The problem is the makefile is XML, which can be ordered without losing any information. The diff tool is likely line-by-line. Therefore, there are "conflicts" because the file is reordered separately on two machines.

for most of my actual shopping needs, it's the store brand that will win the battle for "which detergent is it gonna be?"

And you think that's not advertised? Everytime you buy a storebrand (1) you are at a fairly large chain, mom&pop cannot get storebrands and (2) the advertising won when it convinced you to go to Target instead of Walmart, or whatever.

I'm so special because I decided to buy the stuff that is advertised by the physical location I am shopping at, because they make the most on storebrand, as opposed to on TV is pretty freaking ignorant.

How exactly do the advertisers manage to design ads that will get through to GP who "doesn't watch broadcast television"?

Tons of ways. Product placements in movies and TV shows (for when the broadcast on Netflix). Slashvertisments. Generating news stories. Billboards on highways/buses/traincars. Astroturfing. Paid stuff to bloggers you respect. In store displays. In store placement on shelves. You're getting information somewhere. There.

I, like GP, don't tend to even notice ads off to the side

And those ads are now designed to me maximally effective when seen in your peripheral vision. Just like TV ads are designed to look good when TiVOing through them at SFF

your contention that they affect me significantly just doesn't seem to be borne out by how I actually purchase products.

Advertised products control what you buy, because even if you weren't affected, enough other people are that those people control what is profitable, and therefore mass-produced so you can get it.

It's weird -- I don't even know the brand names for most products. Seriously. I don't

I believe you. There's a whole segment of consumers like you. But that just means advertisements target the stores you go to. Either trying to drive you to a specific store, or make sure you "randomly" choose that brand within the store.. Something like that.

if I probably see only maybe 1 or 2% of the ads that most people see, I'm pretty certain that the advertisers aren't somehow magically able to affect me as much as they affect most people....

Advertising isn't black magic, it's convincing people to make choices. You're making just as many choices as everyone else. What makes you think that fewer inputs means that each of them is worth less?

. And as people get more used to it and filter it out, it becomes harder to manipulate them in general

There's no evidence that people are building a tolerance to advertising. Studies show, on the contrary, resisting an ad makes you more likely to succumb to the next one. And the better the next ad or the one you resist, the greater the effect.

In my tests, DDG returned the best results, then Bing, then Google. Which, honestly makes sense. Bing's results are better for the same reason Mac's are/were so much safer. Being #2, you get to avoid most of the effort because it goes into fucking up #1.

There are multiple fonts: a "math" font and a "japanese" font. The problem is it goes jjjjjjjmjjjjjj for (j)apanese and (m)ath. It's just some programmer who has used the math usage, but never the japanese useage assuming that codepoint was always mathy, as opposed to doing some sane handling of the case.

For example, growing pot: You might have a flower pot full, or you might have a 100 acre farm. Surely the maximum sentence should be fitting for the one using a huge farm to grow drugs.

You imply that the 100 acre farmer would get the maximum penalty, and the flower pot full would not (presumably, the minimum). In reality, the 100 acre farmer would go free for flipping on his buyer, the flower pot guy who insists on a jury trial, and the flower pot guy willing to deal gets the minimum sentence.

You want a maximum sentence that fits the multi-million dollar operation.

No, you want a different crime for that. Because too much prosecutor discretion is bad (except for with regards to mercy).

I've liked that form response for a while. It tragecially now looks out date. To wit:

( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money

is no longer an acceptable objection.

I can give an example, if you don't mind me running to greek. Imagine some program renders mathmatical symbols differently from text. Imagine that someone writes out, using unicode, the formula for the area of a circle. No problem, right? The pi is clearly a math symbol. But imagine the same thing if you were reading greek. And beyond that, imagine if all the greek you read though pi was being used in a mathematical sense.

For the first time visiting a foreign country, I completed the trip without needing to acquire any local currency

FFS, just bring dollars. You know who doesn't accept dollars? Cause I don't. Europe, Asia, whereever.

If it never visits ant of the sames sites, and that pattern is known, isn't that exploitable information?

I've taught older relatives how to tell a destination to their phone for GPS guidance. Until I tried that when I saw they could barely type, I didn't think it would work because I've never seen anyone use that feature. Then again, GPS navigation is the one thing that, because for some reason I cannot download local maps, they track you using regardless.

What could Microsoft's shitty "late to the game" voice recognition add over the existing solutions?

MS's V 5.1 voice recognition was shipped with XP (sp2). V8 came with Vista. Both were pretty good, and thye was client based, not cloud based.

Okay, I shall try to rephrase the question. Please do keep in mind that we are talking about robots taking peoples' jobs and, in that light, wealth distribution.

Allow us to assume that a truly excellent 3D printer technology is invented in the not to distant future, such that it becomes the normal means by which most things are produced. Let us further assume that the inventors, not being idiots, patent their work. So, for 20 years, they control all the robots that produce whatever.

This kind of lead time will lead to a market force difficult to overtake. Let's consider that instead of selling the machines, they lease them for a long time (maybe forever) for a percentage of revenue . Among other things, they will own the machines that mass produce stuff, so assume that those machines are not allowed to produce other machines that 3d print stuff.

Now, this may not end up being a single firm, but let's assume that the companies involved are relatively small in number compared to the size of the planet's population.

How long into the future do you think that people will tolerate 1/2 of all the value being produced being taken by those who happened to either invent the machine or inherit from those who did.

I'm willing to grant that these mysterious machines more than double the output of a factory, so it's still better than the status quo without them. But how long until people's baseline expectations reset, and they just start refusing to pay?

Well, if you have sub-average braking, you know that. If the car in front of you has above-average braking?

You're talking about this incident alone. I'm responding to the question of whether a problem may exist as reflected by the number of accidents Google's cars have had..