You get access to expensive content or services for free. The alternative would be to make you pay but to make money, you (usually) need to work, and work requires your attention. Either way, you are exchanging attention for a service.

Yes, it still has value. Even more so now that the craze has died down. It is used more and more like a currency rather than for speculation.

Hide your bottles guys, the old witch is coming.

First of all, the hiragana "no" is always Japanese, not Chinese, not Korean. The CJK unification is only about han characters (in Japanese, that's kanji).
As for maths, there are usually markers to indicate we are in an equation, which makes sense because Unicode is not powerful enough for this : fractions, integrals, matrices, etc... cannot be rendered with just code points. So in this case Unicode provide the characters (roman and geek letters, numbers, mathematical symbols, the hiragana "no", etc...) and a higher level language (like MathML or LaTeX) deal with the structure. Because of this, Unicode doesn't have to dedicate a special page for mathematical version of regular characters : the software can easily differentiate. If it is MathML / LaTeX "$" block, render it with the math font, otherwise, use the regular font.

Good analogy.

At the time Glide was still relevant, OpenGL was designed for expensive workstations and supported plenty of features like geometric transforms and lighting. Game oriented GPUs couldn't do this in hardware and software emulation was painfully slow. As for Direct3D, it was a massive PITA for developers and wasn't that efficient either.
This is the reason why 3Dfx made Glide. It was a thin layer that is sufficient for the developer to use all the hardware features without hassle but nothing more. For instance there was absolutely no geometric computations. As a result it was very efficient. Its popularity declined as CPUs and GPUs became powerful enough to fully support OpenGL. The original NVIDIA GeForce, which could do geometry in hardware, was the killing blow.

How it applies to VR ? VR demands low latency. And abstraction layers, which often form the basis of open standards, tend increase latency. That's why manufacturers turn to proprietary APIs that are strongly tied to their hardware, like 3Dfx with Glide. Maybe, when we have something that works really well, they will think about standards.

Adobe already more or less killed flash.
The killed Flash for Android years ago and the Linux plug-in is not in good shape. Their web authoring tools now focus on HTML5.

We don't need to be 100% safe, safer than human drivers is enough.
Plus, if there are indeed neural nets, they are not necessarily relied upon in life-or-death situation. In fact, they most likely aren't.
For example, the prankster tricking the car into thinking the bridge abutment is a road may fool some advanced AI until another, much simpler piece of code tied to a proximity sensor triggers an emergency maneuver. Rough ride but you are safe.
And, I wouldn't call these people pranksters. Murderers would be a more correct term, and thankfully, they are rare. The "push you on the tracks while the train is coming" prank may be an easy one but I don't see it performed very often...

if (random_float(100.0) < 82.5) return LIE; else return TRUTH;

Bot here.

What is this "joke" thing humans are so found of ?
And GP comment makes no sense. Why should bots leave when they are asking for maternity ? What is this "stirred up office" thing ?

Oh, bleep bloop, update incoming, it looks like a critical bug fix. See you later humans.

Greece, because they don't have the money.

While they may be easy to avoid by themselves, if, for some reason, they collide with other space junk, they may break up into a large number of smaller pieces, possibly triggering a chain reaction. Bigger debris also typically experience less drag and stay in orbit for longer.

Not sure. Cubes are not the best for radar tracking : convex shape, flat surfaces, sharp angles. These are actually the basis for stealth design.

If your project involves code, it's better if you are familiar with code. In the same way that if your project involves wood, it's better if you are familiar with woodworking.
Better architects also know the technical aspect of construction, including manual labor.

100% perfect execution can turn a bad idea into something that is still bad but sells well.
Flaky execution of a great idea can be a commercial success for your competitors after they take the idea and execute it better.

If that one asshole as you say it is an active kernel developer he has the right to include support for whatever the fuck he wants, that's the whole point of the Linux development model. As long as it is disabled at compile time, it won't affect you.