have money to distribute to other political purposes, you have the juice that creates power. Most important, he can do what his father did and just make personal money by selling his campaign donor mailing list.

Did you know even retired politicians can keep their campaign fundraising going? They can keep fundraising even after retired and can use that money for other politicians political purposes.

There are PODCASTS with larger audiences than MSNBC, dude.

Now that you mention it, Rand Paul's filibuster made it to MSNBC, too.

He got his facetime on the TV and that's all that matters.

[note: Rand Paul's filibuster is actually the lead story on bible-prophecy.com right now]

The only problem with this story is that pandering to "bitcoin dudebros" is widely known to not be a way to electoral success, and if Paul is really just a shrewd grifter that you paint him, he knows that, as well.

Paul doesn't expect electoral success at the Presidential level. He expects fund-raising success.

Think for a minute of all the presidential candidates who know they're not going to win the nomination, but realize that a lucrative donor list is the next best thing. Rand Paul is one of those. He's building a nice packet for the future.

Really? What are they, then?

I've seen quite a bit of coverage including major political sites like DrudgeReport

"Drudge Report"? How about NewsMax and jbs.org? Did you see it on those major political sites, too? Maybe a major political site like bible-prophecy.com?