You could be surprisedd - Venera 7 - all the way back in 1970 successfully landed on the surface of Venus, and transmitted data back for 23 minutes before dying (somewhat prematurely because of a partial parachute-fail during landing)

Al told, more than a dozen spacecraft has since then returned data after being inside venus atmosphere, and a handful of them has done so after having landed on the surface.

Yeah, now that you mention it Rama sounds like a likely candidate. Pretty sure it was -not- Enders Game.

Read a SF-book once, whose name I've forgotten. But it had a charming law:

Parliament must approve all wars. Whenever parliament approves a war, everyone parliament-member who voted in favor of the war, is executed.

The logic was that nobody has the right to decide that some issue is important enough that -others- should die over it, without -themselves- being willing to suffer the same consequence.

On the topic of cannibalism, Arne Ness once opined that in his opinion, it'd be a significant step forward morally if we would refrain from killing more people than we intend to eat.

That is true.

But it's also true that while the government *can* kill you, they're fairly *unlikely* to.

Meanwhile Facebook *can* use all the information you give them for their own personal profit -- and they're *very* likely to do precisely that.

Yeah I know that in principle dealing with corporations is voluntarily, and this *does* make a difference. But in a world where infrastructure is increasingly privatized and monopolized, doing so has high social and practical costs.

Let's say I don't want VISA anywhere in my finances. I'm not aware of -any- Norwegian bank whose debit-cards aren't also visa-cards, quite possibly it'd thus mean foregoing paying with plastic alltogether, and foregoing ATMs too, in favor of withdrawing money in the actual bank, with extremely limited opening-hours, and high fees. (in contrast to ATM-withdrawal or in-store-plastic-payment which is free)

Let's say I don't want Facebook. Thing is, in a world where 95%+ of my peers use *precisely* that for sharing information on their lives, and for stuff like inviting people to parties, what's the social cost for this decision ?

The village square and the village market used to be publicly owned spaces, with free speech. Todays village square and village market are named Facebook and Ebay, they're privately owned and your freedoms are limited to those which are profitable for the owners.

I'd be in favor of less government, if I thought that the alternative was more freedom. Sadly, I don't. To me it seems the alternative is more power to privately owned corporations instead. The solution doesn't tend to be "let's stop doing that", instead the solution tends to be "let's privatize that!"

This is indeed a blind spot in USA. Many, perhaps even most, see government as fundamentally opposed to their interests, while giving corporations a free pass - despite the fact that government atleast in principle represents the interests of the people while corporations represents the interests of the owners. (which are a tiny fraction of the people)

Google and Facebook knows more about our private lives than the government does, yet this seems to bother nobody. It's true that you can opt out of those - but it's also true that network-effects make social media a natural monopoly.

It's not that simple in practice. Wealthy and poor people tend to break -different- laws, and it's thus hard to say if the law proscribes the same punishment for equally serious transgressions.

What's worse, stealing a car, or manipulating financial records to benefit your own wallet while befrauding investors to the tune of $1 million ? Who's more likely to do actual jail-time ?

X6550. It shows up in Linux as 16 cores, but that is because of hyperthreading, there's 8 actual cores, if I understood things correctly.

Yes that CPU *today* costs as much as a good laptop, but the way things are going with cpu-prices and performance, you're likely to get those kinds of cpus in sub-$1000 laptops in just a few years. You already get quad-core I7-cpus with hyperthreading in $1500 laptops.

*shrug* Todays "top of the line" is tomorrows facebook-renderer. I've got an 8-core CPU, and didn't even want one, it was just a side-effect of buying a reasonable-speced machine on other factors (that I -did- care about) and the 8 cores being standard in a workstation in that performance-range. If there'd been a $25 off for half-the-cores option I'd gladly have taken it, but there wasn't. (yes I know I could roll-my-own)

Most people prefer being surrounded by happy people instead of being surrounded by suffering unhappy people. Thus working to create more happiness in your surroundings is entirely rational even for a perfectly selfish person.

If I watch my toe get pricked with a needle, my brain perceives the visible image of the pricking, and the feeling of being pricked as happening at precisely the same time.

Yet knowing what we do know about the speed of nerve-signals, the visible signal *does* arrive in the brain earlier than the feeling transmitted by nerves trough the entire body.

What biological mechanism is responsible for this integration ? How does the fakery work ? Delaying the images from the eyes would "work" but at the cost of making us respons slower to visual stimuli, besides you'd need to delay by different amounts depending on which body-part is involved.

Or is it just that the delay is small enough that we don't notice ?

Everyone I know did a decade ago, today 90%+ of all transactions, 95%+ if you go by money-value not "count of transactions" is done by card, i.e a system that lets VISA, your bank and the store track precisely who you are and what you buy.

There's a few people above 50 who still shop with cash, but they're a dying breed.

Not "most", but more than a third of americans are obese, yes. If the trend holds, it'll be "most" in another decade.

True. Many do fine on less than that.

But if you combine sleep, eating, personal hygiene and suchlike, then it's plausible to me that a person would need a minimum of 9 hours a day, more likely atleast 10 to "take care of bodily needs", which is more than just sleeping.

Thus 14.5 hours a day of work isn't sustainable.