The article mentions an "aquatic sloth"

AQUATIC SLOTH!

A lot of stockholder money disappeared and there was a couple-year glut of web developers, but didn't crash the economy.

Because the tech sector hasn't crashed the world economy...yet?

This has been done on damn near everything for a while. Our packaging facility shaves off about 95% or more of the wafer, leaving a thin, almost transparent layer of the actual electronics. Then we stack 'em up and package them. It's how all those fancy flash memory cards are made.

That leads to everything from atrophying social skills as face-to-face interactions decline to fatal encounters with garbage trucks as we wander, texting and oblivious, into traffic

Or you could, you know, not be a dumbass.

Which is why the best home security system is still the kind with four paws and a loud bark.

So it will affect Wankels even more?

My Ford truck burst into flames after sitting for 3 days in my driveway a couple years ago. Fortunately my wife was working from home and called the fire dept. Saved my house.

I talked to several lawyers after this and what they told me was scary:

1) ALL car models can burst into flames while not running.
2) Many lawyers have their entire practice base on car fires like this.
3) If no one died or was seriously injured, they won't even take the case. There are too many lucrative death cases from this sort of thing for them to bother.
4) EVERY one of these lawyers said they would NEVER park any car inside a garage attached to their house. One even said he fought his fancy HOA for the right to park in his driveway instead of his garage. He won, because he had the evidence.

I am taking that advice.

For more proof that greed is the problem, look at the major post-scarcity issue we deal with every day: Books, music, video.

All of these are now digitized and digitizable, everyone in the world can have copies of them for nearly nothing. And if the creator or each works was given a few cents per copy then the creator would be well rewarded, assuming people want the content.

Yet we still have the RIAA, MPAA, etc. These people get 90+% of the reward for the content without creating it. The only service they provide is the creation of artificial demand ("Everyone is listening to this! You should too!") and some marketing.

So yes, greed is the problem.

Actually, long ago the engineers were basically managers, and the folks that did the work were the mechanics.

My grandfather was a radioman for PAA back in the 30's-60's. That man could look at any vaccuum tube and tell you what it did and what was wrong with it. He could build complex circuits with discrete components just off the top of his head. He held several patents. But he had no college degree so he was a "mechanic" and his bosses were the engineers.

He used to talk about "engineers" the way we engineers now talk about "managers."

I worked in Gov't IT for 8 years. Employees were constantly drilled about protecting sensitive information.

Same kind of thing happened all the time. Passwords on post-its, in e-mail, etc. People are still people even if they work for the government.

I guarantee you Snowden really did no "social hacking" at all.

If you have EVER been someone who solves people's computer problems (sysadmin, DT support, phone support, etc.) you know that LOTS of people will just flat out tell you their passwords when they contact you. They'll put their passwords on post-its, in e-mails, even in the trouble ticket itself. Or they'll just tell you on the phone or in person. No matter how you try to tell them "I don't want or need that information" they still do it. Upper management and C-levels are the worst about doing this, and their accounts can usually access anything in the organization.

Hell, I don't even do support any more, but people still leave me notes or tell me their passwords if they want me to help them with something IT won't do.

It is a silly theory. The followers of Udu know that there are no quanta. There are just smaller and smaller turtles that make up everything. And there is no limit to how small turtles can get.

My dear fallen friend, We DO know the origin of the universe. Udu has given us this.

Follow not those who are like the hare, lazy and who wish to rush to the Truth. Those who point to their holy books and science texts and claim they have the truth. For they are not followers of Udu. The truth is in the shell.

Exactly. Udu does not belive in hurry. Udu believes we should know everyones' lies, in order to slowly march toward the truth.