Didn't Google just agree in a European Commission settlement to, among other things, make the ads more discernible from the search results?

Given his recent experience with the ORI, I wonder if David Wright's talents might serve the public better by forming a watchdog group that essentially does the same thing as the ORI. It wouldn't have the teeth the ORI has in terms of access to data, that in itself may make it a non-starter; but if possible the group could serve to inform the public, and when necessary, embarrass the ORI by pointing out inaction.

I'm going to go ahead and call Shenanigans.

American politics is theatre, a drama, a mummer's farce...total fiction. It has organically grown to keep people divided and warring over the insignificant, while matters of import are settled behind closed doors. I believe that many politicians get into the profession for benevolent reasons...wanting to make a positive difference...regardless of party affiliation. The nature of the game though is eat or be eaten; say what you have to say and do what you have to do to maintain your position. Of course, this is all fueled by money and power. There's really simply nothing else. We're all greedy. At this point in our development as a species, it is still more natural for us to want more than our neighbor than to make them our equal.

DC is little more than a circling colony of vultures, and we're all lost in the desert. Evangelize your politics if you really feel the need, but to me you'll just look like someone who is kind of simple. After paying attention to how this game has been played over the last few decades, I give up. I prefer my fiction with spaceships and aliens, probably because I want off this rock.

I'm guessing you are being modded as troll because the well-known logical fallacy you used in your subject to illustrate your point, went straight over the heads of the mods. To wit:

The question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is a common illustration of the "loaded question" logical fallacy. Kruach's point was the question "Are you a competent cyborg?" is also a loaded question. We are not cyborgs at all, and the use of a cell phone doesn't make me a cyborg any more than using a car makes me a mode of transportation. In primitive terms, a cell phone is a tool not an augment, and its use is a conscious endeavor.

So this is really more of a side-topic, but I thought I'd throw it out there. I guess I've always thought we would get closer to artificial/mechanical creatures as time and technology progressed. I'm wondering if the advent of 3D printing makes it possible for printing kidneys made of alloys that aren't rejected, and polymer membranes that filter the blood. Bio matter wears out, but functional artificial kidneys may not.

Then again, a human heart lasts an astonishingly long time (2-3 billion beats) and I don't know that the artificial versions we have created at this point last longer. Perhaps it will go the other way around and rather than humans becoming more mechanized, our machines will be come more bio-mechanical? Will bio-printed organs be the stepping stone to fully artificial organs, or will it be a step toward making our technology less distinguishable from biology? Can we improve upon nature in this regard, and is it hubris to try?

I would gladly pay $15 per month to access all movie content. I don't think I know a single person that wouldn't pay that. It's considerably more than I pay to production houses right now. My only movie expense currently is Netflix. $8/mo and production companies have to split that with Netflix.

Google: candy games -crush
Set date filter: 01/01/2011 - 12/31/2011 (Candy Crush was released on Facebook 04/12/2012)

I mean really? Could thousands of online and mobile games with the word "candy" in them, existing years, even decades before King Games released Candy Crush, suddenly be in violation of a newly registered trademark?

After watching several animated gif's of the event (like this one: http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/12/comet-ison-fizzles-but-theres-a-sting-in-the-tail/), I'm left a little perplexed. I was under the impression that as a comet approaches the Sun, the heat causes outgassing and evaporation, and the tail forms as the solar wind blows that away from the comet. Accordingly, I thought a comet's tail roughly always pointed away from the sun with maybe a slight curve due to momentum. But the gif's I'm seeing don't show that. I know the comet is speeding up as it approaches the Sun, and certain gains a slingshot effect as it whips around, but I didn't think that speed would overcome the solar wind.

Can anyone explain why the tail is still pointing in opposition to the direction of movement like jet exhaust?

Researcher translation: https://xkcd.com/678/

I think it is as bad as the article makes it out to be.

They searched the car? Did the have a warrant? Probable cause? What was the probable cause? Wires to the trunk? The tail lights are in the trunk. Those need wires. Aftermarket speakers, amps, and alarm systems usually require wires running to the trunk. What is about wires that are so damning? Do these alleged secret drug compartments typically use their own climate control system or something? Even if they had probably cause, which it doesn't sound like, was there visible drug residue in the secret compartment? The officers may have asked if they could look in his car. If so, that would be the owner's own dumb fault for saying yes (never say yes), but I still don't see that holding up in court (IANAL).

The article doesn't mention residue either, so that could have been withheld to sensationalize the piece, but I don't think it matters. The law is sensational enough as it is, and the ACLU is correct. There's already a law on the books against drug-trafficking. There's no reason to extend that to the type of container it may be found in.

Also, this.

This reminds of a line in the movie, "Entrapment".

In this case, the line would be: What can you buy with $6.68 Billion that you can't buy with $6 Billion. It was dumb for Groupon not to sell out. Just as it was dumb for the Snapchat guys not to sell out.

When you're in billion dollar territory, you've made it. You can spend the rest of your life trying to grow a $3 Billion company into a $10 Billion company, but the odds and history are greatly stacked against you. You can invest and grow that money into the same target amount, all while spending your time on other pursuits. How much innovation is left in Snapchat? How much more work is there to do with it? It's a simple, single-purpose app that does one thing very well and that's what makes it successful. Once you start tacking on features, you start losing customers and momentum. It probably reached 80-85% of its utility right out of the gate.

Take the money and go invent something else. Or buy a basketball team. Or help bring an end to disease in a developing corner of the world. But don't waste your time and talents trying to milk one good idea for a few more bucks.

It helps to prevent history from being rewritten by the history writers, the liars, and the pretenders. I'd say its utility is beyond measure.

Also known as a list of 850,000 people making a hell of a lot more than I do.

A couple of weeks? Wow...I burned through it in 9 hours. Even so, it was an incredible game and an amazing gaming experience that I won't ever forget. Solving that game for me was like Parzival winning the Halliday Prize in Ready Player One.

That's an interesting perspective, and one I had not considered. It's not unlike trying to get a small business loan for a start-up. No traditional model lending institution is going to loan you money if you aren't willing to risk any of your own. Gambling with house money can cause people to take risks that they otherwise may not, thus increasing the chances of a poor return on investment. Conversely, few success stories ever come out of people playing it safe, and Kickstarter may afford a designer or developer the option to take a risk that could be the difference maker in success...although that cuts both ways.

As a board gamer, I know that even successful game designers aren't usually wealthy, but they do have contacts and access that fledglings do not have. I don't know if that should keep them from starting a crowd funding project or not.

I certainly agree though that Kickstarter has been co-opted by larger companies and bigger names away from the garage inventors, hobbyists, and tinkerers; and that is kind of sad. Backing a project is now much more like shopping, than a quasi-philanthropic gesture of belief in a person or product. Part of me thinks Kickstarter should be open to all, and the public can decide what they will back. That would be the truest form of the democratization of funding. But it would probably be naive to think smaller operators wouldn't be marginalized.

It's a tough call.