Well, there is a darker side. It's just not always the same side.

Depending on how you define "life", yes. In fact, almost certainly, regardless of which definition of "life" you choose. Selection can occur in any kind of chemical or physical process in which produces similar but not always identical results. There's nothing special about the particular chemical processes we call "life", nor some magic line in the sand you can draw and say "this is life, and this isn't" -- it gets rather fuzzy on the edges, and the distinction between life and other chemical processes is as arbitrary as the distinction between which celestial bodies we decide to call "planets" and which we decide don't qualify. Nature doesn't care much for our arbitrary distinctions.

You can tell people at a company are speaking from a place of privilege when they assert that using real names will reduce bullying/make people safer/etc. For many of us, using real names pretty much guarantees bullying and danger, and quite possibly even threatens our lives. From Blizzard, it really takes the cake. Like I'm going to put my life in jeopardy for the sake of a video game. And even if the threats aren't serious, many people would just rather avoid the hate and abuse to begin with, even if it's "only" verbal/emotional abuse. Some people use anonymity as a weapon, but most of us use it as a shield. Congrats for those lucky enough to not need it, but understand we're not all so lucky. Removing it just further marginalizes those who aren't privileged enough to be safe without it.

People always think the world is currently going to Hell around them, even while living in a golden age.

s/server/service/

You mean like how I can't get warranty repair on my Dell because I'm nowhere near Texas? Oh wait, I can. Hell, I can get the tech to come right out to my office and do it on-site, I don't have to take it anywhere. Funny what happens when there's a competitive marketplace, and the ease or difficulty of getting service and support is something consumers consider. Or were you imagining a scenario where car buyers worry less about server than computer buyers? Cars are so cheap, after all. Oh wait...

One wonders how long it will be until it's entirely represented in Elite: Dangerous. :)

Valve/Steam? And are we really comparing a kickstarter project to a powerhouse of the gaming industry? This is a bit like noting a number of minor manufacturers people never heard of failed to gain any marketshare in the early MP3-player market, therefore it was folly to expect Apple to succeed. Of course, Apple had the advantage of pairing their new devices with an online distribution service for content, whereas Valve... oh, wait...

Ah, the No True Scotsman logical fallacy...

Clue tip: If something appears to make little sense, you probably missed something. Your immediate response to that should be, "what am I missing?", not "okay, these professional scientists must be idiots who don't understand the topic they have Ph.D.s in as well as I do". Appeal to authority is bad, of course, but if you find yourself at odds with an expert, it should at least prompt a bit of self-critical examination to double-check where you might have missed something that, if you hadn't, would have made it all make sense. Like here, where the point of what they're doing is to determine a heck of a lot more than simply what the foreground process is, but rather, what the foreground process is doing.

For some specific individuals, yes. For "private citizens" in general, no. The citizens as a whole have the exact same amount of money either way. The government doesn't take the money from taxes and bury it in a hole somewhere, it spends it, usually on employees that are predominantly citizens, or companies that are usually located within the same country. Indeed, money spent by the government is more likely to be spent on in-country companies that money spent by non-governmental organizations. The idea that the people have less money when taxes are higher is absurd. They money is redistributed, not eliminated. The people as a whole have the same amount of money regardless of whether taxes go up or down.

Yes. The argument is that if you call a large organization a government, it doesn't create wealth, whereas if you call it a corporation, it magically does... by acquiring money from some parties and redistributing it to further parties. Those first parties will have had their money stimulate other business, instead of having had it been taxed, where the government would have then spent it, usually by giving it to businesses to do whatever job that needs to be done. In the end, the same amount of money is in the economy, and the same amount is in the hands of other businesses, all that's changed is which specific businesses have it, what work is actually done, and who benefits from the work done.

Well, if you're going to go that route, the contractors don't build anything either, they just arrange/rearrange the materials they're given. By that standard, nothing's ever been built on Earth, we're just assembling stuff left over from the last local supernova.

By any reasonable definition, NASA builds a lot of stuff.

If you weren't interested in the article, why did you click on it? You know you're not required to read the ones that don't interest you?

Even better, you commented on it. Comments count even more than clicks to the bean-counters who determine which articles are generating the most interest and thus should be focused on more by the site. Comments are more content for the site, creating even more for people to read, and ultimately, more ad-revenue for the bean-counters. Even if your comment is negative, it's presence and the debate that it engenders encourages sites to post more of exactly what you commented on.

If you want to see less of something, actually prove it by not looking at it in the first place. That is what sends the site a loud and clear message about what you'd like to see more or less of.

They didn't betray their oath. Arguably they upheld their oath better than others. They did what was in Earth's best interest, even when Earth's government (and probably most of its people) would consider them traitors for it. Their oath was to Earth, not its government, and they chose the path of true loyalty rather than blind obedience. You seem to be confusing loyalty to your country with loyalty to your government. Sometimes the former requires defying the latter.