Holy shit - that is terrible customer support! I don't usually comment on tech support anecdotes, but this one is so high up on the scale, I couldn't resist.

Nonsense. How can one, with little income, have little to lose? If the fine is proportionate to his or her income, then he/she has just as much to lose - if not more - than the person with larger income. More, because to one who makes near to minimum wage, that little income is spent on essentials - food, clothes, transportation. A person with, say, two orders of magnitude larger net income, will have much more disposable money (after the essential needs have been covered).

This is not entirely true, and it shouldn't be true, either: at least here in Finland, fines for traffic violations are proportional to the offender's income. And I believe this is a very good system, because otherwise, those with lots of money would flaunt the rules, since for them the fines are a pittance. See, for instance, Steve Jobs, parking in the disabled's spot and more than happy to pay the fines.

There is a profound misconception, shared even by intelligent and otherwise well-informed people, and it is that the ultra-rich and powerful people are, somehow, bound by nationality like the rest of us. That's not the case: the powerful US politicians have no allegiance to the US any more than they have to any other country, and would switch places with a prince in Bahrain in the blink of an eye, if they only spoke Arabic. And the bribes they take aren't from US companies only - far from it! International interests are regularly the lobbyists/bribers. Indeed the US armed forces do not protect the interest of the American people as much as they protect the interests of wealthy and powerful people of ANY nationality that has something to win from a war or conflict. All those wars to suppress the "red devil", they clearly weren't in the interest of the American people - they were in the interest of the entrenched international financial elite - as well as anyone who makes profit from arms sales.

It looks like she might have overlooked the glaringly obvious fact that the entire reason why Google X and her job position exist is because of "mind numbing" technologies that serve as ad serving platforms that get in revenue for Google. Ask her to get driverless cars, balloons and a headpiece to start generating income!

She didn't say anything that would indicated that she overlooked what you mention. She stated her opinion about how cool the new technologies her group is working on, are compared to the incremental progress in tablet, mobile phone and apps development. Oh, you though she has a contractual obligation to be politically correct towards her employer? That may or may not be the case (I guess no), but it has nothing to do with whether she overlooked something.

You know, not always do people feel like kissing someone else's ass, when expressing an opinion. Sometimes people are, you know, genuine.

My experience, also. While I did experiment with interrupts with x86, I never did much with assembler, on them, and the segments, near and far stuff, definitely discouraged one from getting too deep into it.