Everything is subjective and political now. People can't even agree on the facts, much less on the conclusions. And, it's all in a light of which political side people perceive you to be on, in terms of what actual truth is or isn't. There's really nothing like political debate or exchange of ideas anymore. It's just a race to see who can insult the other side first, then stick their fingers in their ears and go "nyah! nyah! nyah!" while Rome burns. And, it really has nothing to do with educational level or socioeconomic status. Some of the biggest cocks I've had the displeasure to talk to have held PhDs in respectable institutions and the subject of discussion was in no way related to their field of expertise.

So, if I dropped my wallet, I wouldn't expect that there is an imminent danger that someone will take all the cash out of it and spend it?

This makes a great deal of sense if you stop and think about chess as a mathematical problem of sorts. While it's not been "solved" in the same way that checkers has, there is obviously an optimal solution for chess, and with greater player expertise, the closer they are getting toward reaching that solution, even if it's perhaps not humanly possible to fully solve it. The less experienced player is somewhat like a person who doesn't correctly understand how to balance an equation or who habitually forgets to carry numbers when adding, or some other analogy. A more experienced player is a bit like your calculus professor in college who might have forgotten to put a sign on a number or something trivial that doesn't really affect the process of work (even though the class dipshit feels like pointing out the prof's "typo"). A grandmaster is so good that you don't even understand their mistake when you were told what the mistake was.

IANAS (I am not a statistician), but the basic problem I saw with the article was that it listed various probabilities for certain things, but didn't really add up to one hundred percent. So, a 1 percent chance the world is going to end a certain way, by implication leaves a 99 percent chance for it to end another way. At most, it didn't come close to a hundred percent for all options. Another flaw was that, IIRC, the Earth has around 300 million years of oxygen, and will be consumed by the sun in another 2.8 billion years, both of which are a relative certainty, and I don't remember either being listed. In theory, the risk of asteroid impact should be progressively lower as time goes on, and the other risks, outside of resource depletion and nuclear war, are just speculation. Even with resource depletion, life in some form is going to exist, albeit not with modern conveniences, and nuclear war's survivability is open for debate. I guess the one thing we can be completely certain about is that even Oxford University likes to put a little clickbait out, now and then.

Having spent time around members of the criminal class and general "gutter" of society, I'm really not surprised at this. Thoreau said "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." You can close down all the venues you want, arrest people and pointlessly make examples of them, but as long as the demand is there, things like the black market, or dark web, or whatever, are going to continue to thrive. Change people's attitudes, and you change their behavior. Unfortunately, America has doubled down on draconian punishment, while losing sight of what we're trying to accomplish as a society.

There are plenty of software projects that either end in outright failure or have less than optimal success. Look at what a colossal failure Slashdot Beta was.

A quick look at the demographics of teachers shows that around eighty-four percent of teachers are women. So, do women have lower expectations of female students? Are they unconsciously selecting for non-technical professions, because teacher themselves are not working in a technical profession? Are female teachers to blame for discouraging girls, because they were not able to succeed in a technical track in high school and college? Obviously, TFA is another attempt to stir up the "gender wars," but I'm not sure the narrative that's being pushed really fits the current PC template.

I can honestly say that I've never tried to communicate with other people by verbalizing code. I would have gotten a dirty look at best, from the kids, if I tried saying "for each ClothingItem clothingItem in Laundrybasket ClothingItems, if clothingItem has stains is true, apply prespotter, add clothingItem to WashingMachine."

Yeah, you're spot on with this and why most of the music I listen do has never even come before a company exec. Frank Zappa did a great interview on this very topic, talking about the dynamics of the old execs who were willing to give anything a shot and see if it stuck, versus the newer guys (back in the 80s at this point) who would not take a chance on anything, because it meant admitting they didn't know everything there was to know about music.

Eh, they're plenty bribeable. There's probably a lobbyist from UPS sitting in the office of some Congressman, while a lobbyist from Amazon is in another office down the hall, and one from Fedex down the hall from there. It's all about who ponies up the biggest campaign contribution, if something will be done or not.

My TV watching has declined over the past ten years, significantly, mostly because I don't have time for it anymore. I have forty to fifty years of life left, and a stack of things I still want to accomplish.

...but, also kind of cool in so many ways.

The ManBearPig is that much closer to becoming a reality...

I thought this story was interesting, especially in light of the story a day or two ago about how there weren't any torrents for newly released music on TPB (with all the caveats that came with TFA). The barrier to entry for music production, or really, any kind of entertainment media, has been steadily dropping, to where the reproduction of the created content is almost effortless. Anyone can have a band in their garage and produce halfway decent sounding music, if they're willing to put the time and effort in to create something. A person can write and publish a novel electronically and do fairly well with it. The barrier to game production, in terms of financial outlays, is essentially gone. It's the same use of technology as a multiplier which enabled the information revolution in the first place, with the creation of the printing press. However, what all of those efforts don't have is a solid and pervasive marketing campaign behind them, and that's what a major artist for a major label is "buying" when they get a pittance out of their music being played someplace, or what a game studio or author gets when they are able to sign a deal with a publisher. Let's face it -- production costs are largely nil, but it's the ability to get the word out about something, and like them or hate them, this is what marketers do, and they don't work for cheap. I don't really see the situation going away -- they are a lot of people creating niche media, but there is still money to be made in mass market production. (yes, there are some things I haven't covered, such as the staggering cost of creating a movie or AAA game, and a need to make a profit on them, but I can paint with as broad a brush as I want on a comment board)

Oh, just get a sense of humor already...