"How cute, a selfy ... Oh shit!"

Yip. I've also been tossed around by the boom and bust cycle. California was highly glutted after the dot-com bust and I tried to move out of state, which was very difficult due to family issues. My legacy tool skills are the only thing that saved me, being that all those web newbies had no pre-web experience.

I suspect that something more programmer-friendly will soon replace the bloated layer-heavy HTML/CSS/Lamp stack et al currently used; and techies will fired en mass. "Remote" GUI standards are ripe for a big factoring event in the industry. Common GUI dev does not have to be rocket science. It's like the days of Windows C++ just before VB and Delphi came along, making GUI's a snap (initially), putting many of them out of work.

Fortunately for them, the Windows market in general was expanding such that there were plenty of projects that needed the speed or control of C++ GUI's still. But the same may not be true of the next Idiom Cleaning event.

It's pretty obvious to me that the real solution is to store passwords in a hardware black-box (with a mirrored spare) that only allows a limited number of tries for a given password and all passwords per time period. E.i. throttled.

Computers are getting to fast to permit them to chomp on raw encrypted files.

An idiot may not know that :-)

If the STEM wages in other countries are almost double relative to the local standard of living, then typically those people would put more effort into it. Capitalism incentives 101.

The threat of being outsourced here also tends to make one treat hands-on technical work as a mere stepping-stone job, hoping to move into management, which pays more relative to heads-down tech work. If it's a temp job, obviously one will tend to put less effort into fine-tuning their skills.

I thought the main purpose was to help you remember the company, not to produce sales then and there. Nobody really expects to do much "real" business at conventions.

Conventions are a "notion" system and bragging tool: bigger booth = bigger company, to help separate you from little guys. And for a little guy, demonstrate that your company exists and has enough money to at least afford a (small) booth.

What's the alternative term? "Non-virtual human-body-based visual attention-capturing mechanism"? Too long, for one.

vendors' afterparties...around in one of the creepy "party busses" prowling the...

Do you have to put it in such negative terms? That really drains the fun from my visits there ... I mean my friend's visit.

So we need a meter for meters now.

"Firearms" is a vague term. At the very least, there are multiple interpretations and usages of it, some which have it cover just about any weapon that produces fire or fire-like heat. Thus, nukes could qualify under such a reading.

Someday a politician may promise "A chicken in every pot, and a nuke in every garage".

I meant before.

And that is why it failed...

Over time we seem to be generally learning that our planet is rather unique in terms of our moon size, formation steps, and specific position in the "right kind" of galaxy per heavier elements and stellar explosion danger.

However, the flip side is that we've been learning how tenacious and flexible life is.

Thus, while matches to our particular circumstances may be rare, there may also be more than one path to sophisticated life.

For example, large Earth-sized moons of gas giants, oceans of mid-sized gas giants, and tidally-locked rocky planets around red dwarfs may also be able to harbor complex life.

Which one would get me jailed there?

Angle 1: "Your claim is a steaming pile of shit!"

Angle 2: "Your logic resembles the quickly-disintegrating chemical bonds as found in recently-emerging solid waste products of typical mammals."

The "Left" and the "Right" are both the "Same" - e.g. "the ruling class".
Voters are just the "little people".

Notice how power shifts from one to the other and they keep adding bricks, each to their own wall, but neither side takes down bits the other side has put up?

Someday, the walls will meet and you will be on the outside...