A few thousand reduced-to-ashes New Yorkers might, if they were alive, argue with your dismissal of their deaths at the hands of radical jihaddis as being non-proximate, and shadowy. They are indeed quite literally dead. Multiple very non-shadowy attempts (some very successful) by the same and related groups to kill other people, in large numbers, have also happened since then.

No, its still only the interest rate percentage return. That's what compounding does. Of course compounding works on other investments too- you reinvest your profits, either there or elsewhere. So its not a magical advantage of paying off debt.

Of course there's trivial costs in a business. If you're worrying about the costs of pens and whether you can get them 10 cents cheaper, you're wasting your time. If you're worried about the cost savings of turning the thermostat from 70 to 71, you're wasting your time. If you're worried about the cost of something that is less than 1% of your budget, you're wasting your time- even if you reduce it to 0 you'd have saved more by focusing elsewhere. A good businessman realizes whats worth being concerned about and what you just have to live with. Nothing is 100% efficient in life.

If you aren't in a position where you can gamble 120 dollars a year on your business, you shouldn't have a business. There's a reason why royalty deals are considered bad decisions for small businesses.

Card counting is keeping track of cards between hands in an effort to figure out altered odds on the current hand. For example, if you're playing single shoe blackjack and have seen 10 high cards out of 11 cards, you know low cards have a higher probability than normal.

That doesn't exist in Holdem, because there's no carry over between hands. Each is an individual event, with no altered probability from previous hands. You can calculate odds, but that's easy even for a human at holdem- if there's X cards which you think will give you the winning hand (called outs), your odds are X/47 on the turn and X/46 on the river, or just under 2% per out. For seeing both cards on the flop its 1-(47-X)*(46-X)/(47*46), or about 4% per out. Generally you just use 2% and 4%, as the nature of holdem makes it unlikely that percent or two you'd be off will make a long term difference.

So there are odds calculation. But there's no card counting. Also, card counting isn't the amazing thing some people think it is- if you don't play deep into a shoe, it isn't much of an advantage. In some games like baccarat its been mathematically proven to not give an advantage at all.

There are 2 poker games where it does help- razz and 7 card stud. This is because each player has a unique hand, including individual up cards. When they fold their hands are mucked. Remembering all the cards which were showing at any time is an advantage, as it can effect the odds of drawing to a straight/flush/full house. I would suspect a computer may have a big edge over beginners on those games due to that. But a pro at those games knows how to remember the dead cards already, I'm not sure it would be much of an advantage at high end stud.

There's no card counting in Texas Holdem. The deck is reshuffled after each hand dealt. Only 7 cards are shown to a given player, and all of them can be read at any time. There's no advantage to card counting, because you don't need to count. They may have some other card game they beat, but it isn't holdem.

No, it isn't. Or at least, it isn't by looking for tells. You win money by analyzing their betting pattern on this hand, comparing it to what makes sense, and putting them on a range of possible hands. One of those possible hands is always a bluff. Then you see what you beat of those hands, what beats you, and what your drawing odds are to improve and make a choice off that information. That is definitely something a computer can do. But the question is never "is he bluffing" its "is my hand strong enough and with sufficient odds of winning to be worth paying at the pot and implied odds this gives me".

Those are things a computer definitely can do.

I have a polite canned reply, which basically says that unless the recruiter's client is looking for developers to work 100% remotely, AND that their pay scales are likely to exceed Google's by a significant margin, AND that they do really cool stuff, then I'm not interested. Oh, and I don't do referrals of friends (they get plenty of spam themselves).

I don't actually mind the recruiter spam. It only takes a couple of keystrokes to fire the canned response, and there's always the possibility that someone will have an opportunity that meets my criteria. Not likely, but possible. I'm not looking for a new job, but if an opportunity satisfies my interest requirements, I'm always open to a discussion.

However, when they keep pushing even when they know their job doesn't fit my requirements, then I get pissed and blackhole their agency. That also takes only a couple of keystrokes :-)

Which, of course, is BS and not at all how it actually happened. Which you know.

They guy who observed the mold's properties was terrible at communicating his thoughts about it, and had trouble getting help from chemists to stabilize the important stuff. TEN YEARS go buy, and other researchers get the work done. Then THEY travel to the US to find drug manufacturers that might be interested in taking on the complex task of mass production.

You know, pretty much the opposite of your troll list.

That's one way. There are always other options. The key is to hook in at the layer that you're debugging. The wire is almost never that layer, unless you're debugging the network card driver. Or the hardware, but in that case Wireshark (or Ethereal, as I still think of it in my head) is usually too high-level.

Just like penicillin.

What bank is this? There's nothing wrong with public shaming in cases like this, in fact it does the world a service.

Also, you should seriously consider switching banks. Your post prompted me to check the banks I use. One is great, one is okay. I'll watch the okay one.

Yes, it is, and the same holds everywhere. Being able to grab the data on the wire has long been an easy way to get sort of what you want to see, but it's almost never exactly what you're really looking for. HTTPS will force us to hook in elsewhere to debug, but the "elsewhere" will almost certainly be a better choice anyway.