Auto wasn't evil, he was just doing what he was programmed for directive A113...
As often is the case, it's likely that PEBKAC at fault. Usually, nobody ever thinks about spec-ing out the error cases enough...

As a first order effect, no, but since executive pay is often tied to the company profitability (either through stock options or bonus plans, or both), a CEO has quite a bit of incentive to massively increase the profitability of the enterprise so he/she (okay, I think they are all he) will reap the percentage rewards (along with all the other stock holders) without regard to the cost of the customers bottom line. This second order effect is simply a natural consequence of how things are set up...

If you think about it, this second order effect would likely a bigger effect than the first order effect... ;^)

Oh yeah, a typical pharma company might actually really need to make insane profit on the home run products in order to cover up for all the crash and burn products they will probably produce, but that doesn't take away from the first argument...

But of course an industrial shredder won't be able to collect and sort 80's memorabilia as efficiently as a Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth-class...

Unfortunately mechanical damping of the inductor vibration isn't as effective as simply reducing the amplitude of driving frequency in the audio bands. Remember this is a sub-harmonic that is being excited by a non-linear coupling to the audio frequency. Basically the energy in a higher frequency is being converted into a lower audible mechanical frequency.

Theoretically, simply changing the mass of the physical oscillation (e.g. cementing it to something heavier) only slightly modifies the frequency of the oscillation (potentially creating more audible noise) and it still doesn't change the energy much. Viscous damping of the mechanical frequency might help a little bit more. Unfortunately, in practice, surrounding things like solder joints in potting compounds is risky as they have a different thermal expansion coefficients and it can cause additional mechanical stress (resulting in reduced mechanical reliability).

In the end, mechanical means are still not going to be as effective as changing the circuit to reduce the amount of switching energy frequencies which are coupled to the audio frequency bands. Probably even from a total system cost point of view...

Now that the video game industry has passed the movie industry, why is it surprising that they use the same entertainment industry tactics?
The more things change... ;^)

This is the next frontier/competitor...

I wonder how many Uber/Lyft customers know about the chinatown bus transportation options...

Uber and Lyft haven't seen real competition like this before... They may not know what hit them if they manage to show these guys a profitable new business...

Fraud is an intentional tort. If they never intend to give the rebate for all eligible people, then it is fraud if they then do not actually do it (even if you don't complain). If not enough money is allocated up front, and if they run out of money to pay all the eligible rebates they receive, then it seems to me to be fraud (although IANAL)...

There are cases that companies when it comes down to the bad publicity and/or the threat of fraud ruling, eventually pony up. But the FTC doesn't really look kindly on that in the US. Even if people eventually get their money, if they don't get it within 30 days, I believe it's considered fraud. Of course you never hear about the cases where there are only a few people defrauded and they don't complain loudly.

As an interesting aside, one famous rebate disaster happened in the UK with Hoover. The cost of complying with the rebate eventually cost the job of the CEO and the company was sold off... Which goes to show, you can defraud a few folks, but when there are too many, you eventually have to pay the piper...

Rebates are often fraudulent by design. Many companies that offer rebates outsource the rebate to external marketing firms. First, these external marketing firms don't have the same customer privacy code as the original company. Also, marketing companies often buy the rebates on a pooled money basis, they are given a pool of money to distribute to multiple rebate programs and are incentivized to maximize the surplus.

Outsourcing and incentivizing itself isn't fraudulent (just shady), but the reason that it's often fraudulent is that the allocated pool of money to the external marketing firm is never enough to cover the worst case, so they are effectively going into the promotion with the deliberate intent to defraud customers of the rebate and the original company doesn't indemnify the external company for worst-case shortfall (because they don't trust these shady rebate companies enough to think they won't just claim/pocket the money).

Often these small marketing firms often do not have the financial resources to cover the difference (margins are small because they bid down the pool and they don't take out insurance) and often have co-agreements with shady marketing companies that abuse your information. The original companies know this, but generally just look the other way thinking unless it's a total public relations disaster, they will just wipe their hands clean and enlist one of the other available marketing companies in future campaigns.

I call BS on your BS. Nearly all the stuff that made space flight possible were human achievements on the GROUND.

Most humans in space have been part of nearly ballistic trajectories or computer controlled robots. On many missions, human presence in space was largely for vanity reasons and the missions could have been accomplished with robots. However, there are a few times when humans were key parts of the accomplishment in SPACE which is what I was pointing out. That takes nothing away from other folks fine accomplishments on the GROUND which made it possible.

I think one of the candidates for the peak of human achievement in space is the Apollo 11 moon landing done on manual. Or perhaps the first space walk by the USSR...

The comet landing, however, is probably right up there with the other top robotic achievement in space. FWIW, the mars curiosity sky crane one of the other top 10 that comes to mind...

Actually the speed of light is just about perfect for the photon. At the speed of light, time dilation/spatial contraction allows it to be pretty much everywhere on its world line at the same "time". Thus space is certainly not too big for the photon (if you ignore inflation).

So the problem isn't that space is too big, nor that light is too slow, but how finite beings like us experience time (i.e., life is definitely too short)...

Sigh... Actually the way Obamacare is set up, insurance companies should *like* it. They theoretically get lots of new customers who are forced to buy their services and are pretty much guaranteed 20% of the premiums to run their business (80% has to go to medical reimbursement) and they are allowed to pick and choose the medical providers they will contract with... It's likely the patients that get the screw on this (other than the sorely underused HRA option which is another can of worms)...

Similarly, the large retailers would like a defined standard security coverage levels for POS transactions. The large retailers will simply pass this cost on to the consumers confident in the knowledge that nobody can undercut them in this dimension (as they have economies of scale). It's likely the consumers that will get the screw on this one as they will have to pay for the security upgrades for the smaller retailers...

I think people don't generally realize how much they are actually paying for the convenience of credit card transactions as the costs are cleverly hidden from them. In fact, until recently, the costs were mostly handled in a completely regressive manner (rich generally pay less, poor pay more). Interest payments subsidized the no-fee cards for those freeloaders (industry term) that don't carry monthly balances, Rewards cards dollars are extorted directly from the merchants (merchants have to pay a higher percentage to clear rewards cards than non-rewards cards). The money comes from the merchants so they charge higher prices, and the banks skim the money that is passed through them.

Consumers addicted to plastic payment are essentially enabling the banks to skim money from the retailers (and thus you the consumer)... Think of these two questions you might ask a random consumer...

Would like a convenient way to pay such that you will pay 3% higher prices to retailers so that large banks can get 50% of that money?
Or would you like a convenient way to pay if I gave you back 1% of your purchases volume so you can spend more money?

Clever, those credit card companies, aren't they ;^)

Of course you gotta be really die-hard to watch that Voyager series...
It will probably all start with a run-down shopping mall, using partially decommissioned airforce bases (like the Presidio) will come later...

And besides that, this is probably last season of Mythbusters. Major cast reshuffling (e.g., firing the on-air "B" build-team for probably budget vs viewership reasons) is a sure sign that they've been threatened with cancelation by the network...

Since Google simply leased the land and is NOT the owner, it wouldn't surprise me if NASA (aka the US govt) is still the entity on the hook for paying for the Hazmat situation at the hangar so that Google can redevelop it. Sadly that's how these private-public partnerships usually work out...