Even on Earth there are a lot of creatures that can survive conditions far outside the normal range.

Natural communication? In a crowded airport with a machine? Pull the other one, it squeaks.

Artificial intelligence is nowhere near good enough to translate "I want an isle seat for my son and TIMMY STOP POKING YOUR SISTER, sorry, An isle seat for my son and I have a Delta flight from Dallas, can you make sure it will arrive in time to connect?" That's the kind of thing human attendants can cope with easily. The best kind of interface for ticketing is an unintelligent wizard on a touch screen with big icons and a "help" button for an attendant.

You're right: absolutely nothing is free. Except Linux and Chrome and Internet Explorer and Java and TCP and pictures of the Alps and FreeCiv and Libre Office and Wikipedia and the RepRap design and CERN data and the open hardware repository and NIH publications and water filter designs and Acura NSX blueprints and clothing patterns and Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive and don't even think about saying they're "not really free". In all cases we're talking about voluntary contributions of work. Games are as digital as all of these others and claiming no game is free in that context is total bullshit.

The thing is, they're filling the same roles in the same ecosystems. Suppose trees were square on one island, or very sticky on another, or very short and smooth, or poisonous, or covered in ants. In these cases the lizards would have evolved very different forms.

If they care about their customers (HA!) they should put at least half the employees they're letting go into expanded testing and security divisions.

The only relationship between consciousness and intelligence is that the latter is needed before the former can present itself. Actual artificial intelligence has been created already and is used to solve chess problems, schedule subway maintenance, and answer Jeopardy questions. If your definition of "intelligent" includes "we don't know how it works" then one day you'll wake up to find yourself unintelligent. We're answering the question of how brains work at a rapid pace.

So ignorance is not an antonym of consciousness WAAAIT A MINUTE I'm being trolled aren't I?

What real-world problems are best suited to the kind of programming used to manage the subway system? That is to say, if you had unlimited authority to build a similar system to manage other problems which problems would you approach first? Could it be used to solve food distribution in Africa? Could it manage investments?

The point is, they're not the same, shouldn't be treated the same, and lumping them together makes the data less useful. The only benefit to lumping them together is that it makes the problem look worse than it is. Publishing less useful data for political points? Evil.

No, no, no, no, NO. Whether or not you think the size (or existence) of my car, the size of my refrigerator, or other thing I like that raises my standard of living is harmful the only thing you'll accomplish by preaching that is to waste your time and spin your wheels. People will NOT be willing to make real sacrifices for an externality. To actually accomplish something push for only the reforms that are a net benefit all around like nuclear and solar power, the insulation you mentioned, and battery research.

Google's anti-SEO destroyed SEO-based businesses. Businesses whose product was deception and causing suboptimal decisions. I celebrate the death of those "legitimate" businesses.

If a sufficiently large population of interested people can be induced to correct the map it shouldn't be an insurmountable problem. Wikipedia suffers and reverts many thousands of bits of misinformation daily. Not to say it's perfect but it's good enough.

Anyone who doesn't work unreasonable hours is a slacker? Fuck you.

"Customer's permission" is newspeak for terms of service buried two links deep and five pages of microtext from the top in a section labeled "beware of leopard"

I would never assume they won't make any breakthroughs but what you're expecting is far beyond "making breakthroughs". You seem to believe a government run research program with a relatively small budget can outperform a multibillion dollar decades old giant of innovation like Intel. If Russia had three times Intel's budget for the next ten years they could probably catch up. Other than that it's just not happening.

Rest in peace you inspiration of mankind.