Super short version:

Philosophy addresses questions of truth.

Science addresses questions of observation.

Creators are responsible for their projects. When you back a project, you’re trusting the creator to do a good job, so if you don’t know them personally or by reputation, do a little research first. Kickstarter doesn’t evaluate a project’s claims, resolve disputes, or offer refunds — backers decide what’s worth funding and what’s not.

Some projects won’t go as planned. Even with a creator’s best efforts, a project may not work out the way everyone hopes. Kickstarter creators have a remarkable track record, but nothing’s guaranteed. Keep this in mind when you back a project.

An investment is a risk-based transaction. Donating to Kickstarter technically qualifies, but what do you get in exchange for your money? Not an ownership stake, which is what a stock offers. Not a 'financial product', which has largely always been against Kickstarters terms and conditions.

You get a 'Backers Pledge'. And I have yet to see any legal case that would demonstrate that is anything other than charity. Any scammer worth their salt should be able to mount a legal 'reasonable effort' defense that would stand up on court.

I don't know anything about Alibaba as a company, or about their stock arrangements. But I do know that over the years the website has worked to become more buyer-friendly and to earn buyer trust. My main concern about this is that they don't go overboard with growth and ruin what so far seems to be a good thing.

Here's a nothing, kid. Buy a dictionary. "conformity with fact or reality; verity", "actuality or actual existence", "accuracy, as of position or adjustment" ... Science is the pursuit of truth. What it is not is a declaration that a matter is forever settled. Everything is open to question. Some of the debates are considered settled for all practical purposes, and don't really need to be revisited unless other base assumptions are challenged by new findings, but that still doesn't mean that science is not a pursuit of truth. That everything is open to question is you know that it is. If the goal were to feel good, then we could declare all current matters closed.

Pretty neat... I thought the online reviewing space was going the "reputation" route, becoming more "social" by allowing more highly weighting reviews from people in your group of friends (as well as entries in your "feeds" when friends visit a place). This seems to be the route of stuff like Foursquare... and... well, other similar services that I ignore because I don't have a very extensive network of friends who dine at the same sorts of places I go to.

The other route is to just have a place with reputable journalistic integrity do the reviews, which works OK in big cities. But then you pretty much have to know which journal to use in each major metro area, and deal with the reviews possibly being a year or two out of date. And, of course, probably little to no app integration with your favorite map search engine. http://www.washingtonian.com/s... is a great example for the DC area; we'd pretty much cycle through the entire "Cheap Eats" and "Dirt Cheap Eats" section for nearby neighborhoods, and maybe a few of the "100 best" for special occasions.

Other than that, I really do like Yelp for local recommendations, and have had great experiences using it. So much so that I downloaded the app when Google Maps switched from Yelp to Zagat for local search.

As an aside, I tried to like Zagat, even paid for a subscription back in the PalmOS days. But ultimately, Zagat reviews and ratings always seemed to be biased too much towards decor and not at all enough towards food quality, authenticity, and "interestingness", which Yelp excels in.

So it does suck to hear that Yelp is starting to extort business owners for listing good reviews, since I do make go/no-go decisions based on relative rankings. I dunno, maybe Yelp could start charging users extra for "journalistic integrity" mode that turns off some of their extortion effects, while the "free tier" of user gets rankings based more on advertising.

Anyway, articles like this do make me upset with Yelp. But a lot of places do seem to have yelp sticker on their window, so perhaps it's just part of the cost of doing business these days. I applaud this italian joint for lashing out against it in an entertaining way, and I'll start searching for some of the lowest reviewed places too, since I mostly use Yelp to find the exceptional places anyways.

You mean nationalization? It's legal if you pass a law that says it is.

Nonsense. Laws are changed all the time. There's no constitutional guarantee to any of those rights, and many of them are based on deliberate misinterpretation of existing laws in any case.

Is there any reason to believe that you won't be able to find room inside the case to add the functionality, at least to run a cable?

No, he's right. The benefit of laser cutting is that it is predictable and repeatable. It's far easier to laser-cut millions of holes with tight tolerances with near perfect repeatability with a laser cutter than it is to do it with a mill, provided that the surface being cut lends itself to laser cutting. The problem of positioning the laser is no more complex than the problem of positioning the part on a mill (arguably, it is less so) while milling the holes adds a significant number of additional complexities which are not present in a laser cutting system. That's why laser cutting has become so popular, to say nothing of its ability to handle materials which cannot practically be machined. Then again, laser cutting a fat billet isn't really practical either, so clearly both approaches have their benefits. I imagine that's why both approaches are used by Apple on the same hardware.

Nonsense. A percentage of everyone's behavior is defined by their reactions to how they are treated. If this weren't true for you, you wouldn't have even felt a need to leave the above comment. QED.

The problem with that notion is that you can and will be pushed aside if Apple wants to do a bunch of manufacturing right now. You are last in line for the big guys. You need to be matched with the appropriate manufacturer.

The simplest fix is to charge a tariff to offset the benefits of cheap labor. Then you get money and eliminate the benefits of slavery, without actually outlawing trade. In order to prove that you're unfairly assessing these tariffs, they have to prove that they're not oppressing their people, so the process drives transparency.

It won't fix the low value of human life in China overnight, but it will apply pressure in the correct direction. Sadly, it's not even on the radar.

The complexity of equipment we're talking about here is nothing like software development. You do realize that even machine tools only have a handful of moving parts, right? Tools which hold animals (or cut, smash, or otherwise affect them) can be apprehended simply by dissasembling them. Then you measure some distances center to center, and maybe the bore and stroke of some cylinders, and do some simple math (as in, even I can do it, and I have issues with numbers) and et voila, you know how it works. Especially if they have more than one of them, and replacement parts can be copied from another machine. Farm equipment is regularly repaired by people who don't have a manual.

Because in order for me to give a shit, I have to be able to afford it. Otherwise, I really don't care. I can, however, muster enthusiasm for open-source cameras with the quality of video provided by an expensive DSLR, but cheaper, and still able to use their lenses. If someone can point me to something like that, I'll be excited.

Great. Let's answer that question. The answer is yes, yes you do. A person is not the same thing as a corporation. For one thing, a person is real, and a corporation is a legal fiction which was created by government and which does not exist without its protection. Government is meant to serve the citizenry (hahaha) and corporations thus must also serve the citizenry (HAHAHA) or they should not be permitted to exist. Indeed, one of the tests for granting of a corporate charter used to be public interest, but now it's simply shareholder interest.