And then the US will say 'you list 80% of your company on the dow/nasdaq exchanges, so we're going to tax you as though you were 80% an American corp'.

If they were investing it then it wouldn't be profit and people would care less. They're sitting on massive cash reserves, which ties up the money needlessly. It's bad for the country, bad for the stockholders (since it isn't being invested or used for dividends) , and ultimately bad for the companies since they should be investing to grow. But since it looks good on a balance sheet and a lot of investors can't be bothered to look past a quarterly report a lot of companies with crappy executives and boards will keep doing it.

There are lots of routine, day-to-day things that police are required to do that necessitate a staffed front desk during business hours. Police checks, parole check-ins, and taking deliveries, for example. If their lobby is decent size then offering it as a public space for craigslist exchanges isn't costing them any time or money.

2km for a building full of usable space like offices and hotels. A space elevator only requires a cable. That said, no, no space elevator any time soon.

To me it would make sense to separate traffic enforcement from policing. Create a traffic patrol that has only very limited police powers to enforce the traffic laws, and let them call in the police if there's something they can't deal with. They have less power so can be paid less, and it may lower the risk of violence at a traffic stop if the dealer in the car knows the worst the person pulling him over can do is write a ticket for speeding. Then the police are free to deal with crimes that people actually care about and can work on improving their image.

Source?

Google sells ads, I haven't heard of them selling any info, and I suspect doing so would be illegal in many countries they operate in.

They're upgrading existing installs - you're already a customer to take advantage of this. Besides that they're probably just trying to drive up their pre-SP1 numbers to convince some of their corporate customers to upgrade sooner. They're also upgrading machines that would be pretty unlikely to be upgraded otherwise.

And hyperloop could, theoretically, move people and goods at several times the speed of sound for cheap, once the vacuum is established. Much faster than any other current method.

As to Musk being overhyped, he sold a game he programmed at age 12, was founder or co-founder of zip2, PayPal, spacex, tesla, and is credited with the concept of SolarCity. The only other person I can think of with that kind of diversity is Richard Branson. Maybe Paul Allen, but everything he's touched since Microsoft has failed. He certainly isn't always right, but he seems to have a knack for founding companies that work in areas that are just ahead of the curve.

Limit yes, heads-up rarely unless it's the final round of a tournament. One on one hold'em is almost a different game from multi-player.

They're removing security clearance from someone who is clearly easily bought. What's the problem?

Stupid and greedy is a good definition of someone who should not have security clearance.

You know that a smartphone with NFC can generally duplicate a RFID token, right?

Yet we still can't answer basic questions about ourselves like 'why do we require sleep?' or 'what is a healthy diet?'. I think it is the height of arrogance to think we can achieve in a few decades what took nature billions of years. Today's computers are intelligent in the same way that a parrot is fluent in language.

The founder should be a subject matter expert. They should be the one guiding the product to the first release. Unless the product is a compiler it doesn't matter much if they can code. They need to have a vision of what the product will be, not what widgets are required for every function.

I'd say chocolate is more like coffee. There are a few snobs who will happily pay incredible prices for what they're told is the best quality, a lot of people who want something that tastes right, and the majority that have never tasted it without drowning it in milk and sugar.