Someone's panties are all in a bunch, wouldn'tchaknow. Seriously, nobody's accusing you of anything; but, if it acts as a deterrent, or they happen to catch a thief, it keeps prices lower for you (or profits higher for the shareholders, which could also include you), and if the anti-cheating software happens to catch a cheat, that added proof that you actually did the work makes your degree that much more valuable.

So, where's the problem?

Damnit, that was <750GB.

This. We already have >1TB SSDs, so clearly they're already using $alot of the current 750GB packages to do that.

Best Buy checks receipts? Since when? I have to ask because they weren't doing that at any of my local stores last time I shopped there. then again, it's been a couple years so that may have changed.

The average adult, globally, has much more buying/trading power than an American with $10 in their pocket and no debt, yet simply having $10 in your pocket and no debt makes you wealthier than 25% of Americans. While I'm doing quite well for myself, I couldn't afford to go buy a goat right now, but people living in mud huts do so routinely. Yes, collectively, we have more currency than most of the world, but per-capita, we have less buying/trading power than most 3rd world nations. It gets worse when you remove the 0.1% of Americans who control 22% of household wealth from the equation; worse still when you remove the 10% who control 80% of the wealth. Remove the outliers (and with weighting like that, there's nothing to remove from the low end) and calculate the buying/trading power of the average American, the compare that with the buying/trading power of the average person in, say, Ghana, then tell me who can afford more. Keep in mind that debt is *negative* buying/trading power, it's literally money already spent. If someone has $10,000.00 in liquid assets but $10,000.01 in debt, they legitimately have ($0.01) buying/trading power. That's negative one cent.

We only appear to have buying power in the US because we are extended much more credit than we can afford. Consider:

The average US salary is $51,000 per year, the average home price in the US is $188,900 per year (at 4% for 30 years), the average US car price is $32,086 (at 5% for 5 years), and the average American has $16,000 in revolving credit (at 14.9% in perpetuity). That means, right out of the gate, the average American is going to have $236,986 in debt which would take nearly 5 years to pay off with no interest, assuming they could throw their entire salary at the debt. Now, consider that the average American spends $151/wk on food (and doesn't necessarily eat much better than people in agriculturally-capable 3rd world countries), for a family of 3, that's $23,556 per year, leaving only $27,444 per year to pay down that debt, which would take almost 9 years if not for interest. Except that we also need clothing, which costs the average American family of 3 $174/mo, or $2,088 per year, leaving only $25,356. At that rate, it will take over 9 years to pay down that debt, with no interest. We've covered food, shelter, clothing, and transportation, so we'll ignore other expenses since the average American could forgo those if necessary.

Since I'm not writing a text book, I'm going to simplify the interest for the first year; I'll go with a set of estimates based on 6mo of payments toward each debt (e.g. I'll estimate the year's compound interest by calculating interest based on the mid-year principal balance), which won't be perfectly accurate. Some balances will be higher, some will be lower, in the end it should be fairly accurate; the interest calculated will likely be a bit low, but accurate enough to highlight my point. The average American's housing cost accounts for 79.71% of their debt, while transportation accounts for 13.53%, leaving the remaining 6.76% to revolving debt, so that is how I will distribute excess (e.g. over the minimum) payments for this example. The minimum payment for a $188,900 30 year home loan @ 4% is $902/mo, or $5,412 every 6mo; the minimum payment on a $32,086 5 year car loan @ 5% is $606/mo, or $3,636 every 6mo; and, the minimum payment on $16,000 of revolving debt @ 14.9% is $640/mo, or $3,840 every 6mo. Remember, the average American has $25,356 available each year to pay debts, half of that (to get 6mo of payments) is $12,678, so that is the number I'll be basing 6mo of payments on. Well, there's already a problem, given that the minimum payments total up to $12,888, over 6 months, which is $210 more than the average American will be able to pay in that time.

So, which payments get cut? Remember the percentages I calculated for excess payments? We'll cut everyone according to their share of that $210 deficit, based on those percentages. So, we'll cut the housing payment by $167, the car payment by $28, and the revolving debt payments by $15, over the course of that 6 month period: $5,245 to housing, $3608 to the car payment, and $3835 to revolving debts. We'll also assume we have very understanding creditors who don't charge us any fees or sent our accounts to collections for nonpayment when we don't pay in full. That's a pipe dream, but I'm trying to be generous to your viewpoint (and keep the math as simple as possible).

For housing that leaves a balance of $183,655; for transportation that leaves a balance of $28,478; and, for revolving debt that leaves a balance of $12,165 after 6 months of payments (remember, we haven't factored in estimated interest yet). Now, let's add the year's interest and subtract the remainder of the year's payments. Interest: $183,655 @ 4% = $191,001; $28,478 @ 5% = $29,902; $12,165 @ 14.9% = $13,978. Remaining payments: $191,001 - $5,245 = $185,765 for housing; $29,902 - $3605 = $26,207 for transportation; $13,978 - $3835 = $10,143 for revolving debt.

So, it looks like after paying $10,490 toward their home, the balance only fell $3,135; after paying $7,210 toward their car, the balance only fell $5,879; and, after paying $7,670 toward their revolving debts, the balance only fell by $5,857. That is to say, after paying $25,370 (rounding error... yay!) toward their debts, they're only $14,871 less in debt; $10,499 went to interest, and we're not quite sure where the extra $14 came from (again, it was rounding error, maybe they kept a pair of shoes a couple months after the soles wore through).

Mind you, it'll get easier each year as more of their payment goes toward the principal balance, but at that rate it will take them 11.25 years to pay everything off. Of course, that's extremely optimistic. The car will need repairs in that time, as will the house, and those repairs will probably end up on the 14.9% interest credit cards. Oh, and after 11.25 years the car will probably no longer be road worthy, so they get to restart that debt (ignoring inflation). And, God forbid they get sick, which reminds me, the average cost of (now mandatory) health insurance for a family of 3 is $16,834 per year, which throws a monkey wrench in the whole damn thing; with only $8,522 per year to put toward bills (wait, no, after $2,516 in income tax, that's $6,006) each year. Do I need to redo the debt calculations for you, or are you now able to see how the average American actually has negative buying/trading power, by way of debt far in excess of the value of their liquid assets? Now, consider that I didn't account for vehicle or home maintenance (I mentioned them, but I did not account for them), car insurance (required in most states), gas (for the car), homeowner's insurance (required by the bank while your home is financed), utilities (electricity, gas [for heat], water, garbage collection), property taxes, sales tax, or any form of entertainment. And remember, if I actually took the time to calculate the interest on a month by month basis, you'd actually see more interest charged, so you'd see it taking even longer to pay off all of that debt.

The average American can't afford dick; the banks own it all and it's just on loan to us until we either manage to pay it off, or we default on the loan. You can't really pretend to understand until you've been there, or at least done the math. I've done both, and it's a life I'm glad I'll never have to go back to. And, for reference, the 3rd world cultures where people are starving, it's not that they can't afford food (they don't typically have a concept of money), but that the food simply isn't there (in part because they haven't figured out how agriculture works, so they're not really growing their own); in 3rd world cultures with a concept of money, people don't go hungry and the average person can also afford housing and transportation (usually a mule or equivalent animal, rather than a car), with enough left over to cover some entertainment (which, of course, varies quite a bit from what we consider entertainment in the 1st world) and medical care; the exceptions are areas ravaged by warlords. Mind you, our medicine is typically light-years ahead of theirs, but they can actually afford what is available to them without the crushing debt endured by the slightly above average, or lower, in the first world. That health care sure is important in the 1st world, though; they need us to stay alive and keep paying interest.

That really has me wondering how I survived for a decade on $16,000/yr with one dependent. Oh, no it doesn't... a mountain of debt, that's how. It's taken me half a decade of earning well above the national average to even put a dent in that.

But yeah, we're doing a lot better than the 3rd world. </sarc> Sure, we have nicer stuff, which our financial overlords let us use, for now. Very few of us are richer than anyone in the 3rd world, when you factor what we actually own, free and clear, against what we have on loan. If 3rd world banks gave 3rd world people in 3rd world countries some 3rd world loans, well, they'd be living like we do and those banks would be facing the same lending crisis the 1st world banks would have to deal with.

TL;DR: Your average 1st world citizen is likely much worse off, financially, than your average 3rd world citizen. We only live the way we do because we have the option of carrying take-centuries-to-repay levels of debt; take away that option and tell me how much of the 1st world ends up looking a lot like the 3rd. Here's a hint: Any region where the majority of the population has slightly above average, or lower, income and slightly below average, or higher, expenses. To put it into the perspective of someone who's lived in a 3rd world country, my former boss grew up in a tribal region of Papua New Guinea and could afford a better lifestyle than he currently lives in the US as a business owner.

Yes, of course a host needs a CPU in order to emulate another CPU, but it needn't be the same (or even similar) architecture (e.g. it doesn't need an x86 class CPU to emulate an x86 class CPU, though it *does* help speed things up a bit). As for the RTC, or any other hardware, well, all you need is the CPU and some clever software to emulate pretty much anything.

We're not talking about realtime emulation where 1 second of emulated time equals 1 second of actual time, we're talking perfect (from the perspective of the application, not the user) emulation, where X emulated clock ticks equals 1 second of real time. For that, all you need to do is count clock ticks and advance the counter on your emulated RTC accordingly. You can do that on a system with no hardware RTC at all. For extra realism, emulate jitter by advancing it a handful of ticks early or late. It doesn't matter if 1 second of emulated time equals 1 year of real time (e.g. emulating a 1GHz CPU on a 33MHz CPU sharing the same instruction set and architecture, assuming ideal conditions). From inside that simulation, the application would think 1 second had passed, regardless of how much time had passed in reality.

That's actually, by definition, how an insulated VM works. An insulated VM is in no way efficient, it's intended to be secure above all else. That means no instructions from the VM ever get passed to any physical hardware; CPU instructions run on a software virtualized CPU (no VT-x or similar technologies) or through a software translation layer and calls to any other hardware run through software that emulates said hardware; no physical hardware need exist beyond the CPU, some RAM, and the minimal hardware required to support those. How do you think an NES emulator works on a PC (or phone)? You don't honestly think that every bit of hardware that exists in an NES console also exists within every PC and phone, do you? No, they're emulated in software. All of it, right down to the CPU.

What marcello_dl was saying, and said quite effectively for those of us who understand how emulation works, is that it is impossible, from inside an insulated system, to tell that you are in an insulated system. The biggest clue you could possibly have is timing, and when your timing device is emulated to match the speed of your processor, adding some jitter for effect, that clue doesn't exist. From there, the best you can do is find some piece of hardware that doesn't work as expected; but that's not conclusive, either, as you can't prove whether the unexpected behavior is the result of poor emulation or faulty/failing hardware. To marcello_dl's point, when you pull the trigger of a loaded gun with all safeties off, you expect a loud bang and at least one new hole in someone or something; when you don't get that, you can't prove that it was a failure of the gun or bullet and not an emulation error. That's why there are people out there who genuinely believe we live in a simulation, and I'll grant them that it's possible (though not very likely), given some things I've experienced that really don't have any explanation other than "I was really high despite not having taken any drugs" or that. It would explain why the universe appears to be growing and we appear to be able to use the same techniques we've had access to for centuries to find smaller and smaller particles (e.g. the simulation's available storage is growing, allowing it to render and present finer detail) but, then, so would a handful of other, much more likely, scenarios (e.g. the big bang).

Having worked at Home Depot in my lesser years, no, the cashier was doing their job and making sure they scanned all of your items. About 20% of the theft in my store was sliding small items under the garden center gate, 10% was walkouts, and 70% was people shoving shit in shop vacs, so yeah, not blaming anyone for checking those.

When you've got a couple dozen small items, it's not hard to miss something. On top of that, some of us value our time such that the once every couple years something might be left out of the bag costs less than the time it takes to check every bag, every time. I happen to be one of those people so, while I do watch things being rung up, and bagged, that doesn't mean something small might not get dropped or miss the bag without me seeing it. It also doesn't help that the local Fry's doesn't have bagging stations, so everything is moved from one side of the counter to the other as it is scanned, then bagged after the transaction has completed; by then it's close to the inner edge of the counter where it is more likely to fall without being noticed by the customer. There really isn't room for them to have 32 registers in any other configuration, so I don't fault them for it; especially as they've implemented a secondary bag check as you exit. Fry's is really the only place I don't mind letting them check, as well, because the checkers are always courteous and if they're not busy and you've got time, they're typically quite happy to chat for a while.

Well, since I know they're gonna check the bag on the way out anyway, why am I gonna take 2 minutes of my own time to sort through a couple dozen small items in my bag? Honestly, if you're double checking your bags with more than a handful of items, you're just pissing off everyone in line behind you.

You are right though, I should probably put some clothes on.

An insulated VM, which is what marcello_dl was talking about, wouldn't rely on a hardware RTC; if it did, it wouldn't be insulated, would it?

Ever since the checker at Fry's caught that one of my items (the smallest yet most expensive item on my ticket) was not in my bag, I'm more than happy to let them check. It's not always a loss-prevention, treat you like a criminal, measure. In fact, having talked to the checkers quite a bit when the store is slow, I've learned that they catch people leaving without what they paid for much more often than the other way round. At least at Fry's, it truly is a customer service initiative. And yes, cashiers do face consequences for not making sure the customer leaves their register with all of their purchases.

Assuming the RTC isn't also emulated (and based on emulated CPU clock ticks).

Hang a crowbar on the wall to use as a towel rack. Patent pending.

Not so. In fact, you can tap the unlocked lock icon on the lock screen to re-lock the phone, even if you're in a trusted location or connected to a trusted device. Leaving, then returning to that location does, in fact, not automatically unlock the phone; you still have to unlock it once, and you can still re-lock it if you so choose. I don't use trusted devices (the only one I'd use is my smartwatch, which someone can just steal along with my phone), so I can't speak for whether those auto-unlock or not, but I'd imagine them to be the same.

Methinks someone is making shit up.

Don't install the flashlight that needs access to your SD card and the internet and you'll be alright.