But why go towards eliminating lifelong earnings for artists, as opposed to extending it to programmers?

Prisons would empty!

Well, less than 20% of the prison population is in jail for all drug crimes. So... probably not.

. Do not do anything on the internet you would not do in your front lawn.

There's lots of stuff I feel fine doing on my front lawn, but not on the internet. Well... felt fine. Fucking invasive Google cars show up at the most inopportune times.

We are special and know how to do it safely. Rules are for other people.

True of most people for most rules. After all, it isn't the fact that murder is illegal that stops most people; it's the fact that it's repugnant.

There's no such thing as "fairness"

Well, why not? I mean, if you are making an empirical observation, sure I agree with you. But if you are claiming there is no reason to aim for more fairness, I wholeheartedly disagree.

You're making a case that you with you got paid more money, but not any kind of case that that would be more fair.

But fundamentally, we can all agree that morals exist. And fairness seems to be a natural outgrowth of said morals.

But demanding people spend billions of dollars to try to "fix" the whole climate situation? That just seems like a REALLY tall order...

Well, you made a large jump: that it's not worth spending billions of dollars even if there is no problem. There are people who suggest just that as an economic stimulus. But heck, people certainly disagree about economics.

I've read enough compelling information from both sides of the argument to feel like the "best stance" to take is one of questioning everything

Which is kinda meaningless. You're trying to say you're a skeptic. But anyone can say "I need more info to make a decision" The question is, what decision do you make today.

If you really question everything, if you really are undecided, a few billion at the government level to prevent an ELE seems like a no brainer.

I should have no reasonable expectation that a farmer (Nye wrote "regular software writers and farmers") would have expertise in astrophysics for example.

Farming is hard and pretty science driven. I mean, not for the person who owns a small farm that doesn't earn enough to pay the bills. But for someone who's making a living off of it, they have to know a lot about weather, seed types, interactions with a whole range of chemicals (fertilizers, pesticides, etc.). In general, a farmer is going to be more impacted than most by climate change, and should have enough of a background to be able to understand it (in the high points).

I have no sympathy for idiots who think bank tellers are able to give tax advice. But certainly, if they do, their recourse should be against the bank if they trained the teller to answer like that.

Do I think they should get screwed... no. But am I concerned that they have to prove where the money came from if they are obviously trying to skirt the regulations? Not really. I like the idea of a law that says "don't go out of your way to avoid these reporting regulations."

Hide it? They're advertising voice controls now... at least some of them. And they all will soon.

They certainly would love to shut down bitcoin like they do with other competing currencies

Dude, there are tons of competing currencies. You just cannot call them things like a "dollar" or a "quarter". You can also make a soda. You just cannot call it a "Coke" or a "Sprite".

If someone tells me, if I make deposits worth more than 10,000, I will be taxed a second time, I for sure will stop making deposits above 10,000.

Then you are an idiot. Because that person is wrong. 10,000 just means it gets reported to the IRS. And if the money was in paychecks or whatever, it already is, and they cross-reference.

However, it is illegal to try to skirt the 10,000 reporting limit (by making many 9,999.99 deposits, for example). That's prima facia evidence you are trying to avoid reporting... and therefore the funds are likely untaxed. Therefore, taking the advice of someone making minimum wage... the legal advice of a non-attorney and the tax advice of a non-CPA, will cost you a lot.

IANAL and IANACPA, so you probably want to double check a random person on the internet before making tens of thousands of dollars decisions.

If machine learning is such a great thing, why is Microsoft giving it away?

Because Google, esp. with their investments in DeepMind, are investing in Machine Learning. Giving away what Google's been investing in is a great way to try to encourage lots of start ups to compete with Google's 20% projects.

These startups will be relying on Microsofts services, not Googles. Which has at least some benefit.

Besides, they have had a few huge machine learning projects (Dozens of PhDs... they've invested far far more than that, and built giant stacks of hardware optimized for machine learning) that they may as well leverage somehow.

Did anyone ever use average to mean "mode"? I really truly doubt it.

I think that's probably one of the more common uses of average in a non-technical use. The "average" person, meaning typical, is the most likely person you will meet.

The average family has 2.4 kids is one of those funny statements that sounds wrong, mostly because people are not expecting the mean, but instead the typical value.

maybe because they're privately held but they don't do stupid moves just to squeeze a tiny bit more cash out of consumers.

They don't make stupid moves that make $5 off of you today. Instead, they want to keep you a happy paying customer, and make $0.25 a month off of you in perpetuity.*

*Actual timeframe and dollar amounts used are illustrative only, and likely have no relationship to the real numbers. Except the perpetuity one, actually.

It's quarter-itis, where everything needs to happen now.

Those billions of dollars of American property having been stolen blatantly from Cuba in the first place with the help of a corrupt crony dictatorship

WTF? America won Cuba in a war with Spain. They then offered Cuba their Independence. Obviously, there was a lot of private American ownership of Cuban resources, from the fact that it was an American territory.