The hardware knowledge argument has become virtually irrelevant in the EC2-world where you can spawn VM pretty much transparently

Right, we forgot, Amazon VMs are magical devices powered by hopes and dreams, rather than CPU cycles like old fashioned "computers" are.

Back here in reality cloud virtual machines are just a shitty containment mechanism that's sort of like an operating system process, only dramatically less efficient. Did you know that Google, not a company exactly famous for lacking clue, doesn't use VMs internally at all? Every internal program runs as a regular operating system process on top of a patched Linux kernel. The system is called Borg and they published a paper on it recently.

Why don't they use VMs, Amazon style? Because VMs suck. Running an entire OS inside another OS just to provide isolation is a great way to waste vast amounts of money and resources. It means sysadmins get to reuse their existing skillset instead of learning some new way of managing software, but that's about it as far as advantages are concerned.

Certainly your Amazon VM will suffer from cache line interference, limited resources, and other things that plague physical devices.

Right here is the solid fact.

it's not about skill, It's about how cheap can we get the whores for, and how hard can we abuse them.

20 somethings tend to be too stupid to stand up for themselves and accept a 60 hour workweek as normal. They also buy the bullshit of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and keep accepting more and more workload.

I'm an "old fart" and more of a digital native than any 20 something.. I have been in the internet since 1987 in a legit form.. Was a part of it in other forms for 2 years previous... Running Unix and managing dial up nodes for UUnet access. I have been active in usenet at that time as well as not only living the digital world, but I have done more in networking and computing hardware than any 10 of the new kiddies from college put together. How many of them have actually licked a cray?

In fact most old farts I know that are still in the business can still work circles around the new turds on the block. We just work smart using that experience we have instead of being over caffeinated lost puppies sniffing and peeing on every server rack they can find.

Hardly. AirBnb and PayPal are both good examples of this sort of thing. PayPal got raided a lot and got sent C&D letters by various state regulators when they were rolling out across the USA. Eventually they had to sell to eBay (their primary competitor) to get enough money and political immunity to survive. There's a book about it called the PayPal Wars that goes into more detail on this.

Courts are useless here. They routinely let governments use secret definitions and secret evidence. You have no chance.

lol. This is an administration that defines the word "militant" as meaning any male that isn't a child or pensioner. "Material support for terrorism" doesn't mean anything at all, given that the last 15 years have shown governments will happily label anything they don't like as terrorism. Bear in mind the primary roadblock that prevents the UN agreeing on a definition of terrorism is western nations (i.e. America's) insistence that people who resist foreign occupation of their countries must be considered terrorists, and Arab nations insistence that they mustn't.

No they have not.

Unfortunately, the period you're referring to was an inherently unsustainable one caused by the fact that the US emerged as a victor from a World War, and coincidentally the only one of the major powers in that war whose population and infrastructure were not seriously ravaged by it. Even among the victors - Britain, China, France, let's not even mention the Soviets - all paid a heavy price on their home territory. The losers received economic support from the magnanimous Western powers, but that was cold comfort to a populace largely bombed into ruins.

So the US got to live in a bubble for a decade or two where the rest of the world didn't have the technology or the infrastructure to compete with us in any meaningful economic area. (They either were rebuilding it, never had it in the first place, or were too busy tearing themselves apart in postcolonial revolutions.) As a result, we had near-autarky in an industrial economy buoyed by barely sustainable Cold War military and aerospace spending. Times were good.

But you do get that it was never going to stay that way, right? Eventually the US was going to have to compete with the rest of the world for things. And lo and behold, they could make transistors cheaper in Japan, then they could make automobiles cheaper (and noticeably better!) there, too. Textiles disappeared to Southeast Asia, and steel and other raw materials manufactures moved to Asia as well. By the time the '90s and NAFTA rolled around, it was pretty clear that American consumers would much rather pay a quarter for a can of Coke made in Mexico than 50 cents of one bottled in Virginia. Unless it shut itself off from the world completely - thereby hosing its own exports market - the US could not sustain living wages in low skill jobs forever. The modern equivalent of $55/hour for high school graduates in Detroit who welded three car doors together an hour between smoke breaks was never, ever going to last.

Technically true but not in practice. The President does propose a budget to Congress each year, which the House and Senate are free to embroider upon as they wish. Others have mentioned the fact that the President can veto the budget approved by Congress until they have the 2/3 majority for an override.

But most importantly, the President can commit the US to unwarranted, falsely justified conflicts overseas that eat up $2 trillion in budget over 10 years and duly expect a rubber stamping from Congress. (Because who is going to vote to not pay for the US soldiers you have already committed there to buy the bullets they now require?) So, yeah, in practice they can have a lot of impact, usually for the worse when neocons get involved in any way.

That's a brave thing for a wealthy person like yourself to say and I commend it. Wait, what? You aren't actually wealthy, and instead you just think that somebody who is "not you" should pay for it? Oh, that seems a little more convenient.

While marginal tax rates in the US are not nearly as high as those in many parts of Europe, our income tax system is progressive (i.e. rich pay more) and the lower tax burden is disporportionately structured to benefit the less wealthy. According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, "taxpayers with income over $100,000 a year earn 60 percent of the nation's income and pay 95.2 percent of the income taxes in the United States." Additionally, according to that same source, "Those making over $200,000 comprise just over 5 percent of the nation's taxpayers, earn 32.3 percent of the income, but pay 46.7 percent of total federal taxes and 70 percent of federal income taxes." European systems are actually more "fair" in the sense that larger portions of their incomes are collected in regressive taxes (i.e. everyone pays the same so poor feel it more) like the VAT.

Let's be grown-ups and admit that where we stand depends on where we sit. You probably are not "wealthy," whatever that means to you, and taxing those smug bastards sure sounds good to you, right? Conversely, I am not a "one percenter" (at least not in my state or region), but am part of a family with two working spouses with tech management jobs, and my family's Federal tax bill this year before adjustments and deductions closely approached six figures, or just slightly less than double the median income of the United States.

To someone who is certainly comfortable but by no means rolling in it - child care is ludicrously expensive, and we save as much as is feasible for retirement, taking a lot off our topline income - "oh let's just throw more taxes on people with money" does not sound nearly as good to me as it apparently does to you.

And the computer here is a patsy called a calling station.

From the article: "but its basic approach to the game involves getting into every hand by calling bets".

You joke about gamma rays but there isn't much of difference between X rays and gamma rays from a biological perspective.

I'd be interested in what happens to those that have received several head CT scans. One head CT scan is about 20 years of background radiation.

"It also renews the expiring parts of the Patriot Act through 2019."

No. let that fucking thing die. The PATRIOT ACT and those that support it are enemies of the american people.

Radio isn't "free." The radio stations had to pay the record labels, songwriters and artists for the music they played. In turn, they charged businesses money for - horrors - "unskippable" ads that you had to listen to. Or in the case of public radio stations, asking you for money directly to keep them on the air.

There is no free lunch.

If that 10 years is maintenance free as in I don't have to do anything to it He will win big.
The biggest problem with off grid solar+wind installs is that caring for the battery bank is outside of the abilities of 80% of the population. If musk can make an off grid solar/wind install a zero effort/ zero care system where the drooling masses don't have to do anything.....

That will get the adoption rates way up, if the payback is within 5 years.