The only way something as useful to humans as Spice is so many way could occur on a planet where humans aren't native is if it was engineered.

Arrakis MUST be an artificial ecology that was created in a time from which records are lost, before the Butlerian Jihad.

"we"

Bitcoin is generally wasteful, but miners can be turned on/off at will, so it provides a way to 'burn off' excess energy from renewable sources during low demand, while keeping it available for peak demand times.

The environmental impact of bitcoin is tied to the sources of energy on the grid, and can provide funding for solar/wind generation.

Don't try to ban Bitcoin to stop coal/oil from being burned, just directly ban burning coal/oil.

General Welfare clause.

Not swiping their fingerprints, just swiping the finger while using UI in general, is the claim.

Ironic.

Try reading next time.

Wouldn't accuracy be folded into the overall size?

If you have a model that generates the gigabyte of text, but with a number of known errors, you just append the errata data to the end for a correction pass.

A 100% accurate model would need 0 errata, so the error rate just becomes a size a penalty.

What's it like living in fear all the time?

I was just thinking a belt. Is there a particular reason the vibrations have to come from inside?

There is a reason you were talking about what you were talking about, usually location based.

I once stepped into the Shelving furniture aisle in a department store to take a 40 minute phone call from an attorney about his website.

The next several days I got a LOT of ads for shelves. Nothing special about websites and legal stuff. Google has maps of stores interiors, and combines them with precise location services.

My brother in law, when we shared an IP address received a PDF from a home inspector into his G-mail inbox that mentioned the crawlspace needed to be relined.

Before he even read it, I started getting ads on Slashdot for basement lining services.

There is plenty of data you give them that they think they know what you are 'talking' about without having to actually hear a single word.

All it takes of for someone you know to google something, and for your phones to be next to each other, and they think they have a data point.

I assume that's why I get ads in chinese after I moved in next to some chinese speaking people.

If only the device doing the encryption wasn't held in your hand...

Yep, there are games on Steam and movies on Amazon you can't buy from them anymore... but are still in 'your' digital library.

Fairest solution is a full refund of 100% of the purchase price; and Sony gets to keep the interest that could have been earned on the money as if it were rental income and no other penalties, and the temporary access to the media did have some value.

Blu-Ray has revocable DRM. Even if you never give the player internet access, a digitally signed updated key revocation list will be automatically installed if you insert a newer Blu-Ray disc with a newer revocation list than your player has.

Blockchain wasn't the problem, it was having to report the payments made to users as income to the taxman. On a mostly anonymous platform, that wasn't gonna happen.