It's not quite that simple either.

SSDs write in pages, but erase in blocks of pages. When a page is changed it gets rewritten to another block. The original page is marked as free, but it can't be erased until the whole block is free. Therefore the SSD performs garbage collection of free pages, re-packing them into complete blocks.

On its own the SSD only knows which pages it freed during rewrites - it doesn't know about pages that COULD be freed because they're deleted. Overprovisioning prevents blocking when there are no free pages (that's a huge win), but the drive still wastes lots of time and wear-life moving deleted data around during GC. TRIM provides the necessary hint to prevent that waste.

There really IS a last coin. The generation quantity is a fixed-point number of "satoshis" with 8-decimal precision; 1 satoshi == 10 nano-BTC. The reward is not halved - it is right-shifted by one bit. Generation will abruptly end at 20,999,999.9769 BTC.

The blue bottle is this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Man_o'_War . "Stings usually cause severe pain to humans, leaving whip-like, red welts on the skin that normally last 2 or 3 days after the initial sting, though the pain should subside after about an hour. However, the venom can travel to the lymph nodes and may cause, depending on the amount of venom, a more intense pain.[citation needed] A sting may lead to an allergic reaction. There can also be serious effects, including fever, shock, and interference with heart and lung function."

That doesn't sound benign. You tangled with a genuine screamer.

And let's not forget that the US has achieved democracy, developed a universal healthcare plan to cure aging and disease, and found WMDs in Iraq.

Our bullshit is more refined but equally pervasive.

Your sources and the GP's don't actually conflict. They're just measuring different things.

The XKCD image is comparing Sieverts - absorbed dose - at a specific location. If you were staring into the core of Chernobyl, you received a massive dose. That effect is very localized.

The Scientific American article is comparing the regional effects: typical releases divided over a few hundred square miles.

The "coal far outweighs nuke" argument is based on global effects: While Chernobyl was intensely bad locally, the average effect over the whole surface of the Earth was very small - much smaller than the net emissions of coal.

These are all based on Sieverts/Rems. They measure instantaneous levels. The thing with coal is it's a gift that keeps on giving: the nuke shine of Chernobyl was intensely bad if you were there; a large number of becquerels (decays per second) of iodine-131 were released from Fukushima but it had an 8 day half-life. With coal it's a much longer half life and much more widespread. While there are no spatial and temporal hotspots like you have with nuke disasters, it keeps on going, so the everyone on the surface of the Earth will keep getting hit not just today, but for their entire lives.

The average human will absorb far more radiation from coal than from all nuke disasters. The numbers either way are small enough that you have other things to worry about as an individual, but coal is definitely going to cause a higher net number of cancers globally.

I also don't advocate saving everyone. $100,000 cancer treatments aren't going to be for everyone. However, setting broken bones or covering antibiotics for an infection are simply so cheap that we're better off just paying for it. It's cheaper than paying for the massive bureaucracy we have now.

Yes, with taxes. I'm in a high bracket so I'm subsidizing others. I'm okay with that.

I have an opinion; I accept that other people have their opinion; and I think a compromise might be possible. How is that batshit crazy?

I agree - I prefer the static HTML option. In my opinion baseline healthcare is a human right, not just a citizen's right. Show up at the hospital or doctor, get treated, go home.

We waste more money on insurance bureaucracy than it'd cost to simply provide basic care to "the freeloaders" (by whichever definition)... but if limiting the system to citizens / legal residents / taxpayers / whatever will get people to quit worrying about "cheaters" then I think it's certainly better than the mess we have now.

What went wrong is we created a system which requires extensive paperwork for insurance. It should have been a web form that asks "Are you a US citizen?" and if you answer yes, it says "OK, you're covered."

You can make the system (not just the web site) even more efficient by eliminating that question and simply serving static HTML.

A lot of jewelry is worn as a display of affluence, not beauty.

If you mean you can't keep in touch because you're a business traveller or divorced or something, get a laptop with a webcam, or a tablet, and have him leave it at home. If you want video games, get a DS or something... It's better at games than the phone will ever be, and the times when he's not allowed to game are easily managed by not letting him have it (or open it, or whatever) during those times.

If you mean to keep in touch during the day... Please don't. At this stage in his development he needs to learn how to live without his parents a couple hours at a time.

Not exactly. To the business world "The Cloud" means IaaS: outsourcing their datacenters. They're going from racked servers and storage that they own to racked servers and storage that someone else maintains.

Your point about "mainframes again" applies more to SaaS where people replace their email client and word processor with a web app.

A false sense of security can be worse than just having the exploit exposed.

While obscurity will prevent widespread exploits for a while, there are other benefits: I want to be able to assess the risk myself, know how vulnerable my car is, and possibly upgrade the system if I decide it's inadequate.

"Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun's_tenth_rule

These might be useful:
https://www.circuitlab.com/
http://www.falstad.com/circuit/

Hey other genius, you can. There are other currencies besides USD, or you can trade to BTC and withdraw it.