If the corporate officers aren't DEAD, then they should still be culpable.

In the particular context of data, it's their choice whether or not they retain that data in a way that it could be sold. If at the end of the day the site fails, the business fails, and they go into bankruptcy, it's entirely their choice to preserve that data and sell it to mitigate their losses OR to destroy it based on their previous commitment to do so.

Now, I recognize that a bankruptcy court might frown on that as destruction of an asset of value, but IMO when you're dealing with such data businesses, it should be explicitly laid out in loan agreements that "the company's private data is NOT a secureable asset and is contractually required to be destroyed at the closure of the corporation" thus making it clear in advance that it's not an asset to be borrowed against.

Except that while we all poo-poo racism, we carefully fail to discuss the fact that racism (and sexism, etc) are all just subtypes of generalization and generalizations persist BECAUSE THEY WORK. Certainly there's some confirmation bias, and some vicious-circle-reinforcement going on, but people wouldn't continue to generalize if they didn't find it ultimately useful.

I don't know about you, but I don't have the mental horsepower to keep a perfectly individual, atomistic view of everyone I've ever met as unique snowflakes in my mind. So I generalize, and these generalizations provide a reasonably reliable predictive value while I navigate the world. I know "guys of a certain age" will respond to something a certain way, while "women of a certain age" will respond another, and communicate accordingly.

Are there exceptions? Sure. I might find the beautiful 28 year old woman with a massive N-gauge model railroad in her basement; I'd amend my generalizations accordingly to say "ok, now there is a 1/1,000,000 chance that the next 28 yr old woman might also be fond of model railroads". The exceptions are where we find the limits to the generalizations and THIS is why (on the other side of the coin) it's so stupid to assert too much reliability to the models - ie act as if the generalizations are durably predictive, instead of generally descriptive. If you deny the exceptions, your 'internal models' just get more and more out-of-synch with reality and less and less useful.

I'd point out as well that the most inveterate racists that I know of any skin color are the people who either live or work the most closely with a diverse group of people - ie the people for whom a good, reliable mental generalization is relevant and useful on a DAILY basis - while the intellectualist "open minded" people seem to hail from the most lily-white suburbs.*

*FWIW I'd assert that most of what's called racism is in fact CLASSISM, and the tragedy of racism is that it masks actual class-based issues that are persistent and pernicious. Personally, my experience is that intolerance for racism/classism and racism/classism in practice are two separate things that have little to do with each other. I know an older black woman who is certain that white men in general are (in her words) "the devil" yet she cheerfully has coffee every morning with two white men in her building and would never harbor a nasty thought about either of them. On the other hand, I know lots and lots of white intellectuals that vehemently and passionately argue against the evils of racism, yet deliberately choose to live in 99.9% white suburbs and send their kids to private (mostly white) schools because they don't like the 'culture' of the public schools, and would sweat bullets sharing a downtown train with multiple 'urban youths' of various ethnicities.

There won't be a taxi industry: (accepting for a moment your hyperbolic prediction) so what?

There really isn't a buggy-whip industry now either, nor much of a blacksmithing nor swordmaking one. They're relegated to economic niches that are more pursued as a craft than a vocation. C'est la vie - survival of the fittest.

The taxi industry for at least the last 70 years has been an ASTONISHINGLY widely corrupt one, with collusion between cities and the "medal holders" lucky, rich, or connected enough to be 'allowed' to participate in the business. It's going to die? Good fucking riddance.

And to more specifically address your point? No, it's not going to go away. There will always be a need for rides, and there will always be a segment of people who need/prefer the higher perceived security provided by a certified taxi with a formal organization behind it (in terms of liability). But the bulk-services shuttling drunkards to their homes at 2 am or students around town that can't afford a car? Yeah, no need for taxis there.

Hell, already taxi companies have had to noticeably "up their game" servicewise in the last few years, providing more comfortable, better rides and more electronic tools for convenience. Think that's coincidence?

The safest strategy for connecting everything in your home to the internet is....don't.

Why the fuck do you need to connect your front door lock, your coffeemaker, and your refrigerator to the internet?
Forget to lock your door? GO BACK AND LOCK IT. People have been doing it for 1000 years and the world continues to spin.
Don't want to get up in the morning to turn on your coffeemaker? Either a) get up and stop being a pussy or b) get one of the umpteen programmable ones, or c) just plug your damn coffeemaker into a christmas-light timer set to power up before you wake up.
Want your refrigerator to tell you when you're almost out of milk or better still, to automagically order restocks of food? LOOK INSIDE IT. Decide what you need to buy. THEN GO TO THE STORE. You'll meet actual humans there, and interact with them. I suspect there's more actual human value to that than to the supposed minutes you'll save (so you can what, play more video games? Do some more work emails?) not doing those things.

"..Because the site's privacy policy had promised never to sell or share members' personal details without their permission,..."

Sounds like we could charge the corporate officers with 2 million counts of fraud at least.

If we actually set a strong precedent of punishing site owners for their cavalier disregard for the promises made, I suspect this wouldn't be something we'd have much worry about.

I'm not sure I understand the narrative direction here.

While most people likely find the whole lobbyist thing distasteful, it would be rather ridiculous for a business that challenges long-entrenched collusive bureaucracies (defending millions of dollars of registration fees etc) to proceed without due attention to those realities.

If we're going to strike a pose of moral outrage when a company's employee demographics don't match closely enough the general population demographics, are we going to cry 'injustice' if their numbers climb too high? Ie if African-Americans are 16% of the population, will we complain if they reach 24% of the Facebook employee roster?

Why do we care?

In 2015 do we really believe that some Snidely-Whiplash HR person is rubbing their hands together and cackling while they shred all the valid applications from blacks and other minorities?

Of course they "aren't as vulnerable as believed".

Coral are some of the oldest persistently present organisms on the planet, having comfortably survived MUCH warmer temps (including much more sudden warming from cataclysmic volcanism and/or meteorite).

It always seemed particularly dumb to me that the movement chose coral as the ocean "poster child" for global warming, like picking jellyfish or horseshoe crabs.

Begged question, I'd say.

As long as my wife isn't watching what I type.

Right, I'm sure people would see a chalkboard, chessboard, leaderboard, and keyboard as synonymous in function with a skateboard and a surfboard (and a hoverboard as explicitly presented in the Back to the Future film, which they're aping).

Yeah, no pedantry there.

Even in TFA, using the term 'reawakened' is so totally mischaracterizing the situation.

It's not like black holes go dormant, or gravity goes to sleep. No, clearly it's been short of significant infall material and has suddenly consumed something substantial, leading to a burst of outflow energy.

It's interesting and fascinating, but really we can do better to inform the general public (who is already woefully scientifically ignorant) than using tabloid-level language to explain it.

Obligatory relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1133/ 'Up goer five'

"Rejuvenated" is such a polite word for "bombarded, wrecked, and slagged to the point that the surface crust is really pretty much just a wreck of molten lava".
As in "Mancini 'rejuvenated' Duk-koo Kim's face...."

"This material, which is still in the concept stage..."

That's ridiculous. How is this different than sitting around bullshitting with your friends about how cool it would be to have flying cars? "Wouldn't it be cool if you had a condom that changed color when an std was present?"

And hey, look at that, they've already picked the colors!

This is absurd for so many reasons.
1) as most people familiar with condoms would recognize, when a condom's in full use it's quite frequently dark and/or not exactly exposed to where you can see it.
2) I'm not really interested in using my dong as the dipstick, no matter what it's sheathed in. I'd really rather know the STD status *before* the dick goes in
3) considering the really rather astonishing materials science behind the construction of condoms, it's not like one can easily mix in additives - anything that's going to be part of the latex but isn't directly contributing to strength is going to be a weakness. And what are its ongoing effects on the latex over the long shelf-life and sometimes difficult storage conditions (ie wallet for far too long)? You going to use such a condom if the failure rate is 2x-3x that of normal condoms?
4) the "magic" substance that changes colors in the presence of an STD has YET TO BE INVENTED.

Christ.

Honestly, it makes evolutionary sense.
Cognition is a high-energy task; the brain takes a massive proportion of the body's energy - it's about 5% of our mass, but consumes about 25% of our resting caloric consumption, and this does go up as we "think harder".

The *sole* function of an organism is to live and to reproduce.

If - from a simple organism standpoint - the "living" bit is effortless, ie you're not being chased by sabertooths and you're getting piles of calories coming in, why waste energy on brainpower?

Yes, it's a thing that hovers, but implicit in the term "hoverboard" specifically is a functionality like a skateBOARD or a surfBOARD, ie someone can ride it. None of the videos I've seen shows it supporting any weight but itself (nor even actually moving), which is hardly more impressive than a levitating magnet in a lab.

Seriously, has the media lost even the slightest trace of criticality to their reporting? We just cheerfully repeat whatever some marketing wonk has told us as fact?